ACIM's simple teaching: "This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. BUT DO YOU BELIEVE IT?"

Do you believe this fully and deeply, that only God's truth is true? Maybe in theory, to an extent. But that's not what matters. What matters is if you REALLY believe it deep down.

We're simply being asked to ONLY believe God's truth, the truth of heaven and reality, and to disregard all lies and falsehoods. That's all. But we have to be CONVINCED and deeply fully believing that God' truth is true, AND that we want it.

The entire "process" of waking up entails just sorting out the true from the false. Reason being that we've mixed them together and are confused and lost. We have to clearly identify what the truth IS, and we have to in contrast recognize what things are false. And then we have to be willing to believe ONLY the true things.

This is likely to be met with ALL your resistance, because the fact is that EVERY single belief you have that is false has to be brought into question, and had to be recognised as NOT true, and you do NOT WANT to do that. You think the opposite is false and want nothing to do with it, unwilling to even entertain its possibility. You literally will have to give up everything you think you know and be very open to being extremely mistaken.

There really is nothing more to it than that. We identify what is REALLY true in God's terms, we contrast it against what is OPPOSITE, we recognize that they can't BOTH be true, we reject the FALSE in favour of what is TRUE, and accept the truth - which is atonement. The Holy Spirit helps us in this sorting out:

"The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth. The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man. Among the creations of man, it can also separate the true from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the true and the false."

"The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference FOR you, allowing Him to demonstrate which MUST be true."

"You have need of contrast only here. Contrast and differences are necessary teaching aids, for by them you learn what to avoid, and what to seek."

"The contrast between what is true, and what is not, is PERFECTLY apparent, yet you do NOT see it. The simple and the obvious are NOT apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns BECAUSE of them. All this the Holy Spirit sees, and teaches, simply, that ALL THIS IS NOT TRUE."

"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM. The ego sees SOME good, but never ONLY good. That is WHY its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for this you could not accept, but it always ADDS something that is NOT real TO the real, thus CONFUSING ILLUSION AND REALITY. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth AND illusion you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."

"Truth must be all-inclusive if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposite and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first the second has no meaning, but without the second is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This can not be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false, and truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false."

"Let all these errors go by recognizing them for what they are. They are attempts to keep you unaware you are One Self, united with your Creator, at one with every aspect of creation, and limitless in power and in peace. This is the truth, and nothing else is true."

For some time I've been confused about freedom.

A term I am often told by spirit is "you're free."

This always felt uncomfortable. It seems to allow me to do absolutely whatever I wanted to do.

It always seemed like spirit was giving me permission to do things, even things that seemed unhealthy. And this is because freedom really is unconditional, regardless of what you use it for.

Often when I would ask about what to do, whether to do something or not, they'd say "you're free". It didn't seem like a helpful response.

But I see now that it seemed to prefer to give me the freedom of choice, and to not impose any sense of one thing being more guilty than another.

Even so, I would often feel a need to then push further to ask for guidance or advice as to what to do - from someone who knows better. Because this freedom would also highlight that maybe what I was considering choosing wasn't in the spirit of freedom, ie was unloving in some way.

I still couldn't quite come to terms with "being free" though. I would ask my wife (in spirit) something for example, something perhaps relating to our relationship or earth life, and she would say "you're free". If it was ever a request about whether some kind of ego-need was 'okay', she's say I'm free.

In some way it almost seemed like a sort of "i'd prefer you don't do that, but do it if you want to" sort of begrudging. But I am sure it's my own mind that couldn't help but project that onto it.

I also struggled with the idea of being free in general, especially as it relates to my wife's passing and trying to move on and get over grief and loss.

She has been reminding me often "you're free". This hasn't always sat well, because it often was interpreted to mean "we're separate". I have since come to see that this is a sense of physical freedom - or a breaking of relationship, as though to say we have no relationship anymore, but that's not what it means.

It's finally sort of sinking in, especially from the huge download I received last night, that all this talk of freedom doesn't really mean what I thought it did.

I suddenly see now that freedom is really something that was given by God in my creation. It's a wholesale unlimited unrevokable freedom. And it has no strings attached, nor is there any suggestion of guilt for choosing one thing or another.

In this freedom is responsibility for choosing, the power to choose, the power to cause and create, and the inability to BE guilty. If we are free, and God has said "have at it", there is no coercion or requirement or pressure or punishment or judgement of any kind.

