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

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

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

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

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

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

But I've become clearer on this now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The miracles will flow from there.

Freedom of Choice > Responsibility > Power > Causation > Effects.

To simplify, think of cause and effect. You are either the cause, or the effect. If you see yourself as the cause, you cannot be an effect. Your casual outpouring is so strong nothing can come at you. If you see yourself as not the cause, you MUST see yourself as being highly affected and therefore ARE an effect of something.

When you project responsibility outside yourself, onto another or the world, you are disowning and giving away your power. You are giving power TO them. You are framing them in your mind as having the power to CAUSE YOU, and to make you have effects. And it will seem these effects are against your will - something you did not choose.

But you are choosing it, because you are using your power to PRETEND to disown your power, you are still using your power to frame someone as having power over you, and the power that you see IN them acting against you IS YOUR POWER. You just are seeing it as though it belongs to someone else and is not a part of you.

You've separated yourself from your power and now your power is seeming to turn around 180 degrees and come back at you in the form of "an alien will", causing you, changing you, defining you, altering you without your choosing. Or so it seems. Because you ARE choosing this. You are choosing to see your power as against yourself, doing things to you. Even if it seems to be being done "through" others vicariously.

This means you're in a position which is rather strange, where you are FIGHTING YOURSELF. Like literally you are taking your power, moving it away from you, turning it around, and then launching it at yourself in an attack mode, causing you to have effects.

Your mind believes the power is out there against you. Your mind ALSO must believe therefore that since you are NOT having the power, you are NOT the cause, you are NOT responsible, you MUST BE AN EFFECT. The belief in being not the cause and being affected go hand in hand.

This means that your mind is putting in place both the framing of something external as "attacking you", AND it is putting in place the SYMPTOMS, physically mentally or emotionally, that you would expect to occur IF that power were acting upon you. Your mind ITSELF, makes up effects, that correspond to the perceived cause.

This literally means your mind makes symptoms in the body, makes up sickness and disease and even death, makes up wounds and heartache, makes up emotional reactions and loss and sadness and anger and hurt, to correspond to the perceived external cause. Not just imagining it, but actually MAKING IT, producing it, putting it into your experience, changing your feelings, changing your body.

This especially happens when you project guilt, in which you are basically projecting responsibility, which is cause. You are saying, I am not the cause of this, you are, and are pointing a finger and hurling guilt at another to try to make it stick to them. But moreso what you are doing is you are trying to give them power and responsibility and will and freedom and choice and causation to have these things INSTEAD of you.

It's rather bizarre then that we literally give power to people, to frame them as capable of attacking us, threatening us, making us afraid, upsetting us, doing things to us. We effectively WANT THEM TO. Even if on the surface we are claiming to be innocent, even if we are feeling that feeling of "I didn't choose this, I don't want this, I didn't ask for it."

You see, that victim perspective in which you feel like you are being unfairly treated, that's the feeling you get when you are becoming "an effect". It's the recognition that you have indeed projected power, cause, responsibility etc, and so see yourself as NOT responsible, NOT the cause, NOT the one using power to make something happen.

In victimhood (ego) you perceive that you are not the cause of what's happening, and you are in denial of this, and having denied it you are projecting it. So now you see cause as outside of you, in someone else, acting upon you, at the same time as NOT seeing that you are causing anything yourself. The denial acts as a barrier blocking awareness of what YOU are doing, that YOU are using power, that YOU are responsible, that YOU are causing this.

It's understandable then that as the victimhood role strengthens, the denial and disownership of power, causation and responsibility increases. You believe less and less that "it's your fault" (guilt-related). You believe less and less that you chose it, wanted it, made it happen, or had anything to do with it. Almost as if you were just minding your own business doing nothing at all and someone came out of the blue and attacked you for no good reason. As if you were just completely innocent (the face of innocence).

And that's simply because the power has been projected. The power has been given away, disowned, you don't want it, and you WANT the other to have it. So you simultaneously have this experience of "I didn't ask for this, how could you do this to me", and "that person is having power over me and is the cause of me." You can't have one part without the other. Just as you can't have a belief in an external cause WITHOUT a belief in having effects as well. "I want you to have my power, please use it against me, and I will pretend I don't want you to."

So we quite literally use the power of our mind to dissociate from our power, we hand it over to all kinds of things out there that HAVE NO POWER, other than us giving it to it in our minds. And then having given it to them, they seem to loom over us and we now fear them and feel powerless and weak and feeble. Unable to go up against such a power, as though we have no power at all. And now we are tempted to see ourselves as unfairly treated.

What we have to recognize of course is the secret of salvation - that we are doing this to ourselves. We have to recognize and own the power and responsibility. We have to take back the power of decision and use it to choose otherwise with the Holy Spirit. We have to stop believing that ANYTHING outside of us HAS OUR POWER, and indeed need to recognize that the power we THOUGHT was theirs is in fact our own. It only seemed like theirs because we disowned it and didn't want it.

