Being abused is not fun. Being punished or victimized or attacked is not fun. Being hurt by others, or by anything, is not fun. Being in pain and sickness is not fun. All forms of suffering suck bad.

Every episode of being hurt by the world always looks like you being victimized, against your will. You seeming not to choose it, not wanting it, and doing nothing to ask for it, yet alone deserving it. It always appears unsought and unfair.

When you look only at appearances, every abusive situation looks completely awful. Children being abused. Babies born with disabilities. Parents killed in a car crash. Someone being shot. Murder and rape and all manner of horrors.

However, when you read A Course in Miracles, we're told something which may not seem possible, yet alone true - that you are always doing this to yourself. Not matter who seems to be doing what to whom.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true."

(Urtext T27I10)

In all seemingly un-asked for scenarios of suffering, it always seems that the problem began with attack by another. You were apparently doing nothing and minding your own business. Then along came the horror out of nowhere. You seemed to not even remotely choose it. You did nothing on the physical level to ask for it or to make it happen. You are a genuine victim.

However, such attacks in fact begin long before they ever manifest. And to realize this will take a lot of willingness and healing. Just even getting past the misery could take a lifetime. But hiding behind every experience of punishment is a secret decision, which happened in your mind long before the punishment happened.

Everyone who has believed in separation from God, attacked themselves first. They believed in their own sin and guilt. They tried to crucify themselves. Long before any abuser came along. each of us was responsible for deciding that we deserve to suffer and be punished. We chose to insist on a willingness to allow ourselves to be hurt. We literally wanted to be hurt. Or even worse, to die, because the belief in sin demands death.

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

Having decided you are sinful - the original sin, for trying to attack God, you quickly believe you no longer deserve love. Or even to live. You believe you should suffer and die to atone through the ego. To pay the consequences for what you did. And NOW you start to seek out ways to suffer.

Deciding you should suffer, you now attract, choose, hire, coerce, opt for and want, various people, scenarios and problems to bring the penalty to you. You elect freely and seemingly unconsciously to incarnate into defective bodies, broken families, abusive relationships and all manner of tortures. You arrange it all.

As each form of suffering comes to you, as you asked, and looking solely at the physical way by which it happens, it gives no hint that you asked for it. Especially not that you want it. Each blow is enacted by another body. Each attack appears unasked for. Stuff goes wrong seemingly chaotically and at random. Then the world seems to decide it's your time to die. Sucks to be you.

Who would suspect that you asked for this? That you consented to death, no matter how it came? Who would see the secret wish to suffer hidden behind the face of innocence?

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and ***no one dies without his own consent***. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

No-one, not even the person suffering, thinks that they started all this. It always seems to begin outside of you, beyond your will. And then you can point fingers of blame and say, you abused me, you hit me, you hurt me, you punished me, you screwed up my life, you did this and I didn't choose it. Its all your fault.

And now the other is a scapegoat. Secretly someone you hired to hurt you on your behalf, they now take the blame for being the one who did it to you, so no-one notices the contract you signed. Ands so long as the projection of blame remains, it completely hides what you are doing to yourself. All power and responsibility is projected onto anyone except you.

You won't want to ever look at the fact you asked for this, so long as you don't see one key fact: You believed you deserved to suffer BEFORE you suffered. Before you were attacked, you attacked yourself. You believed it as soon as you left God. The denial of God was the denial of entitlement to forgiveness, happiness, health and life. You threw it all away and wanted life to suck.

And THEN you masterminded a lifestyle of awful things seeming to happen to you, inducing suffering while trying to achieve an illusion of redemption. You think if you suffer enough you'll pay off the debt. How much is enough? Only permanent suffering and death is an acceptable fee for your ego.

You chose everyone in your life. You hired them to not love you. You wanted to be sick. You wanted to be attacked, hurt and abused. Terrible lack of self love and respect happened before you brought a ton of bricks down upon yourself. You hated yourself.

Every hurt, every punishment, every abuse, every attack, IS in fact the working of your psyche to guarantee that you get what you think you desreve. It always appears that other agents are doing this to you, so that you can hide your death wish. But it is ALWAYS you that is deciding to orchestrate ALL forms of suffering. Your mind makes it happen.

