"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone ELSE, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in HIM BECAUSE they are yours. The ego tries to find them in YOURSELF, because he does not know where to look. But the Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yourself you CANNOT find yourself because that is NOT what you are."

Each of us has an identity. God gave us an identity in and as part of Christ or the Sonship, which we share. But in the separation from God, we denied who we were and sought an identity that wasn't shared. That meant denying our mutual identity, placing us in a state of not being certain of who we are. Another way of saying that is that we became afraid of who we are.

Then we started trying to make an identity that would replace the identity we lost. We were out of touch with reality. So we started trying to assemble an identity from various illusions, and from things which are not really who or what we are. In particular we tried to identify with something isolated and alone, that you could call "only yours", rather than sharing an identity with others.

This included identifying with our bodies, believing that our body is our self. To do this our mind has to literally "attach" itself to "mix itself with" the body, trying to become "one" with it. As if to blur the lines between what is the body and what is our self. So that there is only one seeming self, not two. By trying to identify with a body, we're trying to hide our real identity and forget it, so that all that remains is the body self.

If I bind my definition of who and what I am, or what is true of me, to the body, then I am saying I AM a body. And then everything about the body I take personally as if it speaks of and defines me. Maybe I'll feel positive about my body for various reasons, due to how it looks or what it is capable of. Or maybe I'll feel negative about it based on it being ugly or defective. But both are still identifications with the body.

We can also shift to identifying with the mind, or with thoughts. When we have thoughts we can get a sense of an artificial sense of self, mixed in with the thinking. The mind can chatter away with its noise and the more it talks the more you mistake the talking for the person doing the talking. As if the sound of thought is the presence of someone. As if the thoughts are a self. And now you've identified with thinking, perhaps with intelligence or intellect, with memory or accumulation of knowledge.

You can also identify with social standing, your social background, class, race, gender, how much money you have, where your family seems to rank in terms of some social hierarchy, whether you are upper-class or lower, living in wealth or in poverty etc. You can also identify with failing to have much of a worthwhile identity in any of these areas, perhaps with a poor body and poor finances and poor living conditions, seeing yourself as identified as a helpless victim.

I think we can also identify with objects, with animals and pets, with places, with homes and cars etc. We can identify with our children, and literally feel as though what happens to them happens to us. As though they are a part of us, to such an extent that when they suffer we suffer, or we take everything that happens to them as a personal attack. This can lead to the identity of being a father or mother, someone who wants to keep that identity and not let it go, and who cannot deal with the empty nest.

These are all confused senses of who and what you are. And we're all looking for ourselves because think we lost ourselves. We sense that we are uncertain, thus afraid, of who and what we really are - or don't want to know. We don't remember our identity. It's like we have an amnesia. Whether it be an amnesia imposed by birth through crossing the barrier of dimensions and entering a body prison, or the illusion that every time you're born you start from scratch to build an identity.

"Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for everyone he perceives, which is equally variable." "The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

So the big question really is, who are you? What are you? Are you the son of God as He created you? Or have you become something else? Do you want to be something else? Are you a body? Are you a relationship, or a child that you possess, or an object you own? Are you a social status or a financial position? Are you your job, or your role as a parent? Are you made of the guilt and fear and sin that you feel? Are you your thoughts and your thinking? Are you the intellect? Are you awareness? Do you have a soul?

Finding out who you really are, knowing yourself, is what Jesus says is the entire point of this course. It's about remembering and waking up to the recognition that you are still exactly the same identity that God created you to be forever. You are still Christ, you are still a soul, still part of the sonship, still perfect. Still a spiritual being. And your real identity is shared with all the other Sons of God.

So our whole process here is just sorting out, what are we experiencing as being our identity, who or what have we identified with or latched onto, what is it that we think is our self, and where have we put that? What have we tried to become "one with", other than God? What have we wrapped ourselves around in trying to portray ourselves as something God did not create?

If I think I am my body or my thoughts and have actually bound myself to them such that I seem to experience them "as me", then I am in need of correction. I am out of touch with who I really am and am believing I am something I am not. This means I lack awareness or awakening, or am unconscious. These mis-identifiations with things we are not, are blocks to awareness.

"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."

"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. "

"The ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently."

"By accepting the Atonement for YOURSELF, you are deciding AGAINST the belief that you can BE alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond belief. Your wholeness HAS no limits, because its being is in Infinity."

"EVERYTHING you perceive as the outside world, is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation."

"They are reflections both of your own proper identification WITH your brothers, and of your own awareness that YOUR identification IS maintained by extension."

"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it."

"This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for."

"When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son. It CANNOT be with one and not the other. If you are part of one, you MUST be part of the other because they ARE One."

"In his complete identification with the Christ--the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him - Jesus became what all of us must be."

"As long as your identification vacillates, (and B's is weak) you cannot accept the gift that belongs to you."

"Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you WHEN YOU ARE THINKING INSANELY."

"ALL attack is self attack. It cannot BE anything else. Arising from your OWN decision NOT to be what you ARE, IT IS AN ATTACK ON YOUR IDENTIFICATION. "

"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."

"This is not my name alone, for ours is a shared identification. "

"The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT be of God."

"For example, if the identification is with the body, consciousness may distort superconscious impulses by denying their Source, and seeking their impact in the orgasm."

"We said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to "demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God." This ***demonstration*** ***EXONERATES*** those who misperceive, BY ESTABLISHING BEYOND DOUBT that they have NOT hurt anyone."

