Jesus says in the course several times that we have a "sole responsibility". This responsibility is to accept the atonement. And this is usually attached to "for ourselves."

I think this has become one of the most selfishly misinterpreted teachings.

When Jesus mentions this, he ALSO mentions afterwards that once you have accepted atonement, you will now GIVE IT TO OTHERS. Which is not a selfish act. Nor is it exclusive. Nor does it mean you sitting there in isolation having accepted atonement CUT OFF from others, or unable to share it, or unwilling to heal others.

I also think that when he speaks of it being our sole responsibility, he is saying that because we have FREE WILL. Therefore, as the owner of the free will, I have to personally WILL to accept the atonement, and no-one can do this for me. So the responsibility lies SOLELY with me. I have to be willing. That's why it is the ONLY responsibility that lands squarely and solely on MY shoulders and not others. Because I have to exercise my free will. As Jesus says, "no one comes to the atonement except willingly."

Similarly, we have to realize that you cannot RECEIVE atonement WITHOUT giving it, because "atonement is a lesson in sharing." It means that you are aligning yourself with the golden rule and are now identify with your brothers and sharing with them. That in turn means that their interests are now shared with yours and it is your DUTY to fulfill the great crusade to HELP THEM AND HEAL THEM.

"The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING."

I think Jesus is pretty clear that he never intended these statements about "sole responsibility" to be interpreted in such a selfish manner, where people THINK it means "I just accept it for myself in isolation and to hell with everyone else." The reason we accept it is SO THAT we become PART OF the atonement (plan) and now have a PROFESSION of atonement, which we do all the time, which involves GIVING TO OTHERS. Solely accept the atonement for yourself SO THAT you can share it!

Jesus's intention was NEVER to suggest that people are to accept atonement for themselves and then HOARD IT and NOT SHARE IT and NOT HELP ANYONE ELSE. In fact, we can interpret it to mean.... I accept atonement for myself because it is my sole responsibility to put myself into a position WHERE I can help others through a service of miracles!

"The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself. Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors. When this has been accomplished, the teacher of God becomes a miracle worker by definition."

"The unforgiven HAVE no mercy to bestow upon another. That is why your sole responsibility MUST be to take forgiveness for yourself."

"If the sole responsibility of the miracle-worker is to accept the ATONEMENT, and I assure you that it is, then the responsibility for what is atoned FOR CANNOT be yours."

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal. By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them."

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did." ... "Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO."

I’ve come to realize the Course refers to miracles on three distinct levels.

1. Everything in Heaven is miraculous. All expressions of love, in reality, are miraculous. The soul is miraculous. Creation is miraculous. Everything real has a miraculous nature. You are miraculous. You are a miracle. Miraculousness is permanent, natural, and the way God’s thought system always functions. Miracles give LIFE. At this level miracles defy every ego limitation and law. Life itself is a miracle.

2. After the separation, God blessed the Sonship with a miracle. The miracle was the answer to the separation, a healing thought, designed to fully heal the separation. This produced the Holy Spirit. References to "the miracle" are referring to the Holy Spirit. He is the "mechanism of miracles" because He is the way by which miracles (on level 3) are produced. This "one miracle" contains all individual (level 3) miracles. Accepting "the miracle" is accepting the atonement.

3. Within the realm of perception, there are many seemingly individual miracles. Course references to "miracles" in plural refer to this. E.g. "Miracles make minds one in God." "Miracles unite you with your brother" etc. These miracles are holographic, in that each of them contains wholeness and maximal love. They are all reflections of the one miracle, all support each other, are all equal, and all transcend orders of difficulty. These are the "miracles" that you perform IN the world as a miracle worker. These miracles can heal the sick, raise the dead, change perception, and repair the separations between brothers. As a subset, these may also include "shifts in perception" which are not "what a miracle is", but are one of their results. "A miracle is a correction introduced into wrong-minded thinking etc". Here the aim of miracles is to heal the separation between the sonship and induce revelation.

These are all tied together by statements such as "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers." Similarly, miracles extend through Christ as their source, as in "miracles express from an inner awareness of Christ and the acceptance of His atonement."

Miracles do NOT originate at the ego level. They do not originate in your attempts to correct perception. YOU do not do them without God/Christ. Miracles require the absence of fear (ie maximal love), and express FROM a state of miracle mindedness, which is equivalent to true perception. Blocks to awareness must be removed, extensively, before FULL love is allowed to express with enough wholeness to perform a miracle. "The perceptual content of miracles is WHOLENESS." They require vertical perception which is a recognition of mind over matter cause-effect, in which the world is recognized as an EFFECT only, containing no causes, and transcends all ego laws and breaks every law of this world. Miracles are supernatural.

Miracles can correct perception. They can even correct the mind of your brother. However, "the world IS perception" and so additionally, miracles can correct the world. They have power over all forms. Earth is a world of tremendous limitation. Miracles demonstrate that this world is an illusion by changing its forms to show that they are not real. Mind is stronger than the body, and every miracle demonstrates this. Miracles can literally move mountains.

You as a miracle worker become MORE miraculous as you remove blocks to love. When you are done shifting perception, miracles do not come to a stop. Instead, you perform miracles ALL THE TIME. Miraculousness is your God-given NATURE. It is completely natural to your spirit, which is omnipresent and beyond ego laws. Your soul is permanently miraculous. To extend God’s love as LIFE is miraculous. Miracles are life-giving creative acts. They supply a lack. Death is lack of life, so miracles can raise the dead.

There is no sin and nothing impossible that miracles cannot reverse and undo. Believing otherwise is believing the hierarchy of illusions, which is a belief in orders of difficulty. Miracles are all the same. They ignore difficulty. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do." You cannot be loving without being miraculous. Atonement, which includes miracle working, is the natural profession of the Children of God.

The "one mind" or "one mindedness" is the mind of the soul in total union with all of creation.

The "right mind" or "right mindedness" is the same as miracle mindedness, the Holy Spirit's mind of atonement, a state of true perception, and the end of the dream.

The "wrong mind" or "wrong mindedness" is the same as false perception or various states of denial within perception.

HOWEVER, at times Jesus has referred to you having a right mind BEFORE the separation. e.g. "You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor." This suggests you and others (souls in heaven) had "right minds" prior to the separation idea. If being right-minded is being sane, it means you were sane before the separation, and right-mindedness as in atonement is a reflection of that.

It seems the right mind "ends" when one mindedness takes over but you cannot become LESS right-minded when this happens, so one-mindedness includes right mindedness.

"The term "salvation" does NOT apply to the Soul, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is nothing more that "right-mindedness" which is NOT the one-mindedness of the Soul, but which must be accomplished before one-mindedness can be restored. Right-mindedness dictates the next step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack, so that wrong-mindedness is obliterated. The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only ONE direction in which it can move."

