Your ego is the denial of the Self that God created. Its foundation is the belief that you do not have a Self - that you are not the whole. It represents your attack upon your SELF, in an attempt to destroy yourself, which is why the ego wants you dead.

Being rooted in limitation and separation, it is a sense of self that depends on being separate from other selves. It has to reject other selves in order to seem to exist. And so you have to make an ego for yourself AND for others in order to distinguish that you have one.

"Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for everyone he perceives, which is equally variable."

Your ego is obviously in a state of contradiction, because its goal is to be a full self, but it simultaneously hates the full self and denies it. It requires that it lacks something that others have, and has something that others lack, in order to be different and unique and stand out. It is made of relative differences, because it is not absolute. This is why it can never be satisfied or achieve its goal. But that doesn't mean it won't try, so long as "seek and do not find" is its guiding rule.

So the ego is the search for your self, where your mind is trying to find the self that it is denying. It refuses to stop denying self and actually find self, and wants to always be in a state of not knowing what it is. It will search intently to try to increase its awareness of self, to have more and more sense of self, of existing, but without ever questioning the original denial of self.

In order to increase the sense of self, this partial, limited, finite, less than whole, small self, has to constantly build itself up, bolster itself, increase its sense of identity, reinforce itself, validate itself, prove itself, get recognition, and generally increase the attention it gets.

Your ego does not care how it does this, only that it does this. It doesn't care if it means identifying negatively about yourself, being hard on yourself, beating yourself up, being a victim, because these all still have the hidden payoff that it validates the EXISTENCE of the ego. If you are suffering, you must exist.

Your ego will wear any kind of clothing including negative unhappy hurtful senses of identity, if it means you still at least exist in some way. A hurt, damaged, suffering, sick, lonely, unhappy self is still a separate self. Just as much as a separate self that seems happier and more successful and rich and famous.

This is because the ego's fundamental drive is to become more self. To exist more. It doesn't care how it does it. It wants something separate to identify with. It wants to be validated as existing at all. It wants attention, even if it is highly negative attention, or positive attention, so long as it is the attention that it wants to be the centre of.

It wants to be noticed, even if that means being a victim, being abused, being attacked, being threatened. It doesn't care, so long as someone somewhere is validating its existence. And even wanting to AVOID attention is another way to stand apart and be different, to be secretly noticed as avoidant and hiding and ashamed.

As Jesus says in the course the ego also loves the idea of analysing the ego, even if the goal seems to be to try to undo the ego and figure out its functioning so that you can rise above it. Because by thus focusing on the ego and its workings you are STILL validating it and giving it attention. It loves to be talked about regardless of what is said about it.

The overall theme here is that the egos tools can take many different forms, but its fundamental PURPOSE or USE OF those tools is always towards its singular aim of making itself exist more. It could even come up with the thought and emotion, "I'm suffering so badly, it hurts", as though it does not want this. But you might not notice the secret underlying assertion here: *I* am a suffering self that exists, and *I* am having real hurt, therefore I must exist.

It always revolves around a sense of "me". But this sense of me is a limited identity. Since it lacks self and lacks existence, your ego needs to "get more self" from somewhere. It seeks for others to confirm its existence, it seeks to be superior to others so that it can be more right and have more truth, it seeks to be inferior to others so that it can wallow in its real suffering and be a suffering self, and it even seeks to pretend to be indifferent so as to be a neutral self that sits on a fence.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

Always in whatever way the ego expresses, it always is with the PURPOSE of finding a way to bolster the sense of existing. And usually this purpose is hidden and not overtly stated. There is a kind of indirect payoff. While ego is busy putting attack thoughts in your mind, you might not realize that the REASON WHY its putting them there is so that it can get more mind-power to use to reinforce itself, or that it is busy adding to its stockpile of labels and definitions of itself.

When you are angry at someone for example, hurling guilt and pretending that you're innocent, you may not realize the subtler hidden purpose of WHO it is that is angry. WHO is benefiting from the game - it's the ego. If you are an angry self, you are still a self. If you can increase the sense of separation with another person by dissociating from them and wanting nothing to do with them, wanting them to stop existing, it intensifies the sense of being separate from them, which in turn increases the sense of existing as a separate self.

It's always very helpful to ask yourself, "how is my ego benefiting from this?" With any emotions, any reactions, and projections, any attack thoughts, anything that is not peace and love, you should ask yourself how this is benefiting the existence of your ego. And you will likely see that there is always some kind of payoff, some way that it benefits "you", some way that you get something out of it. If nothing else, that it simply confirms that you as ego exist.