The curriculum of ACIM ends in resurrection. Resurrection is the final state prior to going to Heaven. When Jesus accomplished this, his body had allegedly been attacked and "killed" by crucifiers, through the crucifixion. All of these people believed that they HAD attacked him. Or if they were bystanders, they believed the attack was REAL, was really affecting Jesus and attacking the Son of God, due to a confusion between Him and his body.

After this, and after Jesus made his body disappear, he accomplished the resurrection. He then MATERIALIZED A BODY, as a miracle, in order to PROVE AND DEMONSTRATE the absolute total truth and conviction, that what He is could not be attacked, and that this body he showed was a SYMBOL of that perfection. It was a body in perfect health, showing no signs of suffering, no attack, no sickness.

Onlookers, and crucifiers (and the onlookers were also crucifiers by their judgement of real sin), had to then bring into SERIOUS QUESTION, what it is that they THOUGHT had happened and the sinfulness that they thought occurred. By Jesus demonstrating resurrection, symbolized as a LIVING BODY, using the body to PROVE that the body had not been killed and thus Jesus had not been killed, FORCED them to have to DISBELIEVE, their own condemnations, sin, guilt and fear about "what happened to him".

Because obviously, here standing in front of them was a NON-CRUCIFIED body, appearing to be alive, symbolizing immortality, with Jesus smiling through it, happy and at peace and clearly NOT DEAD. And so the contrast was a POWERFUL TEACHING, to all who encountered that body, which showed that that IMMORTALITY is true, that the body is NOTHING, that attacks on a body do not change anything REAL, and thus nothing real can be threatened.

By this demonstration, which was totally miraculous in the true sense, death itself had been snuffed out and all "effects" and consequences of sin removed by the Holy Spirit. Due to the lack of effects, the lack of suffering, and the lack of death, ALL those who seemed to attack Jesus or believe in him being attacked, WERE PROVEN MISTAKEN, because miracles are teaching devices. And this demonstration of a miracle of total healing and resurrection (miracles raise the dead and produce resurrection), they were EXONERATED.

They were PROVEN, that they COULD NOT have sinned, they could not have attacked, and their BELIEF IN REAL DEATH was brought into question. They could no longer believe the body is real. They could no longer believe sin had real effects. They could no longer believe sin is irreversible. And they could therefore no longer believe in THEIR OWN SINFULNESS. And thus in this exonerated state all onlookers and those who met him WERE TAUGHT, THROUGH DEMONSTRATION, BY EXAMPLE, WITH CONVICTION, COMPELLING them to believe, that THEY MUST BE INNOCENT ALSO, because HIS BODY WAS NOT HARMED.

This is the teaching of "brother at your hand I live". This is the teaching of resurrection. This is the demonstration of miracles. And this is the message that EVERY ACIM STUDENT has to at some point demonstrate through the HEALING OF THE PHYSICAL BODY, to undo the picture of crucifixion and to replace it with the Holy Spirit's PICTURE OF IMMORTALITY, as a body which has no signs of sickness or suffering or death or harm of any kind. Because only by reaching a state where YOUR BODY IS HEALED and TEACHES AND COMMUNICATES ONLY LOVE AND HEALING AND HEALTH, only then can your MIND be ready to return to Heaven to access eternal life. "The mind, being sane, heals the body."

A Course in Miracles is about RESURRECTION! You are being raised from a state of death. A dream of death. Raised from sickness. Raised from suffering. Moved AWAY FROM DEATH, TOWARDS LIFE. If you are moving towards sickness, punishment, suffering, death, physical ailments, illness, disease, broken body parts, or any other PHYSICAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE BELIEF IN ATTACK, which are ALL attempts to TEACH YOUR BROTHER OF HIS SINFULNESS, you are moving AWAY FROM LIFE and away from the atonement and away from the resurrection. And that is NOT what A Course in Miracles is asking of you.

This is a course in LIFE! You are supposed to only move TOWARDS LIFE, NOT TOWARDS DEATH. If you head towards death you've got the course backwards!!!!

LIFE LIFE LIFE LIFE LIFE LIFE LIFE LIFE LIFE LIFE LIFE <3

This is the teaching of A Course in Miracles. This is a course in LIFE. Life is CAUSE.

"Swear not to die, you holy son of God." IN THIS LIFETIME. CHOOSE THAT YOU WILL NOT DIE OR PRODUCE BODY SICKNESS OR BODY DEATH!! Swear to demonstrate resurrection!!!

"WHAT IS THE RESURRECTION?

Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death....

The resurrection is the denial of death, being THE ASSERTION OF LIFE...

Here the curriculum ends."

When I used to consider "the secret of salvation", which is the idea that you are "doing it to yourself", I could recognize the need for total responsibility. I saw that anything which I thought someone was doing to me, from the outside in, I must be doing to myself. But I didn't entirely realize a key portion of this.

What I see in it now is more. I see that we are immortal beings, who can never be attacked or hurt or damaged or upset in any way against our will. The ownership and identification with this is our true responsibility.

This lays a new foundation. Because now it means that if I am suffering, or seeming to suffer at the hands of another, or because of the world doing something to me, it must mean I have secretly attempted to stop being immortal.

The "what I a doing to myself" isn't so much the appearance of what others are doing, but is in fact the DISTANCE between my immortal self and the mortal victim self I'm portraying myself as. Between the invulnerable self and the ego. It is the traversal of that distance that I am responsible for, and which is my own attack upon myself, placing myself in a state of weakness.