"The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your own right mind. He was also mine. The Bible says, "May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus," and uses this as a BLESSING. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ-thinking."

"A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at ALL levels. Illness, which is really "not Right Mindedness", is the result of level confusion in the sense that it always entails the misbelief that what is amiss in one level can adversely affect another."

"We said in a previous section that the miracle is an expression of miracle-Mindedness. Miracle-Mindedness merely means Right-Mindedness in the sense that we are now using it. Right-Mindedness neither exalts nor depreciates the mind of the miracle worker nor of the miracle receiver. However, as a creative act, the miracle need not await the Right-Mindedness of the receiver. In fact, its purpose is to restore him TO his Right Mind. But it is essential that the miracle worker be in his Right Mind, or he will be unable to reestablish Right-Mindedness in someone else. "

"In this sense, when their behavior is unstable, they are obviously disagreeing with God's idea of the Creation. This is a fundamental right of man, although not one he would care to exercise if he were in his Right Mind."

"Biblical quotation relates to the healing of a devil-possessed man, in which the sufferer was subsequently found healed, in his right mind, and sitting at feet of Jesus."

"He is invariable as the peace in which you dwell, and of which the Holy Spirit, that which is nothing more than your right Mind, reminds you."

"The ego, which is not real, attempts to persuade the mind, which IS real, that it IS its own learning device, and that the learning device is more real than IT is. No-one in his right mind could POSSIBLY believe this, and no-one in his right mind DOES believe it. "

"Innocent (or true) perception means that you NEVER misperceive, and ALWAYS see truly. More simply, this means that you never see what does not exist in reality. Whenever you lack confidence in what someone else will do, you are attesting to your belief that he is not in his Right Mind. This is hardly a miracle-based frame of reference. It also has the disastrous effect of denying (incorrect use) the essentially creative power of the miracle. The miracle perceives everything AS IT IS. If nothing but the truth exists (and this is really redundant in statement, because what is not true CANNOT exist) Right-Minded seeing cannot see ANYTHING BUT perfection. We have said many times that ONLY what God creates, or what man creates with the same will, has any real existence. This, then, is all that the innocent can see. They do not suffer from the delusions of the Separated ones."

"The world, in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man by God, AND the proper creation by man in his Right Mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order. "

"Only One-Mindedness is without confusion. A separate, or divided, mind MUST be confused. A divided mind is uncertain by definition. It HAS to be in conflict because it is out of accord with itself. "

"The Holy Spirit is the mind of the Atonement. It represents a state of mind that comes close enough to one-mindedness that transfer is at last possible. As you well know, transfer depends on common elements in the old learning and the new situation to which it is transferred. Perception is not knowledge, but it can be TRANSFERRED to knowledge, or CROSS OVER into it. It might even be more helpful here to use the literal meaning "carried over," for the last step is taken by God. "

"Punishment as a concept is in total opposition to Right-Mindedness. The aim of the Final Judgment is to RESTORE Right-Mindedness TO man. "

"This is what his own Right-Mindedness cannot but dictate. The purpose of time is solely to "give him time" to achieve this judgment. It is his own perfect judgment of his own creation. When everything that he retains is lovable, there is no reason for any fear to remain in him. This IS his part in the Atonement. "

"NEVER confuse right-with wrong-mindedness. Responding to ANY form of miscreation with anything EXCEPT a DESIRE TO HEAL (or a miracle) is an expression of this confusion. "

"Only Right-Mindedness CAN create in a way that has any real effect."

"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it. "

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him. "

When I recently started to recognize that the whole world is fundamentally unreal, I started to experience "faith" in God. It seemed to require an UNBELIEF that this world is "true", in order to shift my allegiance and dependence over to the unseen Source.

Jesus talks about faith in the Course, in reference to putting our faith in the ego (faithlessness). We have faith in what we believe is true.

"Your faith lies in the darkness, not the light. How can this be reversed?" - lesson 91. "Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols" - lesson 50

And from Chapter 17 "the call for faith": "Had you not lacked faith that it could be solved, the problem would be gone". "There is no problem in any situation that faith will not solve."

If you believe the world is real and the problems are real and people's sicknesses and suffering is real and sin is real etc, that's a lot of faith being put into the ego. You are siding with it and you are siding with this world. You are convinced by physical appearances and believe this stuff is really happening. There is no faith there.

Now, prior to this shift for me, I've experienced many years of talking to Holy Spirit and Jesus, working with Angels, and having various other interactions with "the other side", and came to depend quite strongly on their guidance each day. And that over time developed trust. But, it didn't develop trust to the level that I'm starting to experience now. It really required me to question whether the ENTIRE WORLD was real and a source of truth.

Some major chunk of belief in the ego world has been withdrawn from it. You have to realize that this world does not contain any truth at all, and notice the ways that you keep trying to find truth in it, and how futile that is. It's like, all this time you were believing in the world and listening to it and trusting it and taking its word for the idea that it was fundamentally real, had factual truth to it, COULD be trusted, and that it was just something wrong with you that was making you incapable of successfully FINDING its secret truth.

And now, suddenly its cover is blown, you have been disappointed by it one too many times, it has lied to you, it has promised that you'll find truth and yet failed every time, and so now you have come to your senses. You withdraw your allegiance from it, withdraw your trust and belief in it, and now are all the wiser. It is NOT to be trusted and cannot be believed, because the truth is not out there. To get this, I think you have really open up to the idea that the whole world is not real in its entirety, including everything in it - people, bodies, planets, space, time, suffering, loss, pain, death, etc. All of it. A big giant lie.

Then you compare this world to God's truth and you start to find out that EITHER God's truth is true or this world is true. Because this world contains so many things that simply cannot fit into God's truth. You must learn and trust that God is unconditional love at all times, which MUST mean, God cannot and does not create suffering, sickness, despair or misery. He would not create death.

"If this were the real world, God would be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation and be loving. Love does not kill to save. If it did, attack would be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's."

As you open up to this, it should dawn on you not just that your mind inside your body has ego in it, but that the body ITSELF is ego, and the physical universe ITSELF is ego. ALL OF IT! This will be somewhat mind blowing. But at the same time you'll discover that it makes incredible sense. And all of a sudden a whole bunch of things that Jesus says in the course suddenly click into place, clear as day. "There is no world", literally, because it is not real. Not just a metaphor, not just an interpretation of your mistaken perception's view of a real world, but literally this whole physical universe is just a DREAM. It really is true.

This is a major turning point in your awareness to realize this. Because now the foundation for all of the ego thought system is exposed. So many mistaken perceptions and beliefs and values are now brought into question in contrast to this new truth, that God's truth is true, God's truth CANNOT create worlds like this, and therefore this world CANNOT be reality. "This world is not my home".

