We don't want to ask for help. Because in our ego we think we don't need help. Because we think we're so amazing and masterful all on our own, that we can do everything on our own, and don't even need any help. This means we believe there's not even anything wrong with us, and that we're amazing super advanced beings already. But the fact is that we need to admit that we are LESS THAN PERFECT, having attacked ourselves and limited ourselves. And we are IN DENIAL about this. We don't want to admit that we suck.

Admitting it is frightening because it means realising that we're "not in a good spot". That we might even be believing we're in danger or are living in fear or are full of guilt or are sick or whatever. But ADMITTING this also means, your mind is going to accept that you DO NEED HELP. And only by recognizing that you are in NEED, will you be willing to ASK FOR HELP. Only by recognising that you are NOT DOING WELL, will you reach out, or acknowledge the fact that you cannot get out of this all by yourself.

Only by having that honesty to admit to failure and lack and not knowing how to get yourself out of it, resigning as your own teacher, will you ASK the Holy Spirit to help you. And then you will be WILLING with a little willingness to LET HIM help you, to let him heal you and guide you. If you can't admit that you are crap all on your own and you don't know what to do about it, you're never going to get to the point where you realize you need God to save you, in which you will turn to him.

People sometimes only reach this when they hit rock bottom and crash agains the rocks and realize they can't help themselves, which is an excellent thing to recognize because it finally means you surrender your egoic efforts to save yourself and become open to something from outside the ego. This is when we are wiling to admit ego defeat, ie failure, which is a GOOD THING, and can then crack open and let some light in from beyond the ego. This is when we want a better way, because our tolerance for pain and suffering has reached its limit.

Those who have suffered and have been tested and have failed and have realised the meagre limitation and powerlessness of their ego self, have been blessed with an opportunity to find God, to turn to him and to trust him. If we're not willing to "admit defeat", we'll just keep fighting ourselves all on our own and continue the suffering, trying to tolerate the pain and misery for as long as we can stand it.

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. 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. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

"The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs"

"Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself. "

Here is a secret to helping others to heal. Jesus is saying that a sick or unhappy or suffering person is only this way, because they are denying or blocking their own inner love/light, which would heal them if they would allow it. They are literally rejecting happiness and wholeness and health.

And because this person is making themselves sick and blocking their own self-healing (embracing and allowing the light already in them to heal them), they need someone ELSE to shine a light for them.

He goes on to tell us that you should OFFER your brother what he isn't offering himself. If he is not offering himself the love/light that is in him, it is your job to OFFER HIM LOVE AND LIGHT.

It's very simple, and highly resisted by the ego in us. But we're simply asked to LOVE STRONGLY, so that the light of love shines onto others. This means literally to BROADCAST LOVE as though it were a kind of transferable "energy", to another person.

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

"The miracle, on the other hand, is an ENERGIZER. It always strengthens, and never depletes. It DOES induce peace, and by establishing tranquillity (not relaxation) it enables both giver and receiver to enter into a state of Grace. Here his miracle-mindedness, (not release from tension) is restored."

We're also told:

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT."

So in healing others, we want to focus on the light/truth/love in the other person, acknowledge/be thankful for the true nature of the person as God created them, still unchanged, and then transmit love to them.

In whatever way and with whatever words, you want to simply EXTEND GOD'S LOVE to the other person, transmit it, relay it, broadcast it, transfer it. Over and over again.

You will find that as you send love, even if you are starting out not feeling very loving or able, your OWN feeling of love will increase, YOU will be brightened, your whole mood will lift, and your perception will change. As you give the love, it heals both the giver and the receiver.

"it enables both giver and receiver to enter into a state of Grace."

"Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as to receive. They simultaneously increase the strength of the giver and supply strength to the receiver."

If you transmit love for a while, you will feel quite strong and miraculous and happy and energized afterwards.

Essentially this leads to a simple conclusion. If YOU want to feel good, you HAVE to help others to feel good. Eventually you will be permanently in a state of love, in which giving and receiving are one, and are then constantly miraculous toward everyone you meet.

"The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship. All fear comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship."

The "authority problem" is where, in heaven, you who are an effect of God and a co-cause of creation, attempt to turn around and CAUSE GOD, while also DENYING YOU ARE HIS EFFECT. You deny his fatherhood and causation of you, you reject everything he has therefore GIVEN you, and therefore ORPHAN yourself - "separate yourself off" from sharing everything with him, collapsing your oneness and trying to "go it alone."