Even if it may appear that the world is seeming to be the cause of something, happening to my body, inducing fear, causing effects in me, it cannot be true. These things are not put in place from the outside in, they're put in place from the inside out.

If I stop recognizing my immortal invulnerable nature, and attack myself first, I will lose track of who I am, question and doubt myself, go into uncertainty and fear, and project the idea of causation outside of myself. Then I will see myself as potentially caused by the world, instead of by God.

That faulty perception of myself, that body identification, that self denial, is something I am doing to myself. And it means I'm putting myself in a position, in a role, where I seem vulnerable and in need of defenses against a cruel and unsafe world. But I can't blame the world for being in this position, when it's me that's putting myself there.

Even more so, the world is my dream, in my mind, coming from me decision. If I dream of my body being attacked surely I have consented, and have attempted to use the body to prove I am not immortal. I have done this to myself. I cannot be attacked if I am permanent and unchangeable. Portraying myself as a victim must mean I'm attempting to destroy myself, and that is my own doing.

The responsibility is not in terms of what others appear to be doing to me from the outside in, but what I have attempted to do to my immortal self, to my unlimited mind, to render is less than whole and lacking and limited. That is an internal attack which merely is disguised behind the outward expression of that deception.

The immortal cannot suffer. The immortal cannot be sick. The immortal cannot die. The immortal cannot be attacked or hurt. The immortal cannot be upset or have their peace disturbed. The immortal are responsible because they know themselves and have owned up to their true christ nature. They no longer deceive themselves with the idea that a fictional alien will can act against them, and so their mind is not split.

The secret of salvation tells us we are responsible for all of our own suffering. It tells us that it doesn't matter what the seeming cause of suffering is, there is only one cause, and it is in our own mind. It tells us that we are doing it to ourselves. And who are we, that this is being done to? We are immortal beings. And so if we seem to suffer, we must have undermined our own invulnerability. Just as "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

You are not weak but strong. You are not afraid but all powerful. You are not an illusion but a reality. You are not mortal but immortal. You are not vulnerable but invulnerable. You are not destructible but permanent. You are not guilty but innocent. You are still as God created you.

Here is why your body's health is a DEMONSTRATION of what your mind believes is true. A broken body shows that the mind is NOT healed, and a healed mind PRODUCES a healed body. "A sane mind heals the body."

The body MUST demonstrate health otherwise it is TEACHING ATTACK and accusing your brother of not being innocent. EVEN THE BODY has to show innocence, physically, otherwise you are communicating to your brother that he is a sinner! Only through your health is it PROVEN to him that he is EXONERATED! You are either teaching "behold at your hand I die" or "behold at your hand I live". Your body is doing one of the two, and if it's that you are dying "because of" external causes you haven't corrected, you ARE accusing your brother of sin.

"Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him. To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned."

---

"You have a fear of broken bodies, because your ego cannot tolerate them. Your ego cannot tolerate ego-weakness, either, without ambivalence, because it is afraid of its own weakness and the weakness of its chosen home."

----

"That is really why you recoil from the demands of the dependent, and from the sight of a broken body. Your ego is threatened, and blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the strain of divided will."

----

"Those with broken bodies are often looked down on by the ego, because of its belief that nothing but a perfect body is worthy as its OWN temple. A mind that recoils from a hurt body is in great need of rehabilitation itself. A damaged brain is also hardly a danger. ALL symptoms of hurt need true helpfulness, and whenever they are met with this, the mind that so meets them heals ITSELF."

----

"If you WITHHOLD agreement, and accept the part YOU play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in LETTING it perceive itself as separate and apart from YOU. Thus is the body NOT perceived as sick by BOTH your minds, from SEPARATE points of view. UNITING with a brother's mind prevents the CAUSE of sickness, and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate. The miracle does nothing just because the minds ARE joined, and CANNOT separate. Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN.

Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him. He has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and YOU have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred. Thus are you JOINED in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. Fight not His coming with illusions, for it is His coming that you WANT above all things that seem to glisten in the dream. The end of dreaming is the end of FEAR, and love was NEVER in the world of dreams."

----

"For all the hurt that war has sought to bring; the broken bodies and the shattered limbs, the screaming dying and the silent dead, are gently lifted up and comforted. There IS no sadness, where a miracle has come to heal. And nothing more than just ONE instant of your love WITHOUT attack is necessary, that all this occur."

---

"Let yourself be healed that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother and yourself. A broken body shows the mind has not been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect. What you would prove to him, you will believe. The power of witness comes from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him.

17 Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony of his innocence. It is this testimony which can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness proved to him. A miracle can offer nothing less to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed and has forgiven what he did not do. And so is he convinced his innocence was never lost and healed along with you."

---

"We said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to "demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God." This demonstration EXONERATES those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have NOT hurt anyone. "

Where do you find a sense of certainty? A sense of something you can trust? A sense of actuality or correctness? Where do you find a truth, that is so acceptable and so full and complete that you have no doubt?

I find that as I try to find answers in, and with, the ego, i.e. with my own mind and faculties, I cannot come up with a satisfying answer. I instead come up with a multitude of possible answers, all of which are different and none of which really give me a sense of .... yes, this is IT, I found it!. .. Or at least, if I think I found it, then later I'll realize it doesn't quite fit. So none of the answers work. None of them.