This has revealed the truth that, by being free I literally am free to come and go, free to choose, free to do one thing or another, with no strings attached anywhere. Strings are not of heaven or of God or spirit. Strings are conditions, part of conditional love. There are no chains or ties, no limits, no imprisonment.

We are all each one of us individually completely 100% free to dream or awaken, stay in hell or move toward heaven, remain suffering or regain our power, act like an effect or a cause, do evil things or good things, whatever. God does not forceable stop anything, but he does will and encourage us through his plan and help to choose a better way - a more loving happier way.

This is why I keep being told "you're free". It's a God-given right. I don't have to do anything I don't want to do. Whatever I want to do comes to pass. I a responsible for everything I experience. I consent to whatever I cause to happen. There is no victimhood, no specialness, no ties and no conditions.

It doesn't matter what I do, coming or going, advancing or retreating. God still loves me and so does all of heaven. I am guided gently forward and gently upward, and so long as I trust and have willingness I will return to God. Not because I have to, but because I want to.

"Forget not that the choice of truth or sin, power or helplessness, IS the choice of whether to attack or HEAL. For healing comes of POWER, and ATTACK of helplessness. Whom you attack, you CANNOT want to heal. And whom you would have healed, MUST be the one you chose to be PROTECTED from attack. And what IS this decision, but the choice whether to see him through the body's eyes, or let him be REVEALED to you through vision? HOW this decision leads to its effects is NOT your problem. But what you WANT to see, MUST be your choice. This is a course in CAUSE, and NOT effect." UrT21H8

"Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."

We are in a state of denial where we are attacking reality. We are blocking truth, we do not want to see what is really there to see, we're trying to hide from God, we don't want to own up to being who we really are, we're trying to bind ourselves to something we're not, and we see ourselves as separate from what is real.

When Jesus talks about vision, he's talking about your willingness to see reality. When we say "above all else I want to see", we're saying that above all else, we're willing to pierce through illusions and walls and denials and take a good hard look at what is actually there. This is also what the course calls "reality contact" .Physical sight cannot see it, so we need to open the mind.

"Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it."

For example, God right now knows you exactly as you really are. He is aware of your perfect permanent innocence. But you are not. You are blocking your awareness of the truth about yourself. You do not know yourself as you really are, because you do not want to. You think things about yourself which you prefer, but which are not true. God therefore knows you better than you know yourself right now, and your job is to come to know what is really true of you again.

Similarly the acceptance of the atonement is really the acceptance of what is actually true. It's a willingness to see everything as it is, to recognize what it is, and therefore to no longer be deceived. It means no longer being in denial and no longer resisting the truth. We quite literally are hiding from reality, trying to identify with bodies in order to keep ourselves away from God.

It's like we're protesting against reality. We're fighting with it, we don't want it, we constantly attack it, and want to be separate from it. So we're out of touch with reality, which means we are confused and lost. It means we do not recognize what is real or not real, true or false, and are mistaken. This also means we are temporarily insane.

The desire to SEE, is the desire to KNOW, and the desire to BE. To see the real world is to be open and inclusive enough that you want to directly experience what actually is real. You can only experience this by not attacking reality, not separating from God, and not denying your soul. We basically are part of a rebellion, which began in the fall of man, and is ongoing. An ancient war against the truth.

If we are "the resistance" against the truth, which is also sickness and death, then we have to lay down our arms and put away our sharp-edged toys and be willing to be exposed to God again. To be open to sharing, to union and to oneness. If we want to be awake we're going to have to be willing to take the blindfold off and open the spiritual eye.

To see closer to reality will show us the real world, and the unreal world of Earth will be forgiven. In "reality" it will only be seen for what it is, before it fades away into nothingness. The closer we come to intimate contact with reality, the more we will see the light of the real world, and see God's reflection in the Earth.

Full reality exposure will reveal God to you, and your true self as Christ will reveal itself as Christ's face finally appears. And then you are ready to penetrate through the gates of heaven into total immersion and communion with all that is. To be in reality is to be in heaven.

"Every adjustment is therefore a DISTORTION, and calls upon defenses to uphold it AGAINST reality."

"For what could house this mad idea AGAINST reality, but for an instant?"

"WILLING AGAINST reality, though impossible, can be MADE into a very persistent goal, EVEN THOUGH YOU DO NOT WANT IT. But consider the result of this strange decision. You are DEVOTING your mind to what you DO NOT WANT. How real can this devotion be?"

"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY. You cannot love PARTS of reality, and understand what love MEANS."