You then proceed to try to AUTHOR YOURSELF, which leads to you trying to reinvent yourself and make a self (ego), while simultaneously believing you have not BEEN authored, and this begins the fear that you DO NOT EXIST - which is the basis of all fear.

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

All fear is the fear of not existing - the fear of death - which is the same thing as the belief that you have not been created - that you have no source, and are therefore fundamentally UN-CAUSED, and not a co-cause, and so must be purely an effect/victim that is ceasing to exist.

AS you begin to open up to hand back to God HIS FUNCTION, in which you acknowledge that you share everything with him, what you have is what he has GIVEN you, you have nothing OTHER than what he has given you, he is your cause and creator and father, and you RECEIVE what he has given you by reclaiming your shared inheritance, you are once again acknowledging that God is the AUTHOR of you, and therefore the AUTHORITY in terms of causal power that has CREATED you. You as a creation are SECOND to him - his son, not his father.

Essentially this is a movement toward giving the role of God back to God, reinstating God as your creator, recognizing that you have BEEN created, allowing yourself to receive everything from God again, and to therefore recognize that you ARE LOVED, you are BEING given, and therefore your existence is being CAUSED BY something other than yourself. Which means that you do not establish or maintain or put in place the continuation of your existence - which you tried to do driven by the fear of death, but instead that God is the one who is causing you to exist FOREVER, and THEREFORE, you absolutely exist and will always exist. Which IS THE END OF FEAR - the reclamation of your GOD SUSTAINED immortality.

"The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has a "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself"

"The authority problem remains the ONLY source of perceived conflict, because the ego was MADE out of the wish of God's Son to father HIM."

"The authority problem IS "the root of all evil."

"We spoke before of the authority problem as involving the concept of USURPING His power. The ego believes that this is what YOU did, because it believes it IS you. It follows, then, that if you identify WITH the ego, you MUST perceive yourself as guilty."

If the body is unreal, and assigning reality to the unreality is something only the MIND does, how does the BODY make the world seem real?

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

Since the body is itself an illusion, a dream, an unreality, it is PART OF an unreality. This means it does not contradict that unreality. It agrees with it totally. Without any contrast, any disagreement, or any rejection of the unreality, it is fully accepted.

This acceptance of it is unquestioning, and does not doubt what the body senses. Therefore, an unreal body in an unreal world, detects the world as if it is "real" to the body. As far as the body is concerned, being part of the very unreality it observes, it registers it as "just as real" as itself. In this way the body seems to regard the unreal world as though it is completely real. Its nature is accepted as identical to its own, and everything about it is similar to itself. It's a kind of reality "within a context" of unreality.

What this means for the MIND, however, is that the mind on another level has to decide whether to assign reality to the unreal world AND the body, or whether to withdraw it from BOTH. To recognize the body is unreal, is also to recognize that everything the body regards as real is actually unreal. The way it makes the world SEEM real, cannot be true, and has to be recognized as a misinterpretation. It's a blindness within a blind world.

To not be DECEIVED by the way the body makes the world seem real, the mind has to DISAGREE with the world and the body. It has to recognize a contrast, and be opposite to its nature. The mind needs to realize that only God's reality is real, and therefore the body, the world, and everything the body reports about the world, is entirely false. Even if what the body reports is a seemingly real world, the MIND has to disregard this and not be deceived by it.

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. "

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

"This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. "

"Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not, its senses remain quite UNAWARE of it, its tongue can not relay ITS messages."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

"True healing is the realization you were never sick" - ACIM

The implication of this is that in order to heal or be healed, you do NOT need to find the 'cause of the sickness'. You need to go BEYOND the cause of the sickness to where sickness HAS NO CAUSE. The sickness was produced by a denial or a blockage or an unwillingness to accept that there IS NO SICKNESS AT ALL.

So then if you go looking for the cause, this not only infers that you believe that you are sick and the sickness exists because of a 'real cause', but also that the sickness stems from some kind of 'causal mistake' somewhere in the mind. Like a root or a decision that was wrong. A starting point.

It seems there is something that you 'did' which then produced a bunch of symptoms after it. But even without symptoms coming after it, that initial 'sin' isn't causing sickness to show up somewhere else separate from it - the belief in the sin IS the sickness. It is sickness because THERE IS NO SIN and to believe otherwise IS to be sick/mistaken.