Another of the egos big tools is to be right. When you are trying to be right, it's because you believe you are guilty and wrong, and are trying to project that onto someone else, so that someone else can be wrong and you can pretend to be right. It may seem at first that the benefit here is that someone else gets to be the guilty one. But that's not the real goal. The real goal is to increase the sense of separation between you and others, which splits your mind, intensifies the sense of being "not them", and thereby intensifies the sense of "being me."

Another of its devices is being judgemental. It may seem at first that the payoff in judging is that you're finding something wrong with someone else, perhaps to be superior to them, or to confirm how you are inferior to them. But the real secret payoff is that if you are superior you are "more than", and "more real" and "more true." And this increases the sense of existing. And being inferior to others or less than or insecure, even if unpleasant, still increases the sense of being something - existing. And all the labels you pile on are just more definitions for what you are.

Another big tool is grievances. If you are bearing a grudge it means you are holding onto the past, which means you are pulling your self away from the present. The present is where your real self has presence, and exists, so the ego does not want anything to do with it. It wants to maintain unhealed unresolved ties to the past so that it can be anchored in it. It needs the past in order to have grudges and grievances that it can keep blaming other people for, so that it can keep projecting and separating and reinforcing itself. Without grievances there can be no way to distinguish that you are separate from others, and so can't exist as an ego.

So it's not just about scapegoating, or being a negative or positive victim, or being at the effect of the world, or people attacking you, or you projecting guilt, or disowning of responsibility, or trying to identify with idols, or becoming a body, or whatever else. The CORE motivation of the entire ego thought system, the GOAL, is to keep being a separate self and REPLACE (kill off) the Self that God created. To keep reinforcing ego, building it, armouring it, defending it, intensifying it, having pride in it, decorating it, increasing it through any means possible.

This is all rooted in the core belief that you are not as God created you. And by denying the self God created, you seem to believe you lack self. That you lack love, power, identity, causal will. And it is these beliefs - these blocks to the awareness of love's (Self's) presence - these denials, that you lack all these things, that really needs to be undone.

Undoing these things doesn't directly attack the ego, and trying to get rid of ego by demonising or attacking it will just be more ego attacking itself to make itself exist more. You can't undo it by using ego tactics to fight it. You have to surrender it.

You undo it by basically withdrawing belief from it, not listening to it, noticing how you're adding to it, being willing to be mistaken, but even moreso by looking at the beliefs you have about NOT being a self, about being unwhole or unholy, about how you lack and are in need, how you don't have love, how you've lost something, how you've been diminished, and this general theme of "something is wrong with me." Your "self attack" has to stop.

Without these faults, these lacks, these needs, this wanting, this self denial and self attack, there can be no guilt and no ego. And the way to undo self attack is through the secret of salvation, in which you recognize you're doing it to yourself and you stop doing it because you want a better way. And that is the path of forgiveness - to undo ego by questioning its foundation. By accepting that you are still as God created you, lacking nothing, needing nothing, ending victimhood, reclaiming power and responsibility for what you are, and opening up to your real identity as the Christ self - the whole holy self, which is based on oneness not separation.

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion."

"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will."

"You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves you."

"Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker."

"For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt."

"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS."

"Miracles are ENERGIZING."

"What you share you STRENGTHEN."

"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack."

"A miracle is a universal blessing from God"

"..he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received."

"I give the miracles I have received"

"But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"By lending you his strength, he strengthens himself."

"And both are strengthened by their union with each other."

"They will strengthen him and stabilize you."

"KNOWING this perfection is shared, it RECOGNIZES it in others, thus strengthening it in both. "

"A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by ME. It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception and snapping it into place."

"The miracle dissolves error"

"See the point about miracles as a perception corrector before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

When we are playing the role of victim, of being at the effect of anything, we are out of touch with the power of decision. We think that stuff is happening against our will. Then we enter into a problem-solving mode, where we ask, "how am I going to deal with this?"

In the victimhood we feel trapped and disempowered, as if we have no choice. We seem forced to deal with whatever is happening, as though it is happening all on its own. We seem to be left with no option but to deal with it, and then we start trying to find ways to make it go away, or to mitigate it and find the least painful way out.

The thing we're then missing is that we actually chose whatever is happening, we are making it happen, and we can choose again. We have a power of decision and we are the rulers of the universe. We do not have things happen to us. We are immortal beings. We act deliberately and intentionally and everything that occurs is consciously chosen.

