Being afraid and perceiving that someone or something separate from you is attacking you, can ONLY happen if YOU are being an attacker.

Fear is self attack.

You position yourself as the one who is being attacked, as if to suggest, you do not believe in attack at all and want there not to be attack.

But at the same time, you have projected attack outside of yourself, see it in another, make it real, believe in it strongly, and then freak out about what you're showing yourself.

The only reason the state of fear does not seem to show obviously that you're doing this to yourself, or that a fearful person is an attacker, is because of the separation or lack of awareness in-between that which is "attacked" and that which is "attacking."

Both the attacker and the attackee are within your own mind. They always accompany each other. One seems like an external cause, one seems like an internal effect. But they are both inside of you. It is your mind at war with itself.

You cannot be afraid without believing in attack, which makes you an attacker. You cannot be afraid without therefore perceiving someone or something as an attacker, which means you've made attack real, believe attack is the truth, and WANT attack.

The state of denial present in fear is such that it seems as though you DO NOT WANT IT whatsoever. You want it to end, want to get away from it, want to be safe and so on. But this is not what your mind is actually doing. It is in denial. It has disassociated its own belief in sin, from itself, has projected it outwards, and now is being threatened by it as if it is something external and separate.

If you are terrified, you are a terrorist. If you are horrified, you peddle horror. If you are sick, you are attempting to infect everyone else. If you are hurt or damaged, you are trying to prove you can be hurt so that your brother stands accused.

This may sound like I'm saying things which are absolutely insane. Except that it is actually sanity to see this. The EGO is insane, and its use of the mind to attack itself is utterly nuts. Its disguises of what fear is and its use of fear as a TOOL and a WEAPON are things it does not want you to ever realize or look at.

There is NO victimhood in a victim. It is all deliberately chosen, it is all serving a purpose and has a very deliberate motive behind it. There are no accidents. Nothing is happening by mistake. It is all chosen. The ego uses disownership and denial and projection and irresponsibility in order to KEEP its belief in sin, deny that it is in you, and to project it outward, pretending that this gets it OUTSIDE of your mind. It doesn't. You are still attacking yourself.

We must be willing to question the appearances and ILLUSIONS which the ego presents to us. Fear is a huge lie. It is a total distraction mechanism, a decoy, designed solely to make someone who is a vicious attacker LOOK LIKE they are the one who is not attacking at all. The more helpless the ego positions you as, the more it can find everyone ELSE guilty. The more innocent you APPEAR to be, the more it's everyone else who is the sinner.

Make no mistake that appearing to be innocent, helpless, a victim, a sufferer, sick, wounded, hurt, upset, or any of these other EGO DISGUISES, is the *exact opposite* of what is really happening. It will take a lot of radical honesty to admit to this.

The benefit of admitting to this is that you STOP attacking yourself, stop USING the ego's tools and weapons, stop believing that you are powerless, stop hurting YOURSELF, and stop making out that you are not the Son of God. The benefits to your mind are immense. The benefits to your confidence and empowerment are immense. You cannot afford to let the ego run the show and make you out to be a victim when - in all truth and reality - you are IMMORTAL SPIRIT which cannot suffer or die whatsoever.

Remember always that you are immortal spirit. Everyone is immortal spirit. Immortal spirit cannot be hurt, cannot be a victim, cannot suffer, cannot die, cannot be sick, cannot lose, cannot be upset or unhappy, and cannot be separate from God. Anything else that is seeming to happen, or anything else that seems to apply to someone, IS A LIE. It is an immortal spirit PRETENDING to be mortal, PRETENDING to be hurt, and PRETENDING it can be dead.

It's BULL SHIT!

In the Holy Mind (whole mind, one mind), what applies to you applies to others, because they are one with you. There is nothing you can do to them that you don’t *directly* do to yourself. Because you are AWARE that you are "in" other people, in harmony with them, it is in your best interests to ONLY LOVE them, in order for you to love yourself.

It is impossible in the shared mind to attack another without attacking yourself. You can’t have something apply to someone that does not apply to you.

Enter then into the ego’s game of death, it’s vast illusion of separation. The game has one rule. If you play within the game, you will die. It’s a very simple rule. However, it is possible to be in DENIAL of the rule, and to start believing there is SOME WAY that you can have something apply to someone else that does not apply to you.

As you lose awareness, you will forget that you have SHARED INTERESTS with everyone because of your Oneness with them. You will start to think they are not one with you, something applies to them differently than applies to you, and therefore there are victims. This also means, you believe you can get away with murder - that you can CAUSE something without experiencing the EFFECTS.

Even if you are under this illusion, believing that this is true and that you’re SUCCEEDING at getting away with murder, rest assured that the RULE of the game does not change. Even if you are in DENIAL of the rule, it applies to you. The law is fixed because it is part of the metaphysics of the one mind. What applies to you ALWAYS applies to others, immediately, directly, and without exception, EVEN if you are in a dream pretending that this is not true.

When you play the ego’s game and take sides, hold a grievance, maintain an enemy, hate someone, attack someone, judge someone, be against or opposed to something, or in any other way USE SEPARATION, it means you are using the EGO. This immediately enacts the one rule of the game - that you will DIE. It also means, that you will have DONE IT TO YOURSELF.