So we take our power back. We claim responsibility for causing everything we are experiencing. We acknowledge, I have caused this thing, I have done this to myself, it is not being done by this other person or something in the body or the world, I am not a victim of this, I am not being affected by them, they have no power over me. I own and take back and reclaim my own power which I gave away, and take full responsibility for it. Which means that I must be CHOOSING what happens, I must be CAUSING what happens, and I MUST have caused all of my own suffering.

All my symptoms I put in place myself. All my upset emotions I put in place myself. All my despair and loss and shame and guilt I did to myself. All sense that I'd been attacked or mistreated or shamed or attacked by anyone else was MY MISTAKE in perceiving this wrongly. I did not recognize that I was using my power to pretend to disown my power, and using it to set up others to attack me for me. I didn't realize I was fighting against myself with a divided will. I have been using my power to try to destroy myself, attacking myself, using others to do my bidding, and then blaming them for it.

Ultimately you need to resume your role and position as ruler of the universe. You are the CAUSE of everything you see and feel and think and experience. You are the co-creator with God with unlimited power. What you say happens, what you do not want does not happen. You articulate reality. You CREATE. You cause what happens and you WANT what happens because you chose it. Everything that happens YOU MUST BE CHOOSING. And by the power of your decision you choose NOT TO SUFFER AND TO STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF LIKE THIS.

Indeed, when you realize that nothing at all has been attacking you OTHER THAN YOURSELF, through your mis-use of your power and will, you can find relief in knowing that if you would just stop hurting your own self, stop giving away your power so that you can be indirectly attacked by yourself, stop disowning responsibility for CAUSING, for CHOOSING, you would stop suffering entirely, and forever. Because NO ONE HAS POWER OVER YOU OTHER THAN YOURSELF! And no-one and nothing can ever cause you to suffer, to be sick, or to die without your consent.

"For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

The golden rule is the nature and law of God. In God, everything is equal and shared. What applies to one brother applies to all brothers. What is true of me is true of you. But even moreso, because brothers are ONE, they literally share identity and soul. I am in you and you are in me. We are part of each other. We are irrevocably joined and share everything, even our selves.

We can describe this as the golden rule, in which what I do to you I also do to myself. There is no option or clause that your brother MIGHT treat you a certain way. You treat your brother a certain way SO THAT you are treated a certain way, because you ARE him, and so you are DIRECTLY treating yourself how you would wish to be treated.

There are no exceptions to this and it is impossible to violate or break this law or be outside of it. It is always operating, whether you are accepting of it and living by it, or whether you are attempting to ignore it and pretend it doesn't apply to you.

If we are one, then I have a shared interest with you. Whatever I do to you I do to myself. Whatever I give to you I receive. Giving and receiving are one. If I were to attack you, I'd be attacking myself. Therefore, it's in my own best interests to ONLY LOVE, otherwise I will make MYSELF suffer, and by my own hand. I have to INCLUDE you, otherwise I will suffer from exclusion.

"Ego" is nothing more than an attempt to oppose, deny and ignore this law. It is an attempt to pretend that it does not apply. That I am not you and you are not me. That we are not equal. That what applies to me doesn't apply to you, because we are different. If we are separate, we not one, and now I should have my own selfish interests - survival of the fittest.

It's like, were both standing on the same floor. Then there is a separation, like an earthquake. The floor cracks in two. I now seem to be on one side, and you on the other. But also the heights of the floors have shifted, and mine is slightly above yours. The two floors are now separate and different and not equal.

This is the separation from God, the seeming split in the mind, which suggests that instead of us all being one, we are now two, split apart, separated off, isolated in our own private territories, and kept apart. We can't seem to share because we can't span the divide of the broken ground, and everything we do is separate.

On this basis of separation, or not being able to share, the breakdown in unity, the collapse of oneness, the arising of exclusion, and the seeming imprisonment on either side of the rift, we get the denial of the golden rule. It seems possible now that because I am not a part of you, and am separate and isolated on my own island, I can only now think of my OWN interests. What I do to myself is done to myself alone, and if I throw a rock over at you, it hurts only you and not me.

While I might believe that what I do to you is NOT done to myself, or what is true of you is NOT true of me, it becomes possible to enter this state where we're trying to get away with murder. It suggests I could attack you, and escape the consequences. I could do something to you which is not done to me. I could give something that I do NOT receive, because I am not INCLUDED in it, because I've become EXCLUDED from you. As though giving and receiving are not one.

So the whole ego system is all about this sense of being exclusive, separated off, not sharing, not one, unequal, different, disconnected, dis-associated, and isolated. Our whole belief then shifts to it seeming to be plausible that we can attack without being hurt, or we can accuse without being accused, or we can make someone be guilty to take the guilt off our own shoulders. That no matter what we cause, we can escape the effects. I can hurt you, and not myself.