For me, it was at the dawn of STARTING to accept this truth, that I started to find myself experiencing "faith". It was as though I was faithless before. I had now "sided with God". The world seemed much less believable, much less real and trustworthy. I started to notice when I was looking to anything IN IT as a "Source" of truth, or as a solution, or as an answer, or as a way to solve problems. The idea of the "source" of truth had shifted away from this world and began taking root in God. A God, a reality, that is beyond this illusory world entirely.

As Jesus explains, "The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there."

What this means is, your sense of REALITY and TRUTH shifts to an UNSEEN world, the world of Spirit, which is God's realm. Even though you may not see it, and you may not directly experience it yet, you have some amount of BELIEF that it contains the truth - a truth which must be more true than the physical world in its entirety. That trust, that belief, which spans and overlooks and bypasses physicality, produces FAITH.

Faith indicates that you trust something that is REAL, and are shifting to an awareness of its existence. At first it may seem distant and remote but over time that faith is going to increase. It's real faith because it is faith in reality. It also means that you're starting to recognize and depend on a SOURCE which is not of this world. A source which provides not only answers and truth, but a source which has power, which is creative, which can express through you, and which performs miracles. It's a source of abundance, a source of correction, and a source of being SUSTAINED by God.

That means, you are now shifting from a "horizontal" belief system in the ego, a linear belief system, where you look to other locations in physical space as the source and cause of things. Before, you believed the only way to be provided for was to earn money at a job. Or you believed the only way to heal was to identify a linear cause in this world. But now, you're going VERTICAL. And that means, you're looking to a SOURCE which completely transcends this world, whereby you actually have access to a creative, abundant source of everything, which can flow through and to you from an unseen place. A supernatural source of support.

Your faith in that source starts to rewrite all the rules about HOW you are going to be able to accomplish things in this world. How money is going to come to you. How health is going to be restored. How relationships will improve. Where you should go and what you should do. It all starts to be inspired by AND empowered by an unseen Source of supernatural POWER, which is God. And this reliance on this Source means that all the laws and rules of this world will be broken in demonstrating faith in it. Miracles. Spontaneous financial abundance. Spontaneous solutions to "problems" which has no basis in the physical "natural" world. It's not going to "come from" this world, because this world is not a real CAUSE. It's going to come from BEYOND this world, supernaturally!

When you go to do things, you will start finding yourself placing an otherworly level of trust in something you don't even see. If it says to go do something, your trust that it is true allows you to trust it and go do it, EVEN IF there are "natural" egoic reasons why not. And as you go do it, with FAITH IN that supernatural power, you go forth miraculously and with light and an empowerment that defies the laws of the ego world. It would seem crazy to depend on a Source of strength that you don't even see yet, but your faith in it will bring forth "witnesses", ie demonstrations and PROOF, that you were right to trust it, and this will only further amplify your reliance upon it.

Now you are no longer alone, you are no longer fighting through life with little power, you are no longer scraping to survive. You have all of Heaven behind you! And not just remotely, but like, working through you, orchestrating events, causing healing miracles, giving you strength that you could not have had if the ego were your source. Bypassing all illusions and all physical laws completely.

God really is a "supernatural God", a miraculous God. This is what we are to come to learn to trust and depend on. Removing our faith in the ego's world and the ego's laws and the ego's version of reality, we are able to shift allegiance to trusting and depending on God for everthing. For me I feel like I am only just getting started in this, and experimenting with it, but I can only see an exciting trend in future towards INCREASE in this faith, INCREASE in miraculous living, INCREASE in abundance from God, INCREASE in joy and happiness, and INCREASE in trust.

Later, as Jesus promises, that which you had ego-defying faith in, beyond the world, which was unseen, will become more and more seen, and more and more demonstrated, to the point where it is no longer unseen. It is all around you and through you. And you will become more directly in the experience of God, finally FULLY believing that only His truth is true, and that there has never been another truth to replace it. YES!!

If a child were playing make-believe and pretending that things were happening, would you believe it? If you knew better, if you knew that the toy car is just a toy, not a real car, but the child was whizzing it around making car sounds and saying "beep beep", would you believe there really was a car there?

Of course not. And the reason is, you know without any doubt, and have a clear awareness, that the toy is just a toy, not a car, that it isn't a "real car", and that the child is just pretending. You know that the car is only moving because the child is moving it. You know that the car is only making "beep beep" sounds because the child is making those sounds appear. So you see everything, you are aware of the whole scene, and so you smile and laugh at the gentle play that the child is performing, knowing it is completely unreal.

The thing is, in this big physical world, we do not realize that everything in it is also a toy. It is a toy that is being played with by the Son of God. And the Son of God is having a great old time making things move around, making sound effects, pretending that He is a multitude of difference characters. He is really versatile and clever. He even pretends to be multiple characters at once, and they even interact with each other and seem to do things to each other. And from the point of view within that pretence it sort of seems like certain characters seem to not know that this is all just a big made up fairytale that the Child of God is playing out. And even that not knowing is part of the play!

And the other thing is, the Son of God is so powerfully creative and expressive, and so intelligent, and so sophisticated at weaving pretend illusions to make things seem like they're really happening. He animates snowflakes falling from the sky. He causes trees to seem to grow. He makes the birds flap their wings. And he creates war. And he creates death and suffering too. Yes the Son of God made death (and can abolish it).

But even as He is make-believing these things, from His vantage point He knows that none of these are real. He is just playing, just pretending. He's having fun and laughing to Himself about how He is playing 'within' His own being, dreaming up fantasies and pretending to make them real. He even is capable of pitting one of His many personalities against another. And He is even capable of manifesting sickness and death, as though these are really happening, and yet all a long He is absolutely unaffected by these and they do not change Him at all. How could they when He is immortal? How could they when He, like the child playing with toys, knows all along that He is just making this all up?

The Son of God knows He cannot die. He knows he is immortal. He knows there cannot be a separation from God. He knows there is nowhere to go where God is not. He knows sin is not possible or real. He knows He is forever innocent. He knows all is forgiven because there is nothing to forgive, because nothing has REALLY happened. And so He is just playing with this 'tiny mad idea' of 'what if separation is possible'. It's just a toy. It's a mind toy. And nothing has really gone wrong. And even as he dreams about this extreme separation from God, and even as it seems to be a horrible nightmare, even the horrible nightmare He is making up on purpose, willingly, wanting it to happen, as part of His great pantomime that He is orchestrating every part of from a higher perspective. And it seems like 'we' are here on the receiving end of this 'chid' playing with illusions, making our lives hell, but 'we are Him and we chose this too. See how creative and imaginative we are, to invent a life of hell on purpose just to see what it's like?