In fact, the more that I get into 'I need to figure this out', or 'maybe it's this - maybe it's that', .. the more I try and effort to investigate and find "the truth" in this way, the worse the situation seems to become. Confusion increases. I move away from a sense of certainty, peace, truth or acceptability. I move towards increasing UN-certainty.

Key insight: Trying to figure out and explain what's happening using my own separate ego mind/intelligence creates MORE confusion! I'm barking up the wrong tree!

So I dig and dig and get clever about what 'might' be "the answer", only to sense that this answer is flawed in some way, it doesn't quite explain things, and I just can't get a feeling of 'absolute certainty' around it. It seems like it *might be* true, it's *possibly* a description, it's *could be* what's happening etc... but never a sense of .... "this is".

And you know what, the more I try to do this the worse it gets and the more confused I become and the less I have peace.

So, the lesson here is, clearly... I have made the problem real, and now I am reacting to it by trying to explain or justify or intellectualize 'why' it is happening... rather than IF it is happening. And that means, I'm using the ego, I'm trusting my own self instead of God, I'm looking for answers in the ego world outside of me, I'm trying to find ego proof of the truth, and basically am constantly coming up empty handed.

It can become... exasperating, trying to find the truth where the truth IS NOT. The secret truth is: EVERY ego answer is NOT TRUE! The ego does not and cannot KNOW truth AT ALL!!! All it can do is speculate and guess and wonder and deduce and pretend it has the prowess to figure this all out on its own. And it will never be able to find the truth. The ego cannot wake up to reality!

So the question becomes, where I am going to get my sense of certainty from? Where is the real truth? Where is a truth or an answer or whatever that I can really believe .... yes... this is exactly IT. And I can tell you, it's very possible to come up with numerous ego explanations or rationalizations that all say... yes... this is exactly it, that this is an exact match to the situation and it really seems to be 'this'... only to find loopholes, inconsistencies, doubts, and then some 'other' possibility comes along. This is all because I'm searching within the realm of relativity, partiality, differences, a lack of wholeness and a world of lies.

So where will I find THE answer? What is THE answer? Where will I get that sense of... certainty, peace, joy, and KNOWING, that comes from the 'real truth'.... something I can really get behind and know, this IS it.

What is the real truth? God IS it, of course! God is WHERE the truth is. God is the certainty I seek. God is the answer that I can actually TRUST.... to trust that it will be consistent and unwavering and complete. There is no sense of consistent truth like that in the ego's world. No matter what the ego's explanations or meanings are, NONE of them are the whole truth. And none of them bring the feeling of... ahhhhh yes... that God brings.

But then, you have to realize this... God isn't an explainer, as such. God doesn't spend time diagnosing, or figuring out, or doing any of those activities that the ego mind does in attempting to find out what it thinks is happening. In fact, God doesn't even deal in the realm of 'maybe'. God HAS the answer already, whereas the ego is SEPARATE from the answer so has to go SEEK for it!

"Seek and do not find!" - ACIM

And the harder you seek the truth, the further you get from the TRUTH! Doh!!! I've been looking in the wrong place this whole time :-D

So ... God has really no interest in spending time trying to discern what illusions are doing or what to do about them to 'fix' unreal problems. God doesn't make problems real then OBSESS over trying to solve them, not realizing that believing they are a problem IS the problem.

So as I go to God, I see that God's 'way' is different from the ego's 'way'. God's way is more to do with.... a constant, direct, immediate correction and healing, which solves the problem, instead of all of the dwelling on basically 'keeping' the problem that the ego loves to indulge in while disguised as a problem solver. Hah.

So again... this is about learning to trust He who KNOWS, versus being lost in he who 'thinks' he knows.

And perhaps it's not until we can really let go of all efforts to 'explain real illusions', that we will turn to God in surrender and trust and allow Him, instead, to bring healing to the situation FOR us.

Thank you God.

Beliefs seem to be something we're supposed to be undoing and getting rid of - at least false ones. And the Course says that you do not necessarily need to have a belief about the truth because it's kind of a given. It doesn't require some kind of extra effort or separate attitude in order to maintain it and it's not something that you make or can put extra energy into to give it reality.

Beliefs usually are something the ego has taken ahold of and is attempting to make real things which are not true. It attempts to feed the belief and build it up and create a stronger illusion. It tries to bring to life that which cannot live, and create a sense of being convinced that this artificial belief is the truth. These kind of beliefs we need to undo.

But as we transition our sense of trust away from the ego and toward God, and as we let go of the sense of truth that we invested into the ego's beliefs, we instead start to place our trust and faith and "belief" if you will, in God's truth.

It also comes down to whether or not you believe that you are worthy of God's love and whether you therefore are worthy of receiving God's blessings. If you don't believe you are worthy of God's love, you will not be able to believe that other people are worthy of it either.

But this is not black and white, because you can begin to put your trust in God and learn to have faith in God's truth even if at the moment it seems distant or hidden behind walls of doubt and illusion. Just because you are not yet fully aware or still believe in sin or have your own problems and false beliefs, it doesn't mean God is disempowered at all.

In fact, God and Holy Spirit and Jesus are permanently miraculous and are absolutely ready right now to perform miracles. For them, miracles are happening all the time. And as you begin to reach out to them in faith, putting your trust and belief in their truth being true, this forms a kind of bridge which connects you to their minds, even if right now you are still vague about them or don't understand them and are not having a direct experience of their fullness.

Forgiveness begins to overlook the illusions and you start to build a relationship with them. This relationship, even if at first it seems minimal and fragile, can be enough for you to participate in performing miracles. They are capable of working with you and using you to extend God's love and healing, even if you yourself are still working on your own spiritual path.