Since the mind of oneness is a mind where what you do to others you do to yourself, you cannot escape the EFFECTS that you attempt to cause. You cannot get away with murder. When you try to, you will KILL YOURSELF.

There is no way to play the game in any special, skilled, clever, educated kind of way. To do so is an attempt to CHANGE THE RULES, which you will NEVER be able to do. Belief in and use of separation is a belief in death, and it will "cause" you to die. This is why all death is suicide, because when you attempt to attack your brother, it destroys YOU, one way or another, sooner or later.

The secret to salvation is the *recognition* that you are doing this all to yourself. You cannot SUCCEED at the game, win over someone else, win a war, or be the victor. Every time you attempt to win, YOU WILL LOSE, beacuse you used separation, and that is self-attack. You cannot WIN the ego’s game of death. Its one rule always applies. If you play it at all, you will die, because that is what you will be choosing.

It doesn’t matter how much you think you can change the rules, find loopholes, figure it out, compete better, one-up someone, make someone else the scapegoat, judge another, or inventively get rid of your sin. If you are playing the ego’s game, YOU WILL DIE, and you will have done it to yourself.

This is why you MUST at some point FORGIVE absolutely everyone. If you don’t, you will hold a grievance against YOURSELF while pretending it is about someone else. You cannot get to heaven with an ego. You cannot win the ego’s game. It is not escaped or won by death or by playing it better. Success at the ego’s game is FAILURE. The only way out, is truth. You MUST surrender the ego, or you will keep weaving illusions of self destruction.

It is perhaps sad news that you have to forgive EVERYONE. It is not welcomed by the ego to recognize the rule of the game clearly. Recognizing the game helps you to NOT PLAY. Only by not playing it can you have awareness of eternal life. This is all metaphysical fact. There is no exception.

"Forgive or die." It is in your best interests to forgive absolutely everything for what it has not done, in order to RECOGNIZE your own innocence. You can only be innocent if the same is true of everyone. It’s all or nothing. The entire sonship is holy, or none of it.

You cannot play the game of death and live. Truth is the ONLY exit.

I looked upon a woman who seemed to be sick. She seemed to have problems. In my mind I observed her problems and regarded them as "being there". I thought that she was her sick body. I started to imagine what was becoming of her and what it might lead to.

Jesus stepped in. He corrected me. "Do not condemn her."

Although it seemed like I wasn't doing anything at all, that I was "just observing" passively what she was apparently choosing for herself, Jesus clearly saw otherwise.

I realized then that if *I* choose to believe in what I am seeing and BELIEVE that the person actually is the sickness that they are trying to portray themselves as, I am falling into false empathy and condemnation and am IMPRISONING THEM further. I am holding the person in prison by AGREEING WITH THEM as to their apparent condition, because their condition is once removed from their REALITY as an invulnerable immortal spirit.

I have to realize, the person IS NOT their body. Bodies are separation devices.

From this came an exploration of ideas and insights which blew my mind.

I asked of Jesus, is it true then that we are supposed to overlook absolutely ALL FORMS and not be blinded by them and not BELIEVE ANYTHING that we see suggested by forms, believing only in total perfection and divinity of all people at all times? Is it then that this entire world was set up to blind us so that if we bought into it, we would be failing to overcome the separation ourselves, and that therefore we MUST learn to overlook ALL of it - to not see people as bodies at all - in order to set ourselves free from this TRAP?

Jesus said "yes".

And so, as it turns out, we quite literally have to learn to SEE, by learning to STOP seeing/believing the blinding illusions presented by form. Physical form is a LIE. It is a huge distraction. It affirms things which are not true in God's reality. When a person shows up appearing to be sick, in body, if we believe it is "how they are", we have fallen for the trap. We have bought into the lie that "they" are the body and that "they as the body" are sick. And that therefore this is reality.

As soon as we do that "passive observing" of other's plight, we are condemning them, judging them, attacking them, reinforcing their sickness, accusing them of sin, believing in separation, and are also attacking ourselves. We then will experience that we are attacked BY and WITHIN this perceptual state. This is why "sight of sickness" horrifies.

It is very challenging, it seems, to not believe that people are bodies at all. To recognize that the only truth about them is NOT what their body says. That people are actually spirits TRAPPED in bodies and the body is NOT the person. The body covers up the person. It is a fictional wall of attack, an obstacle to peace, designed to present an illusion that we are NOT ALIKE, due to the appearance of form. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form" literally applies to ALL FORMS including bodies - we are blinded by the physical and must learn to completely look past it to the brother who is hidden by its deception.

That means also recognizing, that no matter what form seems to present to our eyes - be it sickness or death - we are to NOT BELIEVE IT. And in this not believing the lie, we will stop EMPOWERING IT, and therefore will recognize its nothingness, and thus gain POWER OVER IT to heal and dispel any illusion through miracle working. We cannot work a miracle if we are buying into the lies. We are just as much in need to healing when we believe the sickness is real. This doesn't mean to pretend that sickness in the body is not present or to not bother healing it... it just means to RECOGNIZE what it is (an illusion) and to then demonstrate that it CAN be changed, to prove it was an illusion.