If a child were playing and acting and pretending that they are some character, and if the child is at war with some other child, in this character, and this other child's character comes along with his mighty sword and attacks the child and the child pretend to fall down dead, do you believe it? Of course you don't. You know they are pretending. You know the child is not really dying. And you know this because you know who the child really is. You know their true identity. You see their real self. And so for you, you see their illusions from the outside, and recognize that they are not real or true, and not for a second would you take them seriously or think they are actually doing anything to the child.

But what SEEMS to be happening to 'us', as little Earth people in little bodies, is that us, as characters in Christ's dream, seem to be acting a role in which we seem unaware of who the dreamer even is. It seems like the Son of God has, somehow, even though this is IMPOSSIBLE, has somehow forgotten that He is just pretending, and has lost sight of His true identity, and has become unaware that everything that moves in this fantasy world is because He chooses to make it move. This absolutely cannot be true, but it can SEEM very much the case, and we SEEM to be finding ourselves in this situation, this role, where it SEEMS like we 'really' have gone and fricking done it this time.. where we've *actually* separated from God, where we're *actually* not the Son of God anymore, and where the stuff that seems to be happening really seems like we're not choosing it whatsoever.

This is the extreme prowess of the Son of God, that He is actually capable of making it seem, to Himself, that He is not even Himself anymore, that He doesn't even recognize that He is making up His own pretend dream, and that He is not the author of any of it. He is actually capable of creating WITHIN Himself, what appears to be the almost complete negation of Himself, to the point where He seems to 'die', even though some part of Him must still be existing in order to project this fantasy of 'death', and so He is not all the way dead and still continues to pretend. And even as He seems to experience what it is like to be an actor who has forgotten He is an actor, EVEN NOW He is still Himself and, very very subtly, STILL has not really lost touch with reality, or with the fact that He is STILL the author of this entire dream, even a dream of death. He is STILL the Son of God and He is STILL the one who is choosing and dreaming all this. The subtlety with which He has pretended to not be Himself is so extremely subtle that it is very easily overlooked and unrecognized.

So then the Son of God (you) then seem to even die. And you seem to experience this extreme state of stuff happening that you do not choose or want, like you have absolutely no power to choose otherwise or to stop death. And then it happens, and this SEEMS to prove that you are not the author of this dream. You have given an absolutely tremendous PERFORMANCE, you have totally fooled everyone even yourself (it seems, but not totally), that you have actually died. Once again, if there were an audience who knew better, they would erupt with rapturous applause at just how prolifically brilliant your performance of 'dying' was, and you would then stand up in costume yet identified now as an actor, at the end of the play, and take a bow.

Becoming aware of how this make-believe fantasy world has been turned into something that SEEMS like it is REAL, is the simple act of "waking up" from the dream. It's not that we're not the dreamer, it just that we're pretending not to be the dreamer, and doing a very good job of it. We cannot disconnect ourselves from God. And here's the good news.

Everything that we thought was really happening in this world, all the bad things, all the terrible things, the wars and tragedies, the sickness and death, all of it... every single horror, the absolutely hilarious news is... that all of this IS, absolutely, JUST a pretend play that the Child of God is pretending to enact, as part of an innocent play with toys, and the Child of God - which is who you really are - IS absolutely unharmed, undisturbed, untangled, undead, in your divine comedy of play and pretend. All of what you thought has gone wrong, is not really true. All of the things you thought could attack you, were coming from yourself. All of the things that upset you, you deliberately chose to be upset by. All of the things you thought were capable of keeping you from God, they never were - you just kept pretending they could.

And so ultimately, the gentle happy good news is, when you can come to realize it and see it, that everything is absolutely alright. Everyone is okay. Nobody has been hurt. The Son of God has not been defiled. There has been no real upset. Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists. All of the elaborate pantomime of 'planet earth' is a hoax. All of the stories that have been told about who did what to whom, it was all part of childs-play. All of the supposed tragedies, terrors, horrors, disasters and upsets, were all being deliberately chosen and performed by a full cast of Sons of God. And we're all completely safe in Heaven with God right now in total joy and bliss and happiness, laughing our heads off at how much fun it was to invent such a wacky world of wonders.

If we can just realize this and just tap into this truth, that nothing has really gone wrong and that we're just fooled by the illusion of appearances and by our own role play and acting, we would stand up and laugh and feel so completely free. And we'd be free of the terror of fear, the ugly weight of guilt, and any belief at all that everything has truly gone wrong. We'd be free from the constant anxiety that we've gone off the rails, that life is unfair, that we're in danger, that there are threads and things that upset us, thats there is reason to be unhappy, that we're justified in being unhappy, and we'd be free from our own faked dying forever. The end of fear, the end of suffering, the end of death.

This is all just a SHOW! It's not a real world. It's not a real history. These bodies are not real people. There is nothing real happening here. The kids are just playing in the sandbox. It's make-believe. Don't buy into it or think it's real, remember they're the innocent Children of God to whom nothing can happen. And they're just having fun.

Only love is real.

"The power to work miracles belong to you."

Sometimes when I am thinking about ACIM matters, Jesus interjects and finishes my sentences. I was thinking "miracles are..." and Jesus interjected, "the power to heal."

This kicked in a sudden cascade of many insights, as I saw a wide array of ACIM material "coming together" under a single umbrella. A final missing piece of the puzzle that I've been trying to find for years.

I've struggled to be able to tie certain parts of miracle-working together. For example Jesus talks about miracles as expressions of love. He talks about changes in perception. He talks about healing the body.

He also talks about moving mountains with a power surge. And about the power of thought to produce effects. He talks of how the Holy Spirit enables you to do things not of this world. And then of course there's Jesus's demonstrations of e.g. walking on water, raising the dead, multiplying food.

How is ALL of this a miracle?

I couldn't reconcile how a form of "healing" could be said to "move a mountain". Or how Jesus walking on water was an "expression of love". I almost suspected there were two separate threads in the course - one of "mind over matter" and one of "miracle expression/healing" But there isn't, they are intimately related. Because BEHIND both of them, there is one thing.

The key... is POWER.

And by that I mean, SUPERNATURAL power. The Power of God.In ACIM, there is talk of power. There is also talk of STRENGTH. And there is also talk of ABILITY. These are all very closely related. If you have the power to do something, you have an ability to do it. To be powerful you must also be strong. And when we look to ACIM we start to see the pieces come together:

"The POWER to work miracles (what comes before miracles happen) BELONGS to you."

"To recognize that all POWER is of God is to gain all power."

"I am not weak but strong." "I am not afraid but ALL POWERFUL."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a POWER-SURGE that can literally move mountains."

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

"The fact that each Soul has this POWER completely"

"Miracle-working entails a full realization of THE POWER OF THOUGHT, and real avoidance of miscreation."

"Miracles are seen in light, and light and STRENGTH are one."

"When you have FELT THE STRENGTH IN YOU, which makes all miracles within your easy reach, you will not doubt."

