The Holy Spirit proves the ANSWER. Your function is to listen and accept his answer.

The Holy Spirit provides the HEALING. Your function is to RECEIVE AND EXTEND it. To let yourself be an instrument of healing which he can use to heal others.

The Holy Spirit provides the DECISIONS. Your function is to let him decide for you. He decides on God’s behalf, on your behalf.

The Holy Spirit provides the GUIDANCE and instruction. Your function is to listen, learn and carry out the instructions.

The Holy Spirit provides the THERAPY. Your function is to let yourself be comforted and transformed and corrected.

The Holy Spirit provides the SOLUTION to all your problems. Your function is to offer up your problems to him and allow him to correct the problems for you. He can undo all the consequences of your wrong decisions if you will let him, including physical symptoms.

The Holy Spirit provides the JUDGEMENT. He knows what everything is and how to judge it correctly and without condemnation. Your function is to judge LIKE him and accept HIS judgement as your own.

The Holy Spirit provides the EDUCATION. Your function is to listen and learn and be taught. That means being willing to admit to be mistaken and to change your beliefs.

The Holy Spirit provides TOTAL KNOWLEDGE. Your function is to trust that he knows everything and have faith in his word. You do not need to know.

The Holy Spirit provides the HELP from God. Your function is to ask for help and let yourself BE helped. You do not need to understand how you will be helped.

The Holy Spirit provides the COMFORT AND SAFETY. Your function is to allow yourself to be comforted and to open to trusting him so that he can help you to feel safe. He will smooth your way and clear obstacles from your path.

The Holy Spirit provides a HAPPY DREAM. Your function is to open to this dream and share it with him and others. This includes the perfect functioning of the body.

The Holy Spirit provides a HEALED BODY. Your function is to let him use your body for healing so that it can depict healing. He can undo all forms of suffering, sickness and death.

The Holy Spirit provides the POWER OF GOD. Your function is to allow him to express God’s power through you, for you and for others. There is nothing his power cannot do.

The Holy Spirit provides the MIRACLES. Your function is to share his function and trust him to perform those miracles through you and for you. You do not need to understand what miracles are or how they work.

The Holy Spirit exercises the WILL OF GOD. Your function is to have a little willingness to carry out God’s will and allow God’s will to be done through you by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit brings the LIGHT of God. Your function is to receive and give the light of God which has been given to you through sharing. You do not need to have your own light, you just extend it.

The Holy Spirit FORGIVES YOU. Your function is to let yourself be forgiven and share in his forgiveness, forgiving LIKE him. He knows how to forgive, you do not.

The Holy Spirit is like the perfect teacher. Your function here is to be the perfect student. He is here to help, to fill your needs, to guide you, teach you, heal you, and bring you home.

Your function is to FOLLOW his lead and DO as you are told, and willingly. He will direct you, he will organize people for you to meet, he will speak through you, he will heal through you. You will be told very specifically what to do so that HE can fulfill his function. And he will never leave you.

"Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return."

Recognize in this passage, further confirmation that when the mind is healed, the body CANNOT BE SICK.

Elsewhere Jesus tells us that sickness is merely another form of guilt. If a guiltless mind cannot suffer, it is because without guilt, there cannot be sickness.

Jesus tells us "sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return." ... telling us that it is literally IMPOSSIBLE for sickness to remain or come back, because without guilt, it is impossible. Sickness is MADE OF guilt. It is a thought of sinfulness.

Sickness does mean separation from God. Separation from God does include the mental belief in separation, AND it includes the physical universe and the physical body. All of the content of the ego’s dream of separation is part of "sickness". All of it is governed by this same irrefutable law that when mind is healed, the sickness cannot stay.

This applies to all levels and forms. And it is because of this, that the entire physical universe WILL DISAPPEAR when the entire sonship relinquishes the last ounces of guilt and sin. This is also why when the body is finally recognized as an idea of sin ("the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards"), it too will DISAPPEAR - not die. The dream is left by truth, not death.

This does NOT mean that the mind transcends sickness and the sickness remains, with the mind being all happy and peaceful "in spite of sickness". A broken body PROVES the mind has not been healed, and a healed mind shows it’s PROOF of healing by demonstrating a body free of sickness.