This is pretty radical. It's huge. It means to be miracle workers and truly accept atonement we HAVE TO learn to stop believing forms, stop believing in the physical, stop seeing people as bodies, stop holding their bodies against them as a form of injustice, stop identifying WITH our own body or identifying others AS their own bodies. That sick person IS NOT THEIR BODY. "I am not a body I am free" is the eventual culmination of that. It's no small statement, it is absolute and requires TOTAL FORGIVENESS.

Forgiveness overlooks form. It overlooks sin and death. It is the basis of miracles. It overlooks bodies. It allows the mind to extend naturally and be healed and capable of healing. When we join mind-to-mind there is healing, and the body's condition MUST follow suit because the mind is responsible for causing the body's conditions, be it happy ones or hurtful ones.

Given everything is driven by free-willed cause and effect, nothing is accidental. There are no mistakes. There is nothing happening randomly or by chance. Nothing happens at all without someone choosing it and willing it. There must be a CAUSE, before there is ANY effect.

You might think this is not true based on what appears to be a world or 'nature' that seems to do random stuff and is hard to explain as being anything but chaotic. But the fact is that nothing happens without some kind of "cause" making it happen. Whatever the cause may be. Without a cause there is no effect, so whenever something is 'happening', something caused it.

You then also get the idea that even if you cause something, it seems to have a cascade of completely "unintentional" consequences or side effects. There's seemingly knock-on effects or a whole chain of seemingly chaotic aftershocks. Yet are these things truly random? Are they not simply cause producing effects, which act as causes producing effects, and so on, in a chain of causality?

As the Course says, those who are to meet will meet. So for example, people meet because they choose to do so.

If you also look at My Self is Ruler of the Universe, it explicitly states that nothing happens without your say-so, and anything you choose happens, and nothing else.

The course also describes how teachers of God make all decisions fully consciously, with total awareness of the consequences, meaning, they know exactly what effects they are causing, and cause only those effects, on purpose, deliberately. And it is by choosing only loving choices that they guarantee their safety.

So this world, while it may SEEM like it's a total mess of random chaos and accidents and things happening against your will and victims and mistakes and all these illusions of uncertainty, in actual fact absolutely nothing is happening without a cause. It is all chosen. All deliberate. All instigated by a mind, somewhere.

Nothing moves or animates without mind making it move. Nothing appears or disappears without mind's say-so. Even the laws of nature are being "run" by a mind, somewhere, deliberately choosing what will and will not occur. The entire world would not even show up if it were not for a decision made somewhere.

And just because we think okay, we "set it in motion" and now the chips will fall where they may and a completely automatic random chaos follows, that's simply not true. Causality ensures that the consequences were set up in the causing, not as a result of the effects. Effects do not choose. Effects are not the source of decision. Even if there seems to be an entire cascade of consequences, one thing leading to another, is that not also completely specifically deliberately set in motion by a mind making a choice?

The truth about this world and enviornment then is that nothing happens without your consent, everything that happens is chosen, the world doesn't even spin unless someone spins it, and it is literally impossible for anything to happen if you do not choose it to. You are the author and dreamer.

You are the causer, chooser, instigator, of everything. You are never at the effect of some 'other chooser' choosing against your will, or things happening 'on their own' or as a result of some process or sequence of events that seem totally unrelated. There is no 'un-asked-for' anything. Remember that this entire world didn't even exist until someone explicitly put every piece of it in place, through choice and belief.

So there are no accidents, of any kind, ever. There is no victimhood. There is no mistake or something un-asked for. BUT, it DOES remain possible to make a POOR decision. It's possible to make a wrong decision or a decision for something that brings suffering. It's possible to evaluate situations and set in motion things which later turn out to be harmful. And it's possible to be very deluded as to what you have chosen or why.

The law always holds. Your free will is never violated by anything. If you would simply choose to wake up, you would. "Heaven is a choice I must make". Nothing can keep you imprisoned in hell against your will, other than YOUR choosing. You CAN make a poor choice, producing explicitly selected consequences or conditions, but you cannot make NO choice, and whatever you DO choose WILL happen. No exceptions.

The task then simply becomes one of, making a better choice. "I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace - I made the decision myself but I want to choose otherwise - I want to choose otherwise because I want to be at peace". Choose again, the course says. You are free to choose, but not free from the consequences of choosing. And all consequences are chosen. This is how you create your own hell. And it is how you find salvation.

Complaining is victimhood. And it doesn't work.

Anything that happens, you choose. If you are conscious, you make a conscious choice, with deliberate intent to produce an effect. You cause it, implement it, make it happen and put it in place, because you want to.

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

Having done so, you now have produced effects, circumstances and results. Since you know that you put these things there, on purpose, and that you had the power to do so, you would also know that if you so chose, you could abolish these effects just as easily by changing your mind.

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

But when you cause something unconsciously or you cause it and then use denial to pretend you didn't cause it, you set yourself up for the basis of victimhood. It now seems that cause must have come from someone or somewhere else. If that's true, and if you didn't seem to have the power to put this situation in place yourself, then it seems to be up to someone else to change their mind and cause the situation to change.