To produce a healing, however, it does require at least some amount of belief that God's truth is true. The degree to which you believe in it is largely the degree to which you will allow and accept God's power to work through you. There is no order of difficulty in miracles, but there is kind of an order of difficulty in terms of you believing in your ego and using the ego to attempt to interfere with or block the miracle.

To put it another way, you could be attempting to perform a miracle and saying that you want it while, at the same time, in various ways, your ego beliefs are causing you to ask for something else. And you end up producing results but the results are not the miraculous-seeming results you hoped you were asking for, and instead you just expressed the ego. Then since the ego's will is not really a will at all, nothing seems to happen.

You do need therefore some amount of belief in God's truth being true, in order for you to accept for yourself and allow to extend through you, God's healing power. It is not enough to stand before someone or even remotely and begin to command their healing or to send them loving vibes. You might be assuming that you automatically "believe" simply because you believe intellectually that you can be miraculous, but the amount of your heart-felt believing may be significantly lower than where it needs to be. You will therefore have doubt and fear and be unsure if it's going to work, which will come against the miracle and discourage you from being convinced that it can happen.

So it can be helpful that when you go to perform a miracle, you actively remind yourself that you must BELIEVE that God is going to heal. This in a way seems like making an "effort", only because at the moment your belief is divided and you have to sort of pull yourself out of the ego *temporarily* in order to exhibit a clearer sense of certainty that God's truth is truth.

This will at first seem like a strain of sorts or that you really have to push the envelope of how much you FEEL that you believe it, and the ego in you will try to thwart your efforts. But as Jesus has said, he who asks BELIEVING that he receives it will be given whatever he asks for.

At some point, when you are very thoroughly purified of the ego, and are very certain and strongly convinced of God, your level of what you genuinely believe in will be much higher. You will trust God. You will believe God's word. You will be constantly overlooking ego illusions, including the illusions of sickness and death and real sin. Not just in theory but actually experientially, LIVING it. Walking around in that awareness and knowledge. Expressing it ALL the time.

And then you will not have to make effort to perform miracles because you will naturally, in your HEART, believe deeply that God's will is real and true. You will believe it with your whole heart and your whole being. It will therefore be NATURAL for you to be miraculous. It will be your natural state of being. You will be expressing miracles left right and center every single day, BECAUSE you have a very strong BELIEF, a very strong faith and knowing of the nature of God and believe and trust in HIS power and ability to heal anything.

We have to be honest with ourselves as we learn and experiment with miracles, as to just how much we really do believe God. Don't underestimate how much of a stretch it might be to go from where you're at to where God is at. The ego has long been our trusted company and it can take a LOT of purification and forgiving to truly rise up to the level of Christ.

You do not need christ-level belief in order to facilitate miracles, because Holy Spirit only truly needs a little willingness and your mind only need to be partly corrected. Once you have established SOME faith in God's truth being more true than the ego's truth, miracles will start to become possible, perhaps small ones at first, perhaps minor healings, and you will have a lot of failures and frustrations.

But keep trying and keep learning to BELIEVE firmly AS you do it. That is very important. You can't just get it in your head, your HEART has to feel it and trust it and choose to believe God over the ego.

If you will practice simply switching your belief to high-intensity and back to your regular level, you will see what I mean. Just close your eyes and imagine you're going to heal someone, and then go through the motions of what you think you would do without any particular effort to really believe in it. Like, just saying some words or pointing your hands or whatever.

Then reset and try it again, but this time, BEFORE you start, and sustaining it throughout your effort, make an extra special effort to really STRONGLY BELIEVE that God is going to heal. As soon as you ignite this stronger belief, you should feel it, you will notice it feels like you begin to radiate something. It's almost like you switch on your system and your whole energy field engages and you begin to connect with something beyond yourself.

Then while sustaining that strong heartfelt, whole deep feeling of believing that what you are going to say is TRUE, and that it is backed up by God's love, then proceed with your healing actions such as commanding healing or making statements of truth to speak truth into the situation.

I did this MYSELF today, FOR myself, directing my statements towards some significant sinus pressure and headache that resulted from eating an ice-cream sundae. And the POWER of what Holy Spirit did in me while holding a stronger belief was significantly more noticeable, and I did come away with almost no symptoms left.

I could feel how this was different to simply "showing up" and going through the motions. Too many times in the past I did some of the physical actions of a miracle process and said the words and tried to be commanding or powerful etc but I didn't deep down BELIEVE and I had forgotten entirely to activate belief and to be coming from God's love. I was trying to do miracles intellectually or to treat it like a way to change appearances using appearances.

It's not enough to just assume that you are already fully equipped for miracles, which is the ego's assumption that IT is already whole, and that therefore YOU are already fully in your belief and capability. No. There is more to you which the ego has suppressed, and you are probably not yet acting from a place of pure love and empowerment. You will need to question your belief that you are at your fullest connection to God right now, and learn to open yourself up more and more to His love and to the atonement and to being willing to accept it for yourself so that you can forgive and heal others.

There is a greater strength which you might yet have not even tapped into, and it might require you to really reach out to God and really stand your ground and be CONFIDENT in a way that you might not be comfortable with yet. The extent of your belief in the ego is what holds you back and limits you, and you are walking around with those beliefs ACTIVE in you all the time. So either you have to deliberately poke your head out of the ego's delusion and force yourself to believe more strongly, or continue the longer-term goal of refining your deep acceptance of God's truth.