While sickness remains in the body, we are accusing our brothers and the whole world of attacking and causing us to suffer. We are being victims, defending against truth, and are in denial of awakening. We also put sickness into the body in order to PROVE that we can be hurt. Why would we do that, if we are at peace and awake? We not only would not, we could not.

It is easy to say that sick bodies and healthy bodies are all the same. However, this is the experience of the final atonement of the entire sonship, and if it is not being experienced, it remains a concept. To experience your own body with a HOLY mind, causing the body to be free of sickness, is the first step in "personal atonement".

To undo and disappear the body is a major accomplishment. But until ALL BODIES ARE HEALED because ALL MINDS ARE HEALED, only then when *everyone is experiencing holiness* does it matter that all bodies are the same illusion. Only then, as the entire sonship wakes in union, is it experientially true that all bodies are the same illusion, and at that point, there CANNOT BE ANY SICK BODIES.

No one dies without their own consent. No one is sick without their own consent. The secret salvation is that you do it all to yourself. You choose it. Somewhere, somehow, you choose it. Consent to suffer is not awakening. Consent to be sick and die is not peace. If people do not wish to continue to suffer, they must CHOOSE AGAIN. And they have the power to do so.

Everyone has the power to undo ALL of the suffering of the world. Otherwise, how will you be the light and salvation of the world if you are half dead or worse? Suffering is optional, provided you want the conditions that accompany health. Healed mind, healed body.

"Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time."

Space and time are OPPOSITE to the nature of Heaven. Heaven experiences omnipresence, which means everything is everywhere simultaneously. God is omnipresent, his children are omnipresent, angels are omnipresent etc.

Similarly, time is the opposite of eternity. Eternity means reality is a constant state and nothing changes. What was true before, is true now, and will always be true. Eternity means always, and so is eternal life forever. Time on the other hand is the idea that NOTHING IS EVER THE SAME, that change is normal and natural, and that what was before has died and has been replaced with something unlike it, and so NOTHING EXISTS PERMANENTLY.

Space, and time, are an ATTACK on God and an attack on Heaven’s nature.

Everything WITHIN spacetime, is also an attack on God, and is opposed to his nature. This includes planet Earth. Earth utterly DEPENDS on space and time to exist. Earth takes up space. It changes over time. The part of Earth you call the United States is spatially separated from the part called Russia, and the part called Australia. They are kept apart and do not share. They do not occupy the same space. They utterly depend on SPACE in order to BE what they are.

If there was no spacetime, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to have a three dimensional planet. An object, of any kind, including bodies, would be impossible. Objects REQUIRE space. If there is no space, there CANNOT BE A PLANET EARTH. Space is that which keeps things separated out and taking up volume. Without spacetime, THERE IS NO WORLD.

Since spacetime is OPPOSITE to Heaven and fights against omnipresence and eternity, opposed to it in every way, Heaven and Earth CANNOT coexist. They cannot be merged. Spacetime cannot coexist with omnipresence. "Everywhere" MUST collapse "somewhere". Place and time are illusions. Whether its a planet, or a mug of coffee, without spacetime they cannot exist at all. When omnipresence is here, when Heaven is here, SPACE IS OBLITERATED.

Spacetime is nothing but the belief in separation. It is the belief in an opposite to Heaven. When this belief is NO LONGER BELIEVED, and all faith is placed in Heaven only, and you are SEEING Heaven ONLY, not Earth, spacetime will disappear, and every single physical object will vanish. All bodies will vanish. They are NOTHING. Spacetime is the EGO! When it goes, the world goes with it.

In Heaven, there is no Earth. There is no world. There is no form. There are no bodies. There are no streets, buildings, or artificial lights. There is no day and night. No sun. No Earth. They cannot exist without space and THERE IS NO SPACE IN HEAVEN. It has all disappeared in light. Only the creations of light are real. Only God’s LIVING WORLD OF LIGHT is real. The world you made, spacetime, and all its contents, IS NOT REAL. This is why there is no world and God did not create the Earth. Nor did he create space or time. They are your false beliefs. And they will end, because they never really happened.

"Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary."

"To know is to be certain. Uncertainty merely means that you DON'T know. Knowledge is power BECAUSE it is certain, and certainty is strength. Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love. Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge."