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

(Urtext T27I10)

The ONLY WAY to be set free from ALL forms of suffering, is to recognize that in every case, the power of your decision begins the whole process. You decide you deserve to suffer, then you project abusers and punishers and prison guards, all of whome you hate and blame, in order to to hide how YOU feel about yourself.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves."

You can only suffer by choosing to. If you do not choose to, you CANNOT SUFFER OR DIE. Giving away your power to another to be the fall guy to disguise your self hate, is the only cause of ALL your problems. Choose to love yourself, and you will reclaim immortality.

All abusers, attackers, haters, hurters, punishers, terrorists, murderers and enemies must be forgiven. And to forgive them is a recognition that they were NEVER the starting point of any suffering. Spacetime began and ends with your decision. Nothing EVER happens without your consent.

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. ***I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die.*** I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concepts to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself."

"The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to ***change your mind about yourself***. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."

"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed ***from his own crucifixion***, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life."

Somewhat channeled just now... Thanks Holy Spirit.

Fear is a protection against guilt. It is put in place to hide guilt. If the guilt were to be revealed, it would condemn you and you would "find the guilt" i.e. "be found guilty."

We put fear into place because we do not want to deal with the guilt that has created the fear. Guilt always is the source of fear because Sin confirms something really happened, guilt confirms that what you did was wrong and you're to blame, and then because of that you can't help but be afraid of punishment in the future.

Anyone who has guilt will become afraid.

So we actually use fear to put a layer of protection and disguise on top of guilt, to cover it up. Then we dwell on how afraid we are. And we project the fear as well because we don't want to live with the fear either. We don't want to be "found fearful". So then we try to get rid of the fear too by projecting onto others and accusing them of causing it.

The whole point of that projected fear, then, is to reverse cause and effect, to make it seem like the cause of the underlying guilt is someone else, and not ourselves. When we do this we're throwing a decoy out there and trying to pin blame on it. IF we can blame someone else for causing our fear, i.e. if we can project responsibility for the fear onto someone else, then we can find them GUILTY. Its then their fault. They seem to be causing the fear. They seem to also be threatening to 'create' the punishment that you believe you deserve (because deep down you feel guilty).

So then having projected fear and blamed its cause on someone, covering up your secret plan to use it as a cover for guilt, you'll believe that they are the ones who are 'making you be afraid' - because by projecting you are completely "disowning" the fear and are trying to get rid of it. So if you can pull off this deception, even deceiving yourself, that someone else is causing this fear, then you've accomplished a tremendous switcharoo... a wonderful coverup story that prevents you from having to go back and look at the GUILT that caused all this fear in the first place.

Other people are not making you afraid. They are not turning you into fear. They are not attacking you or getting ready to punish you. But you'll still believe in punishment forthcoming while you cover up the guilt and don't heal it, because fearing that punishment (which HAS to come if you believe you are guilty) doesn't really get rid of the cause of the fear, and you still believe in guilt, and even though you're trying to make out that other people are the ones who are sinning against you, it STILL does not convince you that you are safe or innocent.

You'd rather be afraid than be guilty. Even though the fear is really about you becoming WORSE OFF than when you were 'just guilty', because now you are guilty AND afraid, the fear pretends to hide the guilt and make it 'unconscious', so that you seem to not be aware of it, so that you can pretend that you are ONLY having to deal with fear. And then of course you are ONLY having to deal with the idiots that you project the fear onto - its all about them, having disowned responsibility for the fear as well.

So even though fear sucks, and fear of punishment sucks, and being so afraid and so PROJECTING of fear that you believe you're actually WITNESSING the people show up who are there to come and punish you (for you, so that you can blame them ;-), you'd still rather be in fear and projecting of fear than be guilty.

You don't want to look at the fact that you CANNOT BE AFRAID unless you are guilty. Who can have anything to fear if they are innocent? Who, who believes they are not guilty, can possibly have a NEED for an ego device that *seems* to alleviate the guilt by covering it up and turning it into fear?

You also cannot be PUNISHED if you are not afraid. The only way you can find punishment is by projecting your fear onto other people, effectively recruiting them as your attackers to do your dirty work for you, WITH your will, pretending that it is against your will. If you are not afraid there is nothing to project, which means you will not READ INTO other people a suspicious frightening motive of bringing down GOD's WRATH of punishment for your sin.