"This holy relationship, lovely in its innocence, mighty in STRENGTH"

"He will offer all His STRENGTH to every little effort which you make."

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

"No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. No thought of theirs but HAS THE POWER to heal all forms of suffering in anyone in times gone by and times as yet to come as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now."

"For you have brought your weakness unto Him, and He has given you His STRENGTH instead."

"releasing the STRENGTH of God into everything you think and will and do."

"Every GAIN IN OUR STRENGTH is offered for all, so they, too, can lay aside their weakness and add their strength to us."

"A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its STRENGTH."

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot EXERT REAL CONTROL because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"The miracle is the MEANS, the Atonement the principle, and the healing is the result."

The list goes on. When you look, there are MANY many statements testifying that as our minds heal, they become STRONGER. And this strength is POWER. And this power is CAUSAL and is shared with God. And our thoughts have the power to cause things to happen.

Light and strength are one. Strength and miracle are one. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God" tells you that God uses his POWER. "What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world" entails the fact that He has all the POWER in heaven and earth.

"All POWER in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

It is too easy to be deceived by word associations, such as human notions of love. If we talk about "expression of love" as miracles, we might be tempted to think in terms of softness, gentleness, weakness, a LACK of power. This is an ego definition. Gentleness and innocence are actually very POWERFUL.

It is VERY clear, that BEHIND all miraculous ability, the driving force, is POWER, and it is the Power of God and it is ours to WIELD when we unite with God's Will. This power is EXTREMELY strong. This power POWERS miracles. This is how miracles are ENERGIZING. They supply a lack of power and strength.

"They will strengthen him and stabilize you."

"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS."

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the MIND MUST BE STRONGER than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings MORE LOVE to the giver AND the receiver."

Love, is not just love. Love is POWERFUL. God, who is love, is all powerful. This power, is UNLIMITED. That means it is CAPABLE of anything. It is "the power to" do anything. Love is not weak, it is strong. In sanity the mind is strong. To be miraculous is to be POWERFUL. By forgiving, you become STRONGER. Approaching light, you are approaching STRENGTH.

What this certainly means is, BEFORE a miracle takes place, a miraculous state of mind - miracle mindedness - is a STRONG MIND, a mind which has access to the POWER OF GOD - and it is the EXPRESSION OF THAT LOVING POWER which CAUSES a miracle to occur, which in turn produces effects. Power is the MEANS of miracle working. It is the ABILITY.

"The POWER ***to*** work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already ***able to***. Doing them will bring conviction in the ***ability*** (power). I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction (strength/power) really comes through accomplishment."

Ultimately then, the key thread which binds all the "powers of the mind" together, is the POWER OF GOD. This is why when Jesus walks on water, he uses THE POWER of the mind to do so, and this is a miraculous power. When he heals the sick and raises the dead, it is because he USES power to SUPPLY a lack of power. When perception is caused to change, it is because a "spark of life", a "power surge", an "energizer", is injected into the mind and CAUSES a change.

If we become too caught up in the EFFECTS that miracles cause, that is why it becomes confusing. If we think of miracles as "the expression that came from love" or as "the mountain that was moved" or "the body that was healed", we become confused. Because now we have some level confusion.

"Those who speak of "the miracle OF healing" are combining two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is NOT a miracle. The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a REMEDY. ***It is purely a means***, while any type of healing is a result."

Here Jesus is clear. Miracles are a MEANS. "The Holy Spirit is the mechanism (means) of miracles." The MEANS of being able to PERFORM a miracle, is having the POWER. The POWER is HOW the miracle is performed. The expression of the LOVING POWER OF GOD, is how miracles happen.

So when we look higher, beyond the RESULTS of miracles, beyond the changes, and the moved mountains, and the healed bodies, to the source, we see that in fact it all starts out with THE POWER. And this power EXPRESSES. And this power is UNLIMITED. And this power can do all of the above. The FORM that the effects take is highly varied and potentially a distraction from recognizing that they all originate in the SAME premise.

That you HAVE THE POWER to perform.

"Very few people appreciate the REAL POWER OF THE MIND."

"The mind is a VERY POWERFUL CREATOR, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."

So when we say, "this is a course in miracles", what we are really talking about is, this is a course in BECOMING VERY POWERFUL. It is a course in becoming STRONG mentally. It is a course in lining up with the power and will and mind of God. It is a course in EMPOWERMENT and taking your power back (having given it away to the ego and to weakness). It is a course in becoming ABLE to perform POWERFUL miracles. To USE the POWER of the mind to accomplish anything.

"Teachers of God will take over the world because of their STRENGTH."

POWERFUL SUPERNATURAL MIRACLE WORKERS. .... is a far cry from how miracle working is typically portrayed. A mere "shift in perception" hardly testifies to "what the Holy Spirit (power) enables you to do is clearly not of this world", nor to the ability to heal others, or to move mountains. A miracle CAPABLE of being "a potential spectacle" is hardly likely when miracles are not given any credit for being POWERFUL.

We are in training to develop the ABILITY, the power, to use the power of God. And that is very exciting!

I have actually experienced God's power, once so far. It happened while attempting to heal my wife. A sudden immeasureable presence arrived and felt incredibly strong. Like a super force, so intense and so powerful in its presence, it felt like it could cause anything to happen. That it could move any object. That it was SO STRONG that nothing could resist it. As if it could have literally moved the planet. It lasted only a few seconds, leaving a complete miraculous healing in its wake (all pain vanished).

To GAIN this power, ALL power must be recognized as being SHARED with God. "To recognize that all power is OF GOD (from Him, hosted by you), is to gain all power." With the Holy Spirit working THROUGH you, you become ABLE to do anything. "Do His works". And there is LITERALLY NOTHING our holiness cannot do.

"The POWER to work miracles belongs to you."

There may be a few I missed but this is most of the references to SOULS in A Course in Miracles. Souls are God's Children, they are permanent creations of light, and there are MANY of them.

"Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls, before the intrusion of fire and ice made this impossible."

"The Revelation unites Souls directly with God."

"The Miracle unites Souls directly with each other."

"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification."

"By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly."

"Eternal validity belongs only to the Soul. The miracle acknowledges only the Truth. It thus dispels man's illusions about himself, and puts him into communion with himself and with God."

"The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind and body need Atonement."

"The miracle restores the Soul to its fullness. By atoning for lack, it establishes perfect protection."

"The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions."

"The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return."

"The soul is in a state of grace forever. Man's reality is ONLY his soul. Therefore, man is in a state of Grace forever."

"The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

"HIS slip (rivet) was an expression of a Soul gaining enough strength to request freedom from prison. It will ultimately DEMAND it."

"The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters."

"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God."

"The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished."