So this is then what the ego does, all the time. IT HAS ONE MODE of functioning. It's all it CAN do, because it is ONLY the idea of separation. Its aim is to emphasize, enhance, increase, and deepen the sense of being separate, so that IT increases. That's it's only goal. To attack ever more strongly and cause ever more disruption in equality. It's entire existence DEPENDS on the continuation of this inequality, this rift between brothers, and this sense that you cannot share anything with anyone because they're separated from you.

If the two floors or islands were to meet, and reconnect, and level out, and become one single unified space again, the two brothers could be reunited, and all sense of inequality and difference would melt. And ALSO there would have to now be an acceptance of the golden rule, because if we are sharing everything, then what applies to me now also applies to you and vice versa. We are now the SAME. We are one. So I cannot do anything to you without doing it to myself.

The interesting thing is that even when we're in an ego state of believing that we ARE separate, and are not a part of others, the golden rule actually still applies. We can BELIEVE that we are attacking something "not myself", and we can BELIEVE that the effects are being felt ONLY by that other separate person, and we can BELIEVE that we completely escape any consequences for it, BUT WE DO NOT. Because there are dire consequences STILL operating, consequences which are SELF INFLICTED, which CANNOT be avoided.

If you attack another, you STILL attack yourself, because you STILL ARE them. If you hurt another, you ARE hurting yourself. If you try to destroy another, you ARE destroying yourself. You may not REALIZE that you are, because you think of yourself as PROTECTED BY THE SEPARATENESS, as if the prison walls keep you SAFE. And so you think that attacking someone makes you SAFER. But it in fact erodes your safety because the more you attack the more YOU become imprisoned and weakened.

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING. The reason, however, may not be as clear to you as you think. What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

You cannot be strong without your brother. You cannot be happy without your brother. You cannot be healthy without your brother. You cannot be loved without your brother. You cannot be powerful without your brother. You cannot be free without your brother. You cannot be innocent without your brother. You cannot be holy without your brother.

So if you try to attack in any way, to produce the separation, to make yourself MORE separate, emphasizing the ways that someone else is an inferior evil shit that you hate and who should feel terribly guilty for being so wrong, YOU ARE accusing yourself of this. So you might ask yourself, "would I accuse myself of this?" You will think you're NOT accusing yourself because you don't see yourself as A PART OF the other person, but you are still doing it.

There is a HUGE COST to attempting to ignore the golden rule. The cost is that your mind becomes split, you become self-destructive and suicidal, you become alone and lonely, you become weakened and live in darkness, the world becomes a nightmare of conflict and war, you lose all sense of peace and happiness, communication breaks down and you become unable to relate to anyone, it makes you question whether you even exist, and you will try to destroy yourself. That's a pretty major cost for believing something that isn't true, as if it were real.

You DO have a vested interest, because when you attack you DO experience consequences, even if you do not REALIZE that you do. You may not recognize that every time you attack you feel worse. You may not recognize that when you hate someone you feel awful and guilty.

You may not recognize that when you accuse someone angrily of being guilty of something, to make yourself feel better, you increase your sense of being separate and small and weak and alone. Or that anger hurts your mind and body. You have to recognize what the consequences of attack ARE, so that you will decide that you do not WANT to be murderous anymore, because it actually is not REALLY in your best interests.

The golden rule always applies. It is never broken or violated. You can deny it. If you deny it you will suffer. If you deny it you will be confused as to why your life sucks, and you will probably blame it on someone else, thinking that they are not you, and that therefore you haven't blamed yourself. Everything you do you to do yourself and to all your brothers, to the entire sonship and to God. This is also the secret of salvation. You are INCLUDED IN EVERYTHING. And inclusion is ultimately love.

It's a deadly trap to believe that you need to get that person to love you in order to prove you are lovable.

You can feel very sorry for yourself because of how other people seem to mistreat you or how they don't love you enough.

You can get into a state where you see yourself as unworthy and unlovable purely because other people don't seem to love you.

Then you will be yearning for them to love you, will try to manipulate them into loving you, will secretly want to take love from the, and will try to steal it from them, in order to get some love for yourself.

You think that if they will love you, you will feel better about yourself.

Well here's some news. It doesn't work this way.

Love has to come from God and come through you and be shared. Love is sharing. You have to share in it in order to have it, and by sharing in it you must also share it, meaning you must extend it and give it.

Now, this also leads people to another mistake which is the belief that you should always give give give in an attempt to give everyone what they want, so that you might be able to get them to give some love back to you.

This is a deadly trap as well. If you're waiting for or are dependent on other people to be the source of love for you, or to approve of you, or to give you attention, or make you be okay, or accept you, then you're going to be waiting a very long time and suffer the consequences.