Remember this all goes back to the underlying belief that you sinned by separating from God. That's what this is entirely all about. All the guilt is about that. All the fear that comes from the guilt is about that. All of the projection of fear is about that. And all of the punishment that you're sure will be forthcoming because of how guilty you are, is all about that. It's all about what you think God will and should do to you, which you are deciding FOR Him on His behalf - i.e. on your own. Which is a mistake.

So where are you on the scale of forgetfulness? Are you in the separation stage? Have you turned your experience into one of sin? Have you gone further and blamed yourself for the sin, demanding that you be responsible for it? Have you taken the guilt even further and realized that it means you must be punished, which induces fear? Are you in fear mode? Or have you taken fear and projected it onto others outside of you, describing all the ways that it is their fault that this whole thing is happening? No matter where you are on that scale, right now, you CAN get back to God's love by retracing your steps.

And that means, if you are terrified of punishment, you're pretty sure to be in a state of projected fear right now. You need to take back that projection so that you at least own the responsibility that the fear is yours, its in you, and you made it up. Then you need to rewind that more and ask yourself, WHY am I afraid? It ABSOLUTELY IS NOT because of any projected reason or outside person. Ever. Absolutely not. That's heading in the wrong direction TOWARD the ego. You need to turn around and go the other way, back the way you came. Back toward the Holy Spirit. Retrace... if I am afraid now, it's because I believe I SHOULD be afraid because I believe I AM GUILTY.

Under the fear is guilt. What is it you are so guilty of that it requires such a fear of terrible punishment? Why are you so fervently TRYING to orchestrate that punishment, bring it on, and make it happen, forcing it to occur, through the device of fear and fear's projection? Why do you deserve such a punishment? Did you sin? Did you do something wrong? Do you have a false BELIEF that says you're a guilty sucker and don't deserve FORGIVENESS? You always deserve forgiveness. Always. There is ALWAYS a way to return safely to God's welcoming love.

Retrace those steps. Go backwards. Undo the fear by undoing the guilt. Get out of the fear by recognizing you are NOT GUILTY and therefore have NOTHING to be afraid of. Recognize your innocence. Holy Spirit recognizes it for you while you pretend otherwise.

You are perfectly safe in God's love and He will not condemn you of the things that you think you are condemned for. You are certain that there is NO WAY you can be forgiven for what you did, and NO WAY that it can be TRUE that you are innocent and deserving of love. This is your mistake. This is what must be corrected. You MUST find a way to remember you are not guilty, or you will just keep feeling afraid.

You don't need to 'deal with' your punishing attackers. If you stop projecting your shit onto them you will not see them AS attackers and it won't be their fault you are afraid. You also don't need to really work on the fear, because if you get rid of the GUILT then the fear will automatically disappear completely. It has no foundation. And you don't even especially need to work on guilt because if you have NOT DONE ANYTHING WRONG, you have not sinned, and you have not separated from God, then there isn't any call for guilt and you are perfectly innocent.

Choose again. You are not stuck and you are not being victimized by anything but your own certainty that you deserve it. Choose again. You are worthwhile and lovable and deserve complete forgiveness.

God loves you still. There is a way to be free of this whole nightmare. Choose in the DIRECTION of the Holy Spirit and your way will be made straight.

When Jesus says that nothing can happen without our consent, and that nobody can die without their own consent, what he's saying seems pretty extreme.

We are so used to living in such a way that we constantly believe things happen by accident, or that something can "go wrong", or that there is unfairness and injustice, or that victims have nothing to do with asking to be victimized, or that war is a haphazard chaos.

Yes these are very common perceptions and this is what we're up against, these beliefs and ways of perceiving which fall for all kinds of illusions and trickery. On the surface it definitely appears that all of these things are true, that nobody wants to be victimized, that bad stuff just happens, that things go wrong, and that we don't want to die.

But that's the challenge, you see. That's the spiritual challenge, because what many do not know is that this entire world is a big trick, a set up, orchestrated by those to whom nothing happens by mistake, and who have such power of creation that if they so choose it, it will happen, and nothing else will happen. I know this sounds like some kind of 'God' pulling the strings. But in truth you are God-like.