"You ATTACK the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot SEE it."

Lately for me what has become starkly evident and true of everyone, is the rather dark and twisted truth that everyone is self-destructive. Everyone is trying to die. Everyone is condemning themselves for a sin that never really happened, and the wages of sin is self-inflicted death. Everyone is being unfair to themselves, mis-representing themselves, attacking themselves and hurting themselves.

"...A dry and dusty world where starved and thirsty creatures come to die."

"Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

EVERYONE!

It's a suicidal planet. I wouldn't go so far as to say that everyone has the same degree of "deep self-hatred", but it is certainly rampant. The guilt that people have over the separation has driven them insane. We've collaborated on making an insane and stupid world where suffering seems normal and punishment is atonement.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

"Sin is belief attack can be projected OUTSIDE the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."

Let's just say it again. The whole world is MAD. And this is not merely an allegation or a speculation. It is EXTENSIVE. "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."

"the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt"

Even in biblical terms, if I recall, we're sort of told that each of us on earth has become a "sinner" ie believing in sin, and that we need to "repent" ie find our innocence again.

So what I see now is the fact that we've got a huge population of people who believe they have separated from God. The course calls us "the separated ones." We believe we've accomplished separation by attacking God, or that which is in truth not attackable. And because it is not possible, yet we believe it, we are insane, because now we believe something impossible is true. And this all began with an insane idea.

"The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, ALL relationships were made meaningless."

"In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give it the ILLUSION of reality."

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

We as immortal beings, accused ourselves of a sin we could never commit, made ourselves horrendously guilty for it, attacked ourselves, punished ourselves, entered an insane dreaming state in which we dream of being mortal, made up every form of suffering and sickness, and try to kill ourselves off to prove we are right. MADNESS!!!

Fortunately our entire state of insanity is entirely temporary, entirely unfounded, entirely untrue, and entirely correctable, without the slightest punishment called for. We are all just very mistaken people, who believe absolute bullshit lies that we've taught ourselves, and we need correction. We need help from outside of the hell we made to help us wake up to reality and recognize what is true.

"My call to you is that you offer help from all the dreams the holy Son of God imagines, from the time that first of dreams was given false reality until all dreaming ends forever."

"Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION. But you must learn to ACCEPT truth because YOU THREW IT AWAY. You therefore saw yourself AS IF you were WITHOUT it. By making another Kingdom WHICH YOU VALUED, you did NOT keep the Kingdom of God alone in your minds, and thus placed part of your mind OUTSIDE of it. What you have made has thus DIVIDED YOUR WILL and given you a sick mind that MUST be healed. Your vigilance AGAINST this sickness IS the way to heal it."

This is a simple idea. Since the world is neutral, and since you are having a subjective view of it, your mind is able to see it in different ways. And this means that there is always more than one way to look at something.

Sin is the idea or state of mind in which you see an illusion and combine it with reality, resulting in the perception that it cannot change. That perception is fixed. But this suggests there is only one way to look at something. And here it's meaning seems locked into the form it takes.

In truth there is another way to look at everything, because the Holy Spirit and Christ has given an alternative dream. There is always a "bright side to life" which is different to the "dark side of life." There is always another way to see it, other than how the negative ego sees it.

No matter what it is, how severe it seems, what form it takes, there are always at least two interpretations of it. One of them coming from ego makes the things seem dark and stressful and dangerous and unpleasant. The other provided by Christ Vision through Holy Spirit sees the same thing in a very different light.

The higher way to see, Christ Vision, is what the workbook lessons are geared towards developing. The whole process of forgiveness is of shifting from one thought system to another, or simply making a choice between seeing heaven or hell reflected in what you see.

For everything you see that you do not like, there is a miracle of sight which can look on this exact same thing and see it as beneficial and harmless. For everything which seems to be locked into meaning based on its form, there is another view which frees meaning from its form and uses it for a higher purpose.

So in all things, you can simply say to yourself, that you want another way to look at this. There MUST BE a higher way to look at everything. And when that way of looking is what you do consistently and what you choose to move into regularly, you'll develop Christ Vision.

Since Christ Vision is a gift of Christ that you share with him, your alignment with the Holy Spirit to see how HE sees grants you a viewpoint which is much more charitable and benevolent, which then sees this benevolence reflected back to you.

"What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

"There is another way of looking at the world."

"There is another way of looking at this."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside-down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son. It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom."

"The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is in you BECAUSE there is also another way."