Cause produces effects. This is God's permanent law, without exception. It applies everywhere always. There is a secret to performing miracles based on this, resulting in the undoing of effects. This is directly tied into the Atonement and The Miracle.

"the word "atone" really means "undo." (remove illusory effects)

"The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo (removes effects). And thus it cancels out (by not causing) the interference (effects) to what has been done (caused in reality). It does not add, but merely takes away (removes effects)."

I have experienced several times the instant vanishing of symptoms when causation was removed. This takes place at the level of the mind and the mind's belief in causes. As I stripped away belief in who or what caused this, the entire symptom literally disappeared in a split second.

Nothing happens without causation. Effects can only appear when there is a cause. This includes the **belief** in there being a cause, even if the cause is made up in dreaming. When the cause stops causing, or is undone, the effects immediately disappear. Causation is like a broadcast, emitting consequences, effects, symptoms and results. Effects come from it.

Just as God is first cause, He MUST create effects. His effects are His Kingdom of Creation, including the Sonship. Because God is permanently causal, and true cause means creation, His creations have eternal life and always exist. True causality creates permanent, living beings. You did not cause God (which would be sin, authority problem, level confusion), God caused you.

"I am forever an effect of God."

There is also what we call "making", which is also a form of causality. It causes destructive illusions instead of creative reality. It is a made-up BELIEF in a cause, as an attempted cause, in the mind. It's a made-up cause that we believe is real, and which in turn produces made-up effects which we believe are real. Just because it is made-up doesn't mean it does not DO something.

A **belief** in a cause isn't a real cause, or of God. So what it produces is not a real effect, but is an effect nonetheless. Artificial causes produce artificial effects. But they DO produce these effects, which includes symptoms of sickness in the body, and ultimately the body itself.

"The body cannot remain without illusions (illusory causes)."

When the mind believes there is a cause, it MUST include the belief that there are effects. The mind thus believes in BOTH. They are made together, and are undone together. Effects cannot remain without a cause of some kind. When you switch off the broadcast projector, there is no more making of images. Both the broadcaster and the broadcast disappear.

It would be easy for us to switch on and off causes and effects at will. This always takes place in our minds. The problem is that we keep disassociating from the part of our mind that is causing or believing in causes, and project the ownership of the causation onto external things - anything other than our own mind.

So if we think a person is causing us to be upset, we're in false perception. We see cause as separate from and outside of our own mind. Yet this BELIEF in cause, is INSIDE our mind because "ideas leave not their source."

We are confused in thinking that someone else is causing our upset. But the IDEA of "someone is causing me to be upset" is our own mind's idea, which projects, resulting in a false perception. And this idea IS STILL CAUSAL. By believing, "I am being caused", we literally are CAUSING ourselves, and our mind DOES produce effects within us, from it. And this is actually part of the belief that we are creating ourselves, the result of a split mind.

It is not possible to believe in a cause, WITHOUT the belief itself having an effect. Even if the visualized cause seems to be mapped onto some other person, it is STILL a "belief in cause" in our mind, and this gives it power. If our mind is generating, picturing, imagining, "there is a cause", it WILL and MUST also picture, generate and imagine an effect to correspond to it. And usually the severity of the effect lines up with where the cause falls in the hierarchy of illusions.

This now means that as we picture ourselves as being caused, we WILL also picture ourselves as being affected. This believing in and use of causality, no matter how it is dressed up in appearances about others, will result in OUR MIND producing EFFECTS in ourselves. These will show up as symptoms in mind and body, as emotional reactions, fearful thought responses, justified anger, and other effects.

As the secret of salvation tells us, it does not matter how it appears that someone is a victimizer, or who is doing what. When your mind "sees itself" as being victimized, that way of seeing itself ALONE victimizes you. And you cannot see yourself as being victimized WITHOUT seeing yourself ALSO as a victim.

Funny that - as you believe in victimization it sets up a causal belief in your mind which causes you to MAKE YOURSELF a victim. Your mind then generates the effects and symptoms of having been affected. It pictures itself in the roles of victim AND victimizer.

Now, here's the key. Based on this law, that even your BELIEF in a cause IS CAUSAL, and has illusory believed-in effects, removing this belief in a cause MUST remove the effects. This even includes the physical symptoms of sickness which YOUR MIND put into your body, as a result of YOUR MIND visualizing itself as at the effect of its own causal beliefs.