If we do not like what we are getting, we must have made a wrong decision because we are not at peace. We have to recognize we made that decision and we want to choose otherwise because we want to be happy. So this means owning our power and owning our choice and owning what we have already chosen, so that we can choose something else.

We then have to step into the position of decisiveness, which is fearlessness, in which we exclaim that we have the power to choose and we decide what WILL happen. Instead of dealing with cleaning up problems or trying to fix issues or trying to find ways to build defences against these horrible things that are threatening us, we simply elect to stop making such bullshit and we powerfully choose something else.

I must have chosen whatever is happening, because nothing can happen against my will or without my consent. If I do not like it or feel like it is looming over me or happening without my consent or as if it is random or chaotic or just came out of nowhere, them I am very mistaken and am not being responsible. Spiritual responsibility requires owning the power of God and using it to make a better choice.

Instead of playing with options or trying to mitigate problems, we instead decide what we do want, we completely ignore the problem, we don't bother getting into problem management or problem solving or defences, and instead we simply flip the entire mental conversation to a new path. I choose this, instead of that, and this will be my future, and this is what I want, and I elect that this happen as I have requested. And so it is.

We no longer are in the business of putting up with things, tolerating, making do, putting out fires, diminishing, avoiding, fixing things up, or trying to prevent a bigger disaster. We are now in the business of choosing what we want, and only this can happen, and nothing else can happen. We are not at the effect of the world or anything in it. We are choosers and creators and wielders of God's power.

"My Self is ruler of the universe. ... It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences."

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

Love has a fundamental rule that it MUST be shared, otherwise it is NOT love. This means that love is tied to oneness. You must be one with your brother IN ORDER TO experience the state of love. They must be included in the love, included in who and what you are, otherwise love is absent.

When two separate people see themselves as separated off, but try to love each other, the love is CONDITIONAL. It is a special love. They may feel the love strongly or even describe it as unconditional, but so long as separation is preserved the love is limited. Nor will it be felt all the time.

In order to truly unconditionally love, there must be no conditions on who or what you are, which means your must INCLUDE your brother as part of yourself. Your must have shared interests and joined minds. You must be in total agreement and appreciation.

ONLY by sharing can you love, because love is the opposite of selfishness. It's a feeling or state that you experience WHEN your mind is OPENED UP to include others. A mind that is shut down, exclusive, isolated, limited and alone, is not a loving mind.

You also cannot be loving IN ISOLATION. It cannot be that you are loving fully and yet other people are EXCLUDED from your love, or from your self. Love must go out and it must extend and it must be given and shared without any strings attached. Otherwise it can't be love. And that REQUIRES ONENESS.

When you see yourself as one with another, as including them, encompassing them, uniting with them and sharing everything with them, THEN you will automatically feel love. Love isn't actually something that you can just invent on the spot. It is not something you MAKE. It is not something that you switch on or add as if it wasn't there.

Love is actually an inherent part of reality and of God's law and nature. It should be felt all the time. But if it is not being felt, it is because it is being blocked. That means there is denial and limitation and conditionality. Therefore in order to feel love for someone it's not a matter of you deciding to "invent some exclusive love" just for that person, which simultaneously shuts others out. In order to ACCESS to love, we are really talking about you accessing A SHARED STATE in which all love pre-exists and dwells AS GOD.

To love, therefore, requires you to enter into union with God, to share with God, to be open to God. And that means being inclusive of all God's children. It means shared identity, holy relationship, innocence, recognition of your brother as part of yourself, a willingness TO INCLUDE, and a complete absence of any kind of exclusions or exceptions. Love is then felt automatically without any effort whatsoever. It is simply there when you share. It is what true sharing feels like.

You can try this for yourself. Attempt to see someone close to you as being a part of you. Attempt to extend yourself to include them, as though enveloping them in the bubble of what BOTH of you are together as one. Recognize they are part of you and therefore everything applies to both of you. Share with them. You WILL notice that a feeling of LOVE just comes out of nowhere. This is because you have MET ITS CONDITIONS.

"Love MUST be extended. Purity is not confined. It is the NATURE of the innocent to be forever uncontained, without a barrier or limitation."

"Love MUST be total to give Him welcome"

"ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth, because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED."

"Where there is love, your brother MUST give it to you, because of what it IS. But where there is NEED for love, YOU must give it, because of what YOU are."

"Love goes out because of what it is"

"Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy."

"Love is one."

"Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds them both forever as the same."