So all these beliefs about having not chosen, about not having freedom, about being affected, about stuff happening that we don't want, and about the horrible idea that death is just going to happen to you against your will, ALL of these have to be questioned and undone completely. Because they are all false. They are all lies, that everyone is falling for 24/7. Yet as Jesus says in ACIM, you made sickness and death and you can abolish both.

This is why A Course in Miracles is so radical. The Truth flies in the face of how everything appears in this world. It goes against how everything is set up and how everything was deliberately designed to look like it proved we did not choose this. This entire world is a cover-up in which the Son of God is pretending to hide from a made-up enemy, and He very much is responsible for animating every single character and event in this dream regardless of whether He appears to suffer at His own hand.

Attempting to 'wake up' from the illusion of this world does not seem to be easy. It's a huge mind-fuck. As the Course says, we do not escape this illusion through death, but by TRUTH. Only the real Truth can set you free. And as a certain movie says, "you can't handle the truth".

Well, you can handle it... when you're ready to accept it. Because it's a pretty huge Truth that is not at all like what this world seems to suggest is true. And to go there, to be open to it, seems like a huge journey somewhat 'against' the world. But everyone is making this journey, and sooner or later everyone will come to realize what the Truth really is, and this entire universe will disappear.

Often when I'm in the middle of some kind of upset, or a pain, or a sickness, or a struggle with someone or whatever, Jesus or Holy Spirit will simply say "its a lesson".

When they say this, they aren't saying "its a punishment", even though that's what I'm interpreting it as - some kind of unfair treatment. By saying its a lesson, it lets me know I have something to learn.

But it also lets me know, that this isn't something that they're trying to hide from me. They're not being assholes and concealing the answer to the lesson. It's totally available, and I'm aware somehow that the only reason I'm having the lesson is because *I* need to change in some way. There's something about my perception that is faulty, or something is unforgiven, or some healing is needed.

At the same time, I get this feeling like, there is a prize... a gift... there's something valuable that is 'mine' but its hidden from me, like a buried treasure or something. I can have it, and there's nothing stopping me from having it, other than that I need to learn the lesson. It's not a lesson in punishment or how I need to suffer. So then this makes it feel more like a challenge.

Also knowing it's a lesson helps me to not see it as 'against me' or 'unwanted' like I was before. If its just a lesson then things are happening for a reason, and there's just something I don't accept or don't realize/recognize yet. This sort of makes it almost an exciting challenge to find out what it is that I'm not 'getting' yet. This then sends me on a journey of discovery to look within and investigate what's really going on here. It's a call to do some radical honesty and inquire within.

And actually it's not like Jesus or Holy Spirit are mean school teachers who put up walls or reprimand you or anything. They are actually willing to HELP, with the lesson. But it entails a certain amount of willingness on my part. I can even ask them for guidance and they can provide some.. sort of like clues... because they don't often just outright reveal the 'answer' or solution or truth. But they're there to help as much as I'm willing to learn. Ultimately, how quickly I learn the lesson is up to me.

See we each have our own curriculum and like ACIM says, we get to decide when to learn - ie we can delay or be willing - but we don't necessarily set what the curriculum contains. And usually when lessons come along they are always unwanted at first. That's why they happen, lol. But they're there to help. They're nudges toward God. So if something seems to have gone wrong I need to become willing to at least accept that this is trying to help me somehow, and that I need to open up to something because I've made some mistakes. I need to learn the lesson. It's not there to torture me but to free me. My mighty companions just want the best for me.

Thanks Jesus/Holy Spirit.

"Dreams show you that you HAVE the power to make a world as you would have it, and that, BECAUSE you want it, you SEE it. And WHILE you see it, you do NOT doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world, clearly WITHIN your mind, that SEEMS to be outside. You do NOT respond to it as though you made it, nor do you realize that the emotions which the dream produces MUST come from you."

The key part here is, "a world, clearly WITHIN your mind, that SEEMS to be outside. You do not respond to it as though you made it."

So Jesus is saying, both at night and in the waking world, you are dreaming, and you MAKE A WORLD. Your mind has the power to make an ENTIRE environment. AND THEN... you pretend that you didn't make it!

You do not respond to it as if you made it. You see it as separate from you. You DISASSOCIATE yourself from it, and pretend to be a little figure in the dream, just one body among a vast landscape, and pretend that you have control over only this one PART, and NOT the whole thing.

