"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings more love to the giver AND the receiver. (A miracle is misunderstood when it is regarded as a spectacle.)"

"The use of miracles as a spectacle to INDUCE belief is wrong. They are really used for and by believers."

A CAREFUL reading of these principles tells you something different to what many people believe it says.

First of all, that if you REGARD a miracle AS a spectacle, it is MISUNDERSTOOD.

This implies that miracles are quite capable of BEING spectacles, ie something "impossible" happening which might surprise people. But when you regard what is happening AS a spectacle, you are mistaken. Because then you're a) focusing on form, b) not realizing how the mind is being healed, c) not recognizing the PURPOSE of miracles ultimately which is to get us back to God.

This doesn't in any way mean that a spectacular miracle is wrong or to be avoided. It means that if you INTERPRET the miracle as a mere "spectacle", you are mistaken about what is happening and why. This has no bearing on whether or not a miracle is being performed or for what reason.

Rather than suggest that you should AVOID spectacular miracles, it in fact tells you that if you think that a spectacular miracle IS A SPECTACLE, you HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD what is happening! Which is a totally OPPOSITE meaning.

He then goes on to tell us that USING a miracle to try to INDUCE BELIEF, is wrong. He does not say that miracles are wrong, or using miracles is wrong, or that spectacular miracles are wrong. He says that if you use them to try to CONVINCE someone through coercion, manipulation, "showing off", temptation etc... you are getting into ego magic.

Not only is this "wrong" because it is a misunderstanding of miracles, it's also wrong because it will increase ego and play on special relationships and risk idol worship. Miracles aren't meant to be used solely for the purpose of "how they look". Like, Jesus didn't walk on water to just "show off". He did it to TEACH and to inspire and awaken people. Because "miracles are teaching devices."

He goes on to clarify, that in fact miracles are given BY BELEIVERS, FOR BELIEVERS. Which suggests that in order to RECEIVE a miracle, a certain amount of belief or faith is needed in the part of the RECIPIENT, ie they have to be somewhat open to being helped, and therefore already HAVE belief. And this enables them to be helped. Which means the help is given to those who are open and receptive and already are willing to entertain the possibility.

They are thus NOT given to people who REJECT the help strongly and don't want it, in an attempt to FORCE them to BELIEVE, because this would be a violation of free will. Trying to "impress" someone or shock them or use the power of the mind to get someone to FOLLOW you or to worship you, is obviously a mis-use of that power.

So when you look at these two statements carefully, you should not come away thinking "spectacular miracles are wrong" or "don't perform miracles that might be spectacular in case you scare someone", and especially not "always do them behind closed doors in private". Jesus was plenty public with his demonstrations. We are in fact encouraged to perform miracles, to recognize that miracles CAN BE spectacular, that it's perfectly legitimate and okay for spectacular things to occur (otherwise its likely not a miracle anyway), and that such miracles should be happening all the time."What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

So the only thing these statements are saying is not to use miracles for ego purposes, don't force them on people that don't want them, don't MIS-interpret them as spectacles, and give them to those who are at least partly willing to believe in them already. Otherwise you risk facing ego rebuttal and fear reactions.

In fact, all of these statements quite clearly IMPLY that miracles CAN BE extraordinarily spectacular, in general. Someone walking on water, someone's limb being rebuilt, food being multiplied, the dead being raised, is pretty spectacular. And there is nothing wrong with that nor is Jesus cautioning against it in ANY way.

This is why sometimes you have to really read the course slowly and carefully and digest ALL the words instead of skipping over it too quickly, because it's far too easy to skim and focus on only parts of sentences and then draw generalized conclusions that don't pay close attention to the details.

In ACIM, mistakenness is not the same thing as how the world generally thinks of it. If you go into the women's toilet instead of the men's, it could be a mistake. A mistaken action. If you pick up the wrong set of keys, it could be a mistake. If you leave your lunch box at the workplace, it could be a mistake. Something you intended that sort of went wrong somehow.

You could then try to turn these mistakes into sins and say that the person is guilty for going into the wrong bathroom, or a bad person for forgetting the proper keys, or stupid for leaving their lunch at work. But a "forgiving" reframing of this that says like "oh well they just made a mistake because they were supposed to go into the other toilet", isn't forgiveness. It just recognizes a horizontal worldly error within this system.

Forgiveness is higher than this. True mistakenness is a recognition on a vertical axis. It's a view from above, from a mindset of sanity and truth and light. It looks down and sees something impossible, something which cannot be true, and recognizes it as not true or real. Something false. Like a lie. And because it recognizes it as untrue, it is not attracted to it, and it doesn't turn it into something to be punished for. Instead it recognizes that the error just needs to be corrected. It was just a mistaken view, a mistaken belief, which can't be true, and the mind needs to be restored to the truth.

So if in the world, say, we take something that someone is believing or doing, based on a mistake. Let's say that they're having a sickness and coughing all over everyone. You could take this mistake and turn it into a sin. Sin does the opposite of see correctable errors, and sin doesn't recognize a mistake AS a mistake. Instead it thinks of it as a TRUTH, as something real and valid, and actual. The person really is coughing all over the other real people, how horrible. What a sinner.

To move to forgiveness then, we need to shift away from "it's a sin" to "it's a mistake". But not in worldly terms. Not in social preferences or rules about how to act around people or other made up stuff. True mistakenness would recognize that a) the person is not a body even if they think they are b) they are not really sick because they are immortal c) no-one is really suffering d) contagion is a lie e) nothing real can be threatened etc... that sort of thing. In effect that ... this whole show, this body person, this coughing, this spewing, is all FALSE. It isn't true, it isn't happening, it isn't POSSIBLE in God.

If we can see that this event isn't possible, is false, isn't true of the person, they are not really doing it, its having no effect, etc, then we can recognize that the person is in a sate of insanity and is just simply mistaken about how and what they are. They're showing a lie. They're trying to convince you sin is taking place. It isn't. We recognize there are just a bit insane, a bit mistaken, calling for love, in need of healing and correction. None of what they are doing is possible, none of it is true, none of it is happening but in a dream.