Other people are not supposed to be the source of love for you. Other people are not supposed to approve of you. Other people are not supposed to accept you. Other people are not supposed to give you attention. Other people are not supposed to love you more than others. Other people are not supposed to save you. Other people are not supposed to be your savior or your idol or your hero. Other people are not where you should be receiving love from.

You can't experience love unless you are in it. You can't be in it unless you are sharing it with God because God is the only source of love. You can't share in it unless you are willing to receive it from God. You can't get it into you unless you are willing to remove all of your false beliefs which say that you don't deserve it, can't receive it, aren't good enough, or that you are in need of it. You can't share it unless you're willing to let others also receive it just as much as you. And you can't have it unless you are willing to give it away.

To your ego, giving away love means losing it, which means you are sacrificing it, which means if you give give give you will end up with none for yourself. This won't coerce others into loving you, nor will it make them love you in return in order to have an equal or fair relationship. That's bullshit. That's not a relationship, it's a bargain. Your ego needs to get out of the way if you are going to experience love.

You need to realize that God's love is infinitely abundant and always available and is unconditional and freely given to all equally, all the time. That includes you. You must be included in the love and having the love, even when you give it. If you are overflowing with God's love, from WITHIN, having received it inside of yourself directly from the source (God), then you will be so happy to share it and spread it around.

And here's the little secret. When you share and receive God's love and are open to an unlimited supply of it coming into you from Him, which He has already put there, you will have so much that even if you give it away, it will not decrease whatsoever. The secret is, that as you give real love, unconditional love, you not only get to keep that love, but the love INCREASES.

You don't need, and cannot get, love from someone else. It must come from God to you to others, in that order. If you don't feel lovable or loved, YOU are not loving yourself and YOU are not letting God love you. It's an inside job.

You will not EVER find love outside of you, and you will not EVER be loved from outside of you. "Outside of you" means separate from you, and anything separate from you is impossible to experience. You can only experience love when it is NOT separate from you, meaning it's INSIDE you, meaning God put it there and you're experiencing it where it IS.

You already have it. You just have blocks to awareness which is preventing you from accepting and allowing it. Your ego is getting in the way. It's making you believe, falsely, that you do not have love in you, cannot have love in you, don't deserve love in you, and that you are not love. YOU ARE LOVE ITSELF. You are an extension of love. How can you not be love, when Love (God) created you like Itself? You aren't going to get this love by force-feeding it from the outside in. You aren't really lacking it! You just need to UNCOVER IT, because it's already been given.

God has already given you 100% of all the love in existence. If you are blocking it, you're going to go seeking for it outside of yourself, and it will stay outside of yourself, and you will never have it that way. It's not anyone's job to love you. It's only God's function to love you, and He already has. The only part left now is your WILLINGNESS to accept and allow it and RECOGNIZE it where it is, within you, where God already put it. You are already loved, unconditionally and eternally, so if that's not what you are experiencing, YOU are blocking yourself from being loved.

It doesn't even matter if other people love you or not. Other people could be loving you 100% unconditionally and totally all the time, but you could still be shutting it out, ignoring it, rejecting it, and not believing you deserve it. How are you going to get that love into you if your entire reason for trying to find it out there is because you don't really believe you deserve it? No-one can give it to you if you don't allow it to be in you, and to allow it to be in you is to accept it from God.

Love has already been shared with you. Love is already available permanently. Love is what you are really made of. You can't not be loved or lovable or loving. But you can pretend, and you can cover it up, and you can be in denial. That simply means you need to uncover all these ways that you keep love from yourself. It's not because other people are keeping love from you, it's YOU that does not really want it. You say you do, but evidently you don't, or you would accept it from God right now.

God loves you. Just so you know.

When we all love each other, it means that we have love within us, because we are love, and are sharing that love, NOT BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE NEED IT, because they also have the love coming from God within themselves. To love everyone is not to substitute for their belief in lack, or to love them FOR them, or to force love upon them. We all are responsible for and naturally function as extenders of GOD'S LOVE, because God is the only source of love that's real. Access your own unique connection to Him, your own relationship, and heal it, so that you can experience love again.

Let's just be VERY, VERY clear for a moment. Heaven and Earth are definitely TWO VERY DISTINCT STATES/PLACES in A Course in Miracles. If they were the same place there'd be no point Jesus referring to them as opposites or as two things. Or as "in heaven" or as "on earth". THEY ARE TWO PLACES. You cannot be in, or see, both of them, at once. THEY ARE OPPOSITES, diametrically opposed in every way.

This is important to realize, because Jesus frequently states how Heaven is DISTINCT from Earth and being IN Heaven is very different to being ON Earth. And yes folks, EARTH DOES MEAN THE PLANET EARTH, not some strange twisted metaphoric interpreted labelling of your inner ego interference "about" a world. The only way the Earth is "about" anything is in that it is an attack on Heaven.