If my belief is that a person is upsetting me, three things are happening. 1) I am "projecting" causality onto the person falsely, resulting in a false perception that "they" are causing me. 2) MY belief in being caused is causing me, 3) I am inventing the upsetting effects because of this belief, BY this belief. If I clear up the confusion about WHO is causing who, and then STOP causing through this belief, the effects MUST go.

If my mind is thinking, "I am upset because of them", and I"m feeling the upset, my mind MUST be seeing a line of causality starting with "them" and coming into me and impacting upon me, producing upset. This is what my mind is picturing. This is HOW I am making the effects. If I tell myself, "they are not causing me to be upset", I am taking a step towards undoing the cause.

I'm almost saying, "since they are not causing this upset, I am not upset." or "everything that came from them, has not come". They then become your savior because now you are using them to explain why you are NOT affected negatively, or as a way to say "I am healed because of you". Or as the course puts it, "Brother, at your hand I live." This requires the removal of all symptoms of attack in the body and mind, accomplished by removing fake causality or accusing your brother of causing (sinning against) you.

Sometimes, if the causing seems fairly clear-cut and well defined as to who I think did what, and I remind myself I am NOT caused by the person, it can be enough to undo my mind's belief in the cause, and thus stop causing my own upset. Symptoms of upset vanish instantly. Even physical symptoms, because *I* was producing them.

Other times, I've found I've built up a collection of beliefs in causes, which have to be dismantled more methodically, piece by piece. I have to remove all belief that anyone or anything else is causing my issue. I must not believe that I am at the effect of anyone else's mind or any "causes" that I THINK are in the world. My BELIEF in them being causes does not make them causes. This is confusion/projection/disassociation.

MY BELIEF in being caused is what causes me to suffer. When something is seen as having NO causes left, and being the cause of nothing, it disappears.

I have to also remove all belief that I am causing any issue in others, because this too ties me to guilt. For example if I have an argument, it is not enough to undo the belief that I am being upset by them. I will likely believe I upset them also, and this too is fake causality. Anything THEY are experiencing, THEIR mind has chosen to cause. I must be accepting of this by dismantling my belief that I caused them, which in turn will heal them and set them free from imprisonment.

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself."

Once this is clarified, that no-one caused my effects but myself, and that cause is in my mind because I believed I was caused, I must now recognize that my own choice to believe I am being negatively caused DID produce my own symptoms. I am responsible for it. This is the secret of salvation. But we can't stop there. WE must STOP causing our own suffering.

This requires us to stop believing that even WE have caused our suffering. Seeing that we did it to ourselves, and recognizing our own mind is causing itself, may be enough to collapse it. Recognizing the futility of hurting ourselves, we will drop the desire to continue. Seeing that we are causing our own suffering, we cannot escape the causation or blame it on anyone, have to admit the truth, and admitting the truth presents us with a fact - we did this, and we no longer choose to.

We might have to work on undoing the belief that we are caused, as well as being willing to no longer suffer the role of victim. Without a cause that we believe in, we cannot believe in being affected. In recognizing we were the victimizer of ourselves, we can stop being the victim. No-one has ever been victimized by another person.

Remember that you have no neutral thoughts. All thought creates form on some level. All thought is causal. You cannot neutrally casually think about stuff without producing effects. Imagining fearful things happening to you, IS actually you DOING them to yourself. Dreaming about scenarios isn't a freebie thought. We deliberately DO, or DO NOT. We cause, or do not cause. And only what we cause happens.

""My Self is ruler of the universe." It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens (effects) is what I desire (cause). What does not occur (effects) is what I do not want (cause) to happen. This must I accept."

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

Stripping away all sense of "the cause of this", MUST undo the effects. When you cease attacking yourself with thoughts of being attacked, you will not be attacked or attackable.

Without a cause, there can be no effects. Without belief in separation, there can be no sickness. Without seeing yourself as a victim you cannot be victimized. Without victimizing yourself you cannot be hurt. Without belief you are sinful (caused bad stuff) you cannot be guilty, and without guilt you cannot frighten or threaten yourself. Without a cause, your sickness must vanish. And without a cause, the dead must rise.