That's the kind of mistakenness that the Holy Spirt recognizes. He sees errors and does not mistaken them for sins. The ego on the other hand tries to take mistakenness and hold it against people, narrows down to focus on it, judges it, makes it out to be TRUE, believe it is HAPPENING, believes it is POSSIBLE, and is HAVING EFFECTS ... and that's all basically a definition of "sin". The idea of an attack which can have real consequences against real things.

"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." UrT27I6

It's kind of all about recognition. If you recognize what is possible and true in God, then you recognize when someone is MISTAKEN. Their mistakenness calls for correction not punishment. You recognize what they are presenting is NOT POSSIBLE, and can't be true, so is not actual or real. So you can't hold it against them.

If you FAIL to recognize that the person is just mistaken or "being false", you make another mistake, by mistaking a mistake for NOT a mistake..... you turn the mistake or falseness into a TRUTH, and now because it is true it seems REAL to you. Or like a fact. The person really is coughing all over everyone. The person really did go into the wrong bathroom. The person really did leave their lunch at work for the 5th time.

"The Holy Spirit CANNOT punish sin. Mistakes He recognizes, and would correct them all, as God entrusted Him to do. But SIN He knows not, nor can He RECOGNIZE mistakes that cannot be corrected. For a mistake that cannot be corrected is MEANINGLESS to Him. Mistakes are FOR correction. They call for NOTHING ELSE." UrT19D4

Largely such mistakes are easy to mistake for sins, rooted in physical stuff. All the things we do with the body, all the things in the world, are all IMPOSSIBLE. ... and they present temptations, and illusions that you can do things which CANNOT BE TRUE in God, such as being sick. If you take those illusions AS TRUTH, you believe they are real, and now the physical act is interpreted as a sin. You lock it in place as though it can't be reversed or forgiven. And now in unforgiveness you "accuse" the person of "really doing this", and justifying punishment. Who moved my cheese?!

So basically we have a mind full of illusions and insanity which is just a state of making a lot of mistakes and believing untrue stuff. That only calls for correction. But if you take that stuff and do not recognize it and do not realize it is untrue, you will MISTAKE IT for truth and now it becomes SIN. As though you're really doing it. That's the little shift the ego insanity makes. That little shift from "it's just an illusion" to "taking that illusion seriously because you're actually really doing it." Ego grabs ahold of mistakes and corrupts them into punishable acts of evil. As if you intended it on purpose.

We are just mistaken. And we are mistaken about being mistaken. And when we lift away the mistakenness about being mistaken, we'll recognize we are mistaken, and then stop being mistaken. And that is forgiving.

Your ego is a device, a kind of machine, similar to how your car is a machine.

You designed it to perform in a certain way and to carry out your instructions.

Just as a car can only do what it is designed to do, the ego can only do what it is designed to do.

When your car is doing what you ask of it, driving you from A to B, it is fulfilling its function. Similarly when your ego is doing what you asked it to do, it is fulfilling its function.

It was the ego's function, as you designed it, to skew awareness away from God and to fixate on the opposite of God. Its function is to be unforgiving. Its function is murder.

Now, don't expect your ego to carry out some other function. You wouldn't expect your car to suddenly start washing your dishes and cooking dinner. It can only do what it was designed to do. And you would be nuts for condemning it for failing to come up with a 3-course meal.

Similarly with your ego, don't expect it to be not ego. Don't expect it to attempt to do anything other than it was designed to do. It's still carrying out your orders and doing what you wanted. It's something you made, just as people make cars.

Do you think the ego is ever going to turn around and say "you should apply forgiveness now", or "god loves you" or "there's nothing to be afraid of"? It's not meant to. That's not its job function. It's supposed to remind you how separate you are from everything and how death is life and how attack is salvation and all the rest of it, which it does very well.

What you can learn here is not to be afraid of the ego, because it's actually not 'against' you for no reason. It only seems to be against you because you asked it to be. You designed it to be. And its just doing what you wanted at one point in time. What you want now may be different but the ego, like an old machine, is still doing the same old thing that old machines do. They can't change.

So, in a way, don't take it personally when the ego is retaliating or being vicious. Don't think the ego is out to get you or has a will of its own or power over you. You are its master. Also don't think the ego has some kind of say or power over you as if it's deciding 'new things' about you. It's a one-track pony. It just keeps on doing what the ego does. And since you set that in motion yourself, it's actually being very faithful, a faithful servant, giving you exactly what you asked it to give you.

So now the ego is not so much your enemy, or necessarily a friend, but it is a friend in the sense that it is obedient and is doing what you made it to do. Don't be getting all up in its face about why it's being the way it's being, when you're the one who chose it. Recognizing it is serving you helps you to not only be grateful for the opportunities it presents, but also stops you from seeing yourself as victimized by it.

Maybe think of it like someone who has a serious disability or mental disorder and they really can't help it but keep blurting out swearwords... and so there they go again, swearing, but you understand they can't help it, their body is programmed to make it happen. So then it's not personal, and its forgivable because they know not what they do, and you're not a victim of it because you understand there isn't a malicious 'will' or intent that's running this. It's not someone out to get you. It's just a device mechanism behaving in a certain way.

So the ego is not your enemy, because in a way it is helping you to have lessons, to be asleep, to have a chance to choose again whether you want to be with God or not. And you hold all the power and the on-off switch to the ego machine. You get to choose whether to use the ego in the way it was designed to be used - to divide and separate and make illusions real, or whether to use it with Holy Spirit.

To use the ego with Holy Spirit is to look upon the ego simply for what it is, and recognize it as a faulty broken mistaken machine, which has no will or power of its own, which is just ticking along and doing its role. And here you are, in Holy Spirit, hearing the ego's voice and its assertions but taking the opportunity to listen to Holy Spirit's version of events.

Your sole task now is to simply choose not to listen to or believe what the ego is saying. You may hear it still, because it's not going to change its tune, but don't buy into it. Don't get caught up in it. Don't get lost in blaming it or fearing it. And don't keep using it for the original purpose you designed it for. You need to use it for forgiveness and as an opportunity to be triggered into healing, learning to listen to the Voice for God instead. The ego is just a limited mechanical robot. It's really nothing at all.