Eventually, you will simply become so certain of God's ways, and so sure of His nature, and so convinced about the justification for LOVING people - including yourself - that you will automatically BE in a state of strong belief in God, and therefore you will very naturally and EFFORTLESSLY perform miracles. Your word will move mountains, heal the sick, raise the dead, and more.

But for you to believe, truly believe, that God is love, and that you are loved, and that you are justified in loving others, and that you CAN love others STRONGLY and without reservation - i.e. unconditionally - you are going to have to undo all of your own false ego beliefs in sin and guilt and fear and death at some point. They do interfere with your faith and diminish your effectiveness at facilitating miracles.

The miracle itself is unconditional, but your genuine willingness to perform it fully and with wholeness and power depends on your trust and openness with God. If you yourself don't believe you deserve love or healing or forgiveness, because of your belief in your own sinfulness, then you will not be GENUINELY and AUTHENTICALLY willing to extend that blessing to others. But if you have at least forgiven yourself to SOME degree, you WILL be able to begin practicing miracles - literal miracles, and you WILL start to see results.

So go ahead and keep working on your purification and forgiveness, but practice also believing in God's power and believing that God DOES will healing an WILL heal. It all is unlocked when YOU decide to ACT like God would act and therefore align yourself with His will and step out with confidence. As you decide to act according to God's Law, enacting His truth and demonstrating His Flawless Reality, He and all of Heaven will rush in to SUPPORT you, help you perform the miracle, assist in healing, and will empower you.

These are steps of faith. You have to act as if you believe it will happen and that you will be backed up, and the backup will come. Because it is God's love that empowers all miracles and your willingness to love will bring them forth for others.

Gradually as you demonstrate God's power, not only for others but for yourself, you will learn by witnessing the effects of the truth, having shown them to yourself through the miracles you have performed. And this will inspire you and encourage you and teach you that what you believed in was really there, that God really does perform supernatural healing, that you truly CAN do this, and you ARE authorized to do it even if you're still working through your own illusions and beliefs in the ego. You gotta start somewhere.

If you truly believe in God's love, you will BELIEVE that He can heal, and you will allow the healing to move through and around you. If you don't believe in God's miraculous power, then you will not believe in miracles and you will not see miracles through your hands. It's as simple as that.

Learn to believe that God is supernatural, loving, generous and in divine health. Learn to believe He has not become sick or damaged and neither has anyone else. Learn to believe that you made sickness and death and can abolish them. And learn to believe that God's love will move even if you yourself don't yet FULLY believe in it.

You MUST believe in miracles if you are to believe in God!

*BELIEVE* AND IT WILL BE GIVEN YOU!

From lesson 48: "There is nothing to fear."

"The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength. The awareness that there is nothing to fear shows that somewhere in your mind, though not necessarily in a place you recognize as yet, you have remembered God, and let His strength take the place of your weakness. The instant you are willing to do this there is indeed nothing to fear."

You would think that trusting yourself and depending on you own strength more would make you somehow more confident. You’d think that if you can just be braver or more stoic or aggressive or assertive, maybe you can be unafraid. Or that if you come across as powerful, others will not intimidate you.

But there is a metaphysical basis for what happens here. When you trust your own *separate* strength, you are actually putting distance between yourself and strength. God is strength. Innocence is strength. Being separate is a belief in not being with God, and not being innocent. So as you move into separation and into "your own" separated self, you move away from the inherent nature of God’s creation, away from divine protection.

This makes you weaker, lacking, uncertain, filled with doubt, afraid of punishment for the sin of being separate, guilty for rejecting God’s help, and thoroughly limits what you can do. No-one can be separate from God and live.

Anyone who has struggled in life can probably tell you that when you are trying to do everything on your own, it sucks bad. Trying to overcome problems and deal with stress and manage everything and to be some kind of separate superhero, absent of God’s help, has its major limits. Trying to "go solo" is suicide.

The more you do it, the more you *seem* to become some kind of heroic savior, or successful achiever, or person of pride, or someone who has conquered the world. You come across on the surface as invincible. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more that you try to become the ego’s version of invincibility, the more you will become vulnerable, fragile, paranoid, empty, weak and sick. Being the hero of the dream is a trap. This is why heroes die.

True strength is only possible when you share with God. True resilience, invulnerability, power, confidence, certainty, immovability and permanence can only be found by allowing God to be the one who supplies your every need. Without God, you are without life. Without God, you are alone and you now have to defend yourself against an entire world you see as willing against you. Without God there is weakness and death. You cannot live without God.

So if you are afraid, it is a sure sign that you are depending too heavily on "your own" strength. It’s strange to think that you are feeling afraid because you are believing that you are powerful. Or that you are afraid because you think you are tough. Or you are afraid because you believe you can do anything and everything and don’t need any help. Or you are afraid because you see yourself as not needing any help. But this is precisely the backwards effects which the ego produces, pretending it is going to help you to be more distinctly separate, when all it does is hurt you more.

If you are afraid, it means you are not trusting God right now. It means you are listening to the ego and are fantasizing about how powerful you are. Trying to be powerful without God makes you powerless. To have power over others against their will strips you of your power and turns you into a vulnerable victim. If you are afraid, you need to let go of trying to do this all on your own. The more you try, the more you will fail. Seek and do not find.