It may appear that these things are the 'cause' of sickness, but really their presence at all is the 'cause' because they are blocking an ACKNOWLEDGEMENT of divine health. They are blocking the atonement, which is that sickness has NOT occurred.

So in order to BE healed, you need to get past all notions of symptoms being real, and past all notions of a cause being real, and REMEMBER that there is no 'real' cause because sickness is not real. You need to remember that YOU ARE NOT SICK. And in that light, in that awareness, the sickness is not believed in, is not seen, and does not exist. Thus any 'manifestation' of it must disappear.

So if you're addressing the sickness, fighting with the sickness, trying to find the cause of the sickness, trying to uproot the sickness, trying to figure out where the sickness came from, or how to fix the sickness, you are barking up the wrong tree and the ego knows it. This only reinforces your belief in it.

The ONLY healing is in surrendering the ego, letting go of the need for the sickness - which ultimately is to block the awareness of NATURAL HEALTH. The only purpose of sickness is as an obstacle to peace and a resistance/defense against the truth. Its only purpose is to choose not to acknowledge that YOU CANNOT BE SICK because you are immortal spirit - Christ!

So let's stop. And let's move into ACCEPTING that we are 100% healthy. Let's move into allowing God's presence to heal. Let's move into recognizing that sickness can never be real, and the belief that it is real IS the sickness. And then let's drop this ego pretense that sickness is happening and admit the truth: As Christ, as God's creation, you are immortal and immune and invulnerable and immaculate. Nothing has happened and nothing can happen to make you sick. You can never be sick because God has created you innocent forever.

So all of this other 'sickness' is just the belief that you are not that, that you are not Christ, innocent, immortal and invulnerable. Your thoughts about the sickness are attack thoughts - "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability". But your invulnerability cannot BE attacked. Believing that it can IS an error, and error is sickness. Sickness is not the TRUTH, sickness is a LIE. And ultimately, death is a lie.

Own up to your immortality today.

This sounds like a tall order, but ACIM is saying we should not in any way be at the effect of the world. It should not do anything to us. We should regard other people as having not done anything to us. That is forgiveness. You are immortal and unchanged.

Forgiveness therefore is being causal and not an effect of the world. In forgiveness nothing happens to you, no-one offends you, nothing upsets you, nothing can hurt you, nothing can be taken from you. The world does absolutely nothing to you at all.

There is a very strong thread through the course that teaches this. It basically means you should be having absolutely no reaction to the world for any reason. You should be in a calm and whole state of mind which is always unconditionally loving, always deliberately acts, always gives the same one response to everything, and never re-acts to anything.

A "re-action" is an indirect action, a response, to a seeming provocation from outside yourself. Something happens first, and then you act, rather than acting first. And the action you perform is determined by what was done to you, rather than by what you truly will to do from love.

Reaction means you are a victim. It happens when you believe that stuff in the world is doing something to you. This happens when you believe it is REAL. This applies to everything physical. Everything the body can see and sense. All physical things are illusions, with a nature that is designed to tempt you all the time.

The world tempts you to believe that bad things are happening, cruelty and injustice, threats and dangers, wars and attacks, sicknesses and suffering. It shows this to you as pictures of crucifixion, pictures of bodies, pictures of things going wrong. It presents this to you as physical images, as physical objects, suggesting to you - look at this, it's true!

All physical things are forms of sin. Even the body is made from the idea of sin and deception. They give rise easily to a sense of guilt and fear, IF you buy into them. If you look at them and you start to buy into it, believe it, trust it, want it, you'll be giving it power over you. And then you'll perceive that it is causing you. Which means you are being affected by it.

This then causes you to be changed BY the world, seemingly. Or rather, you are using the world to pretend you are affected by the world. The result is that your mind will believe the external world is causing it, and it will manufacture effects to correspond to it. Your feelings will change, you will be "made" to feel a certain way, and you'll start having all kinds of effects - reactions, to what you've perceived.

Basically, if you believe that anything in the world is true, you are giving it power and truth and reality, which in your mind will set you up as the victim of it, and that will cause a reaction. If you are reacting in any way, with upset, fear, guilt, anger, anything at all, you have bought into the illusion that the world exists and is truly causing you.

The aim then is that you need to get to where you recognize that the world - which is a dream - is only a dream, which you are dreaming. And because it is only a dream, it is not a cause, and is only an effect. You must withdraw all power from it, all truth, and all reality. You must recognize it as nothing, doing nothing, causing nothing. All of its physical testimonies and states and forms must be recognized as lies - false - untrue.