"Love is not learned, because there never WAS a time in which you knew it not."

"Fear appears in many different forms, but love is one."

"And every one I give returns to me, reminding me the law of love is universal."

"In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION."

"Love IS extension."

"In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle."

"Teach only love, and learn that love is yours and YOU are love."

"For if love is SHARING, how can you find it except through ITSELF? Offer it and it will come to you, because it is drawn to itself."

"LOVE IS FREEDOM."

"Love is incapable of ANY exceptions."

"That is because the function of love is One."

"How gracious is it to decide all things through Him, Whose equal love is given equally to all alike. He leaves you no one OUTSIDE yourself, alone WITHOUT you. And so He gives you what is yours, because your Father would have you share it WITH him."

I received a large envelope in the mail. It was from a medical group that we depend on currently for a treatment. I wondered what it could be. Or more to the point, I feared what it might be. Was it a bill? Was it a notice of termination? Was it more rules being laid down to control behaviors? Was it some serious requirement we were going to have to go through? All this ran through my mind in a matter of seconds in reaction to "seeing it." And I hadn't even opened it yet.

I then remembered, that this is a prime example of reacting in fear to some "portion" of the world. Something in the world seems to happen, some "dream" seems to occur, and then I perceive it. And if I perceive it is REAL, forgetting that it is complete fiction and isn't really happening, I MUST experience some portion of the hierarchy of illusions. Some measure of fear, threat and danger must arise, to correspond to the perceived severity of "the problem that came out of nowhere".

So then I remembered, oh yea,.... there is no world. This is me reacting to part of a dream as if it is real. And so I saw, wow, look at how my mind just went right into FEAR, the instant that I saw what this envelope was, and allowed its "reality" to enter my mind. By not remembering this is just another dream episode, my mind was "snagged" or caught up on the dream, as if bound to it and part of it.

The automatic go-to reaction was to be afraid as a result. Yet the instant that I thought to myself, "there is no world, this is just a dream", the fear melted and I felt happy and light and safe. I stepped outside of it. I reframed it. I remembered this little "event" is nowhere and nothing. And I saw how strange it is that I would go into automatic, uncontrolled fear, just as a reaction to having made an envelope real. Having then told myself that all manner of defensiveness is needed, in the form of fear, to prepare myself for what this was going to "do to us".

As I stepped outside of it and laughed, with the fear gone, and trying to stay in the happy awareness that there is no world, I noticed how I probably for all my life have "reacted to dreams" in this way. Each time some thing seems to happen in the world, there has been this "being caught up in it". And each time I am caught up in it there is suffering. And along with that there are upset feelings and fear and stress. And it's all because I thought what was happening was real.

In fact it then seemed really strange that I had chosen to go into fear at all, because there was absolutely no call for fear and no apparent reason to be afraid at all. If the dream was not real and there wasn't even really an envelope, then there was no basis for any reaction whatsoever. And this revealed just how pointless and arbitrary fear is, like some kind of un-checked auto-responder, that just activates unconsciously, with little regard for whether it's even justified. Like a habitual reaction. And I probably had been doing this all my life.

But now here I was, feeling safe and light and happy and bright, because I had remembered for a moment that "this is just a piece of a dream, it's not even really there". I thus opened the envelope and inquired as to its main message. It was, to my pleasant surprise, a refund check for $150 for "overpayment". lol

But it is a lesson. It has shown me another fine example of just how this works. This ONE PROBLEM. Forgetting that you are dreaming. Believing it is REALITY. Thinking that what's happening is ACTUALLY happening. Losing sight of any kind of awareness and just becoming unconscious, ego, reactive and fearful, suspicious, defensive, vulnerable and weak. If the world is real you HAVE to be afraid, and everyone who has been living this way their whole lives doesn't know any other option. I know I didn't.

It's all what happens when you dip down into false perception and bind yourself to the dream, lose yourself in it, go into the darkness of it and take it seriously. Then as you lift up, as you remember THERE IS NO WORLD, your mind just floats right out of it and makes light of it, free from it, saved from it, happy and safe from it. And in that light, there is no concern for what the dream seems to show, or what the event seems to be about. You are not inside the event, because you are not lost in the dream. Being lost is the mainstay in this world, and few have found themselves as yet.

"Awareness of dreaming is the function of God's teachers."

"They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die, yet they are not deceived by what they see."

"Miracles restore the awareness that you are the dreamer of the dream."