This then leads to the perfect foundation for complaining. In complaint, you now assert that you do not want the effects you ended up with, BUT, you're not willing to admit that you caused them OR that you have the power to change them. You believe someone else had that power. So you now try to manipulate the surrounding environment and its contributors by making a lot of 'noise' about why you don't want the results that have appeared, and why someone else needs to be stepping up to make the changes.

So complaining is victimhood. It's a state where in truth, you WANT the situation to be the way it is, having chosen it, but you are claiming that you don't want it. And it's where you have no actual intention of changing your OWN mind, or causing the situation to change. So the ego is then making a lot of noise about why the situation sucks, is unwanted, isn't agreeable, should be different etc, while unconsciously continuing to choose it, cause it, make it and put it in place. All the while trying to suggest that someone else needs to take some action.

You DO have the freedom and the ability to correct the situation. It is the lack of OWNERSHIP of the causing of the situation, and the perception of yourself has having NO POWER OVER IT, that is the problem. You CAN change any situation. You can heal anything. You are free.

"The Holy Spirit will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let him."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

"The power of decision is our own. Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear."

"This holy relationship has the power to heal all pain, regardless of its form."

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

"As God created you, you have all power."

"The will you share with God has all the power of creation in it."

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS."

"For you have ASKED it be withheld from power to heal all dreams. There is no miracle you cannot have when you DESIRE healing."

"For you HAVE power to save the Son of God because his Father willed that it be so."

"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world."

"he HAS the power to heal and bless all those he looks on"

"The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you."

"The power of the Sons of God is operating all the time, because they were created as creators."

"It is you who have the power to dominate all things you see."

"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. "

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"There is a place in you where nothing is impossible. "

People talk about forgiveness a lot, but might not recognize that judgement is its opposite. In order to forgive we have to give up being judgemental.

To be more accurate, the Holy Spirit does judge, but his judgement is completely accurate and impartial, simply seeing the truth of things. When we move away from his judgement we judge with the ego, and the ego is always biased and unfair and harsh.

Until recently I didn't see how important the idea of not judging is. The Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, "judging is the way that you perceive wrongly." That lead to a realisation that I was somehow in a mode of judging all the time. Judging everything I see, labelling, categorising, evaluating, selecting, analysing, figuring out, that's all judgement.

Judgement is something we made up to replace knowledge. In knowledge we have a direct knowing of what something is, a cognition of it, with no interpretation needed. We are one with it and be it, so we know it intimately like ourselves. But in the separation we threw knowledge away, meaning we could no longer just "know" what something is. We denied knowing and claimed not to know, which is a state of questioning and fear. We then needed a way to "find out" what stuff is, so in the split mind of consciousness and perception we invented judgement - to judge or assess reality.

Having invented judgement, perception is then totally based on it. Judging is what you do to try to figure out what something else, on the basis that you do not know what it is. And because you don't know it, you can't possibly correctly discern it, at least not unless judgement is completely lined up with knowledge in the state of true perception - as the Holy Spirit sees it.

To judge with ego is the attempt to decide what you think something is, what you make of it, what you read into it, and what you project onto it. And in fact it's then not an attempt to find out what the thing is, it's actually an attempt to push it away and not know it. Sensing is about not knowing, and is also part of this, via the body's senses.

So then we judge as an attack, in an effort to play God as if we can tell things what they are. As if we can put onto them our definition of them. A label to be attached. You're this, you're that. A finger to point and a sentence to hand down, a verdict of guilty. The ego always judges there to be something wrong with everything, while the Holy Spirit judges there to be nothing wrong but a mistake.

When I was thinking about not judging at all, I started noticing many quotes in the course confirming this. And then I thought, maybe God doesn't judge at all either. If God has knowledge he has no need for judgement. Which means he's not sitting there pointing a finger, blaming, resenting, assessing if we did well enough, deciding if we're worthy, looking down his nose at us, condemning and accusing us, hating and resenting and rejecting us, or any other kind of snooty dis-satisfaction.

In fact I'd been noticing this in a lot of near death experience accounts, where people discover that there is absolutely no judgement in heaven. And that means none of the above, none of that sort of sitting there in front of some panel of judges, or waiting to find out your fate, or being frowned upon for doing things wrong, or even condemned for crimes or sins or whatever. There is absolutely no judgement at all in heaven.

I found this quite inspiring, because I think we spend most of lives living inside of a state of judging and being judged. And the course says that if you judge others, you will judge yourself, due to the golden rule - other people are you, so if you judge them you are judging yourself. So then we're in a constant state of feeling judged and condemned, and trying to project that onto others. So we might then think that God does the same and judges the things we decide are sins. But he doesn't, at all.

I found this really interesting, to consider God as non-judgemental entirely. Not even batting an eyelid if we do the most heinous things, make horrendous mistakes, or even seem to deliberately hurt others or attack or whatever we would judge as evil. Not a single bit of judgement from God. It's a very loving and forgiving state when you think about that. That no-one up there is looking down their nose at you or holding anything against you whatsoever.