Thank you ego for being ego and for being a faithful servant of my awakening. And thank you for your efforts to attack so that I have an opportunity to learn to forgive. And thank you for guilt and fear so that I can learn that I am guiltless and fearless if I take those opportunities and work with them correctly. And I accept you as you are for what I made to you to be, and release you in freedom and gratitude.

When you are done using the ego and buying into this notion that it has power to do stuff to you that you didn't ask for, which is like a farmer saying "I didn't plant those stalks of corn" when clearly he did because they didn't get there into neat rows all by themselves, you'll set it aside as a 'toy' that you no longer want to play with or have a use for. It's as simple as that.

You're not a victim of the ego you made.

You have everything. God shared it with you.

But then the ego comes along and says, "you don't have that". It tells you, "you're lacking what God gave you. what he supposedly gave you is not HERE. so you'd better go look for it somewhere ELSE."

So then you start to SEEK. And this seeking is like running away from what God gave you. And what God gave you is inside you, so you're running away fromyourself.

As Jesus says, all forms of sickness are produced by seeking externally outside of yourself. What this means is, if you believe and assert that you do not already HAVE what God has given you, that's actually an ATTACK on your invulnerability. And that attack now means that you are attempting to believe that a) you are not as God created you (you are sick), b) you have lack and emptiness in you (death), and c) you will not find God by going within (separation).

Then you go off looking for... basically yourself, for God.... anywhere OTHER than where it is. The ego's made sure you believe its not in you, and you don't have it, and you are not yourself, and God is not in your mind, so now you look everywhere ELSE for it. You therefore are now looking "outside yourself", somewhere beyond your is-ness, to try to find what you think you lack.

And as you do this, you are compounding the belief that you are lacking, that you're empty, that God is not with you for some reason, that you don't have health, that you are less than whole, that you are diminished and void in some way. And all of those attack thoughts produce SICKNESS. They are like evil curses.

Then as you seek, looking everywhere but where you'll find God/Self, out in the world, or even in the body, you WILL NOT FIND IT. You've separated yourself from it, so now you are blind to it, and aware UNAWARE of its presence, so you literally do not see it. You will therefore keep hunting around in the dark, worried, afraid, desperate that you need to get this 'something' back, and yet you will not find it. The 'it' is not out there, beyond your Self. The 'it' as God is not separate from you, lost in some world somewhere.

So you will then "seek and not find". And you'll not find pretty hard. And especially if your believe in being lacking in some way is strong, e.g. unworthy, or imperfect, or flawed, or whatever, you will be compelled even more strongly to SEEK. And yet the harder you seek, where the 'it' is not, i.e. outside of you, the more you will fail to find it. And you'll grow really frustrated that you are coming up empty handed and being led on wild goosechases. But, if you're really steeped in this belief in how much you are lacking, you'll still have yet another attempt at finding it. You'll tell yourself you didn't look hard enough (because you're defective), and that can be a vicious circle.

So then you seek and fail and seek harder and fail harder and it gets really desperate and exasperating. You feel like you just can't find a solution. You go into panic. The ego has really got you in its grips. And the fact is, it's because you are looking for something you DID NOT EVEN REALLY LOSE in the first place, in a location that it does not exist. You need to QUESTION THE NEED TO SEEK, by questioning whether it is TRUE that you actually 'lack' in the way that you believe.

So what that then boils down to is, it's a matter of awareness. You have blocks to your awareness which hide from your awareness the presence of everything God already gave you. And if you had full awareness of everything God gave you, you would KNOW that you do not lack ANYTHING and that you have NO NEEDS. Thus no need to seek. The block to awareness is all the ways that the ego tells you, you are not ALREADY fully equipped, that you are not ALREADY complete and whole, that you are not ALREADY holy and perfect, or that you are not ALREADY WITH GOD.

Yes, you are already with God. You just have a block to awareness covering it up.

So we need to stop seeking. After all, people who find, stop seeking, right? You might think that means you have to seek first in order to find second? Well, what if you just find? What if you just accept that you are already in a state of having found yourself, and found God, and that you are in the presence of what you THOUGHT you were lacking? What if you question all of the 'lacking' belief? What if you undo all of the 'don't deserve it' and all of the 'not perfect enough' and all of the 'I'm not God's beloved child'? What will be REVEALED?

The truth!

The truth will set you free, or rather, you will be set free INTO the truth. The truth is, God already loves you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, you are not lacking at all, you are worthy of unconditional love, you are totally 100% acceptable, you are perfectly innocent and HOLY, and you have absolutely NO REASON to be afraid. All fear stems from a sense of separation from God, i.e. something's gone wrong and now you have to seek. Stop it. No fear is needed, only celebration, that "I was lost and now I'm found". Cus when you're a seeker, you're a loser. When you stop seeking, you win, because then the ego loses.

"Be still and know that I am God." See.

The only real choice you have, the only moment at which you are actually choosing between ego and God, is when you decide whether or not to accept the Atonement.

Here are your only choices:

A) I really did sin, and therefore every consequence of sin should happen and I deserve to die and I will make it happen.

or

B) I really did not sin in reality, nothing real has been threatened, God still finds me worthy, I am still innocent and nothing has happened.

This is your ONLY choice.

And this choice ONLY happens at the CLIMAX of a forgiveness process, a process of purification, in which you are undoing beliefs in death, punishment, fear, guilt and sin. You have to undo and PURGE all of that shit BEFORE you can even get to where you will be WILLING and able to accept some atonement.

If you imagine that being "in the ego" is like being in a dark warehouse, that warehouse contains shelf upon shelf of sin, guilt, fear, punishment, sickness, death. You have to find your way out of the dark and reach the exit. But before you can get to the exit, you have to most PAST all of these shelves of ego lies. You have to not believe any of them and clear them out of your way so that you can get to the exit.