Heaven and Earth. TWO PLACES. Earth has "place" because it is inside spacetime. Heaven is "not a place" only in that it has no FINITE LOCATIONS, because IT IS EVERYWHERE, and so transcends spacetime. It is STILL A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN EXIST AND LIVE!!!

If you EVER think that Earth is Heaven, you are stuck and have totally missed the obvious. Anyone reading theses statements SHOULD, using NORMAL LANGUAGE, get the impression and message that Jesus literally means TWO WORLDS, and that they can never be one because they are OPPOSITES. And only Heaven really exists. If someone reads these and doesn't get that? Read it again and take it literally.

"He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"Only this is the real world, and perceiving ONLY this will lead you to the real Heaven, because IT WILL MAKE YOU CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING IT."

"For you share the real world as you share Heaven, and his healing IS yours."

"Because my feet are on the ground and my hands are in heaven, I can bring down the glories of Heaven to my brothers on earth."

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego."

"Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth."

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him."

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

"Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough not to return to earth."

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

"You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven."

"The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here."

"The golden ASPECTS of reality which spring to light under His loving gaze, are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them."

"As miracles in this world join you to your brothers, so do your creations establish your fatherhood in Heaven."

"Deny a brother here, and you deny the witnesses to your fatherhood in Heaven."

"The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him."

"This is the ONLY justice Heaven knows, and all the Holy Spirit brings to earth. "

"Reason will tell you that there is no middle ground where you can pause uncertainly, waiting to choose between the joy of Heaven and the misery of hell. Until you choose Heaven, you ARE in hell and misery."

"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."

"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."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

"No one on earth can grasp what Heaven is, or what its one Creator really means. Yet we have witnesses."

"There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven."

"I give You thanks for what my brothers are, and as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny, scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus"

"There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth, it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things."

"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But let us again remember that both are in you."

"It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven's peace."

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form."

"His will is done because all power is given him in Heaven and on earth."

"And you will have conviction then of Him Who knows the function that you have on earth as well as Heaven. "

"Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God's plan."

"There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it."

"It is the bond by which the giver and receiver are united in extension here on earth as they are one in Heaven."

"It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."

"No-one outside of Heaven knows how this can be. For understanding this is Heaven itself. Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity."

"God limits not. And what is limited can NOT be Heaven. So it MUST be hell."

"Now a quiet time has come in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of Heaven's children and the Son of God. We pause but for a moment more, to play our final happy game upon this earth. And then we go to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs. But here on earth the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give. "

"His Words contain all hope, all blessing and all joy that ever can be found upon this earth. His Words are born in God, and come to you with Heaven's love upon them."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Did you know you're living inside a giant hologram?

(this may take a bit to explain, so bear with me)...

Actually, that's only the half of it. There's a reason why you are inside a hologram, and there's a motive for making it that the ego wants to keep a secret.

The purpose of the physical universe, as a hologram (a holographic dream), is to profoundly obscure awareness of God. The ego has used it to create a way of experiencing which seems to be completely devoid of God. The physical universe was made to literally shut God out and to make it look like He does not exist. And it's done a pretty good job, because we all believe it. And you don't even realize you believe it.

As Jesus says in ACIM: "Nothing so blinding as perception of form".

So, how does this work and how does it obscure God, and why is form (physical matter) blinding? And what's this got to do with holograms?

Ok so bear with me as I try to explain, this is VERY hard to explain because it defies a lot of ego logic, so let me know if I lose you.

First we define what God is like.

God is oneness. God is omnipresent, meaning He exists everywhere. And God is whole and completely equal everywhere. What this means is, if you could think of God as occupying 'space', no matter where you are in that space, God is *exactly* the same there as He is in any other part of it. Over here He is God, over there He is God. No matter where you are in God, it's exactly the same as everywhere else.

It's kind of like if you were to take a road trip inside God you'd be driving for a while and then remark to yourself, you know what, this place looks exactly the same as the place we just came from. Exactly. Then you drive some more and it still looks exactly the same. It's almost like you aren't going anywhere. Ok so God is the same everywhere.

Now there's another part to this. This may be hard to imagine, but ALL of God is in all *parts* of God. (NB: The ego will say this is IMPOSSIBLE!) As you think of God as occupying space, and you're driving in that car to different parts of God, and its all the same, you might still be tempted to believe each 'part' or 'location' in God is actually a DIFFERENT part, but just 'looks' the same. Like, as if the whole landscape is a giant set in a movie and its all painted in white paint. You're accustomed to thinking that the stuff 'over there' is not the same as the stuff 'over here', in some way. Its sort of similar with God.

ALL of the properties of God are everywhere. ALL of the awareness of God is everywhere. ALL of the attention of God is everywhere. So then when you ask yourself, what parts of God are 'here', in this location, the answer is, ALL of Him. And when you then ask yourself, well what parts are over there in that other part, the answer is also - ALL of Him. And what about those parts you were driving through 50 hours ago... ALL of Him was there.