God is permanence. What God creates is also permanent. How can it be, that if God has created you as permanent, that you can malfunction? The whole idea that you can even have anything wrong with you is completely incompatible with you being permanent.

How can your total complete perfection, immortality, innocence, holiness, sinlessness, purity, guiltlessness, immacuate cleanness, ever turn into some kind of MALFUNCTION? How can heaven just BREAK someday? How can immortals suddenly become sick out of nowhere? How can what is permanently perfect, ever degrade or corrupt or decay or be destroyed?

The idea of death and the idea of eternal life are UTTERLY INCOMPATIBLE. You can't BE malfunctioning. God does not create things that don't work. His brand even comes with a guarantee.

"My sinlessness is guaranteed by God."

"God's promises make no exceptions. And He guarantees that only joy can be the final outcome found for everything."

"The Guarantee of Heaven"

"We thank you, Father, for Your guarantee of only happy outcomes in the end."

"He Who ensured your sinlessness must be the guarantee of strength and light as well."

"God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency."

"In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality."

"It is His laws which GUARANTEE your safety."

"And thus His Will provides the means to guarantee that it is done."

"Leave, then, the transfer of your learning to the One Who REALLY understands its laws, and Who will GUARANTEE that they remain unviolated and unlimited."

"It needs but two to understand that they can not decide alone, to GUARANTEE the joy they asked for will be wholly shared."

"Yet, to the dedication to the truth as GOD established it, NO sacrifice is asked, NO strain called forth, and all the power of Heaven and the might of truth itself is given to provide the means, and GUARANTEE the goal's accomplishment."

"But the guarantee of your continuity is God's, not the ego's."

"The Atonement is the GUARANTEE of the safety of the Kingdom."

"The removal of blocks, then, is the ONLY way to guarantee help and healing."

"The world WAS a way of healing the Separation, and the Atonement is the GUARANTEE that the device will ultimately do so."

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God."

"My sinlessness is guaranteed by God."

"Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will, beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness."

"In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life."

"It is in this that the simplicity of salvation lies. It is because of this that it is guaranteed to work."

"God's treasure house can never be empty. And if one gift were missing it would not be full. Yet is its fullness guaranteed by God."

"Your claim to miracles does not lie in your illusions about yourself. It does not depend on any magical powers you have ascribed to yourself, nor on any of the rituals you have devised. It is inherent in the truth of what you are. It is implicit in what God your Father is. It was ensured in your creation, and guaranteed by the laws of God."

"The end IS sure and guaranteed by God."

"Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings."

"We will attempt today to find this Thought, Whose presence in your mind is guaranteed by Him Who speaks to you from your One Self."

"And God Himself has GUARANTEED the strength of miracles for what they witness TO."

"Where two have joined for healing, God is there. And He has guaranteed that He will hear and answer them in truth."

"Morning and evening do we gladly give a quarter of an hour to the search in which the end of hell is guaranteed."

"The "right to live" is something no-one need fight for. It is promised him, and guaranteed by God."

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."

"Who could be surer that his happiness is fully guaranteed?"

"What is the Will of God? He wills His Son have everything. And this He guaranteed when He created him AS everything."

"Our success in transcending the ego is guaranteed by God, and I can share my perfect confidence IN His Promise because I know He gave me this confidence for both of us and ALL of us."

I have a number of reactions regarding those who are sick.

All of these reactions entail me feeling sorry for the person, or wishing they were well, or being sad that this has happened to them.

I have reactions of guilt that somehow I caused it, and reactions of fear that somehow it will worsen.

And I also have reactions of compassion and understanding.

But all of these reactions are actually responses to perceptions which are not true.

Ego reactions always occur after having perceived something wrongly, and unless you are coming from love your reaction is founded in victimhood.

It can seem like I am caring or wanting a person to be healed, because I am upset about them being sick. It can seem like I am wishing for their best. It can seem as though I want the sickness to go away and that this is a good attitude to have, or shows a sign of caring or compassion.

But the truth is, these reactions are all founded on DOING NOTHING ABOUT IT.

They are not attitudes of correction, or healing, or forgiveness, or undoing. They are responses founded on the belief that the sickness is real, that it is happening, that the person is suffering, that "someone" needs to swoop in and save the person - anyone other than me.

If you really look at this in yourself, you may well be a very sympathetic, empathetic, compassionate, caring-seeming person, but the fact is that a lot of these responses are born in a state of inability to help. A state of disempowerment. A state of passivity. A state where you believe that there is nothing you can actually DO to correct it, even though you may be filled with wishful thinking about how you would do something if you could.