The exit from the warehouse will take you INTO THE LIGHT, into Heaven, into the Atonement, into your INNOCENCE, but the ONLY way you can go through that door is through willingness to accept the truth is true, and choosing to admit that it is so. That nothing has happened and you are still innocent, that you are still as God created you. Then you step OUT of the warehouse of darkness INTO the light, and it is ONLY THEN that you have placed yourself back INTO the thought system of the Holy Spirit or God.

Whether or not sin is true, or whether the belief in sin is true or false, is THE PIVOTAL POINT at which you are deciding, whether you are allegiant to the ego, or allegiant to God. All of the prior steps of undoing fear and guilt and sickness and punishment etc are prerequisites but do not actually directly take you OUT of the ego thought system. They are steps TOWARDS it. They are you meandering around the warehouse in the dark trying to find the exit. All of these corrections and changes of belief and purification and releases and letting go and shifts in perception and so on are mere PREPARATION for exiting the building and becoming miraculous.

This is why when you apply forgiveness processes you MUST at some point take it ALL THE WAY to the atonement truth, OTHERWISE you are not completing the forgiveness and are falling short. You are actually STAYING IN the ego thought system UNLESS you TOTALLY EXIT through that door of accepting the atonement is true of you. And many people are doing exactly this - falling short of exiting the building, and instead lingering in various levels of denial and unconsciousness, with blocks to awareness still in place, not really undoing or looking at the unconscious belief in sin or the DEATH WISH which lurks in the darkness right in front of the doorway home.

This has to all be uprooted and dug out and undone and un-believed in PRIOR to reaching the exit, so that when you get to the exit you will no longer have any ties or objections or reasons of doubt or faith in the ego beliefs as to why you CANNOT exit, or why you don't want to, or why you cannot accept it is 100% true. It takes a lot of "work" to go through all the shit to uncover these layers of blocks to awareness, to really become literally AWARE of the truth. And only then, when you finally can SEE that it makes total sense that you MUST STILL BE INNOCENT because you DID NOT SIN in reality, only then are you actually making the choice between the ego and the Holy Spirit.

That's the only point where you're saying yes to God and no to the ego. It's also the point at which, as you exit, you become OPEN TO RECEIVE MIRACLES. This is because you now open up to accept that you CAN BE LOVED because you are worthy of it because you are still innocent. Only AFTER EXITING THE BUILDING do you step INTO THE LIGHT, and upon EXPOSURE to the light, now allow yourself to be LOVED BY GOD. And it is in this reunion, in this moment of becoming PART of the atonement itself, that you are actually willing to RECEIVE LOVE. And in your receiving of this love, THAT is how you receive a miracle and THAT is when you get healed. Because now you allow the love to love you and it heals you. If you believe sin is real then you are saying NO to love and are not receiving it.

THEN, you can take the healed part of your mind to others, to bring the atonement to others, and to SHARE and extend the miracles you've received - the love, the worthiness, to others, as part of the atonement plan. And you can do this whole process over and over again on any individual issue in order to keep accepting miracles upon miracles, until there is nothing left keeping you in the dark at all.

I've been trying to find away to describe forgiveness in a way that is fully encompassing. I'm getting closer.

First of all we were in heaven and everything was, and still is, perfect and whole and innocent and beautiful and immortal.

Then we did the separation idea which is an attempt to dream that you are exiled from heaven and outside of God, in a mortal realm of death and suffering.

God created the Holy Spirit to answer this insane world and provide a template/example of how to live and see in such a way that a) hell is forgiven and overlooked and not believed in, and b) the way to heaven is opened up.

ACIM refers to "the real world" as something you reach or see just prior to heaven. It also refers to "the forgiven world", the world you made but seen from a different perspective.

The question is, how do you move from false perception to true perception, and what is the nature of this true perception? How do you look at hell and not regard it as hell?

The really mind-bending part I think is in trying to understand how you can be in this hellish cruel world and not regard it as real. Or the question of, how do you love something which is driven toward attack and sin and death.

I think what we have to realize is, Jesus is trying to get us to accept ONLY and align with, the nature of heaven. He wants us to be heaven-like. This entails several aspects:

1) "Be vigilant only for the Kingdom", meaning to put your full attention on accepting it as the ONLY truth and not believing anything else.

2) "I am under no laws but God's", meaning you recognize that you operate within and from God and by His laws, completely ignoring the laws of spacetime.

3) "Teach only love for that is what you are", meaning you are being the way you would be in heaven, loving and giving and joyful and appreciative.

4) "I am still as God created me", meaning you recognize your identity as Christ which is IN heaven, and live out from that Christ nature, expressing Christ at all times.

5) "The power to work miracles belongs to you" and "To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power", meaning that you are plugged into Spirit and the Holy Spirit is mechanizing miracles through you, you are effortlessly able to break the laws of the world and "there is nothing my holiness cannot do."

6) "Only the truth is true and nothing else is true", meaning we believe and accept fully only God's truth and ways, and completely reject and deny and see as false anything that is against this truth. Which includes all aspects of the false world of hell.

The list really goes on, because the course says a lot about this. But I think overall if we focus on trying to "be heaven like" while in this world, accepting only God's truth as true, bringing Heaven's light and love into this world to heal, being "in it but not of this world", we will achieve "the real world".

The real world is a reflection of heaven, aligned with heaven, symbolizing heaven. It is a state of mind. And that state of mind is very close to being heavenly. So we need to get our minds into a heaven-like state as much as possible in dreaming.

As we do this, as we become "the light of the world", as we express miracles from God, as we extend God's love here and be as God created us, identified with spirit not body, and are essentially acting from beyond the laws of spacetime, our attitude towards hell and cruelty will automatically take on its "new perspective".

The true perception we are steering toward and HOW it looks and WHAT it sees are really determined by you "embedding" yourself in heaven. Being true to God's truth. Being aligned with God's will. Being an extender of God's love. Being a doer of God's will. etc... Like, if you might imagine, an angel of light who has briefly stepped into this dimension, retaining all its heavenly brightness and power, not of this world but acting in it temporarily.