As I pondered this I was then wondering, well, what is it like to see things without judgement then... and then the Holy Spirit showed me one of his visions. In this vision I was aware of a person who was being seen with such innocence, such lack of judgementalism, that they seemed to be doing absolutely nothing wrong at all.

I could see that there was an awareness that the person was a bit lost, confused, perhaps making mistakes, but they just seemed to be seen as absolutely utterly innocent in that. Sort of like a child that just hadn't learned yet, didn't know any better, and was just finding their way. There was a total and utter lack of judgement against them, no sense of wrongfulness, no guilt, no condemnation, no sense that they are breaking rules, nothing but a deeply innocent and compassionate view that they are simply loved where they're at. Even their mistaken state didn't seem like a state of sin, it was just "how they were at the moment" framed in total innocence and harmlessness. As if all that remained was for them to gently find a way out of a maze or something.

No judgement, no condemnation, no failing to measure up, no sense of unworthiness, no anger or blame for doing something wrong, not even a sense that the way the person was mistaken was even "not supposed to be that way". There was no pressure, no hurrying them up toward a goal, no chastisement or punishment, and nothing but a loving sense of just gently guiding them to be less confused. Like all they had was a temporary slight confusion about things, and just needed to be shown the truth, and that is all.

I see now that forgiveness is completely non-judgemental in this way, and this is how the Holy Spirit sees everyone. It's also how heaven and God sees everyone. That we're not going through some kind of obstacle course, doing things hellishly wrong, committing sins all over the place, or causing any real problem. From heaven's viewpoint we're completely and totally innocent at all times, and just a little bit lost. With no sense of sin whatsoever, we are then just in need of being guided back home, like just a lovely little lost sheep that needs as little bit of help.

No sense of shame or guilt, no sense of punishment or sinfulness, no sense of demand or coming down like a ton of bricks, no sense of force or pushing or chastising or assessing whether someone is measuring up or not, no disappointment or annoyance or finger pointing, none of that. Just simple innocent love being nothing but innocent and gently offering a loving correction, with a smile behind it.

If to forgive is to suspend ego judgement, then we have to find a way to stop judging everything on our own. We have to let the Holy Spirit judge for us, and his judgement is a pure judgement based on innocence, in which there is no guilt or punishment of any kind. He only ever finds us to be innocent because he recognizes exactly what is true of us. And recognition is enlightenment, and is rooted in knowledge.

"Judgment and love are opposites. From one Come all the sorrows of the world. But from the Other comes the peace of God Himself."

"In the mind of the THINKER, then, He (Holy Spirit) IS judgmental, but only in order to unify it so IT CAN perceive WITHOUT judgment. This enables the mind to TEACH without judgment and therefore learn to BE without judgment."

"How can His Son AWAKEN from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge NOT, and he WILL waken."

"Judge not, for you but judge yourself and thus delay this final judgment."

"Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own. The choice to judge rather than know has been the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not cognition rests."

"Judge not because you cannot, NOT because you are a miserable sinner too. How can the special REALLY understand that justice is the same for everyone?"

"The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made. These problems are not true, but that is meaningless to those who believe in them. And everyone believes in what he made, for it was made by his believing it. Into this strange and paradoxical situation, - one without meaning and devoid of sense, yet out of which no way seems possible, - God has sent His Judgment to answer yours. Gently His Judgment substitutes for yours. And through this substitution is the ununderstandable made understandable. How is peace possible in this world? In your judgment it is not possible, and can never be possible. But in the Judgment of God what is reflected here is only peace."

"On the contrary, he puts himself in a position where judgment through him rather than by him can occur. And this Judgment is neither "good" nor "bad." It is the only Judgment there is, and it is only one: "God's Son is guiltless, and sin does not exist."

"The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment."

"And in His judgment will a world unfold in perfect innocence before your eyes. Now will you see it with the eyes of Christ. Now is its transformation clear to you."

"Herein does he receive Atonement, for he withdraws his judgment from the Son of God, accepting him as God created him."

"You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false. It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt."

"The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world's learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. Who is in a position to do this? Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself?"

Ego always wants what it doesn't want, and doesn't want what it wants, because it is a contradictory though system that makes no sense. It may say it does not want death, and does not want people to be dead, but it does.

So while it says it does not want death, does not want people (bodies) to die, does not want sickness etc, it simultaneously is believing in and wanting those things. It is simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by everything, which is part of the uncertainty of fear as well. Insanity is two-faced like this, it can't commit to any one thing fully.

So in our egos, in our false perceptions, our insane split minds, our belief in separation, we literally believe both that a) we do not want death to happen and b) we totally want it to happen. This has to be looked at and recognized. It does mean that if we "don't want death", we DO want it.

Adopting any attitude based on "it really happens" is wanting it, having already given it reality and truth and value. If you value it you make it real. If you value it you want it to happen and try to make it happen. To believe in death, which is not love, is murderous.

Making death unreal is the only way to not play the game and get out of the flip-flopping confusion of wanting it and not wanting it. It's like being addicted to something that hurts you. You hate it and love it at the same time, in a twisted sort of way.