YOU CAN!

These attitudes are actually a cover-up for miracle mindedness and an excuse for not forgiving. They are an ego response that looks as though you are deeply concerned about someone, while at the same time strongly believing that they really do have a problem.

What we have to come to learn is the art of correction, which is more to do with an active undoing of the problem rather than an agreement that it exists. Corrective measures. And we DO have the ability to do this, not alone but as a result of our union wth Holy Spirit and God.

I've been in states of sorrow and despair plenty of times in which I've "begged" God to help and sometimes there is some help and sometimes not, but in general each time that I find myself thinking of asking someone ELSE to help, someone who "has the power", I am either nudged or have an innate knowing that doing so is basically shirking an obligation.

God has empowered us to extend His love and healing, and to do so through the mechanism of forgiveness, in which we cancel out, undo, correct and make vanish, all signs and symptoms of artificial causes, demonstrating that separation has not occurred, that problems are not real, that sickness is an illusion and that even death can be reversed.

It is one thing to be terribly upset and guilt-ridden. You feel guilty and responsible for causing someone's suffering, even if you did not appear to directly cause it, because you feel as though you are supposed to be able to take it away but are failing to do so. So in a sense, your mind knows this and actually will experience guilt when you are not performing miracles. When you are in support of sickness and are believing in problems and are making it real instead of correcting it actively, your mind will know that you're actually using this as a way to avoid your ROLE as "the light of the world", and this produces guilt.

So you will feel guilty when you are not helping others to heal, and you will feel guilty when you are failing to forgive. It's not your fault, but either you are choosing health as truth or you are choosing sickness as truth. Being upset that someone is sick does not mean that you are a believer in health and wellbeing. It means you believe sickness cannot be undone, which is a strong belief that sickness is the truth.

This we have to become honest about and weed out of ourselves, to become the miracle workers that we are meant to be. Forgiveness is the way to bring about miracles, through the correction and undoing of what is false. Not through the ego's victimy reactions of guilt, powerlessness, well-wishes and the like. Those are like saying, sorry you are sick, but I believe in sickness and therefore I think you should be sick.

We need to learn to make the universe disappear and all sickness along with it. The end of death, sickness, the body, and the world.

Usually we want to get rid of everything we do not like, everything that feels harmful, every fear, every upset, every ounce of grief or loss. We want to get rid of all our enemies and things that hurt.

But this is actually the ego in action. It wants to get rid of these things because there is a potential that these things might be used to wake you up.

So long as you're in the midst of a lesson, in which something seems to be against your will, you will have this sense of "I don't want this and it shouldn't be happening". This is the ego's reaction. It does not want you to use this opportunity for forgiveness. It does not want you to learn the lesson.

Not that the ego is arbitrarily against you. You made it and you asked it to do this for you. You wanted it to deflect you away from sources of healing, from anything that might trigger an awakening to truth. You wanted it to keep telling you that stuff isn't supposed to happen to you, and you wanted it to make you see things as if they are happening against your will. That way you could stay asleep.

But each time you try to 'get rid of' what you do not like, or be free of a lesson, or fix a problem, or make a bad person go away, or stop something from happening, you're really using ego denial. And you do this in the name of spirituality.

You think it is spiritual to have a life where there are no problems, where nothing is happening to you, where you have no enemies, where everything goes well, where people seem to just adore you, and where you aren't hurt or offended by anyone. I mean, as a goal that's great... That could be true of real spirituality, but the ego wants this goal WITHOUT awakening.

So that means, getting rid of all protagonists, all offenders, all enemies, and all threats. It tells you you shouldn't be afraid and that fear is a bad thing. It tells you not to be guilty. It even tells you you should be constantly happly or people-pleasing. These are all deceptive ways the ego gets you to NOT deal with your shit, and it forms a spiritualized ego.

When you are afraid, that's very good, because you are being confronted with the results of some belief that you have and it's coming into your awareness. This is a great opportunity. Instead of the fear hiding out in the back of your mind, it's being brought into awareness. You don't like it, for sure, but recognize it is an opportunity because now some normally hidden dark shit has come out into the open where you can take a look at it.

It's all about how you use things - whether you use it to deny your shit or use it to bring light to your shit and undo it. So you could take the fact you're scared as a great opportunity to look at WHY you are scared, rather than to just want the fear to go away. It's pretty normal to want the fear to go away, but it's not healthy. It is healthier to take a look at it with Holy Spirit and find out why you are afraid... What guilt is the fear based on? What's the deeper cause of it? Why do you want it? How's it serving you to keep you in the dark? Where is the so-called truth that surrounds the fear to make it seem justified? What is the real truth of this situation?