Yet who makes the worlds that show up when you dream at night? Who puts the buildings and the people into the dream? YOU DO. Yet in your dream you pretend and convince yourself that you are nothing but a little figure going about your business in some world that was "there on its own".

Think about it.

This world is the same. This physical world, planet Earth. IT IS ALSO A DREAM WORLD THAT YOU ARE MAKING UP WITH YOUR MIND.

AND YOU ARE ALSO HAVING DISASSOCIATION FROM IT.

AND YOU ARE ALSO PRETENDING NOT TO BE THE ONE WHO PUTS IT THERE.

AND YOU ARE ALSO PRETENDING TO BE A LITTLE BODY AMONG MANY THINGS SO THAT IT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE YOU HAVE ANY CONTROL OVER THE REST.

It's exactly the same dynamic in waking and nighttime dreams. You are dreaming of planet Earth. You are making up environments and people and events. AND THEN you are pretending to HIDE in your OWN DREAM, to pull off a stunt of making it look like you're JUST this one little part of it.

THAT IS A HUGE DECEPTION. It is the illusion.

You MADE THIS WORLD. God did not create it. You are dreaming of the entire universe. And without you dreaming of cars and houses and mountains and forests, THEY WOULD NOT EXIST.

To not OWN that, is DISASSOCIATION. It is the belief that what's OUTSIDE of you is NOT WHAT YOU PUT THERE. That it is not PART OF YOU. Or it is not yours.

That is the VAST LIE that we are telling ourselves here, in bodies. We're huge, vast, universe-sized beings of light and power, who are manifesting WORLDS, and pretending to be tiny little insects running around on the surface suffering against our will. UTTER BULLSHIT LIE.

YOU made the Earth. Not God.

"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."

Intellect here is being basically equate with the ego thought system. Intellect is a device that separates and analyzes. It looks at things and separates them off and compares them. It judges them and evaluates them. This splitting apart is an emphasis on separation and increases the send of fragmentation of things. Things can become extremely complicated in the intellect.

As such, since the physical world is made from the idea of separation and the intellect similarly fosters perceptions of separation, the intellect can be said to be responsible for making the world. ie the ego mind of separation reinforces ideas of differences and contrasts and directly leads to physical matter showing up.

Jesus congrats this against real thinking, ie the thoughts you think with God, thoughts of love and creation, which are extensions of God's mind. Those create wholeness and spirit and eternal life because they are not based on separation. It's a way of thinking that doesn't dissect or analyse or judge or evaluate. It's a thought process that looks out from a loving whole state of mind and creates more of the same - the good, the beautiful and the holy. This extends the Kingdom of God (heaven).

"Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful, and the holy. Do not lose sight of this."

You might notice also that when you move away from love and the present moment, the mind creates a sense of separateness from "what is" and moves into a kind of more fictional, theoretical, conceptualizing state. This produce a sort of "shift upwards" in the mind, or what we might call moving thought up into the intellect. In the intellect everything becomes theoretical and non-practical, or is a lack of application because it's a lack of real engagement and sharing. It could be thought of as a way of shutting down and separating off by trying to hide from immediate reality, going into fantasies and sidetracks.

"Intellect may be a "displacement upward"

The intellect can be somewhat useful perhaps for assessing things in this world and sorting out what to do and so on, but only as a temporary tool. It's easy to become lost in it and to be so involved in intellectualizing that your whole experiences becomes one big theory and not a whole lot of relationship. Then you can be sort of living in a cloud of "course thought" masquerading as "doing the course" but only really being good at talking bout it, around it, and indirectly referring to it. The truth has to be lived, and that means eventually the intellect will be transcended and used no more.

You may believe that you need to get love from someone important. Maybe a spouse or a friend or a child or parent.

But this love that you think you need from them, is a substitute for the love of God.

Your attempt to need or depend on their love is a way for you to claim that you need to get love from outside of yourself, because you lack it, because God doesn't love you.

You'll be upset about how your need for love is not fulfilled by others, and why they are supposed to fulfill it, and why you feel so lost and empty because of their failure to do so.

But this so-called "need" that you have, is really your own belief and assertion that you're not lovable, an attempt to avoid being loved by God, and a way to hide from love.

The external seeking for that love when then look like a really deep desire to be loved and to want love, but it's really in truth a cover-up for an attempt to not want love to be inside of you.