All illusions have no REAL cause. The causes are made up beliefs, which DO cause illusory effects, and without maintaining these beliefs the effects cannot stay. Anything not of God or made without love has no real cause. We MADE sickness and death by believing they have been caused and are the cause of us (the God of sickness and death), and can abolish it by believing they have NOT been caused.

To recognize something has NOT been caused, is to recognize it CANNOT have happened. Without a cause, the effects must go. What has not been caused cannot exist. And since illusory effects and symptoms DEPEND on the mind believing in them, without believing in them they MUST vanish. Which undoes physical suffering, sickness and death

This is forgiveness and atonement. The recognition that separation has not been caused and sin has not caused effects because there is no sin. The lack of belief in sin as "causing evil" erases death. The knowing that there is no death. Withdrawing causes of illusions will undo them all.

"Illusions recognized (I caused this myself, it did not cause me) must disappear."

This literally is tied into the atonement. If to atone is to undo, then by cancelling the fake causes that we were using to make things "be done", and if miracles undo and take away the effects by recognizing they have not been caused, then to accept the atonement is to accept that there are NO CAUSES other than God. We HAVE NOT CAUSED separation, there is no cause of death (sin), illusions DO NOT exist, and we are no longer manufacturing fake effects.

This will ultimately UNDO the world because the world is nothing but an EFFECT of a belief - the spacetime belief.

Shifting away from made-up causes, and aligning ourselves with God's Will, which is truly causal and creative, we become miracle workers. Operating from vertical causation, not mis-creation. Our causing now becomes love-based, constructive, creative, healing and miraculous. No longer against ourselves, no longer affected by the world, we regain invulnerability and power. We can now give life and cause resurrection.

We become a cause that does not cause itself. We become free from effects of our own making, or the illusion of effects made by others. Our will is now undivided and single-minded. Nothing can oppose us as ruler of the universe. We are free to carry out the will of God. To cause with IMMEDIATE effects. And to be truly helpful to others through causal miracles.

"This is a course in cause and not effect."

"miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.""

"Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet, without effects, there is no CAUSE."

"Who can predict effects without a cause? And who could fear effects UNLESS he thought they had BEEN caused, and judged disastrous NOW?"

"Who can perceive effect WITHOUT a cause? What can the causeless BE but nothingness."

"And this DENIES the fact that ALL are senseless; EQUALLY without a cause or consequence, and CANNOT have effects of ANY kind."

"In its passing went its consequences, left without a cause."

"And to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause, and with no power to accomplish anything."

"Nothing can have effects without a cause, and to confuse the two is merely to fail to understand them both."

"Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness."

"It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way."

"Fear cannot be real without a cause, and GOD is the only Cause."

"The healing of effect WITHOUT the cause can merely shift effects to other forms."

"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 therefore all your sins have been forgiven because they carried no effects at all."

"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression."

"And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect it cannot make effects."

"What is projected OUT, and seems to be EXTERNAL to the mind, is NOT outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has NOT left its source."

"Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move (cause) mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don't believe it. People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert (cause) real control (effects) because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place?"

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. 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."

For something to be special it has to have a value that is different to the value of something else. We give it its value by taking away value from something else.

So if I have an apple and an orange, which are essentially equal, and I say, well, I like apples more than oranges, I have to 'demote' the orange and withdraw some of its value and give it to the apple. Now I have a sense that the apple is more important or 'special' than the orange.

What this does, is it makes me have a 'special love' relationship with the apple, and a 'special hate' relationship with the orange. I've also turned the apple into an idol, and the orange into an enemy.

The Course also talks about how we use special love to cover up special hate. The ego has made a world from separation and has made everything in the world be separate. This is based on hate. It is an attack on God. However, the ego then comes along and tries to 'cover up' and deny this hate by creating the illusion that things are somehow joined. It does this by the illusion of 'sameness', things being similar, of like mind, or having minimal conflict.

Minimally conflicting individuals end up as 'friends and allies'. And as the Course says, these allegiances are formed because two people temporarily agree to be against something else. Thus their allegiance still 'includes' an idea of attack and rejection, because it can't exist unless 'everyone else' is not like them. Thus the friends become special and have a special love relationship. But this special love is at best temporary, and covers up the foundation of the relationship which is hate. Separation from others. Isolation. Exclusivity. And so if something takes away that veneer of special love, it 'reveals' the hate beneath it and the claws come out.