Anything you see with the body's eyes, do not believe it. if you believe it, you will become deceived. It means you've bought into a temptation, and temptation puts you in hell. Anything that seems to be happening or existing in the physical world is NOT OF GOD and is not true. It must be denied. To deny it you must withdraw all belief in it, not play along with it, not go into false empathy, not join with it or become one with it.

The aim is to reach a state where you recognize that the world does nothing whatsoever, it has no power and no cause over you. You dominate it because you are all-powerful and causal. You are its dreamer. And as a result you cannot react to anything. It means the end of victimhood, the end of being affected or upset, the end of suffering because of anything other than yourself.

It does sound like a tall order - to not react to anything here whatsoever. To not react to a war, or a murder, or an abuse, or a fire, or a loss, or a threat. To be completely calm and still and unmoved and uncaused by anything in the world. But it is the goal we're seeking to achieve. If we are to be forgiving, it means we must be overlooking the world, which means not resting on the world, and not giving the world things it does not have.

In full recognition of being the cause or dreamer of the dream, you no longer can go along with believing that people are really suffering, or that sickness is true, or that death has any power to suppress anyone, or that bad things can make you unhappy, or that anything in the world can take anything away from you by any means.

It means the end of all effects from the world, all shifts to emotion, all fluctuating state and responses. It means being singular and unconditional, with one response to everything. I am not at the effect of the world I see. I will not react to the world I see. The world I see does nothing to me. I am immortal spirit and nothing in the world can change me or do anything to alter me in any way.

"That this is all the BODY does, is true. For it IS but a figure in a dream. But who REACTS to figures in a dream, UNLESS he sees them as if they were real?" UrT27I4

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." UrT27I10

"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within YOU, there is a force which NO illusions can resist." UrT22F5

"Be not deceived by the form of problems today." UrW79L10

"Now it becomes your task to let the illusion be carried to the truth. Be steadfast but in this; be not deceived by the "reality" of any changing form." UrM28A7

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs." UrM13A6

"For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take." UrW140L4

"Be not deceived by forms the "something" takes." UrT29I8

"You have need to use the symbols of the world a while. But be you not deceived by them as well. They do not stand for anything at all, and in your practicing it is this thought which will release you from them." UrW184L4

"The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end." UrT31D2

"Be not deceived by what appears as many choices." UrT41G14

"Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear." UrT21C2

"He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did." UrM6C3

"for the world will never again appear to rule the mind" UrM6C3

"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." UrW190L5

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power" UrT11C5

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal." UrM9A6

"The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. It is the temptation to abandon God and His Son, taking on a physical appearance. It is this which the body's eyes look upon." UrW64L1

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself." UrW64L2

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach." UrT31H1

"What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive YOURSELF defenseless and in hell. Yield NOT to this" UrT31H6

"For all temptation is nothing more than the attempt to substitute another will for God's." UrM17A9

"Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated." UrT27K4 "The world I see has nothing that I want." UrW128

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys?" UrM14A4

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way." UrW137L7

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other." UrT12G1

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see." UrT11J4

I used to strongly believe that when a body dies, that is "death". And this is a bad thing. It's something to avoid at all costs. Because the body has to be kept in its "alive" state for as long as possible. And that's based on the belief that a valuable real person IS a body and the body's end IS the end of them, and a great loss to be avoided.

But for all the fighting against death and wishing it wouldn't happen, it happened. And I was so done with fighting against it that I pretty much surrendered and let it happen. This was a good thing actually. Actually as I look back and see all the efforts I made to fight against it, I see now that the whole situation was designed to exhaust my attempt to use "fear of death" as a way to reinforce sickness and separation.

What this giving-up did was it uprooted my belief that death is bad, especially given that when the person died they were liberated from a lot of limitations and suffering. For them it was actually quite a helpful thing.

In fact it was so good for them to be out of the body and back in a state of freedom and happiness, that it made the whole idea of keeping the body going seem nonsense. And with that, the whole idea of defending the body against death seemed nonsense.

Before I knew it, my whole attitude about death being the opposite of life was being broken down. Especially when my wife came visiting from the other side several times, in ways that were unavoidable proof that she still existed.