To the ego this would have to mean, well, if all of God is here, then there's no other parts left to be elsewhere, so elsewhere there is no God. But in God's reality, in God's 'universe', somehow God is capable of being fully present in every single part of it at the same time. In this sense its almost as if God is PERSONAL, personal and local to every single part of existence, and yet, simultaneously personal to ALL parts at the same time. (Revelations speak of this intensely personal quality.)

You could kind of think of God as though there are trillions of copies of Himself, which the ego mind might be able to grasp. Except that in God there are no separations. Absolutely all of God's being, all of God's mind, all of God's identity, all of God's wholeness, is SHARED by all parts of existence. And when you try to think of this in terms of what you are USED TO, in the physical world, you can only relate to like a large stretch of land that you call 'The United States', within which there are many different distinct places. But if this land were God, everywhere would be the same and there would only be ONE of anything. Hard to get your mind around!

Now, this is where the ego comes up with a device to shut God out.

As we know, the ego's only tool is "separation". What the ego does, is it tries to take the omnipresent oneness of God and start to make it `look like` God maybe ISN'T the same everywhere, or ISN'T fully present everywhere. The only way it can obscure God, i.e. make it seem like God has gone away, or that God does not exist at all, is to go against the nature of God. So if the nature of God is, all of Him is the same everywhere, the ego's attack will entail the idea that only PART of Him is PARTIALLY present in each location. And this implies that God is riddled with contradictory differences. (The ego is contradictory, God isn't).

So now it's kind of like, you're driving in that car through God and you notice that, some of these hills are starting to take on a different shade of color. There's some slight differences in how things look over here than how they looked back there. At first, the separation isn't strong or well defined. In fact it starts out very subtly with just a 'hint' of differences. Then as you keep driving the intensity of the separation increases, and it really starts to stand out that different parts of God are different in quite noticeable ways.

What's happening at the same time is that the ego is now suggesting, by manipulating your perception, that maybe God is not fully present here. Maybe God has some parts of Himself which are sort of 'tied up' elsewhere, or occupied or busy with something else, so he can only be partially present. And also the ego is suggesting God isn't the same everywhere. The way God is over here is not quite the same as over there, and the over-there parts are somehow distracted from being fully present here.

This is how the holographic dream is born. A hologram is the concept that "the all is in every part" - which is pretty close to the way I described God being if God were a 'space'. i.e. All of God is fully in every part of existence. If you want a primer on holograms or whatever maybe check out The Holographic Universe which is quite an interesting book.

Anyway. Basically, at the early stages of the hologram forming, a lot is still shared and things are still almost-one. But the 'density', if you will, of the hologram, increases by continued ego belief in separation. The ego starts noticing and emphasizing the ways in which different parts of existence seem not to be the same. And as this grows stronger, it starts to seem more and more as though only a small part of God is still present here, because all the `other parts of God` are apparently quite different and have become quite finite and specific, and they're all localized to other parts of existence. So what exists over there maybe does not or cannot exist over here.

As this progresses, in the mind, the hologram 'solidifies' more and more. Or another way to describe it is that, formless reality in which everything is the same everywhere starts to 'descend' into localized properties, differences, separations, divisions, fragmented identities. The more separate and clearly defined these differences become, the more the awareness of God's omnipresence, God's total attention, God's total awareness, and God's equal presence everywhere, APPEARS to be shut out of awareness. If it seems true to you that differences are real, and that you start to look AT those differences and breathe reality into them, then you will become fixated on the ways in which God is NOT THE SAME ANYWHERE.

Not only is God not the same anywhere, but this also has a dire conclusion. If you really strongly believe in the reality of differences, you must start to fixate only on the appearance of what's left. All of the different 'forms' of difference. And those forms of difference is what we call PHYSICAL MATTER. The solidification of wholeness into locality, the contraction and density of 'energy' if you will, is what happens in the 'lower levels' of the hologram. The further into separation and differences you go the more 'solid' everything starts to look, and the less there is any evidence or awareness that God is present, even AT ALL. At a certain point you would be forgiven for even believing that God does not exist AT ALL because ALL you can see are the intense, real-seeming differences of physical matter. The physical universe 'stops' God from being able to be in all places at once, or in all places equally, or in all places fully, replaced with the idea that everything is separate from everything else.

So while holograms start out subtle, or what scientists call 'diffused', the lower levels of the holographic 'dream' are much more divided and separated out and form 'images'. When you see the little images on your credit card which look 3d when you see them from different angles - those are a form of holograms. You see an image, and yet when you look from another angle, you see another image. Its as if ALL of the images are somehow 'in' the one location, SHARED. But on the level of physical matter, you can only ever see ONE of the versions of the image at a time. You can't see the 'all'. You can't see all of the angles of the little dove or whatever it is in the hologram, because it is obscured by the rules of the physical universe.