"I came to your minds because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact that there is another way, or another voice. Having given this invitation to the Holy Spirit, I could come to provide the model for HOW TO THINK."

"I WANT another way to look at this."

"Perhaps there IS another way to look at this. What can I LOSE by asking?"

"Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace of God."

"For you have learned of Christ there is another way for them to walk."

"Who would be willing to be turned AWAY from all the roadways of the world, UNLESS he understood their real futility? Is it not needful that he should BEGIN with this to seek another way instead?" "Belief that there IS another way is the loftiest idea of which ego-thinking is capable. This is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is NOT the self."

"Yet reason looks on this in another way."

"How COULD there be another way to solve a problem which is VERY simple, but has been obscured by heavy clouds of complication, which were MADE to keep the problem unresolved?"

"Alternatives are in your mind to use, and you CAN see yourself another way."

"No one who has learned from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs much conditioning. The ego cannot withstand the conditioning process, because the process itself DEMONSTRATES that there is another way."

"Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

WHAT IS SIN?

Every aspect of an insane egoic mind is JUST A MISTAKE, which calls for correction. The mind "accidentally" considers something to be possible which isn't, and so is making an error. Like an error on a math test - a false conclusion, a miscalculation, a mis-thought. The mind believes impossible things, and because they are impossible it is not doing them.

"Sin" is what we call it when you become mistaken ABOUT a mistake, and fail to recognize its impossibility. Being mistaken about mistakes, not recognizing them as mistakes, converts them into TRUTHS, which are now sins. You don't realize they can't be true, and you think they are possible. As if you are actually doing them, giving them reality.

"Sin" is thus a "mistake about a mistake". A failure to recognize a mistake, leading to taking it seriously and taking it to be true and real. As if it is actually happening with real irreversible consequences.

Insane people are regarded as sinful when their insanity is not recognised as insanity, and is instead thought to BE SANITY, and thus assuming the person is SINNING ON PURPOSE from their right mindedness, which would indeed be deliberate attack. If this were true it calls for guilt and punishment.

Mistaking someone's delusional state for truth and reality, you think they are "actually attacking on purpose from a sane mind that should know better", which justifies anger and revenge for such a violation of the rules of sanity.

Guilt therefore arises from being mistaken about mistakes, regarding mistakes as deliberate acts of defiance against God and reality. If you COULD attack God it WOULD be a sin and you WOULD be guilty.

Sin is therefore a fiction about a fiction. The insane mind is in a deluded state believing illusions, which is just a set of mistakes, and then on top of this the delusion is taken to be NOT a delusion.

Sin is twice removed from God, mistakes are once removed. Guilt arises from taking mistakes to be truths. Or believing that illusions are real. Such as believing that the physical world is happening. If anything seeming to happen physically IS TRUE, it is a sin. If it is recognised that the world is JUST A MISTAKE, it is open to forgiveness.

Sin sees everything as unforgivable because it locks in the mistakes and regards them as concrete truths. Forgiveness recognizes what the mistakes ARE, and so sees an error has been made, which calls only for correction to appropriately treat the error. To fix the problem correctly.

Sin does not fix errors correctly, it compounds them by trying to use punishment as a fix. It says that the "mistake" is that you really did something impossible, as though it were possible, and now it has had real effects.

There is now "proof of sin", tangible sin, physical sin, evidence. Or in other words, an illusion (such as form) is mistaken for a real true possible thing and held up to be the "evidence" as to what you did wrong. Such as that the body did some wrong act causing the plates to be smashed, proven by the pieces of broken plate on the floor. Instead of being recognised as more illusions, it's taken to "prove" that you broke the plates in reality.

That presence of "an illusion being interpreted as proof that it's true" means "you did it" in space and time, and therefore are guilty. If you did sin, you deserve absolute punishment and death. Sin sees death as the way to CORRECT sins - death as atonement.

"Sin calls for punishment, as error for correction. And the belief that punishment IS correction, is clearly insane." UrT19C1

"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death." UrT19C3

"Yet, for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole IDEA of sin, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. For the wages of sin IS death, and how can the immortal die?" UrT19C3

You not recognizing that this world is an illusion, converts the world into a place of sin and guilt, demeaning punishment for every act. You recognizing this world is just a MISTAKE and IS IMPOSSIBLE, forgives and overlooks the error and calls for the true atonement of the UNDOING of the error. The erasing of the world and space and time. The correction of the error - the illusion of a world - through its cancellation and disappearance, in which the mind returns to sanity and to God's kingdom.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty." UrU5A5

I see now that forgiveness of another must entail an appreciation of how we are joined in oneness, sharing everything. We have to realize that we ARE each other, and that we are included in everything. There has to be awareness of the golden rule and the fact that giving and receiving are one. Whatever applies to me must be seen to apply to the other. And there must be shared interests. Without this there is not forgiveness.