It's by recognizing that the real world is a reflection of heaven, and that therefore true perception is aligned with knowledge, that we can see "what kind of seeing" we need to be having, "what kind of attitude" we need to be having about the world.

When we are coming from love and light and truth we just WILL see the world in a forgiving way. What seemed to be dark and cruel and twisted, will be loved and shone away. What seemed to be attack and threat and danger, will be rendered harmless. It's hard to imagine HOW that can be possible or what that "looks like", but it is automatically taken care of when your mind is approaching oneness with God.

We are to be heaven's representatives here in this realm. We are to be teachers of God who teach (give, extend, express, symbolize) God here in this realm. We are to demonstrate that we are entirely driven by, orchestrated by, willing with, in unison with, on the side of, accepting of, God and his mighty companions.

And we are to live as though we are in heaven already, perfect already, immortal already, while having these bodies, to symbolize and represent innocence, harmlessness and an eternal life to those who are tired of the drudgery the world has to offer.

This filesystem of a computer on an open network is actually a very good analogy for the structure of heaven and the relationship of individuals.

Let's say that there is a file system containing all this content.

Let's then say that you have your own computer (your soul) which is networked into the file system (via the christ mind which connects the souls).

Let's say that because the system is "open", other souls also can hook themselves up to the file system (via the christ mind).

And let's also say the system is so open that anyone who connects themselves to the file system also becomes "part of" the system, and their system is open, and so it allows access to their own computer by the main filesystem and also by all the other computers (souls).

In this open environment (heaven/sonship), I can access a file, say a pdf file, on the file system, and have full access to it. I can read the whole file. Simultaneously, you and other souls can access the same pdf file, and have full access to it, and share it, at the same time, and read the whole thing without limits.

Similarly I can access YOU, the file on your own computer (soul), and fully access everything about you and share "what you are", including any "creations" which you might have stored "inside" your own computer (within your being).

And as such in this open state, the entirety of creation is accessible to everyone simultaneously, fully, and without restrictions. Everything is shared. No-one is denied access. Everyone can access everything fully, even if others are accessing the same content, at the same time. Our access overlaps.

NOW.

Consider the separation idea, or the ego. What would happen if you suddenly became selfish, and decided that you wanted access to one of the files on the file system, to have the same full access you had before, BUT... with a condition.

The condition is, that no-one else is allowed to access it at the same time as you. You want exclusive rights. You want ownership. You want the content to be isolated. You want to keep others away from the content and not share it with them. And to do this you have to put a "wall" of some kind around the little piece of content to a) keep you inside of it where you can access the content, and b) keep others outside of it so they can't access it.

Now, let's say that rather than you doing this with a file on the main filesystem, you instead try to do this with your own computer (soul). Let's say you try to make it so that you have access to your self, but other souls don't. That the main file system is also deprived access from your computer, and no-one is allowed to share what's on your computer. You want a "private" system.

So you put up a wall around your computer (the body, around the mind) to try to keep you in and others out, so that you can have exclusive rights and possession of what is "inside" you and reject what now seems to be "outside you" (the rest of the network/sonship). You're now being selfish. You've put yourself into lockdown. You have shut yourself off from SHARING with the whole, from the network, and from the main filesystem, and so all you are left with is what's inside your own system.

In this state now, you are still basically the soul, the self, which you were before this happened. In this act, you did not actually invent a self. You already were a self, when you were sharing the filesystem, as God intended. Openly. But now that you put a wall around yourself, this makes "your self" become "separate". It's like you unplugged your computer from the network so that no-one else could share what you have.

So this produces "a self which has BECOME separate", which previously was not separate. This is what "the separate self" means. THIS *SELFISHNESS* is the EGO. Not the idea of a self or soul.... the idea of a self or soul that has become trapped in isolation due to the walls its put up, the blocks to awareness, which have disconnected and disassociated itself from sharing with the whole networked system. So now you are a perfect being surrounded by limitation. The limitation needs to be removed, not your SELF.

In fact, in order to "wake up" from the state, you need to plug your self back into the network (sonship) and re-join with the whole system (heaven), by plugging your computer (soul) back into the network via a cable (christ mind) so that you can share the whole system again. And this also means the whole system now has access to YOU as well, because you are part of the content. Literally this means that a part of the sonship, a part of creation, which was orphaned, is now returning to the whole, so that the whole can now SHARE IT and access it and therefore benefit from and enjoy it (you) just as much as you enjoy others.

So you see just like with computers, which host NON-PHYSICAL content, Heaven also hosts non-physical content. And in that kind of system it's possible for us to SHARE and have simultaneous access with everyone else, without anyone being limited or restricted or shut out in any way. This is the nature of Heaven, God's creation. It's all based on openness and sharing by many individual souls who ALL have FULL access to the WHOLE of everything all at once.

Your soul has full access to everything, and to the ego that would mean "there is nothing left" for anyone else. But to God, your full access means everyone else ALSO can share and have everything. Just not exclusively. There is no exclusivity, isolation, SPECIALNESS or selfishness in heaven. It's a totally 100% open shared system of freedom.

ACIM: "The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self fullness."

In A Course in Miracles, forgiveness is a movement away from believing that illusions are true and real, towards recognizing that they are in fact not true or real. This becomes clear when your awareness increases sufficiently to reveal a larger truth, which shows you the ways in which the "smaller truth", i.e. illusory lies, are in fact limited and untrue.

Forgiveness, as a process, is also a movement from unawareness, in which you don't see clearly or fully, to a state of expanded awareness where you see more of the whole picture and with greater accuracy. As you go through this, what seemed to be true of your illusions starts to be recognized as being not as true as the larger truth.

It's a matter of becoming clear about what REALLY is true, and what is actually false. Getting truth and illusions confused is the ENTIRE content of the ego, and the entire content of the separation from God - which is you trying to make illusions become reality.

As you become more aware of what the truth really is, and less convinced about what the truth is not, your discernment of true vs false becomes clearer. You learn to recognize the truth for what it is (not the illusion you thought it was), and recognize the illusion for what it is (not the reality you thought it was).