So when the Course is saying, nothing so blinding as perception of form, what it's saying is, physical matter is a very dense level of a holographic interpretation of God, which has the effect of completely obscuring any trace of oneness or all-ness, so that you fixate on only one version of one image, in which it seems like NOTHING is shared and therefore there is no God. 'Sharing' is the same as 'Oneness' so if there is no sharing (co-existing in the same space) then God doesn't exist.

In the physical world, an object does not seem to have anything shared with another object. There is no sense of there being any unity between them. There is nothing 'the same' that is exactly the same in both. This defies the property of God that all of him is everywhere. And then because the stuff that is `in` one object is NOT the stuff that is `in` another object, defies the property of God that all of his same properties are in all objects at the same time. So if you look at that matter and you BELIEVE the illusion that it is trying to SHOW you, its statement of 'what is', you will be blinded from seeing God.

Physical matter LITERALLY was made by the ego to make the properties of God totally obscured and distracted away from. If you believe physical matter does not share anything, you do not have awareness of God. It blinds you. If you do not believe that physical matter contains all of something which is also fully present in other parts of matter, you are blinded to God. Matter, in all its forms, is a giant blanket of the 'undoing' of God's reality, God's omnipresence. It is a physicalization of the idea of separation, but even moreso, the idea that God's law-defying everywhereness is NOT what existence is like, and therefore God does not exist.

It is designed SPECIFICALLY to shut out the awareness of God's presence so that, IF your mind is aligned with it and IF your mind functions according to the 'laws of matter' then you WILL NOT SEE GOD. If you SEE MATTER, you do not see God. Not fully. If you do not see PAST matter, you do not see God. If you fixate ON or look AT matter, you will not see God. Your mind needs to become able to OVERLOOK (forgive) the ILLUSIONS that are presented to you BY MATTER ITSELF.

This isn't just a matter of fixing your mind and staying in the world and not seeing God. Your mind needs to go back `up` the hologram to the point of Oneness, eventually, so that your awareness is able to discern that a) God is fully present, b) All of God is here, c) All of God is everywhere, and d) All of God is the same everywhere. If you believe that MATTER IS REAL or MATTER IS TRUE, then you cannot be aware of God. If the form of matter dictates how your mind perceives or you believe in its ILLUSION, you cannot see God. Matter is BLINDING. That is its function. And it will never have another function until it is undone.

What the ego in your mind does, is it looks at matter and uses it as a 'model' for what is true about your mind and what is true in your perception. Its illusion infuses into your mind and you take it at its word and consider it 'reality'. You buy into its illusion, its way of obscuring God, and its statements of the ways in which God is not here, God is not everywhere, God is not ALL in ALL. That is matter's message. That is the 'state of existence' of the physical universe, designed solely to shut God out - IF you believe it is real.

This also leads to another way to say, the physical universe is just a holographic dream, and it is just an illusion designed to obscure God, and NEVER will it be Heaven (because heaven is formless), and THE WORLD IS NOT REAL. Matter is not real. Separate forms are not real. Bodies are not real. Planets are not real. Physical matter is AN ILLUSION AND NOTHING ELSE. It is the illusion that God is dead and can never be real.

These are all ways of expressing the idea that God is not God, and that can never be true. And this is why eventually the physical universe WILL DISAPPEAR.

I have no idea if I explained this well or conveyed what I wanted to. I had a profound experience a few years ago which SHOWED me an EXPERIENCE of this - I experienced what it was like to go up the hologram in my mind, back toward Oneness, and how this allowed me to be AWARE of God's presence - all of His presence in every part of the dream, and how this totally defied what 'form' was trying to telling me was the truth of existence. So I speak from experience, but these things really defy the ego's logic so it's very hard to put into words. Let me know if I need to clarify something.

All is not as it seems in this world. The physical world ITSELF IS the 'form' of the egos attack on God, and IS its defense. You think you only have defenses in your mind inside your body. But the physical universe as a whole is a giant defense mechanism - IN the larger mind of the Son of God. You're literally looking at the MIND of the Son of God attempting to shut God out. That's what this world is.

OK.

This is going to have to be pretty long because this is a very difficult subject to explain, so bear with me. Some of you may be willing to accept what I'm going to say, some will not.

Oneness. What does it seem to mean? God is whole. God is complete. God is "all there is". God is everywhere, omnipresent, lacking nothing. God is the same everywhere. So... if this is true in terms of ego logic, it means the following:

God has no son. God is dreaming this world. God is a murderer. God created death. God makes people suffer. The separation happened inside God. God is mistaken. God is afraid. God is all people. God is experiencing "himself" through and as all people in the world. There is nothing other than God. We are God. Separation is real. God created this world. etc.