This in turn demonstrated strongly that physical death is not really death, because even if the person's body was dead the person was not. Eternal life carries on. So the death of the body is meaningless. As Jesus says:

"The death of an illusion means nothing."

So there I was faced with the pretty strong fact of the illusion of physical death, which was in fact a total lie, contrasted strongly against the ongoing presence and life of my partner. And this couldn't help but uproot and bring into serious question the idea that physical death and physical life mean anything different at all.

In fact, the way I see it now, I'm recognizing more and more that the whole world is an illusion. None of it has any meaning. It is not right or wrong, good or bad. It is not life, and it is not death. As Jesus states:

"There is no life outside of heaven" ... " Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth."

The body, the world, it is neutral. It is not alive, and it is not dead. It does not have any inherent meaning at all. We've given it all the meaning it has. We've placed labels on it to pick out parts and separate things off and say ... this thing is good, this thing is bad, keep more of this, avoid more of that.

Death is relegated to being seen as the label we give to things that symbolise death, like dead bodies, dead leaves, decay and rot etc. Life is a label reserved for the things that move around, that seem to grow and be born and new. But THAT is precisely what the illusion of the world is, and why the world is an illusion.

The world is an illusion that certain states of matter are different to other states, that certain bodies are more alive than others, that certain forms are more dead than others, that there is hierarchy in the illusions and separate categories for things. That is all illusion. It is all one thing. One big illusion.

It's like a giant smokescreen which sometimes takes on the form of what looks like life, and sometimes it takes on the form of what looks like death, but it is never really either of those things. It is nothing. As Jesus states:

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."

Living moving bodies are not life. Stationary decaying bodies are not death. We made up these labels for aspects of one thing that seems like two things. The illusion that it is two things is the problem here. We believe that the form that things takes tells us what it means. That is the bullshit lie. Nothing here means anything. "Nothing I see means anything."

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

Our task then is to learn to stop separating off some parts of the world and giving it special labels, which are in opposition to the labels we give to other parts. Pitting these labelled parts against each other and making them more SEPARATE, is the problem. All this does is keep the ego and the separation from God going.

War and peace in the world, at the world level, are not different. They are two sides of the same coin. One is not better than the other. They are both meaningless. Activity or lack of activity is the same thing.

This means that it actually does not matter if bodies are living or dying because they are not really living or dying. A body in one form is no different than in another. Being deceived or horrified by the appearance of a body in a disabled or broken or damaged form is entirely a temptation of the ego to regard some parts of this world as worse than others. Death is not worse than life, and life is not better than death. They are equally nothing here. One dream of illusions pretending to show up as many separate things.

Our entire shift is a transition away from believing that the world - or our mind - is split up into many compartments in which some compartments are different and better or worse than others .... to a state of wholeness in which there is only one truth that applies to all of them. It is a shift away from a separate victim and victimiser, to a total ownership of all power and causation. A shift away from being a mere character in a dream, to being the one who dreams the entire dream environment and all things that happen to all parts of it at once.

The great illusion and deception of the world is that the form of life is preferable to the form of death. Or that one is better, or one is more alive, or one is more dead, or one is more to be avoided. If you play that game you will be lost and you will fear death and think that you live, while not really living. Living in a belief that death is a specific separate thing is a belief in not living at all. To really live you must claim eternal life, in which there are no such shiftings and changes and transitions between appearances.

All beliefs in how different parts of the world are different, how they are not alike, how they are conflicted and at war, how some are better than others, how some are more holy or more evil, more wanted or more unwanted, all of these inequalities have to be completely ironed out. The whole world has to be regarded as equally one thing, with no separate truths or multiple levels or categories or labels. All of it is nothing. And none of it is of God.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

"This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs."

Here is the main problem we all face day after day. The body makes an ILLUSORY WORLD seem real. The world is an illusion of a world, a picture of crucifixion, a vision of hell, a depiction of total lies, holding not one single shred of truth and is designed to tempt you believe that illusions of death are reality.

The BODY, was INTENTIONALLY MADE, in order to sense this world and to try to make the world SEEM real - to seem to really EXIST. It does this through what we call senses, sensory inputs, detection, perception, ways of discerning that not only is something REALLY THERE, but it's DOING STUFF, it's changing, it's shifting, there are sensations being produced, you can touch it and smell it and see it, and all this turns into EVIDENCE trying to testify that THE WORLD EXISTS.

EVERYTHING THE BODY SENSES IS A LIE!