"The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

"Most of the abilities man now possesses are only shadows of his real strengths. The Soul knows, loves, and creates. These are its unequivocal functions."

"Perception did not exist until the Separation had introduced degrees, aspects and intervals. The Soul has no levels, and ALL conflict arises from the concept of levels."

"The Soul does not need healing, but the mind DOES."

"Any attempt to endow the ego with the attributes of the Soul, is merely confused thinking."

"The mind returns itself to its proper function only when it WILLS TO KNOW. This places it in the Soul's service, where perception is meaningless. The superconscious is the level of the mind which wills to do this."

"The mind DID divide itself when it willed to create its own levels AND the ability to perceive them. But it could NOT entirely separate itself from the Soul, because it is FROM the Soul that it derives its whole power to create."

"Even in miscreating, will is affirming its source, or it would merely cease to be. This is impossible, because it IS part of the Soul, which God created, and which is therefore eternal."

"But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge."

"God and the Souls He created remain in surety, and therefore KNOW that no miscreation exists."

"I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power of the mind, by uniting MY will with that of my Creator, which naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose."

"Strong wills can do this NOW. And you WILL find rest for your Souls. God knows you only in peace, and this IS your reality."

"Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation, for the Sonship is your Soul."

"Your Soul does not need salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation IS. You are not saved FROM anything, but you ARE saved FOR glory"

"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."

"But if you hate part of your own Soul, ALL your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God creates AS YOURSELF without love. And since what He created IS part of Him, you are denying Him His place in His own altar."

"The peace of YOUR Soul lies in its limitlessness."

"Limit the peace you share, and your own Soul MUST be unknown to you."

"Every altar to God is part of your Soul, because the Light He created is One with Him."

"We have repeatedly emphasized the fact that one level of the mind is not understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the soul, and with time and eternity. "

"Eternity is an idea of God, so the soul understands it perfectly. Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which IS the ego's domain, accepts it without question."

"The Holy Spirit is the mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the Soul. Its ability to deal with symbols enables it to work AGAINST the ego's beliefs in its own language. Its equal ability to look BEYOND symbols into eternity also enables it to understand the laws of God, for which it speaks. It can thus perform the function of RE-INTERPRETING what the ego makes, not by destruction, but by understanding."

"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

"The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS."

"With full recognition of its transitory nature, (a recognition which I hope you both share), Helen offers a very good teaching example of alternations between Soul and ego, with concomitant variation between peace and frenzy."

"In answer to Bill's question, it is perfectly apparent that when she is ego-dominated, she DOES NOT KNOW her Soul."

"Man reacts to his ego much as God does to His Souls, - with love, protection, and great charity."

"The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the Soul's acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are utterly useless."

"The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all."

"While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive itself as rejected by something which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a delusion."

"The religiously ego-oriented tend to believe that the Soul existed before, and will continue to exist afterward, after a temporary lapse into ego-life. Some actually believe that the Soul will be punished for this lapse, even though in reality it could not possibly know anything about it."

"The term "salvation" does NOT apply to the Soul, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is nothing more that "right-mindedness" which is NOT the one-mindedness of the Soul, but which must be accomplished before one-mindedness can be restored."

"Attack is ALWAYS made on a stranger. You are MAKING him a stranger by misperceiving him, so that you CANNOT know him. It is BECAUSE you have made him into a stranger that you are afraid of him. PERCEIVE him correctly, so that your Soul can KNOW him."

"To be fatigued is to be DIS-spirited, but to be inspired is to be IN the spirit. To be egocentric IS to be dispirited. But to be self-centered in the RIGHT sense is to be inspired, or in the Soul. The truly inspired are enlightened, and cannot abide in darkness."

"He can speak from his Soul or from his ego, precisely as he chooses. If he speaks from his Soul, he has chosen to "be still and know that am God."

"Your real worth IS your divine authorship, and your Soul is its acknowledgement. I cannot guide your egos EXCEPT as you associate them with your Souls."

"Chesterton wrote an excellent description of Cervantes and his perception of his "unheroic hero," a view of man which the ego tolerates all too frequently, but the Soul NEVER countenances."

"The ego may will them because the ego IS both lean and foolish. But the Soul CANNOT embark on them because it is forever UNwilling to depart from its Foundation. The journey to the cross should be the LAST foolish journey for every mind."

"The soul's true functions are knowing, loving, and creating."

"Note again that the functions of the Soul were not referred to as abilities."

"The clear-cut implications of relativity, which properly inheres in this statement, DEMONSTRATE that abilities are not functions of the Soul. The Soul's functions are NOT relative. They are ABSOLUTE. They are OF God and BY God, and therefore God-like."

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

"Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS."

"Remember that the Soul knows no difference between being and having. The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God. To Him, getting is meaningless, and giving is all."

"Having everything, the Soul HOLDS everything by GIVING it, thus creating as the Father created."

"Can the Creations of God Himself take joy in what is not real? And what is real except the Creations of God and those which are created like His? Your creations love you as your Soul loves your Father FOR THE GIFT OF CREATION. There IS no other gift that is eternal, and therefore THERE IS NO OTHER GIFT THAT IS TRUE."

"In every case you have thought wrongly about some Soul that God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass."

"It is possible even in this world to hear ONLY that voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls."

"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" This means that if he listens to the wrong voice, he has LOST SIGHT of his Soul. He CANNOT lose it, but he CAN not know it. It is therefore LOST TO HIM, until he chooses right."

"In contrast, the Soul reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anything else. Nor does it make any attempt to ESTABLISH what is true. It knows that what is true is everything that God created. It is in complete and direct communication with every aspect of Creation, because it is in complete and direct communication with its Creator."

Here are some quote which speak to miracles or miraculousness being something that does not depend on perception, suggesting that miracles are not "shifts in perception", but rather that miracles are creative expressions of love which can *produce* shifts in perception.

This is because MIND and PERCEPTION are two different levels. Mind was mind before perception was introduced. Perception is a layer of interpretation on top of the mind. Miracles come through the mind from God's mind, as expressions of MAXIMAL LOVE, and CAUSE perception to change to line up with the mind. "Miracles are a corrective device introduced into the MIND by me." But the miracle is occurring and coming FROM the mind-level of love, producing secondary EFFECTS in the perceptual realm.

Decoupling miracle mindedness from perceptual shifts, and seeing the shifts as "effects" of miracles, allows us to see that you can be consistently miraculous when your perception has nothing left to shift. Simply because miracles originate BEYOND PERCEPTION, which is why they can CORRECT it.

This is also why we become MORE miracle minded and more miraculous and more able to constantly perform miracles, as we uncover love and our mind lines up with God's will and power. Being miraculous isn't temporary. We are a PERMANENT MIRACLE and miraculous creation is our nature. Which is why "Miracles are supposed to be happening all the time. When they aren't, something has gone wrong."