Its the same with feeling guilty, upset, angry, offended, whatever... Each time this stuff comes to your awareness it's a great opportunity to heal and undo. So don't try to hide this stuff away. Don't shove it back down or want to get rid of it or to avoid it. And don't blame people for triggering it off - they're trying to help you to look at the stuff you don't want to look at. You're better off dealing with it and then being done with it, rather than constantly hiding from it and feeling its torment in the back of your mind, only to keep resurfacing saying "please acknowledge me and recognize my message to help you grow, and please use me for awakening."

This is all great material. Great opportunities to make progress. It's hard work but it's worth it, and it's far better for you than to want to just keep making this stuff go away. You can be free of it permanently if you deal with it properly and heal it. Isn't that better?

Let's take a look at these statements about overcoming death.

1) "When you learn to make ME manifest, you will never see death. For you will have looked upon the deathless IN yourself, and you will see only the eternal, as you look out upon a world that cannot die."

2) "The body cannot live nor die, because it cannot contain you who are life. If we share the same mind, you can overcome death because I did."

3) "The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."

These statements make sense when seen from the perspective of True Perception. Bear with me while I think out loud...I'm still fleshing this out....

I will use an analogy to describe what the illusion of a world is. Imagine that the entire world is all one color. It's made of all one single material. It is mostly transparent. Let's say absolutely everything is made of glass. All the trees, bodies, animals, clouds, oceans, mountains, everything is made from this same material and it all looks the same.

Other than certain shapes which are formed by this worldwide material, there is absolutely nothing different about any part of it. It's all made of the same stuff. Also within this world, any illusions of one object causing another are completely overlooked and ignored.

In no way and under no conditions can any part of this world do anything TO any other part. ALL of it is just an effect, inert, lifeless, void of will. It is just a static image. It does nothing at all. There is nothing attacking anything else, because you recognize that all parts are coming from the same material, made by the same person, seen in the same way, and nothing can really do anything to anything else. There is no cause within that image of a world itself, the cause of it is outside of it. It is being PROJECTED within your mind and you are its sole cause. A frozen dream.

This is basically what you will see the world AS when you attain full True Perception. When you then look from this perspective, you will see that ALL illusions within the world are equal. In this way, THERE IS NO DEATH. Ie, this image cannot live, this image cannot die, it just remains being an image. This image cannot contain you in any way, who are life, because what is LIFE has nothing to do with forms or bodies or images. Images of bodies being in one state or another are all the same.

That said, as Jesus explains, when the mind is not using the body for sin, which means, attempting to confuse levels and reverse cause and effect and to make out that some part of this IMAGE of a world is able to attack another, then the IMAGE of that body will change to represent sickness and death. It will be seen as containing weakness, and thus it will seem to weaken, become sick, and die.

When it is not being used for purposes of *false perception*, it will not be distorted or unnaturally forced to be SICK. It will just be seen as perfectly neutral and free of attack. And because it is free of attack, it cannot be attacked. Or rather, in recognizing attack is not REAL, symptoms of attack will not show up in the image. Thus the body image will show up as having "natural health".

Jesus talked about how when he recognized his body for what it is, it could not disintegrate. It was not alive because illusions are not life. It could not die because there was no attack projected onto it. He therefore simply saw the end of its usefulness, laid it down and MADE IT DISAPPEAR, because he saw it was nothing but an illusion/image which was *not really there*. The image of the body, while showing up as part of the dream world, was essentially incapable of sickness, aging, change, or death, even within time and space.

I feel I don't quite have this whole picture yet, but it's a work in progress. Feel free to correct or add to this if you see fit. I'm gradually forming a clearer picture of how this all fits together.

This morning Jesus told me to "listen". So I just lay there and focused on listening. My thoughts stopped. It was at times difficult to maintain extreme focus on listening intently, particularly without anything to listen "to". My mind kept getting lost agains in ego dreams and thinking. Then I'd come back to it.

Listening very intently stops all thoughts. It also makes you more present.

Then something else happened. Holy Spirit said, "receive". So while maintaining this listening state, I allowed myself to receive. This means, receiving without necessarily 'giving' anything. Allowing God to come to me. I immediately felt Holy Spirit's presence in my body which then proceeded to shake and stuff as Holy Spirit healed me. Each time I allowed myself to stop, listen, and receive, another wave came.