The body is designed to DECEIVE you. Its senses are designed NOT to be aware of reality. It's eyes are designed to be BLOCKED by forms of sin/error/matter so that you do NOT see. It's ears pick up on fake sound vibrations. You touch the surface of nothing with your fingers and believe it's a real object. It's a massive deception.

This is a pretty major issue for us because we're strapped into these bodies. We're being presented with this holographic virtual world all around us, showing us pictures of death, suffering, sickness and hell, a world where everything is fundamentally imperfect and impermanent. And then we're forced through the body's sensory inputs to PICK UP ON "what's there" and to relay that as messages to our mind. Our mind sees these messages and now has a choice, either you BELIEVE THEM, or to recognize them as UNREAL.

When your mind believes what the body senses, which includes ANYTHING YOU CAN SEE, any notion that "something is happening", any sound or smell or taste, any appearance of any body doing anything anywhere in any way, you are FALLING FOR TEMPTATION. You are being deceived by illusions and have entered into the ego. And that means your spiritual eye is not open, you're not having christ vision, and are unconscious.

The problem is, you're going to remain strapped into the body UNTIL you can COMPLETELY 100% transcend the world, and transcend and NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING the body detects. And yet the body is going to keep bombarding your mind with all of its sensory inputs. Pictures of crucifixion, bodies writhing in pain, wars waging, fights breaking out, people crying etc.

The body is going to just keep picking up and sensing this stuff and broadcasting it to your mind. So what is your mind going to do about this? How do you get out of hell? How do you transition from being DECEIVED by everything the body picks up on, to being NOT deceived?

This is where changing our beliefs comes in. And this is where forgiveness comes in. Because "to forgive is to OVERLOOK". Which means to forgive the entire world you must overlook it, not see it, must learn to RECOGNIZE that it IS AN ILLUSION, and NOT BELIEVE IT. Believing the body's sensory impressions of the world are real is FALSE perception. Believing illusions are reality is FALSE perception. To reach true perception you must come to RECOGNIZE and believe, that everything the body picks up on as "out there" or "happening" IS NOT TRUE AND NOT REAL. IT IS NOT HAPPENING AND DOES NOT EXIST!

"Forgiveness recognizes that what you think you brother did HAS NOT OCCURRED." It has not even happened. The events were ILLUSIONS! What your body showed you WAS A LIE! This is profound because it means literally we have to learn to open the spiritual eye which looks with TRUTH (holy spirit) and clearly recognizes what this world IS (a lie), rather than believing in it. A forgiven world is a NOT BELIEVED world. A forgiven world is a FALSE world. And this means weakening investment in physical senses.

"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."

So this is our issue. We are using a body which is picking up on a world of sin and hell which is not real, and which tries to tell us "ITS REALLY THERE". "It exists". Add this is what the body was DESIGNED TO DO. And it was designed to never do anything else. Which means it CAN ONLY LIE to you. So you have to learn how to STOP BELIEVING IT. You must learn to recognize ALL body signals are UNREAL and UNTRUE. Add that means the entire world you're in, everything you see, is NOT REAL.

It's by learning to recognize illusions as illusions, sensory inputs as FALSE, and trusting only the spiritual eye of truth and light, that you escape from the dream of hell and wake up to reality.

"Nothing you see means anything."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it."

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"To sense is not to know."

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."

"Theirs (body's eyes) is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing."

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel."

"But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."

"God's teachers choose to look **on dreams** a while (the world). It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. **The dream says otherwise**, but who would put his faith in dreams once ****they are recognized for what they are****?

Awareness of dreaming (recognition that it IS a dream not a reality) is the real function of God's teachers. ****They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. (body visions) Yet they are not deceived by what they see.**** They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity (reality, truth) alone is not a thing of dreams (not of or in this world). And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as ***behind the dream*** (behind the illusory world), beyond all **seeming** (appearances, illusions) and yet surely theirs."

"The ***body’s eyes will continue to see differences.*** (for a teacher of God who is still in a body using it temporarily alongside christ vision) 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed ****will no longer acknowledge them.**** 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, ****and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before.**** 4 ******But the *healed mind* will put them all in one category; they are unreal.******

5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in ***sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world*** (all body sensors inputs including everything you see - you SORT OUT these messages in your mind). 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth. (mind recognizes the world is an illusion, because it sees WITH truth, which reveals what is true and what is not - the world is not)"

To be aware of dreaming, is to be aware that this entire world, all bodies, this whole seeming universe, space and time, it is all a dream.