It is not necessary to do everything on your own. Nor is it a matter of being a separate hero and having Holy Spirit back you up or having mighty companions to support you and surround you. I used to do that more, trying to retain my separate will and have Holy Spirit as a kind of servant to do my bidding and make my separate problems go away.

It’s more a matter of surrendering control of what you think is "your life", which you are trying to will independently of God, and give your life back to God. Make room for Him to help you. Let Him share it with you. Let Him solve the problems and carry the burden. Let Him look after others for you. Allow the freedom of not having to carry the whole world on your shoulders. It’s too big for anyone to do so in isolation.

Share your life with God and you gain the power of God. Paradoxically, allowing Him to live through you will allow you to live forever. Letting Him take over and direct you specifically, and being willing to listen and learn and do, to follow direction, will be far better for you than the outcomes you are trying to manipulate into being. Controlling your will and making it oppose God’s is not ever going to work in your favor.

God has a plan. God knows how to fix stuff. God knows what everyone needs, including you. Let Him lead the way and there will be no fear. Trust Him, and all your worries will vanish.

"To the extent to which you identify with the ego's self, you will identify with the ego's strategy, and so you will become afraid of the power of your mind."

Ask Jesus what to do! Learn to ask Him more than you ask yourself. So often I am considering what to do or not do, relying on my own self to know and be able ego decide. Jesus says, "ask!"

"Before you choose to do anything, ask me if your choice is in accord with mine. If you are sure that it is, there will be no fear."

"Against this sense of temporary existence, the Soul offers the knowledge of permanence and unshakeable BEING. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?"

"You look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death."

What God created is permanent. What you create is permanent. It has eternal life and exists forever, unchanging and unwavering. Nothing real can be threatened or changed, nor does it change, because reality is a constant state. It is permanently the same. Absolutely unchangeable, unassailable, unaffected.

You cannot change what is permanent. You cannot establish the truth. You cannot decide what is real. You cannot change God's mind. You cannot define what you are. You cannot change what you are. You cannot destroy anything real. You cannot truly be sick or die. You cannot leave Heaven. You cannot modify what God has created. And you cannot make yourself mortal.

BUT...... you can be in denial. You can be delusional. You can be trying to use belief to pretend to convince yourself that this isn't the case. You can TRY to effort to make what is permanent, impermanent. This is an attempt, by immortal beings, to pretend to be mortal.

In every way that you attempt to prove to yourself and others that you and they are not permanently as God created us, those are futile attempts to convince yourself that something else is true. That you are not permanent. Every time that you attack your body and make it sick, you are trying to prove that you can be hurt, even though it is literally impossible to hurt that which is permanent.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

Similarly death is an attempt to prove the permanent Son of God can be made impermanent and dead. It does not work. It has NO EFFECT on the Son of God. Death does not kill you. It does nothing. Therefore attempting to prove you can die, by committing suicide, by hurting and attacking yourself and your temporary illusory body, is clearly a demonstration of someone who is strongly trying to PROVE that they are NOT permanent.

The further someone goes towards having this amassed stockpile of "evidence" for why they are not permanent, the further they are in denial. This is why death itself is total denial. It's a total blind inability to accept the TOTAL futility of trying to die. Immortal beings, are trying to prove they can be dead. And the more they are delusional and believe in death's possibility, the more they bring about suffering and sickness and death in themselves and others.

Those who are saner, who are less in denial, and who do not believe in attack because they know that nothing real can be threatened so attack is pointless, automatically produce healing and demonstration of miraculous reversal of "sickness", the stockpile decreases and their demonstration of mortality diminishes and is reversed. Resurrection happens, which is nothing less than the demonstration and symbolic use of the body to show that you truly believe, and can prove, that you cannot die, because you have the POWER to do so.

Resurrection is a demonstration of acceptance of atonement, the sheer truth that what is permanent is STILL permanent, NOTHING has happened to change it, there IS no sin, there IS no attack, there IS no sickness or death, and therefore to PROVE beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are under NO laws but God's. That you are ARE permanent. The body then, in the hands of a sane person, is healed. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." And the body in the hands of someone accepting atonement is UNATTACKABLE. "It cannot be sick, nor can it die."

The body now TEACHES by EXAMPLE, symbolically, to those still dreaming, that the soul is permanent and the Son of God represents eternal life. The body becomes a symbol of eternal life and a breath of immortality in the dream, communicating to those grown sick of the fetid stench of death, that death is futile, pointless exercise, sickness is ridiculously unnecessary, and HEALTH is representative of living forever.

The Holy Spirit has now repurposed what you made, as something unattackable, to demonstrate you CANNOT BE attacked. That harm has never happened, and you are beyond all causes that could possibly ever make you or the body damaged. It is a supernatural demonstration of UNLIMITED POWER. It is truly miraculous. You become invulnerable (aware of your invulnerability) and you USE the body to symbolically demonstrate it to others.

To accept the atonement truly means the TOTAL unconditional acceptance of the total state of PERMANENCE of your reality. It means the complete surrendering and letting go of ALL things temporal or temporary, which includes the body and the world. It requires your transfer or rather, resumption, of Heaven, to resume recognition of your self as permanently Christ, and to remember the truth about you. This resuming or rather continuing of your uninterrupted creative extension, is an awakening, the only awakening, to the experience of eternal life, beyond the body and beyond the dream of death, beyond this world, not of this world, nor in it.