So long as someone else is tasked with providing love for you, and so long as you keep them in that role, you are in denial and are trying to stop yourself from being actually loved.

You do not need other people to love you. You do not need to get special love from them.

Your "need" is a belief in, a choice for, and attempt to bring about, a lack of love, because it's part of your ego's defense against God. For it to then seem to yearn for love externally is a fake motivation, a cover-up story, to pretend to desire love very strongly, as a way to always move away from where love really is.

This so-called "need" for love is a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that as soon as it's put into place, it stops love from being present. It's an avoidance of love, and an assertion that love does not exist. To then proceed to seek for love based on this is to guarantee you will not find it. "Seek and do not find" is your ego's primary mandate.

The only way you are going to experience love is to let all those people off the hook, to stop expecting or needing them to be the ones to love you, to recognize they themselves need love because they are resisting God, and that you need to get your love directly from God within. And the only way to do that is not to fulfill your need for love, but to get rid of your neediness because it's actually what's blocking you from love's presence.

You need to instead open up to accept and allow God to love you directly, to receive it, to experience it, to let it be true, and to be filled up with it from the inside. It means dropping your belief that you can't be loved or that it's someone else's job to do so. You need to learn to love yourself, and in so doing, allow God to love you also.

It's God's love that you really want. It's God's love that is the only real love, anyway.

Whatever you are experiencing, comes from whatever mindset you have. Either you're in the ego mindset and thus experiencing a physical world of bodies, or you're in the Holy Spirit's mindset and on the spiritual level.

Thoughts/attitudes/beliefs/truth on the Holy Spirits level is completely incompatible with the ego's level. Never the two shall meet. So the ego is really confined inside its bubble of private insanity.

Within the ego's bubble, it starts to believe it can ACCESS and thus experience, what it is like in the Holy Spirit's world. It actually wants to do this because it wants to become more powerful, to have more domination and control, and to wield what would seem to be the kind of 'special' powers that Holy Spirit apparently has access to.

Except the ego has a problem. It cannot leave its mindset. It can't *actually* get into the Holy Spirit's mind. So it pretends that it can. And as always, it uses separation to do this (the same old story, separate in the name of joining).

The ego takes its own mindset and separates it even further, dividing it into 'good' and 'bad' parts. All still within the ego thought system. So now it labels some parts of itself/the world as good and some parts as bad. It sort of creates the illusion that it can 'borrow' some goodness from the bad stuff and attribute it to the good stuff, to make the good stuff seem extra special and sparkly and important and valuable. And of course that means taking some of the 'bad' that you'd find in this stuff and attributing it to the 'bad stuff' so that it seems extra bad - a repository for nasty dark judgements and hate and so on.

This creates the persona - the spiritualizing portion of the ego mind which tries to focus only on the 'good' interpretion of the world, and simultaneously creates the 'shadow', which is whats left of all the stuff that is 'not good'. For something to seem good, something else HAS to seem bad. To have special love there has to be special hate. To idol worship there has to be 'the enemy' who clearly do not get what's so special about the idol. And to have all the 'spiritual behavior' you must relegate 'unspiritual behavior' to the shadow. You try to hide everything bad IN the shadow, AS the shadow, and you then try to get RID OF the shadow. Tuck it away, hide it, destroy it. And then guess what happens?

The shadow part of the ego mind, the bad stuff, now takes the symbolic form of all of the enemies, attackers, victimizers, causes of sickness and so on. The 'goodies two shoes' part is the facade of special love and special appearances which 'saves face' and makes it seem like you are MORE spiritual ie more SPECIAL than you are. ie, if you sweep all of the sins under the carpet it LOOKS LIKE you're more innocent than you are. The ego's use of the persona is what gives extra weight to the idea that your persona is valuable, important, special, wanted, loveable (in an ego way), desirable, innocent (ego innocence) etc. And so the 'good ego mind' and the 'bad ego mind' are now AT WAR. Reinforcing the good reinforces the bad because it's like a seesaw - you take less load off the good end to make it seem 'lighter', the bad end gets badder and 'heavier/darker'.