Through forgiveness you will eventually reach a truly, fully "forgiving" state of awareness, which recognizes ALL of the truth, which is that nothing has really happened, there is only innocence, and therefore there is nothing to forgive.

Now, there are a couple of pieces of the puzzles of performing miracles which I did not really get, but which certain Christian practitioners tried to describe. They would say that you have to a) believe in Jesus ("be a believer"), and b) have "faith". Since their belief in Jesus was heavily wrapped in Christian theology, I had trouble discerning exactly WHAT it was about Jesus that I was supposed to believe - such as that He died for our sins and such, which is not an ACIM teaching. I also have never really 'got' what faith means, because it was never explained in a clear context.

But I've become clearer on this now.

The only way that "believing in Jesus" and "having faith" become meaningful, is when you can discern that the ENTIRE WORLD IS AN ILLUSION. It is necessary to have a really strong clear distinction between what is TRUE, and what is FALSE. So as you go about your life believing in the world, (even if you're trying to learn not to believe in it you probably still do), while you're in this sort of in-between phase of "some of the truth is true, but some of it I don't get", you will also be similarly confused about what it means to believe in Jesus, and what faith is.

If parts of the world are real to you, in spite of what you might claim otherwise, this HAS to mean that you in part also believe that God is not entirely real. It also means that you have 'faith in' the ego, and faith in sickness and death.

Now, this isn't something that people want to admit but, the simple fact is, either you believe that God is real, fully, or in some way you don't believe it. And that displaced belief will be put into a conviction that the ego is real - that it is truth, and that everything it claims is true. That will go on to mean that when shit happens in the world and it seems real, part of you will be trying to look to God for a way out of it, but part of you will be attached to believing in it. And so you are now torn, or your faith is divided. And Jesus says faith cannot serve two masters.

So what needs to happen is, through proper forgiveness, we need to become REALLY CLEAR about the distinction between reality, and illusions. We can' have this mishmash of partial reality and partial illusion. It will confuse us and rob truth of meaning.

To be able to believe in Jesus, means that you believe Jesus is 100% reality, He is 100% love, He is 100% truth, 100% immortal, 100% innocent, 100% at peace etc. He shares this truth with God 100%.

IF that is true, if that's your definition of truth, then it HAS to mean, that anything not of God is not truth. So now you need to be very clear, WHAT is not of God? Because if you go on believing God created the world, and yet the world seems to be the place where things fuck up big time, then... well, now you are super confused. And of course you are confused because it makes no sense that God would create a world with sickness in it, because that means God creates sickness. So now if you were to follow that truth, and you were trying to find some healing or peace from experiencing sickness, how the heck would you have any kind of power to turn to if that power believes in sickness? You'd be hopeless.

So... to believe in Jesus means to believe in God, that God is the one and only truth, and only things which are completely in accord with unconditional love are of God. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else at all can be permitted to take up the label of "real" or "true".

So then you have to ask yourself, did God create the world? No. He did not. So that means the world is not real. And that's mind-blowing, if you really take in deeply. It completely undermines your entire view of reality - or rather, your mistaken view in which you think illusions are reality. Because all this time you've been thinking you're living in a 'real' world and now you find out, it's a tricking illusion pretending to be real!

But this is how you can then have faith. You can have faith because, now that you believe in God's truth, and you know that God's truth is the only truth, and that this world is NOT a part of God's truth, that means whenever any shit happens in the world, you can BYPASS it, OVERLOOK it (forgiveness), and HOLD STRONG to the truth as God would have it be. That means, NO MATTER WHAT is in front of your face, no matter what happens, no matter how serious it seems, no matter how final - even death, YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN IT, because believing in it would have to mean - you really do not believe in God all the way.

But if you DO believe in God, then.... no matter what happens, no matter how serious, you do NOT pay it attention, you do NOT believe in it, and you instead express and extend GOD'S REALITY in place of it. You cancel it out. You overwrite it. You clarify that the problem is NOT real, is NOT the truth, and you replace it with love. This shows the nothingness of the illusion, puts everything in its correct order, and corrects all confusion. It also produces miracles.

So you have faith by believing that God's truth is true, and that this is shared by Jesus.... and you have faith by holding true to that fact regardless of how the world seems to be. The only question of your faith wavering is when you believe the illusion enough that your belief in God's power wavers, and that means you've temporarily forgotten that God's truth is true. You've believed in the ego again. So you lose faith when that happens.

This kind of faith in God is not blind faith or just 'hope'... it is CERTAINTY, it is KNOWING, it is TRUTH, and it is CORRECTION.

Holy Spirit interjected while writing that the word "trust" is really what faith means. Trusting God. Trusting the real truth. Trusting that BECAUSE of what the truth is, that "this problem" is not insurmountable or irreversible. It is that knowing of the truth, that trust in the truth, which powers miracles.

So forgiveness leads you to miracle mindedness, a clarity about what is true and what is false gives you miracle mindedness, and a certainty about the truth being true (and that therefore the world is not real) gives you the foundation for faith. Your trust/faith in God's Way gives you miracle-working capabilities.

To get there you're going to have to question the validity of every way that you're trying to find truth in the world, because it means that you're looking for truth in an illusion. It means you're not clear yet about what is true and what is false. The world is false - head's up!. Entirely false. It is entirely an illusion that doesn't really exist or mean anything at all. Every time you 'seek' for truth in it, you will not find it, because it is not there. You need to learn to stop trying to do that and instead believe in God.

The miracles will flow from there.

Ego's world is run by the egoic thought system, based on an EITHER-OR mindset of separation.

God's world is run by God's thought system, based on a BOTH-AND mindset of sharing.

EITHER-OR is based on the idea of separation - there is a separation between who has and who has not, who does and who does not, what is and what is not, etc. An object is this, but not that. It's either red or blue. It's either here or there.

BOTH-AND is based on sharing, something is equally true of both me and you, we both have everything, me and you are loved the same by God, etc. There is no separation in that. What exists is in all locations simultaneously, space and time do not place limits on anything.