This total awareness of absolute permanence, dissolves the body and makes it IMPOSSIBLE to be in this temporal world. "Indeed, you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge." It restores the perfect knowledge that you are STILL perfect, nothing EVER happened, there IS no dream world, and bodies do not exist. It is not merely a compromise between staying in the dream and being awake, it is total immersion in reality, in God, in Heaven, where you have never stopped being permanently eternal. It is the awakening to the soul.

In this awakening, there is no remaining memory of even the dream or the world. It is gone. It never existed or happened. There is only the total unlimited experience of total immortality and permanent life. This requires nothing less than the absolute 100% unconditional willingness to will with God, to do His will, to share His mind, and to extend His being forever. In this awareness, there is no Earth, there is no dream, and there is no separation.

Nothing has happened. Only that which is permanent is true. Only that which lasts forever exists. Nothing real can be changed or threatened and never has been. Once you return to being an immortal being, you will realize, you ALWAYS HAVE BEEN and always will be, and now anything of fantasy dream worlds where people die will be complete unbelievable nonsense to you.

You are immortal. You are pretending not to be. When you are done pretending not to be, you will accept your immortality and return to Heaven.

"There is no death, the son of god is free."

The idea that the world is just a dream, may sound very simple. But to fully and completely embrace it is a very tall order. If the world is just a dream, it changes your ENTIRE relationship to everything, to all people and object and events and places. Every single happening is framed differently, every interaction has a different meaning, and every piece of physical matter is up for question.

To accept this idea intellectually is very easy. It makes a lot of sense. If you can see the logic behind it, that we made this world as an opposite to God, and is therefore not real, you can accept that as making sense.

But to live it, to deep dive into it, to apply it everywhere and at all times, to remember it in the midsts of all happenings, to use it in all relationships, and to completely uproot all previous beliefs is long term challenge.

For me, the seemingly logical and clear conclusion that the world is not real, has become so refined and polished that I can see nothing to contradict it. Like, it makes total sense on paper. However, I still have a vast repository of "other beliefs" which have been convinced otherwise over time.

Beliefs in bodies being real. Beliefs in being a body. Beliefs in other people being bodies. Beliefs in events happening. Beliefs in seriousness and importance. Beliefs in value and priorities and hierarchies of difficulty. Beliefs in justified reactions and ego emotions and normality and human nature. All of those things scream that the world is real.

So what I find is that although I understand it in theory, my mind and beliefs still are quite uncertain about this idea. I go towards it a little more only to find other beliefs springing up into awareness saying, "but what about....". And every SINGLE one of those beliefs is rooted in the belief that the world is reality. The basic opposite premise of the dream. Each one of them signals and testifies that this is not just a dream.

So the mind then finds itself pulled in two directions. One direction pulls toward the seemingly glowing new "idea" or light, that it's true the world is just a dream and nothing is happening and no-one has ever sinned. And the other direction pulls towards the old worn out darkness of nightmares and hell, that there is sin everywhere and no hope for salvation.

"Some of your greatest advances YOU have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats YOU have evaluated as success."

"If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching."

I will go towards the light of the truth, and the ego mind will go into doubt, which is fear. It will say, but what about this, and what about that.... there will be an uncertainty and a "not sure about this" and a "can this really be true?". There is a DIS-BELIEF.

"Ultimately, space is as meaningless as time. Both are merely beliefs. The real purpose of this world is to use it to correct your unbelief."

And the fact is that EVERY single opposition to the truth has to be uprooted and corrected and dispelled in order to have NO OBJECTIONS to accepting the atonement. If there is even a slight reason why you might not trust the truth, or suspect that it is false, or have a slight confusion about whether it is true or false, then you will not whole-heartedly accept the salvation it offers. Atonement can only be fully accepted through TOTAL willingness and certainty.

So I keep "naturally" checking and re-checking, looking at what the course says, reminding myself of its facts, re-considering the possibility that I might be mistaken about this new idea. I can't help but be "open minded" about the possibility that it is WRONG, because my ego already believes it is wrong and this pulls me into entertaining its possibility. And until I am wholly certain of its truth, which has to run VERY deeply and fully, this will keep happening.

"Until this distinction is made, however, the vacillations between free and imprisoned will cannot but continue."

These vacillations are to be expected for anyone who is attempting to awaken from the dream. If the world IS a dream and we have been believing it is NOT a dream, but a reality, then our entire way of believing and thinking and perceiving is going to have to go through a 180-degree transformation. Or as Jesus puts it, the upside-down thought system has to be turned right-side up, and that means nothing short of a complete reversal of your thought system and "world view".

Reversing your thought system WILL entail nothing less than realizing that everything you thought was what you did NOT want, you want. Everything you thought was evil, is good. Everything you thought was good, is evil. And all ego beliefs which claim a lie are actually claiming something else. It requires a tremendous sorting out of what is TRUE and what is FALSE, and in this endeavor you WILL be mistaken throughout the process. Which is why it requires a little willingness to consider the possibility that something else might be true, beyond what you currently believe.

I approach and I retreat. I get closer to accepting and then the ego fear pops up. I use the confusion as an opportunity to find more clarity, and then advance forward again. Each time becoming a little and more convinced, not just in theory but in practice, in direct experience, of the world's unreality. Because if what ACIM says is true, then "awareness of dreaming" and "the body is a dream" must become my new reality, before I can go home to God.

One thing is for sure, the road home to God is winding with spluttering false starts and lurches and gradual progress."I can but choose to wander off a while, and then return. Your loving Voice will always call me back, and guide my feet aright.""He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again."

"Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream"

"The Second Coming is merely the return of sense."