So this ego attempt to divide itself and be at war with itself, which creates the persona and the shadow in conflict with each other (e.g. person who everyone always thought was 'good' gets unfairly attacked or sick etc), allows the ego to lend special meaning to some parts of its mindset - a glow of specialness - sacredness - holiness - spirituality. Not genuine holiness or genuine spirituality, but a fake APPEARANCE of it. A facade. This can take the form of huge sacrifices or changes in behavior, level confusion, trying to be good, trying to not be bad, trying to ATTAIN very lofty levels of 'spiritual advancement and capabilities' that make it look like you're very advanced and special.

Since the ego cannot leave its own mindset and cannot actually become spiritual, it just fakes it. It pretends it is spiritual. And it fools itself. And this is what YOU do. This is what I do. This is where we TRY to attain experiences and mindsets which are OUTSIDE of what THIS mindset (our current ego mindset) can achieve. Our ego mind tries to 'be spiritual', while KEEPING the ego mindset. This is because the ego wants to live in two minds. It wants to take the ego self TO the Holy Spirit and to KEEP it and to at the same time TAKE ON the Holy Spirit's power. Obviously this cannot be achieved because the Holy Spirit's mind completely dispels the duality that the ego is based on, and completely undoes it. But that doesn't stop our ego from trying!

So whenever you are KEEPING the ego mindset and are trying to INCLUDE spiritual mindsets in some way, you are spiritualizing.

Whenever you try to express, quote, espouse, affirm or act is if you are being or accessing spiritual truths which are WAY higher than the ego's mindset, and you cannot actually ACCESS and experience the level of mind where those truths can be EXPERIENCED, then you are spiritualizing.

So let's see... course quotes and concepts... for example the idea of oneness. You could say to someone like, "it doesnt matter because we are all one". Bullshit. This isn't an EXPERIENCE of the truth of that statement. You can only experience that at a level ABOVE the holy spirit in the mind of HEAVEN. That's the only place where this truth is experiential. Remember, truth is what you can experience. If you cannot experience it, you're kidding yourself every time you make statements about it AS IF you are living it.

Or how about even saying, "I am immortal spirit"... well.. not as an ego you're not. Who is saying you are immortal spirit? It's the ego. You can only BE immortal spirit when you have completely let go of the entire ego mindset. So this information is just... information from another world, from another dimension, another state of mind. Thus it has no PRACTICAL USE for you here, on the ego level, because you cannot EXPERIENCE it here. So it remains lofty. It remains a concept. And then if you spend time just regurgitating the concept, stating it, quoting it, because it 'sounds spiritual', then you are spiritualizing.

You're taking very high truths from very high levels of mind, which require AT LEAST a total atunement to Holy Spirit's mindset AND a total relinquishment of the ego's way of experiencing, and are trying to bring them INTO the ego's mindset. This is spiritualizing. Adding spiritual value to a valueless system. Borrowing spiritual truth from a level of mind that is beyond where you are at. That's faking it. That's spiritualizing your ego. And what happens then is that the best you can do is quote these things and say them and affirm them as if doing so is EXPERIENCING them when in fact you cannot experience them yet, and so they remain MENTAL, and that makes them INTELLECTUAL. Thus you end up intellectualizing the course's truths, you intellectualize higher levels of reality and you pretend that doing so means you are experiencing them here and now. You're not. The ego is deceiving you and trying to be special. And this makes these truths BECOME nothing more than specialness. And then you end up sounding like a bliss ninny, lol

Anyway. I'm sort of expressing this as it's coming to me.

You need to be realistic about the level that you're on, what mind you are IN, the scope of that mind, what is OUTSIDE that mind, what you can actually EXPERIENCE right now, and stop hitting yourself over the head with these lofty spiritualizing ego-inflating truths which you can't even experience yet. You need to focus only on the truths which you can PRACTICALLY APPLY, ie BE EXPERIENCED, to help you to transition your EXPERIENCE from what you are experiencing now in the ego mind to what Holy Spirit will allow you to experience in his mind. If it does not involve your experience, and if it is not practical and you can't actually USE it to change your experience, it is intellectual ego noise trying to spiritualize itself.