It used to seem as though forgiveness was some act performed by one separate person towards or with regard to another separate person. There was something that the separate person did to the the other separate person, and now the separate person had to do something to forgive them. This is clearly not in accord with ACIM’s teaching on forgiveness because forgiveness requires the two minds to be one. You have to love your brother as yourself.

When your brother is seen from the perspective that they are included in who and what you are, and are thus part of you, sharing everything with you, everything now applies to both of you equally and simultaneously. You ARE each other. In that light, any unforgiveness is an attempt to separate from one another, while forgiveness is a reunion. The two become one in forgiveness.

The same applies to atonement, true perception, salvation, and miracle mindedness. It is not just some separated-off state, it’s an entirely shared state. It’s just a tiny bit short of total oneness. Communication means immersion and union and sharing everything as one, and miracles raise the level of communication and sharing. Miracles make minds one in God. Miracles unite you with your brother. Being IN the miracle is to be IN a united shared state.

More and more now it is becoming extremely clear that, very simply, “being separate” is the entire problem, and “being joined” is the entire solution. There is nothing else. Either you’re separating off of you are one with each other. Oneness isn’t two separate people bumping bodies. It’s literally a fusing, melding, merging, unifying, sharing of everything. True connection. True opening and trust. True communion.

You can’t see forgivingly without that shared union because it is literally the light in which you see. It is the way to recognize your brother’s attempts to separate as untrue and as a call for love. It the proper framing of your holy relationship. Without the union there is a breakdown in forgiveness. To be completely forgiving is to recognize that everything applies to both of you equally at once, as one, together, as the whole. Wholeness is inclusive, and wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles.

Either you live in such a way as to always regard your brothers as a fundamental part of your own self, in which you are literally one and two, sharing the same spark of life, in the same light, or you are moving into separation and grievance and war. It’s very simple. Separate or join, fear or love, die or live forever. Atonement is a lesson in sharing, because we’re forgotten how to do it.

All miracle mindedness requires a shared state of mind and identity. You have to BE the other person to join with their mind and share light with them. We can’t do any of this correctly if we remain separate. There is no miracle without sharing, there is no love without sharing. There is no atonement without sharing, there is no salvation without sharing. Your brother is your savior because he is your self.

“Your Father is as close to you as is your brother. Yet what is there that could be nearer you, than is your Self?” “This state, and only this, must YOU attain with God beside you. For until you do, you will still think that you are separate FROM Him. You can feel His Presence NEXT TO you, but CANNOT know that you are one with Him.”

“And He will speak to you, reminding you that you are Spirit, one with Him and God, your brothers and your Self.”

“He must see someone ELSE as NOT a body, one with him, without the wall the world has built to keep apart all living things who know not that they live.”

“Forgive him now his sins, and you will see that you are one with him.”

“Every altar to God is part of your Soul, because the Light He created is One with Him. Would you cut a brother off from the Light that is yours?”

“Your brother's holiness shows you that God is One with him AND you; that what he has is yours BECAUSE you are not separate from him OR from his Father.”

“No-one unites with enemies, nor is at one with them in purpose.”

“Then let him offer you the light you see in him, and let your "enemy" and Friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. Now are you one with them, and they with you. Now have you been forgiven by yourself.”

“I trust my brothers, who are one with me.”

ACIM is simple. You've given your power away to illusions which have no power of their own. You have projected causality outside yourself, making you an effect. You think the world is responsible for causing you, so you try to persuade it to cause you in ways you prefer. This is all backwards. Reverse this causality and you're done.

We keep making up perceptual stories about how something out there has power over us. It's causing us, affecting us, doing things against our will. And each time we believe this, we perceive this. And with each perception comes the fear of being under attack. Even believing something out there is "making you happy" must induce fear.

"I am constantly tempted to make up other laws and give them power over me. I suffer only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all."

Every single facet of victimhood is a belief that something has power over you. Every single form of suffering is a demonstration of your belief that you are being affected. Even death is an attempt to prove you are totally powerless. This is bullshit.

"I am not helpless, but all powerful."

"You made sickness and death (with your power) and therefore can abolish both (with your power)."