While we attempt to make certain parts of the world more important or valuable than others, we make them special. This is our attempt to 'spiritualize' the dream. We attempt to make some parts more spiritual than others, so that at least some of the parts seem sacred, spiritual, holy, valuable, rather than it all being equal and neutral. In this way the ego holds onto these parts of the dream to make it real and to be attracted to it. And of course, to be attracted to one part of the dream requires the formation of a 'shadow' attitude which is against other parts.

So for example, to me, Apple Mac computers are more special than Windows PC's. Green grass is more special than brown. Summer days are more special than winter. Certain TV shows are more special than others. The olympics are more special than regular team sports. And raspberry-anything is more special than most other flavors. These are things I've made special, at the expense of other things being despised and disliked.

This is where the Holy Relationship comes in. With a goal of true holiness, we recognize that instead of depending on another separate thing to 'get' what we lack, or to reinforce our own self-specialness, we instead become wholly dependent on God. It is now God who created us, not our parents. God now also created our children, and he is responsible for them, not us. This of course dissolves all family structures. Absolute equality is the only family - God's family. Equality dissolves specialness and sees everything with unconditional love.

You can still be having your relationships and your favorite foods and whatever, but eventually we will let Holy Spirit choose everything for us and we will live in freedom. We may well remain with those we had special love with and no longer see them with specialness. But this doesn't mean we don't love them. It means we love them even MORE. We love them with an unconditional, ego-free love. One where being together is voluntary and not forced, or maintained out of guilt. But not until we are truly ready to accept this. It can't be forced while we still value specialness or we will experience sacrifice and loss.

You can still be in a one-to-one parternship all the way to waking up. Just look at Jesus and Mary as an example.

Here is even more proof.

God created free-willed individual souls. That is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE if God is purely a concept of "no parts" or "a single thing". Even ONENESS cannot mean "one thing", because a "one thing" does NOT create "separate beings" as quoted below. Nor can the son of God dream WITHOUT God being part of the dreaming, if they are literally "one".

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, NEVERTHELESS CREATED SEPARATE BEINGS WHO HAVE EVERYTHING INDIVIDUALLY, but who want (free willed) to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself CREATED YOU. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

"If you believe that ALL THE SOULS THAT GOD CREATED ARE His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One (does not mean no souls), then every Soul MUST be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness (still many parts which share) DOES transcend the sum of its parts (see, there are parts). However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts (more parts) are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved UNTIL all of the INDIVIDUAL PARTS OF THE SONSHIP have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood."

So you can see, if you can accept this, that God DID create individuals, and Jesus even goes so far as to say "separate beings". He also says the sonship contains multiple parts. This kind of thing just is totally incompatible with ideas of oneness, singularities, non-dualities, "God is and nothing else is" etc.

The truth is though, it's not a question of EITHER God is Oneness OR God has created parts.... it's actually that BOTH ARE TRUE. There is a oneness, as in a SHARING, BY PARTS, which does not undo the fact they are parts. This sharing allows them to AGREE WITH God's Will, freely.

More pertinent quotes:

"To be egocentric IS to be despirited. But to be self-centered in the RIGHT sense is to be inspired, or in the Soul."

"Projection (creation), as defined above, is a fundamental attribute of God, which he also gave to his Son. In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

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

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

"Right perception is necessary before God can communicate directly to His altars, which He established in His Sons."

Here is the clincher, Jesus stating that GOD GAVE FREE WILL TO ALL HIS SONS:

"In this sense the creation includes both the creation of the Son by God, and the Son's creations when his mind is healed. 8 THIS REQUIRES GOD'S ENDOWMENT OF THE SON WITH FREE WILL, because all loving creation is freely given in one continuous line, in which all aspects are of the same order." - ie the son MUST have the freedom to CHOOSE to WILL, otherwise he does not have freedom and is not like God. God therefore HAS CREATED individually free-willed sons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imagine that you live in a reality where you are always included in everything. Anything that happens, happens to others, and it happens to you. Anything that you give, you give to others, but you also receive. Anything that transpires happens to all at once.

Anything that is expressed by you is received by everyone, and received by yourself. Like, you literally ARE the whole of everything. The whole is your self. The entire realm of reality, the kingdom of God, is your self. So anything that takes place, you know about it, you feel it, you experience it along with everyone.