While you might try to take a side, and side with the angle that you do NOT want a person to have died (a body identified person), the mere belief that they are a body and HAVE died IS a decision to join in false empathy and to therefore value death and WANT it to be real. This is why for example in ACIM Jesus says that we try to keep people in their bodies, held there by guilt.

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT." UrT15H12

Our world-driven body-based perspective that bodies are real people, and we do not want them leaving "this world" because that seems like an end from our point of view, is totally blind to the fact that we belong in another world, and coming HERE is death. Birth is death. And even coming into this world took place BECAUSE we wanted to believe in death and keep it.

Prisoners have gone into a prison and are so insane that they believe the prison in their home and they don't want to leave, and are kicking and screaming to stay in the prison, because they think that outside the prison walls is a prison, and that they are free right now in their cell. They have no idea how backwards their thinking is and do not even recognize a prison when they see one.v

So yes if you are "upset by" some body person dying, it does mean that you believe it is real, want it, are choosing it, are reinforcing it, are being murderous, and are participating in trying to keep the person in a state of death. You'd rather they be suffering and dying than alive in God. Whether your ego likes to hear this or not is another matter, but we have to be honest and willing to look at it if we want salvation.

Being in grief, the grief simultaneously is a reaction that seems to say "I care greatly about this person and now they've been destroyed and I feel bad about that because I don't want it" .... at the same time as ..... "I totally want to believe they're dead and I'll happily bargain that they come back into their body and stay in a body forever in my little prison world and die along with me."

So then you discover that the grief is not just "pure grief" or purely justified or purely innocent or purely anything. It's not a whole story. It's a tainted mix of ego reaction and a sort of fake remorse masquerading as caring and feeling a loss, much like what we do in guilt. The loss is a lie because if the mind believes there is a loss it is choosing it and wants it. All emotions are caused by the mind choosing to feel what it wants.

"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." UrW152L1

We do have secret ulterior and selfish motives. We want them back because WE feel deprived. Our egos want to keep people in bodies forever and keep destroying them forever. A living death, followed by the death of non-life. Just recycling around over and over again, but never waking up from it. We can even say that yes it is selfish to grieve, it's always about a sense of what we want, what we have lost, how we feel hurt by what someone has done, anger at someone's leaving, as if their death attacked us. It's not easy to admit to how unforgiving this viewpoint is.

Remember that nothing real can be threatened. If something seems to have been threatened it cannot have been real. We believe it was real, which is a mistake. Believing a person is a body and that the body and world are real is a mistake. When the body, like a chunk of reality, goes away, we are forced into an experience of having lost a part of reality itself, as if part of God is dead. That MUST cause a sense of loss. It's not based on a real truth, but it's based on a perceived truth, and can produce horrendously deep despair.

But the despair is a lie. It's fake. It seems justified and understandable and common ("normal") and so on, but it is not really natural under God's laws. If nothing real can ever die, which is true, then there can BE no reason for despair. And the despair must be a smokescreen to hide a wish for death to be real, and for God's truth to not be true.

Grief isn't just grief, it's a mask used to cover up attack. Just as the "face of innocence", which sees itself as unfairly treated and unwillingly caused to lose something it values, secretly hides a vicious special hatred and a desire to attack and destroy. The victimy little "poor me" of the suffering grieving self is essentially an attempt to enter into the perceived death and join with it and be one with it, such as to become dead also.

This is why in grieving we are not really living, and people have a really hard time returning to life. I might feel grief still but at the same time that means I am believing in death and not life. It means I'm trying to join with the death and die along with it. That's not living. Eventually the sympathetic "part of me has died" game has to be given up and we have to RESURRECT back to a firm commitment to immortality and eternal life. God does not will that we suffer.

Yes it is very very very hard and deep and horrible to go through grief, but grief is not grief. Nor is the only way out to "go through it". It is deception. And no matter how long it takes or how quickly, we are asked to rise up out of it (the battlefield) into the light where loss is impossible and we can be only happy. We do not escape death by dying, we escape it through the light of truth.

The end of grief is the end of death. How much suffering is enough before we will choose again for a better way?

"Loss is not loss when properly perceived. Pain is impossible. There is no grief with any cause at all and suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream. Such is the truth, at first to be but said, and then repeated many times, and next to be accepted as but partly true, with many reservations, then to be considered seriously more and more, and finally accepted as the truth. I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt. And I would go beyond the words today, go past all reservations, and arrive at full acceptance of the truth in them." W248

"For what would be the use of pain to me; what purpose would my suffering fulfill; and how would grief and loss avail me, if insanity departs from me today, and I accept my holiness instead?" W285 "Who could despair when perfect joy is yours, available to all as remedy for grief and misery, all sense of loss, and for complete escape from sin and guilt?" UrW165L5

"Forgiveness IS your peace, for herein lies the end of separation, and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss." UrT29G1

"He laughs as well at pain and loss, at sickness and at grief, at poverty, starvation and at death. He recognizes sacrifice remains the one idea that stands behind them all, and in his gentle laughter are they healed." UrW187:6

"The way is not hard, but it IS very different. Yours is the way of pain, of which God knows nothing. THAT way is hard indeed, and very lonely. Fear and grief are your guests, and they go with you, and abide with you on the way. But the dark journey is not the way of God's Son. " UrT10D4