But this awareness also includes the important awareness that only the Kingdom of God - which is not of this world - is real and true.

This sounds like a simple distinction but awareness of dreaming can only FULLY arise when we are 100% clear that this world IS NOT reality, and that God's kingdom IS. It is the awareness that only the truth is true and nothing else is true. Anything not of God is unreal.

This awareness of dreaming also entails the full appreciation of the fact that this world DOES NOTHING at all to the Kingdom of God. Bodies coming and going has no effect. Death does nothing. Sickness doesn't change anything. Not one single thing in this world has the slightest influence on God's creation.

And this also entails a recognition therefore that YOUR IDENTITY, is fully aligned with and aware of being "as God created you", as a perfect innocent soul in heaven. In which you have fully released all traces of EGO, and all sense of body-identification, and all belief that the bodies in this world are people.

Everything your eyes behold here must be recognised as A DREAM, and thus is unreal. A false dream, a fiction, an empty world, a nothingness. Something you are just dreaming in a state of seeming sleep, with absolutely NO CAUSAL POWER, and no consequence upon anything in the reality of the waking Kingdom of God.

Nothing you see here means anything. Nothing in the world can bring oppression. Nothing can make you suffer or be sick or die. You are immortal and eternal. The entire world is fake and unreal. Nothing that happens in the world or that has ever seemed to happen has any real meaning or value whatsoever. You are safe in God, at home in God, dreaming of exile.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams, once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs." UrM13A6

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed." UrT27I1

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real." UrT27I2

"No-one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-one believes there really was a time when he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real." UrT27I5

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." UrT27I10

"Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreaming of a world OUTSIDE yourself. And leading finally beyond ALL dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life." UrT27F9

If you as Christ, God's Son, are "one with God", does that mean you do not exist as an individual being/son? Does it mean there is only God and NO son? No. It also does not mean that your "brother" is an "ego idea of separation". Brothers are co-children of the same Father - God.

In not one single one of these statements does "one" mean a count of one.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. ***There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER***. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

"This is because ***God and man are NOT equal***"

"The creative power of both God AND His Creations is limitless, but it ***is NOT in reciprocal relationship.*** You DO communicate fully WITH God, as He does with YOU. This is an ongoing process in which you SHARE, and BECAUSE you share it, you are inspired to create LIKE God. But in Creation ***you are NOT in a reciprocal relation TO God***, because He created YOU, but you did NOT create Him. We have already stated that only in this respect your creative power differs from His."

"I and my Father are one with you, for you are part of Us."

"Your Son is one with You in being and in will, and nothing contradicts the holy truth that I remain as You created me."

"Nothing has power over you except His Will and yours, which but extends His Will. 8 It was for this you were created, and your brother with you and at one with you." (oneness is happening at the same time as you AND your brother existing as creations of God!!!)

"You and your brother are the same as God Himself is One, and not divided in His Will. 2 And you must have one purpose, since He gave the same to both of you. 3 His Will is brought together as you join in will, that you be made complete by offering completion to your brother."

"I trust my brothers, who are one with me." (not "who are egos with me"!)

"His Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness encompasses ours." (two onenesses? WTF, OMG, call the the course police)

"Your role in the redemption LEADS you to it, by re-establishing its oneness in your minds."

"And ONLY as you look upon him as guiltless, can you understand his Oneness."

"Nor do they love the Oneness which created them as One with Him."

"In unity with Him do they abide, and in their Oneness both are kept complete."

"Its truth established you as one with God."

"we stand together as one Son of God."

"every heart throughout the universe forever sings as one"

"As a man and as one of God's creations, my right thinking, which came from the Universal Inspiration which IS the Holy Spirit, taught me first and foremost..."

"In this equality is Christ restored as one Identity, in Which all Sons of God acknowledge that they all are one."

"He loves you both, equally and as one."

"When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made."

In none of these statements do the "two" cease to exist as two. This does not mean separation persists either. Nor does it mean that "two" always indicates "multiplicity of egos". Nor does multiplicities of brothers created by God in reality mean there is separation happening.

Separation does not mean "counting how many", any more than oneness means "a count of one". Separation ONLY means the attempt to be exclusive, selfish and isolated, in among a large group of individuals with whom you were previously sharing everything.

So many myths to dispel.