Everyone co-creates together. You are never excluded in any way. That's the fundamental fact of how reality actually IS. This is the law of God. This is the golden rule. What you do to another you do to yourself. You are one with everyone. You are the whole environment, not just a figure in the environment. You are heaven. The kingdom is your self. The sonship is your soul. All your brothers are part of you. No-one escapes anything ever. Everyone is always included, shares everything, has everything.

This is how reality really is. This is what produces shared interests. How would you act, think, feel, behave, if you knew that this was the fundamental law of existence? That anything you do even slightly you will do to yourself as well? This provides the incentive that you should only love, otherwise you will deprive yourself of love. You should only heal, otherwise you will make yourself sick. You should only include, otherwise you will become alone.

This is what ACIM is teaching you to remember and to attune to. Knowing your neighbor and brother as yourself. Realizing that if you do something you do it to yourself. The secret of salvation. Whatever you give you receive. Anything you see as being in your own interest is to be seen as being in the interests of everyone. Miracles are given to you in order that the be given through you to others and thus shared by everyone. Miracles are a universal blessing from God to the entire sonship all at once.

We need to re-learn this because we have forgotten how to live as shared entities, with shared identities. We think we are separated off by bodies, exclusive, omitted, rejected, lost, alone, not qualifying, left out. As though others can do something that doesn't include themselves, and you can do things in return that don't include yourself. As if you can get away with murder. As if you can attack without being attacked, or project guilt and escape from it without it still belonging to you. This is all the ego's realm of lies and deceit, denial and projection, dissociation and separation.

You have to learn to remember again that you are not just some separate figure in the world, separated off from others, separate from effects. You are the entire environment. You are the whole. You are the sonship. You are the kingdom of God. You are included in everything at all times. Every thought affects everyone. Every act impacts the entire universe. You are the one, shared with all. Everything belongs to you and to everyone else simultaneously. Everyone has full access to everything at all times. There are no limits anywhere.

"The secret of salvation is that you are doing this to yourself."

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thinking."

"When I heal I am not healed alone."

"Nothing is for you alone."

"Atonement is a lesson in sharing."

"I will not judge lest I be judged."

"Giving and receiving are one."

"Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds. Such is the truth."

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"The sonship is your soul."

"We are the kingdom, WE, the sons of God."

"The Kingdom of heaven includes all his children and their creations."

"I and my father are one."

This world is part of death.

Heaven, in which there is eternal life, is the only "place" where there is life. Everything this side of the separation idea, which includes this entire universe, this planet, and all bodies, is part of the idea of an opposite to life, thus death. This is why it's a "dream of death".

Everything in this world is dead. The course calls it "a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son".

You need to realize that only at the very, very highest level, squarely centered in Heaven, is there "life", because life must be eternal life and eternity is not outside of Heaven. That means that anything "outside" heaven, which is this universe and everything in it, is not life. It's an idea or picture of death.

So even while you are "living" your life and seem to be in relative health or having a body or "half dead" or totally dead and buried, all of that spectrum of "death and dying" is death. Not just the climax. The final moment of death is just a symbol of death WITHIN a dream of death.

"There is no life outside of Heaven" literally means that every form in this world is not life. "Heaven and Earth are opposite in every way". Earth is nothing like Heaven.

When we say, that we see God in the world because God is in my mind, this is a helpful idea and can be an experience but it is not well-worded considering how many people use it. It should say, this world is an idea WITHIN God, or at least more accurately we could say, I see God IN SPITE of the world because the world is in my mind and so is God.

We must be careful not to equate this world with heaven or with God. This world is an illusion. It does NOT EXIST and it is not heaven. There is at best a reflection of heaven here in this dream, which is not the same thing as being in heaven.

This world, a picture of death, must disappear, because death is an illusion, and all illusions must disappear. This is why this world holds nothing that you want. Who could want death to be real? It is not God's creation and it is nothing like the nature of God at all.

As the course teaches, you cannot see both worlds. The body's eyes behold a world which the ego made from death, and the "spiritual eye" (the one mind) sees only heaven. The bridge, in-between the two states, or the "forgiven world", is just a transitionary state in which the world of heaven is reflected and glimpsed.