Because the world of physical matter is entirely an expression of the egoic thought system, space and time and everything within them (bodies, planets, etc) are governed by this idea of EITHER OR. Living in such a world, the seemingly "natural" way to think about anything is to align our thought processes to the "natural world" and think in accord with it.

So now we "learn" to think in an EITHER-OR way. Either I will turn left or right. Either I will eat at 5 or at 6. Either I'm male or female. Either I am asleep or awake. Either I choose option A or option B.

We adopt this as an entire way of thinking about the world, of reasoning about anything, of what to do, where to go, what to choose, always a selective judgement based on either this or that. It seems to "fit" well with the way the physical world is structured and how it behaves. But it is completely unnatural and completely opposite to God's world.

In God's world, seemingly miraculous things are possible. Everywhere. All the time. Everything in God's world breaks all the ego's laws of separation, and therefore the entire basis of EITHER-OR thinking. God does not think, hey, either one son or another will get my attention. He thinks, BOTH of them get my FULL attention. Nor does he think, I will give 50% attention to one and 50% to another. He thinks, I will give 100% love to both at the same time. And this is done WITHOUT loss, without sacrifice or lack, and without compromise.

The true meaning of divine sharing is that everything applies to BOTH me and you equally, simultaneously, and always. If there were such a thing as a divine pizza, I could eat the whole pizza and you could eat the whole pizza. We both get everything. This is not possible in the physical world, but it is possible in spirit.

One of the tricky things about understanding ACIM is that we come at it with the ego thought system. We come at it with EITHER-OR thinking. And that's a serious problem. Because whenever ACIM speaks of ANYTHING to do with God, Heaven, Creation, Sonship, Holy Spirit, Laws of God, beyond spacetime, etc.... any of those topics, the laws of GOD are applying, not the laws of ego.

So then a statement like "I and my father are One", is completely misunderstood. It's a truth WITHIN the scope of God's BOTH AND system of thought. There, I can be one with God while still being an individual. I am both, myself and part of God. The course also states that God has only one son, BUT that the one son is also many sons. It literally states that BOTH statements are true, that there is one, and many. The Sonship comprises many children, who are ALSO one.

But to the ego this seems nonsense, it cannot fathom how there can be ONE AND MANY at the same time. It insists that it is EITHER one, OR many. And then it decides that many sounds like an ego thing, and one sounds "more spiritual", so it hacks out the many from the one and ends up with its version of what Heaven must be like. And it's totally bullshit.

To grasp anything of the divine nature of the Kingdom, on ANY topic "that side" of the separation boundary, anything real and true, anything to do with Sonship or Creation or God, you have to totally put aside the EITHER OR exclusive separatist way of reasoning logically, think WAY out side the box, and adopt a BOTH AND way of reasoning. THEN the things that Jesus says that sound totally contradictory finally make perfect sense, WITHOUT having to change anything or turn stuff into ridiculous metaphors.

"One brother is all brothers." "One mind is all minds."

Does not mean there is EITHER one brother OR many brothers. Nor does it mean there is either ONE mind OR many minds. Literally, the entire statement is true. There are many brothers, and they are all one. There many minds, and they are all one. And as soon as your thought process tries to "axe" the "many" part of those statements in favor of keeping only the seemingly unifying "one" part of the statement, you're off on an ego tangent of error.

We are one, but we are still brothers. We are the one son of God, but we are also PART of a sonship of many sons. I am a child of God, and so are you. I have individuality, and so do you, and yet simultaneously we share everything. I have everything that God is, which should to the ego mean there is nothing left for you, but you also have everything that God is, simultaneously, because we share it all. Sharing does not mean a collapse of individuality either.

The BOTH AND system of thought, which "runs heaven", is a completely miraculous thought system. It defies all ego laws. It breaks space and time. It ignores silly limitations and false conclusions. It allows to be possible that which the world of EITHER OR would find absolutely impossible. It ignores spatial limitations of all kinds. This is why God is omnipresent, meaning existing in all locations simultaneously. It ignores the idea that we must be kept apart in order to be individuals. And it defies every attempt to split it up and compartmentalize it into nice little prison cells.

The entire Kingdom of God and everything in it is miraculous because of this fundamental logical premise of the whole system. "Nothing real can be increased (God cannot create) except by sharing". As God SHARES, this is an AND scenario. God AND his creation. God AND his son. BOTH God and His son exist. His son is in his likeness because they BOTH are of the same Kingdom and nature.

When I give to you, BOTH of us have it, and I do not lose it. This is why sharing INCREASES the supply in heaven, while sharing causes scarcity in the ego world. When God creates you, God gives ALL of himself to you and yet loses nothing and HAS everything still - BOTH you and God now share everything and there has been an INCREASE. This is miraculous, it dissolves the idea of separation and exclusivity, transcending all ego concepts. The entirety of reality depends on it.

The system of God's mind, his thought system, how the Kingdom is run, is entirely based on this idea of simultaneous sharing, union at the same time as creation, multiplicity at the same time as oneness, having everything while also sharing it with others without anyone being excluded in any way. Heaven is not like this world. It's laws are totally different to the separated-out world the ego made to depict isolation and selfishness. There is no selfishness in the Kingdom, only self-fullness.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self-fullness."

You have everything, and we all share it as God's family.

When we come to the course, typically we come with a pretty big bag of beliefs.

One major belief, accrued over a lifetime, is that we are separate from the world. The world is this huge thing outside us. We learned "by experience" that it does things on its own, against our will, and we do not SEEM to have any direct mental power OVER it at all.

Only a rare few have even a slight hint of what we might call "telekinesis".. mind over matter. Some bend spoons thinking it's amazing but it's barely anything.

This is what the ego set up... to be in bodies shut off from the power of the mind and *disabled* so much that we can't even use the mind DIRECTLY to make anything happen. And then we just... got used to it.

We do have SOME power over the body, even regular non ACIM folk do... like you can cause the body to change in various ways based on your experiences and moods and so on. You can choose to go into anger and make your blood pressure go up. You can manifest headaches when you don't want to go somewhere. You can develop sore throats when you didn't speak your mind. All kinds of stuff happens to the body just in normal ways as a result of the mind's power - just a little bit of power, demonstrating itself.