When you reverse cause and effect, to place the levels in their correct order, you don't merely "disempower" that which you thought was causing you. You BECOME powerful, and re-claim the position of having POWER OVER everything else. You have power over it because YOU ARE CAUSING IT. You are broadcasting the world.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. 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."

To take back your power, is to become EMPOWERED. Being empowered, you now have THE POWER. Power is ability. It means you can accomplish something. You can cause something to happen. You can create or make. You cannot be victimized or attacked. Power is immortality.

Once you have your power back, do you think you'll sit on a fence and merely observe the world, as if someone else had the power to put it there? Do you think sickness and death will still have power to enact themselves against your power?

"What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God."

"I am under no laws but God's."

Having power OVER the world, which YOU MADE in the first pace, which YOU GAVE laws to, means you can change and break the world's laws. It means nothing can choose for you and your will is unopposed in what it can do.

You have power over the world because its power is less than yours. In fact it has zero power. Which means when you exert your power, the world cannot resist. It doesn't have the power or strength to oppose your will. What you say goes. You make it so. You override the world and its laws. You write something new on the wall.

"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you."

The Course is all about taking your power back and then using it to help others. Having power over the body, power over sickness, power over death, power over time and space. No longer being at the effect of anything. No longer being under limits of any kind. No longer being incapable or unable to do anything. No longer suffering against your will. No longer tolerating. No longer waiting for someone else to save you.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do." NOTHING!!

Either

a) cause is outside you, you are at the effect, powerless to stop it, or

b) cause is inside you, you can affect all illusions, you have power over everything AND CAN EXPRESS IT!

Choosing B is choosing the atonement. "An untrained mind can accomplish nothing".... but a trained mind, which believes in its own power, and does not see itself as powerless, can accomplish ANYTHING. Having a healed mind isn't the end of accomplishment, it's the beginning. Miracle mindedness is merely the state of true perception FROM which miracles - the POWER OF GOD - are expressed.

You are ALL POWERFUL. You have power OVER this world. It is NOTHING to you. You are in command.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin for only if there were a body is sin possible."

The physical world is made of the idea of sin. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards." Sin is the idea of attempting to attack God. "The world was made as an attack on God".

Physical matter is the idea of sin showing up like a solid immovable object. Its forms are "forms of error". The body can see only these errors as if they are true. It was made to try to picture God's son as crucified and attacked. "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

The body was made to look at hell and see nothing else. It can see only conflict everywhere it looks. Our mind must learn NOT to believe what the body reports as true.

"The body's eyes see only form (objects). They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. And they were made to look on error (forms of error) and not see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin (literal granite blocks made of sin), and stopping at the outside form of nothing (the surface of physical matter). To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything (physical objects), the wall that stands between you and the truth (the physical world is a literal "solid wall" hanging like a veil across the face of Christ to block your sight), is wholly true. Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall (ie brick walls), see truly? It is held back by form (matter), having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form (bodies, planets) will be perceived.

These (physical) eyes, made not to see (reality), will never see. For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them (meaning you made the body's eyes). What was its maker's goal but not to see? For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but not for seeing. See how the body's eyes rest on externals (surfaces of matter) and cannot go beyond. Watch how they stop at nothingness (houses, tables, cars, humans), unable to go beyond the form to meaning. Nothing so blinding as perception of form (the world). For sight of form means understanding has been obscured."

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"Sin is belief attack can be projected OUTSIDE the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack."

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"The introduction of reason (sanity, sense, truth) into the ego's thought system is the beginning of its undoing. For reason and the ego are contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to co-exist in your awareness. And reason's goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. You can SEE reason (literally, you can look at the truth beyond the world of lies). This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally (the ability to see what is true plainly and clearly). If it is not the body's sight, it MUST be understood. For it is PLAIN, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It CAN be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their different ways."

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"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely."

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"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."

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"Love, too, has symbols in a world of sin. 2 The miracle forgives because it stands for what is past forgiveness and is true. 3 How foolish and insane it is to think a miracle is bound by laws that it came solely to undo!"

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"In content all the questions are the same. 2 For each one asks if you are willing to exchange the world of sin for what the Holy Spirit sees, since it is this the world of sin denies. 3 And therefore those who look on sin are seeing the denial of the real world."

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"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

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"Except for God's teachers there would be little hope of salvation, for the world of sin would seem forever real. 2 The self-deceiving must deceive, for they must teach deception. 3 And what else is hell?"