Jesus refers to Heaven as a "living world". Earth, and this universe, is not a living world. It is a dead world. It is an idea of being dead. This is why Jesus says the idea of death is the last to go, and that when the idea of death goes, the entire world goes, because the entire world is founded on the idea of death, and everything in it is an idea of death.

If you were not dead already, you would not need to achieve resurrection, and resurrection would be meaningless. But resurrection is your goal because it means you have accepted atonement and returned to life. Returned to heaven, and left the world of illusory death behind.

There is no world. This is the central lesson the course would attempt to teach. Only God's creation, God's world of Heaven, the Kingdom, which is the extension of Himself, his holy creative thoughts, as the One Son, the many sons, and the sonship, sharing love IN HEAVEN.

Where is Jesus? He is in heaven. Why isn't he in the world? Because the world is not heaven. Where will Jesus be when his body disappears? Not in this world. Where will this world be when death is fully undone? Nowhere. What will REMAIN when a world of death has been undone and disappeared, recognized as having not existed at all? The only thing that will remain is God's Kingdom, which is HEAVEN, and you are part of it and all of it. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with this universe or this planet.

There are a number of words Jesus uses in a very different way to how we use them. He literally redefines and teaches us a new meaning of these words. This is because we've taught ourselves incorrectly what something IS, and have mis-identified things. In ACIM His use of terms gives them a whole different meaning.

Some examples:

Life. You think it means bodies that "are alive". He means, that which has eternal life in Heaven and extends forever, which never perishes and cannot die.

Death. You think it means death of the body. He means, anything even slightly less than 100% perfect life. Even a slight grievance. Even a slight sickness. The entire dream world and everything in it.

Murder. You think it means some person in the extreme attacking another. It really means the dynamic of a separation between cause and effect in which you perceive something applies to you that doesn't apply to someone else, allowing you to escape the consequences of what you cause. The entire ego thought system is murderous. "What is not love (100% love) is murder."

Insanity. Any state of mind which is not total wholeness and holiness. A split mind. A mind which believes illusions are real. A mind which sees itself as separated from its creator. All states of dreaming. Happy dreams, unhappy dreams. All states of perception. Seeing yourself as a body. Believing in death.

Sickness. You think it means just body sickness like having a disease. Jesus means a sick mind which produces a sick body, all states of mental unhealth, death, forms of physical sickness, illness, fear, unforgiveness, guilt, body-identification, belief in sin, level confusion, magic, etc.

Fear. You think it's some feeling you have when you are scared and that the rest of the time you are not afraid. Jesus says the entire world is made of fear which is the opposite of love, all states of sickness including death are fear of awakening, and fear includes every state of the ego thought system.

Sin. You think it means something you did. Jesus redefines it as something you think you did which you didn't do in reality. Sin is the authority problem. It's reversal of cause and effect, opposing God's will, which has produced an entire world of sin and death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." In sin, the death wish is formed, making death inevitable, unless you undo sin.

Love. You think of special love, an emotion of love, private love, exclusive love. Parental love. Small amounts of love. Jesus says all expression of real love are maximal - maximum total unconditional whole-minded full-hearted unlimited universe-sized love.

Forgiveness. You think it means pardon. Or you think it is a process. Jesus states it is a constant state of mind in which you recognize there is nothing left to forgive because you have not condemned yourself. All forgiveness is self forgiveness, yet you are one with others. Forgiveness is the atonement.

Ego. You think ego is just some little bit of egotism or selfishness. Jesus redefines ego as the separation idea and an entire thought system which has manifested as a physical universe, complete with dream bodies and war and death.

Perception. You think perception is you being inside your body peering out through your eyes seeing stuff in a certain way. Yet Jesus says the world is perception, physical objects are mental images, the whole world is your perception within your universe-sized mind, and it's not so much to do with how you see something that's out there. Perception is a result, not a cause. Projection makes what you see.

There's many more things which we do not recognize as being what they are. And so it may be easy to mis-read what Jesus means by certain words. We have to unlearn all of our previous definitions for things and broaden the scope of them. Jesus is accurate and truthful in HIS understanding of what things ARE, he knows what is fear and what is death and what is life, in the most accurate of ways. Our definitions are limited and basic and incorrect. Dictionary definitions are also flawed. This is part of what makes learning ACIM challenging, he's using familiar words in unfamiliar ways.