But beyond the body, we generally see ourselves as "cut off", disconnected, powerless, completely unable to affect anything outside of it.

Then we come to the course.

And then we hear the course saying stuff about how we need to change our perception and that what exists in the world is an outward picture of an inward condition. We REFERENCE our EXISTING BELIEF SYSTEM of "I am not connected to the world", and then try to make sense of it.

So this lead us to think, ok... My mind is not outside my body and has no power over what's out there, so this MUST MEAN, that within my own body, inside my mind inside my body, there are some false perceptions which I need to change, and this will change how I SEE the world out there... BUT, it will not actually CHANGE the world out there whatsoever.

This is because the old belief system of powerlessness, littleness, being stuck in a body, having no mental power, is still circulating as a "foundation" for what you are learning. And so you learn WITHIN that context without questioning it or thinking that it even CAN be questioned. What you learned prior to the course closed your mind, and you proved it to yourself over and over again by how many times you couldn't stop the ice-cream from falling on the sidewalk, had to suffer from the weather, or couldn't prevent an accident.

So then you learn the entire course and try to make it "fit" inside this framework, building UPON what you think you already know. This leads to GROSS DISTORTIONS of the meaning of what Jesus says. It leads to the belief that he is talking about "you in a body" when he refers to "the world you see" as being something you made up... therefore, since you believe you can only change what's INSIDE your body, which you think is all of your mind, you do not even begin to think that changing your mind would change your BODY, yet alone anything OUTSIDE OF IT. And so when Jesus says things like "the world you see", you will dilute and mangle it to fit into what it would mean INSIDE your body, therefore.. referring to your private personal misperceptions OF the world, rather than literally or directly the world.

The disconnection or rather, separation between cause and effect, between your mind and what it believes, and the out picturing of that AS body and AS THE WORLD - the physical planet - forms - bodies - people - objects - the spearation between you and that stuff seems insurmountable and too far-fetched to believe you might be able to have power over it, or that it MUST change, or that you CAN change it with your mental changes. You simply do not see, or believe, that your mind is the cause of what is literally out there.

This leads people to believe also that if they change their internal perception, housed inside the limits of their body, they will be able to become PEACEFUL and happy, IN SPITE OF, the conditions which are in the body or outside of it. They see both of them as outside of their "self" and so outside of their own mind's power or reach or control. This leads people to believe that they can a) be at peace without healing sickness, b) can be at peace with the body dying, c) can be at peace even though people continue to be able to attack their body, d) are happy to just put up with sickness because somehow, there is a way to be peaceful in spite of it.

This of course is the distortion that entirely arises because of the FOUNDATION of the thought system, which has been built up over many years, teaching us that we are CUT OFF from the world, that there is huge SEPARATION between cause (us) and effect (the world). We don't seem to have ANY mental powers at all to make objects move, to heal sick people, to stop death, to reverse suffering, or any of the rest of it. This is because our mind is BLOCKED, and we are not aware of the whole truth.

Jesus is in fact teaching us in the course that we DO HAVE THIS POWER, which is a power to LITERALLY MOVE A PHYSICAL MOUNTAIN, or even to create a planet, because this is the natural result of having CAUSAL POWER over the EFFECT which is out there. The inner picture MUST be reflected outward. So when the mind decides, hey, I am going to rearrange this entire forest but uprooting all the trees and putting them in a different assortment, that's what will happen. But we do not believe we have even REMOTELY anything near that power, because of just how radically LIMITED our mental power seems to be.

We are GROSSLY out of touch with the power of the mind. Just even being in a body seems to shut us off form being able to do this. And yet these things are miraculous. These miracles demonstrate the power the mind has OVER MATTER, because the mind that KNOWS it is CAUSE, simply knows that everything else MUST be at its effect, and so its power over it is UNLIMITED.

It is only because we believe STRONGLY that we are limited by this body, limited by the isolation of being a separate self, totally out of touch with the MIND, believing we have a mind when in fact we just have a TINY LITTLE BIT OF MIND operating as a conscious self, shut off from what we really are capable of, that we won't consider it even POSSIBLE that the Course is telling us we literally made the world, or that we can change it with our mind alone.

This is the level of resistance to miracles. This is the resistance to all ways that mind may exert its power "over matter". "That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind is proof that the mind must be stronger than the body." ... the mind is supposed to be ABLE to COMPLETELY do whatever it wants to do with the body. No limits. "There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

But so long as we believe we are these little piddly WEAK little body-identified selves, MINDLESS, cut off from everything external, seeing no oneness or ability to join, and having no power over any forms whatsoever, we are going to just CONTINUE TO BE VICTIMS AND DIE. And that's simply because we do not recognize that we are choosing that, because we have yet to wake up to the power of the mind. We are accidentally choosing death, until we realize that we are the Son of God for whom nothing is impossible.

So there is a LOT of this resistance in the ACIM community, and even those who are on the cutting edge of opening up to the power of the mind are still like little babies in terms of the development of this power. I would sort of put myself in that category and there still seems to be so little I can actually do, definitely nothing of my own will, and even with God acting with me I am still very limited. But I am willing to be open to the possiblity that my mind, shared with God, has far more power over this world than it appears, and WAY more than I have been led to believe by the ILLUSION the ego created to make it seem I have no power at all.

We have to realize that just by being in a body, we made ourselves TOTALLY POWERLESS, victims at the effect of the world. No power whatsoever to stop things from happening. That's extremely the OPPOSITE to our natural state of miracle mindedness. We need to UNLEARN what this illusion has taught us, and reclaim the power of the mind over matter to be able to perform magnificent miracles and be free of these limitations. This is why Jesus says time and again that there is nothing you cannot do, and ALL THE POWER IN HEAVEN AND EARTH HAS BEEN GIVEN YOU. But we do not see it, or believe it, because we're so used to being blinded by this illusion of separation between what is inside me and what is outside. That must be undone.