"12a. Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

"23 ... YOU are a miracle. God creates only "that which, or one who, is of surpassing excellence or merit". Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator. Anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real."

"Prayer is the medium of miracles, not because God created perceptions, but because God created YOU. At the beginning of this course, we said that YOU are a miracle. Therefore, the miracle worker is a miracle NOT of his own creation."

"Each *Soul* knows God completely. This IS the miraculousness of the *Soul*. The fact that every each *Soul* has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

"9. Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are ALWAYS miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws."

"4. All miracles mean life and God is the giver of life."

"27. A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."

"38 - The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles."

"43 - Miracles arise FROM a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

You may be wondering how "the separation" was possible, and how we came to seem to be in the situation we're in. There IS an explanation, which Jesus has given in many forms.

The essence of it, is that God gave you TOTAL unlimited freedom when you were created.

"The latter required the endowment of man (Souls) by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given."

"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul."

This means God gave us all absolutely free will. Our will has TOTAL freedom. Now, here's the interesting part.

Because the will is totally free, it actually has the freedom, or potential, to try to use its own free will against even itself. It can actually try to "will not to will." It actually is free to even use its freedom to try to prevent its own freedom, if it so chooses. Doing so is self-defeating, but you CAN do this.

This is an inherent function of the mind and actually completely natural, because it's part of being totally free. God HAD to give you the freedom to potentially "mis-use" your will, otherwise you could not be free. He couldn't just lock you in to some kind of mandated use of it, you had to be free to use it as you saw fit.

The freedom God has given you INCLUDES the freedom even to deny God if you want to. It includes the freedom to resist him, to deny reality, to try to use free will to stop willing, the ability to try to create nothing, to use the will destructively, and to at least ATTEMPT to separate itself from its source.

Your mind can in fact go into a state of denial. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in terms of it being "not allowed by God." God had to GIVE YOU this ability in order to give you total freedom. He doesn't necessarily will for you that you USE the will in this way, ie non-constructively, but you CAN if you so choose.

When you do choose to use it in a self-defeating way, you are "mis-creating", in an attempt to use the will against itself. This is really an attempt not to create, or to cause nothing, or to be inept and inert, or to not extend. It's like a kind of resistance, which is also fear. An attempt to be UN-WILLING, or to NOT will what God wills. Indeed, to attempt to will AGAINST him, which is "the authority problem."

"Remember, we have already stated that denial is not a purely negative device; it results in positive miscreation."

There is a fundamental truth that you cannot will against God's will. But, that does not mean you aren't free to TRY to. You are free to attempt it. When you do attempt it, you FAIL to change his will at all, and instead go into denial.

In the denial you BELIEVE that you have succeeded, but you haven't. Also when you are in this denial state, you are denying yourself, denying God, and denying reality. It's very important to realize however that denial does not CHANGE reality. It has no effect on the truth. Denial merely means to believe that something is not true, even though it still is true. It's a kind of rejection or refusal - an unwillingness - to accept what is true.

Your mind, as given by God, DOES HAVE the freedom and ability and power to go into a state of denial. This is BUILT IN to its fundamental freedom. It HAS to be able to potentially use its own freedom even against itself, otherwise it is not free. It is because of this "clause" if you will, that we could potentially elect to "go into the separation", ie to believe that we have become separate, even though we haven't. ie to go into denial.

"The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."

"For the separation is only the DENIAL of union, and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true."

Mind then is perfectly natural in its ability to try to deny its own creator if it so chooses. God has given it the freedom to use itself against itself. The fact is that it HAS DONE THIS, which is what we call "the separation" or the fall of man. Our minds HAVE elected to deny their own freedom, placing themselves into a state of imprisonment.

When mind uses its own free will to will AGAINST freedom, it induces a state of imprisonment. The will becomes imprisoned and the mind seems to go to sleep, or seems to become unable to will anything.

"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will. It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you."

"If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

This has actually happened, without in any way leaving God or leaving God's laws or operating outside of your inherent nature. There is fundamentally nothing "wrong" with this as such, but it IS out of accord with God's will. It is an attempt to reject his will. All this can produce is a state of denial, because God's will itself cannot be opposed, but you can thus "believe" that you are opposing it. Even if it's just a belief, it DOES alter your mind when you believe it.

"Remember a very early lesson, -- "never underestimate the power of denial." It has no power in ITSELF, but YOU can give it the power of YOUR mind, whose power is without limit of ANY kind."

"God did not ALLOW this to happen. But you DEMANDED that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so."

"God did not blot it out, because to eradicate it would be to attack it."

"It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you."

The main truth is that there is no real benefit to using freedom against freedom. The circular logic becomes obvious. For example, we're saying that it's possible to "will not to will". The more that you will not to will, the more you are using will, and obviously contradicting what you're claiming to accomplish. You therefore cannot will NOTHING, and have to will something. So instead you will a sense of EMPTINESS or a sort of "lack of creation."

"If a mind creates without love, it can create an empty shell. This CAN be possessed by evil."

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection."

"He can create an empty shell (see previous reference), but he DOES NOT create nothing at all."

So in fact what happened is we used our free will and our freedom of choice to elect to use the mind, mis-creatively, to try to "create nothing", and this produced a sort of empty creation, or a lack of creation - a lack of love's extension. In the mind this produced the hallucinated state of the lack of God, which is space-time and all its contents. Jesus refers to it as an empty screen onto which we then project meanings.

So long as the mind is unwilling and is resisting freedom and therefore is in denial, it is maintaining its belief in something opposite to God. That maintains 'the ego' and the illusion of a meaningless world. The world is meaningless because it is an "empty shell" which has no real content of its own, onto which we project images and meanings either thought false or true perception.

While it is true that mind cannot create a real separation, and you cannot leave God, and you cannot violate his reality or his laws, it is also true that the ability to deny IS within his laws and his reality. It is part of your rights as a created free-willed being.

God actually does not COERCE or shame you or guilt you or punish you for WANTING to use your freedom against itself. You ARE FREE to do so if you so choose. It's just that when you do so, you do bring suffering upon yourself and He does not will that you suffer.

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it."

So God gently INVITES you to return back to willing constructively with him rather than destructively. You have to FREELY CHOOSE IT, and accept atonement because you want to, not because you are forced to. This is because your mind still has the power to exercise freedom - a power that you have never lost.

So being in the denial of God, is actually a possibility of reality. It is not PREFERRED, but it is possible. It is not what God wills for you, but he HAS given you your own will, so even though he does not make it possible for you to actually separate, he DOES allow you to BELIEVE that you have. And this has taken place. This is why Jesus says "the separation has occurred." We HAVE tried to deny God and we HAVE believed that we've become separate.