"Release the future. For the past is gone, and what is present, freed from its bequest of grief and misery, of pain and loss, becomes the instant in which time escapes the bondage of illusions where it runs its pitiless, inevitable course." UrW195L5

"Unshaken does the Holy Spirit look on what you see; on sin and pain and death, on grief and separation and on loss. Yet does He know one thing must still be true; God still is Love, and this is not His Will." UrW95L5 "If you have the gift of everything can loss be real? Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? UrW155L2

"Through this, he learns that where he anticipated grief, he finds a happy light-heartedness instead; where he thought something was asked of him he finds a gift bestowed on him." UrM5B5

"The gentle have no pain. They cannot suffer. Why would they not be joyous? They are sure they are beloved and must be safe. Joy goes with gentleness as surely as grief attends attack. God's teachers trust in Him. And they are sure His Teacher goes before them, making sure no harm can come to them. UrM5F1

"You're doing this undo yourself."? No way!!!

The ego objects to the secret of salvation. "I CAN'T be doing this to myself! There's no way I'm causing or choosing this! I don't want this, I didn't ask for this, I didn't do anything to make this happen."

Of course the ego thinks this because this IS the defense that is covering up the awareness that you are all powerful. That you chose and caused.

See, ego equates responsibility with guilt and it has absolutely no notion that you can be responsible WITHOUT being guilty. It sees responsibility as "where the blame lies", who is guilty, who sinned, who did it.

It doesn't WANT to be open to the idea that you could take responsibility and be INNOCENT. And so it has a lot of defences and denials and resistance to this idea.

When you start taking responsibility the ego is going to come in and say that you are guilty because of this. So you're going to have to learn to separate out the responsibility from the accusation.

It can really challenge you to be willing to consider that you might actually be choosing what you are experiencing. It means you're going to have to let everyone off the hook and not hate them. It means you can't be a victim, you can't be unfairly treated, you can't be being misrepresented or not heard or accused.

The ego sees taking responsibility as on par with admitting to a crime that's going to send you to prison. It does not want to do it. It sees confession of truth as totally against your best interests. It's like admitting to being a guilty sinner, tapping into your deepest hidden hurts and sense of regret and guilt and shame.

Who wants to admit to being the cause of something awful, or some suffering, or something unpleasant even? But this is what we're going to have to do. The ego has been judge and jury and has decided that the only way you can have the power to do anything is by having the power to be a guilty suffering attacker.

This is why it's a bit challenging, admitting to the truth. You suspect that you sinned, you suspect you're guilty, you don't even want to look at it in case it's true. Or it seemed true when you last looked at it, so you hid from it and vowed to keep it hidden.

But the truth is that you cannot suffer unless you choose to do so. And that's easy to say but a lot harder to totally own. It means you're going to have to look at and question how you might have actually done this. How you chose. The power of your decision. How you decided and the purpose you were trying to serve in your deciding. Why you wanted to suffer. Why you wanted sickness. Why you wanted pain and misery.

Probably you'll feel that the reason for this self-attack was some kind of horrible sin that you committed long ago, maybe an ancient sin, you know, like trying to kill God? Which you believe is true. So you're going to have to confront that at some point to find a path through so that you can get to where you are responsible without the guilt. Where responsibility can mean a verdict of freedom.

We are quite averse to admitting to what we think we've done because we don't want to. And we've become used to projecting it rather than owning it, because owning it feels like shit. But we are not being asked to own up to something terrible that we did, we're being asked to own up to having NOT DONE ANYTHING.

But the road to freedom requires the total acceptance of total responsibility. Without ANY sin or guilt entering into it. When responsibility is polished clean of all guilt, it simply means you are still as God created you, pure and clean, innocent and sinless. And cause for celebration.

"Loudly the ego tells you NOT to look inward, for if you do, your eyes will light on sin, and God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do NOT look. Yet this is NOT the ego's hidden fear, nor YOURS who serve it. Loudly indeed the ego claims it IS. TOO loudly and TOO often. For underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is NOT certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet ANOTHER fear, and one which makes the ego tremble. What if you looked within, and saw NO sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego NEVER asks. And you who ask it now ARE "threatening" the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to PRETEND it is your friend."

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct. Nor at the beginning stages of their functioning as teachers of God, have they yet acquired the deeper characteristics that will establish them as what they are."

Seems to me that the biggest influence on what anyone sees in ACIM, how they relate to it, what they think it's saying, what's important, is PERSONALITY. We all seem to filter it through our human ego personalities.

I've noticed this over and over again. A highly intellectual person has a very different 'view' of the course and how to "do it" than someone who is much more emotional, for example. And there are emotional people who struggle with the metaphysics. And people who get the metaphysics and are emotionally cold.

Some people are very intense about the course, others more laid back. Some are very open minded, others more closed off. Some are highly conservative, others very liberal. Some like the emphasis non-duality views, others find them to be missing something major. Some feel very aligned with the earth and interpret the course as affirming their love of the earth, while others see the world as nothing and want to get the hell out of here. And all of these attitudes were in place BEFORE anyone started the course.