I know that I have done this over any over again, believing that if I could just say the correct thing or think the correct thought or understand the correct concept or say it in a special way, that meant that I am BEING IT. I believed that my intellect had the capability of experiencing the truth. Hah. It doesn't. The intellect is only activated when you are not able to LIVE the truth, but are trying to incorporate it into your experience, so you can inject it into your THOUGHTS, which are fantasies, and you can pretend you are living it, but really you are not. If it's stuck in your mind and isn't in your heart or in your feeling or in your actual direct experience of 'reality', then it's not really your truth right now. And if you accumulate a lot of that 'information', no matter how spiritual it is or how lofty the metaphysics, if you are not EXPERIENCING it, then you are spiritualizing your ego. This is what I have done over and over again.

All you are capable of is letting go of the ego mind and the way of experiencing that that mind gives you, and transitioning your experience of reality to the holy spirit's mind where you can experience HIS level of truth fully. Where you can LIVE IT. A course in miracles is all about LIVING the truth and PRACTICING it and PRACTICALLY EXPERIENCING it. The rest is just ego noise.

There is a reason why the Holy Spirit is invisible to the body's eyes. There is a reason why Heaven is invisible to the body's eyes. There is a reason why Christ is invisible to the body's eyes. The body's eyes CANNOT SEE REALITY and they never will. That which is invisible "to the Earth" is real. What has "become" visible - this planet, is FAKE VISIBILITY. It is a block to sight, crammed in front of your face so that you will be distracted by illusions and NOT SEE. The time will come when all things VISIBLE will end. That includes this planet. Christ Vision is how you see the invisible, which MUST ENTAIL no longer seeing that which you THOUGHT was visible, which is in fact non-existent.

"When you made what is NOT true visible, what is true became invisible. But it cannot be invisible in ITSELF, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity."

"What witness to the wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? He is INVISIBLE in such a world. Nor can his song of union and of joy be heard at all. Yet is it given him to make the world recede before his song, and sight of him REPLACE the body's eyes."

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know this star is there. "

"How can man "come close" to others through the parts of him which are really invisible? The word "invisible" means "cannot be seen or perceived."

"By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear."

"Judge not what is invisible to you, or you will NEVER see it. But wait in patience for its coming. "

"What love would look upon is meaningless to fear, and quite invisible."

"For, in the NEW perception, the mind CORRECTS it when it SEEMS to be seen, and it becomes invisible."

"These might be called the Teachers of teachers because, although they are no longer visible, their image can yet be called upon."

"For the little spark that holds the Great Rays within it, is ALSO visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness."

"But the time will come when all things visible will have an end. The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen"

"Here is what is really here made visible, while all the shadows which appeared to hide it sink to obscurity."

"Nor will what you saw before be even faintly visible to you. Today we are trying to use the new kind of projection."

Denial has two applications. Either to deny reality, or to deny unreality. The ego uses it to deny God. You as a miracle worker are to USE DENIAL to deny anything NOT of God any power to do anything.

Miracle-working therefore entails DENYING that what is not of God exists at all. This strips it of all reality and power. You must withdraw all the power you GAVE it. You must not beleive in it. You must cancel its whole existence. What is not of God simply is not possible, and the illusion that it is possible can be undone by denying it any reality. To recognize illusions as nothing makes them disappear.

We are therefore asked to REJECT things which are not of God. To deny and reject sickness, suffering, and death. Not to pretend they aren't there, which is really a hidden belief in support of them. But to properly deny them. They are themselves denials of God, because sickness is the ego's religion of denying God.

To deny the world of illusions is to remain in strength and to not allow anything of the world to intrude upon you or another. Deny that your brother is a body. Deny that sickness is possible. Deny death can ever exist. Deny that "its true" that your brother has problems or is imperfect.

Denial couples with acceptance. To deny what is not real is to accept what is real. Just as to deny reality is to accept illusions into your mind. Whatever you DON'T deny, you accept and allow to remain. Acceptance is supportive. Denial is not. Using a "lack of support" AGAINST weakness and suffering and death, cancels it out, just as two negatives make a positive.

"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH."

"To deny the denial of perfection is not so difficult as the denial of truth."

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

"THIS peace is totally incapable of being shaken by human errors of any kind. It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way. This is the PROPER use of denial. It is not used to HIDE anything, but it IS used to correct error."

"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."

"Teach no-one he has hurt you, for, if you do, you teach YOURSELF that what is NOT of God, HAS POWER OVER YOU."

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS."

"Do not ALLOW him to belittle himself in YOUR mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and escape from YOURS."

"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."