The problem then isn't REALLY denial. Denial is NOT a negative functionality. It is not inherently a bad thing. You actually can use denial positively and for protection. The proper use of denial actually denies illusions and supports the truth of reality. It is only the improper use of it which has led us to deny God and accept lies, instead of accepting God and denying lies.

"Because of your Father's love, you can NEVER forget Him. For no one can forget what God Himself placed in his memory. You can DENY it, but you CANNOT LOSE IT."

"You can DENY His knowledge, but you CANNOT change it."

"But denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as it is of being used destructively."

We have actually moved into a denial state, in the mind that God gave us, as part of the freedom he gave us, and this has TEMPORARILY produced the 'tiny mad idea' and the 'unholy instant'. It has led to the hallucination of spacetime - a belief in possibilities which aren't actually possible in truth. This has happened. But none of the things which seem to happen WITHIN this denial, have really happened.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

This ability for the mind try to elect to be what it is not, to assume an alien power it doesn't really have, or to enter a state that it can't really enter, IS the power of denial that all minds are naturally capable of, in reality or otherwise. If you use the mind against itself it attacks itself and produces insanity. And since denial is a rejection of or avoidance/hiding from reality, it is a form of unconsciousness or an attempt "not to know", which induces a sort of sleep, in which we dream of imaginary worlds.

You CAN deny God, that's not against his law. But when you do, you induce a nightmare of suffering.

"What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His."

"What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it. The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."

The world you "made up" does not really exist. It's a dream. The ability TO dream, is not made up. It is part of your natural freedom. God is not stopping you from choosing to go into denial, but he IS inviting you to come out of that denial when you are freely willing to do so, and therefore return to a happier state in alignment with his will. Denial is not an illusion, it PRODUCES illusions when misused.

So basically, "the separation", otherwise called "the attempt to deny the truth" has happened, the mind HAS exercised its free will to repress its own freedom, and this HAS induced a kind of sleep state in which the mind dreams of separation. The dream isn't valid at all. The DREAMING is a mind function and not to be discarded. It is simply something that you can choose or not choose. When you DON'T choose to dream, you instead choose to accept ultimate reality, and use the mind ONLY for constructive creative purposes.

"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others."

Long story short, mind DOES have the potential and freedom to go into denial, and this is entirely within the laws of God. It's just that when we do this, we are not happy, and it induces fantasies of things that aren't really possible. God does not will that we suffer so he instead calls us to return to him, knowing that it's best to use our free will creatively rather than self-destructively.

"It is for this denial that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth."

"Both the power and the strength of man's creative will must be understood, before the real meaning of denial can be appreciated and abolished. Denial is NOT mere negation. It is a positive miscreation."

"Extension cannot be blocked, and it has no voids. It continues forever, however much it is denied. Your DENIAL of its reality arrests it in time, but not in Eternity."

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial." "For fear IS a call for love, in unconscious recognition of what has been denied."

"The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does NOT depend upon your recognition."

"Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable. One is false, for it was made out of denial, and denial DEPENDS on the real belief in what is denied for its OWN existence."

Mind is free to deny itself, at any time. It has denied itself. That's why we're dreaming of exile. Its ability to do this is God-given. Its election TO do this is its own free choice. It HAS chosen to do this, and so it IS in a denial state. That is why there arose a NEED for atonement and God had to create the Holy Spirit to maintain a link to his children, guaranteeing that they can return to him when they are willing to do so.

We are not to be in the business of trying to "deny" that the mind can or has done this. It absolutely has done this. But it can choose again. It can choose to stop mis-creating and to instead create only the extension of God. It can choose to stop denying its own freedom and reclaim its inheritance. It can move out of its temporary state of resistance, into acceptance, out of fear into love. And at no point is God sitting there saying "denying me is against the law." He doesn't condone it, but he also doesn't force you not to choose it.

In a higher happier state of mind, mind radiates more light and power. There is greater communication, as in mind directly expressing from a more loving state. In this state, we are more immediate, and more causal. We choose what we want to happen and we literally express that it is happening. And it happens. It is essentially the same thing as CREATING.

In a lower darker state of mind this does not seem to occur. We are too tied up in using the senses to detect whether or not something has happened seemingly 'on its own', which is the belief that the world is the cause. There is either waiting for something to occur, or there is a mocking dismissal of the possibility that what you will could actually happen.

But the mindset we want to get to is that we are causal, we don't look to externals to determine whether something will occur. We simply choose what we want to occur. And in this higher state of mind there is much more expression, much more radiating outward of light and love. You could say, there is an expression from love, or 'miracles are expressions of love' as the course says.

Not that as such these are transmissions of love, but that we're in a more loving powerful state and express ourselves, in various forms. Instead of looking to see if something might be there, or fake a belief that we can make it be there while believing we can't, we adopt a sincere and empowered attitude of direct power. We express, psychologically, an outward expression of thought and belief, which simply chooses what we want to happen. And this is not an asking or a request, it is direct expression. We put it there.

This can only happen when we bypass space (distance) or time (delay) in our belief system. How we're looking has to be much more immediate and direct. We intend.... what we insist and know ... believe... must happen. And it occurs.

Effectively it just means that we're in such a unified and present and immediate state of mind that we no longer act like recipients of whatever the world says we have to be, or what it does to us, or with any sense that the world is choosing for us. We adopt a position of causation and expression, radiating and deciding what will be there. We insist on it, and it is so.

This can I think only occur after much purification and removal of guilt, there has to be freedom and innocence, light and love, wholeness and power. Then you simply regain the natural ability to just will whatever it is that you will to happen, and it literally happens. In whatever form, according to whatever choice. A loving expression rooted in love, steered by thought and put in place by power. The power of decision, with effects.

I see that this requires quite a high state of mind, a lot of freedom, and a great amount of happiness and love. Miracles cannot be performed in a spirit or doubt and fear, or in guilt. Darkness blocks the expression, just as a breakdown in communication/joining cuts it off.

Belief in separation coming in-between (space time) shuts it down and prevent the expression. In other words, if there is a belief in separation (from God etc) it 'comes in between' cause and effect (cause is father, effect is son). And this sort of disconnects your mind from causing effects - there is a 'communicating' (transmitting) breakdown where your creative effort falls short. When cause and effect are more 'one', you are now in touch with the power of dreaming the dream, and can directly cause the dream to change, and minds to change.

To reconnect to that power is literally the same thing as undoing the split in the mind so that cause and effect are reunited, allowing power to put in place .... what is within is without. Expressions which actually produce results. Simply willing from a state of happy loving mind can move mountains and reshape the world. We would call the miracles but they are simple the natural unhindered functioning of a a healed mind choosing what to create.

"Miracles are thought creations."

"We once said there is no order in miracles because they are all MAXIMAL EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE."

"I KNOW that miracles are natural, because they are expressions of love."

"Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power."