It seems that the personality remains largely unchanged throughout our practice, and is more or less the same after many years of doing the course. And this personality acts like a huge filter, a flavouring, which massively influences preferences, what we resonate with, what seems to feel right to us, etc.

In the case of the course itself, the book, this results in a wide range of disagreements about what it is, what it says, what it means, how to do it etc. Because the course itself remains fixed and thus people's personalities project onto it.

In the case of our lives it's different, because each person's curriculum is very personalised and individualises to suit what their needs are, what their path is, what their background is, what their personality does to relate to things.

The curriculum and what is written in the book are somewhat different things, although leading to the same goal. Our life lessons are highly varied and personal. In that way, what one person needs is highly different to another, and this can also extend to each person USING the course different, seeing different things in it, emphasising different parts of it.

I've noticed how different personalities will tend to relate to certain aspects of the teachings and ignore others, gravitating towards parts that speak to them. This is because of the personality filter.

I'm not sure what we can do to ignore or rise above the personality, it has a strong influence on everything we do. Perhaps in the more advanced stages we are able to see past it and be more unified in our outlook. But it certainly is a very very strong flavouring of our whole experience.

What thus works for one person doesn't work for another, what one person tends to focus on in the course may be very very different to another. Some get heavily into analysis, some into feeling, some into practical everyday applications, some into high lofty abstract theories, etc.

And typically we all defend our viewpoints and opinions, because it's a reflection of our personality. And we all do a pretty poor job of being outside outside our own personality as well.

People gravitate to certain personalities as well, in terms of what videos they will watch, what posts they will read, who they'll agree with, what groups they'll join, whose version of the course they'll listen to, etc. And certain personalities which are more charismatic or outspoken or intense or talkative tend to become content creators and teachers and have followings, and then their personalities become worshipped.

In all my time with this I've rarely seen ANYONE really change their general core attitude about the course, regardless of any amount of attempted persuasion. Because most people are simply using the personality as guidance.

People who have held a general belief and attitude 10 years ago are still holding it now. How they speak to people has hardly changed. Which parts of the course they think affirm their view have not changed. It's all very locked in. And because everyone is so locked into the personality it gives rise to a lot of conflict.

We need to find a way to transcend the individual differences and personal attributes and look outside of our ego selves to see a broader more inclusive picture.

If you think this is not true, it is because you do not RECOGNIZE the insanity.

Insanity is actually a state of a LACK of recognition.

So when you are insane, you have even less ability to recognize that you are insane, which is why you are insane to begin with.

Therefore, to return to sanity, there has to be an increase in RECOGNITION of what everything really is.

A lack of recognition also makes you out of touch with reality. It's like you're in a state of hallucination instead of direct cognition.

When the recognition is at its maximum, you transition from being "out of touch", to having "reality contact."

A key requires that you have "a little willingness" to consider that you might be mistaken. That your recognition of what things are is faulty and limited. That there is a truth you do not see or recognize.

By having some willingness to be mistaken, which is humility and honesty, you can open up to a higher truth.

This invites the Holy Spirit to enter to heal your mind and help restore your sanity.

The world does not want to admit to how insane it is, because it's so insane that it doesn't think it is insane.

What is described in ACIM as "the real world" could be said to be simply a view of what's here WITHOUT insanity, a view in which you have full recognition.

And that means that until you reach that state, you are perceiving an UNREAL world. That means you are spending your whole life living in an unreal world, in a dream.

"This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream IS sacred to you."

"As you look with open eyes upon your world, it MUST occur to you that you have withdrawn into insanity. For you see what is not there, and hear what is soundless. Your behavioral MANIFESTATIONS of emotions are the OPPOSITE of what the emotions ARE. You communicate with no-one, and you are as isolated from reality, as if you were ALONE in all the universe. In your madness, you OVERLOOK REALITY COMPLETELY, and you see ONLY YOUR SPLIT MIND everywhere you look. God calls you and you do not hear, for you are preoccupied with your own voice. And the vision of Christ is not in your sight, for you look upon yourself ALONE."

"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where truth should be, and where it really is. Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all? To sense is not to know. And truth can be but filled with knowledge, and with nothing else."

"It is insanity that thinks these things. You call them laws, and put them under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose. You think you must obey the "laws" of medicine, of economics, and of health. Protect the body and you will be saved. These are not laws, but madness."

"Is it not strange that you believe to think you made the world you see is arrogance? God made it not. Of this you can be sure. What can He know of the ephemeral, the sinful and the guilty, the afraid, the suffering and lonely, and the mind which lives within a body that must die? You but accuse Him of insanity to think He made a world where such things seem to have reality. He is not mad. Yet only madness makes a world like this."

"From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. For YOU sent forth these messengers, to bring this BACK to you."

"It is the FUNCTION of insanity to TAKE THE PLACE of truth. It must be seen AS truth, to be believed. And, if it IS the truth, then must its opposite, which was the truth before, be madness now. Such a reversal, COMPLETELY turned around, with madness sanity, illusions true, attack a kindness, hatred love, and murder benediction, IS the goal the laws of chaos serve. These are the means by which the laws of God APPEAR to be reversed. Here do the laws of sin APPEAR to hold love captive, and let sin go free."