Here's why listening and receiving seem so alien to the ego, and why it stops ego thoughts.

Your mind in its natural state is supposed to receive everything from God. It is a receptive device. It's willingness to listen to everything God is sharing and to be open to it keeps it plugged into love. It is supposed to receive a constant broadcast of love, all the way into the deepest depths of the soul.

This is simple cause and effect. God is cause, God creates and sustains you forever, you are the effect of God and so it is completely natural for your soul to simply receive whatever God is creating you to be.

This openness to receive God, to allow God, puts the mind into its natural state of extension, where it receives input from God and then broadcasts it, like a repeater. It allows God to flow through it and express love outward, increasing the love and joy.

But in the separation idea, something happened.

Another way to think of separation is that we tried to unplug ourselves from God's input, to stop listening to His Voice, to stop receiving His love, and to run off with our hands over our ears trying not to acknowledge, allow or be open to receiving the truth. It was an attempt to shut out the 'cause' of ourselves and to pretend that we ourselves are our own cause.

This does something unnatural to the mind.

Without input coming from God, the mind starts 'inventing' inputs. It starts to dream. It makes stuff up. And since what it is making up is not love, all of this dreaming produces ego thoughts and forms. "All thoughts produce form at some level." So now instead of simply radiating silence, or peace, or love or joy, the mind starts making "noise". This noise takes the form of ego thinking.

So ego thinking then is, in every case, an attempt to run away from God, to not listen to God, to not RECEIVE, and to instead try to give without receiving. This is because in the separation, ego separated giving from receiving. It actually is trying to give give give all the time (because it is sacrificial), but without receiving, because it wants deprivation and lack.

So the ego-driven mind is very good at making noise, broadcasting, giving without receiving, creating lack, inventing thoughts and dreams, and making illusions. It is all symptomatic of being unplugged from God and not receiving God as input.

So what happens is, if you focus on listening, ALL of your ego thoughts will go silent. Very automatically. You don't need to thought-watch or try to transcend them or stop them or whatever. They are only happening because the mind is not listening to God. So as you put all your focus on God, all your problems are solved and the mind automatically stops inventing stuff.

All of the ego's thoughts are mind wandering. And mind wandering means, allowing mind to take you away from yourself and away from God. This means going into ego thinking, making illusions, believing separation, and stopping receiving. If you did not "wander away" from yourself, ie yourself in God, you would not have any ego thoughts - OR any ego at all.

Essentially this is the ONLY meditation that works, because there is only one problem - separation from God, and only one solution, rejoining your mind with God and putting your mind back in service to spirit. ie being willing to receive God's will and extend it, rather than willing against it.

It is very easy and simple and very powerful. Just put all your attention on listening. Listening means you are shutting up and stopping making noise and being quiet and allowing something else to have it's say. It means you are willing to stop being the author of illusions, and to receive reality - what it wants to tell you it is rather than your ideas about it.

Whether you listen to sounds or not does not matter. But even if there are sounds and if you put all your focus on listening to them, that is helpful too. Not much different to transcendental meditation where you focus on one thing. But you don't even need something to focus on.

You are basically focusing on God. On allowing God to express to you, whereby you listen to that expression and thus receive it. Listening and receiving are the same thing. This is also how you get in touch with spiritual guidance.

"If you do not hear the voice for God it is because you do not choose to listen."

When you surrender and listen, and become open to receive, it can seem as if you are being selfish by ONLY receiving. But try it. Allow God to come to YOU, rather than you doing all the "seeking". "Be still, and know that I am God." Just allow yourself to receive God's love, let Him love you, let the love come to you, and simply absorb it. Without needing to express anything, nor even trying to extend it.

We have become SO used to not receiving that we think we're supposed to do something in order to earn or be entitled to something. You don't. God would love you regardless of whether you do anything. Just be still and listen and let yourself receive from God.

I think I posted about this a while ago and called it "God bathing"... like sunbathing, you just soak up God and receive the warmth. Like recharging a battery before use. It feels great to let yourself receive love. Especially to allow yourself to be loved without you having to do anything, recognizing you are worthy of that. It actually makes you feel VULNERABLE. Exposed to God. Allowing God into your innermost private areas. Soak up the love. It will heal you.

And, if you are willing, to receive God's love, you might also invite Holy Spirit to enter you at that time, and He really can go to town healing you. There are major miracles of healing waiting for you to receive if you will just surrender and be willing to let it come to you. This is also the key to abundance.