Absolutely none of that is true. That is the purest most logically accurate definition of what non-duality means to the ego. It is the most precise conclusion you can draw from how the EGO understands oneness or what it means to be "one". If oneness truly means "there is only one", the God is responsible for hell. And it is grossly mistaken.

If God is one, then God cannot even create anything because there is nowhere for the creation to occur and nothing to add which wasn't already there and so, literally, "there is only God". This is the conclusion many many Course folk have come to. It seems to in some ways make sense TO EGO THINKERS and those who use linear logic who think that such linear logic is capable of encompassing and understanding the nature of God.

God is not like this. And oneness does not mean "there is only God". And non-duality, as the opposite of duality, does not properly describe the holographic creative nature of God or reality. Non-duality is CLOSE to being correct, and is more correct than duality, but it is still a concept and it falls way short, as you will see. If there is non-duality there should be just "one thing". In that, there can be no Son of God at all, no creation, no love, no extension, no sharing, no sonship, and no holy relationship.

In fact, what's happened widespread in ACIM folk is various false conclusions which have established themselves as if written in stone "what the course says". And yet the consequences of these errors are quite horrific. To believe God is all there is is to equate God with ego and death. To claim that God is all there is also denies and murders every Son of God.

OK.

Now, let's talk about how God actually exists and thinks and creates and the nature of His creation. If the strictest definition of oneness or non duality is true, then God cannot even create anything. And in a sense, PARTS of the Course speak to this. E.g. "God is". And also, "nothing real can be increased except by sharing". So anything real, like God, is permanent, fixed, unchanging, does not increase or decrease, and therefore there can be no creation whatsoever. Which means no son. UNLESS, this thing called "sharing" happens.

Recognize that God is love, and because of what love is, it automatically goes out and shares and extends. It shares because it has no reason to hold anything back. It is fundamentally a state of sharing, including, giving, and this radiation of love is another way of describing the act of creation.

God in and of Himself is whole, complete, lacking nothing, needing nothing, and is already permanent. Like a solid rock. Unchanging. That does not really sound like something that can create, does it? It seems very fixed. Like absolutely nothing is happening or possible. That's strictly what most definitions of "oneness" imply also. That nothing else is possible besides God existing. That's false.

God loves, and in that love, God radiates, extends, shares, creates, miraculously. Ego logic will NEVER account for "the miraculous", and God's creative ability is truly miraculous, which is why YOU ARE A MIRACLE. To the ego, God CANNOT create, and the act of His creating defies ALL EGO LOGIC and demonstrates that God is a miracle worker. Something happens in God which defies explanation and seems impossible yet happens. God SHARES AND CREATES something "other" than Himself, out of nowhere.

If you think of God like a light bulb, God is the fixed light bulb which does not move or change really, but the bulb radiates and SHINES light. The light goes outward and illuminates. That "shining", that light radiating, that is creation. The light radiating is not necessarily the same thing as God Himself. God is complete and whole already, but God SHARES Himself by shining light and radiating and extending, and that which extends outward is creation.

It is in this way that God created the world of Heaven. Here is how the Course describes it is a NATURAL division:

"The world was made as "a natural grand division," or a projecting outward of God. That is why everything that He created is like Him. Projection, as undertaken by God, is very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit from Him. It is important to note that the term "project outward" necessarily implies that the real source of projection is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the Father."

So God in and of Himself is complete and whole, but He "projects outward" (extends) and that which is projected forms a "world" (heaven). This world is, in a sense, "divided from" God in a natural way, in that it comes FROM God and is God SHARING, but God as its SOURCE still remains in a sense, beyond it.

This is because God is the "first cause" and what God radiates is the "effect" of God. His Thought/Shining is the effect of Him as the "thinker". The effect of God is not capable of turning around and "causing God" in reverse, or of making God its effect. The creation (the Son/sonship) is being constantly sustained by, projected by God, forever, is coming FROM God, and therefore the Son is ONLY "as God created Him" and cannot change what He is. The Son has no real say in what He is at all, He merely gives thanks for having been created perfect.

God is cause, not effect. God cannot be affected. This causal extension or "creating of effect" in a way puts up a kind of "wall" or division you could say, just on a causality level, which in a sense, separates the creation from God's own Self, but only in the sense that the created Son cannot cause God back. But the Son CAN share love with Him.

This is not the same thing as the "separation" that we are accustomed to thinking of as what the ego does or relating to the "separation from God" which was a different matter. The "separation from God" happened when the Son, who is only effect and not capable of causing God, attempted to cause God. That means the Son tried to will against God's will or to undo what God has created, trying to replace it with something else. That was an act of impossible denial, which brought about the separation and the "fall of man".

That's an entirely different thing to the "natural division" between God and His Son. The division between God and Son is NATURAL in that this is How God intended it, that the Son is imbued with the SAME WILL TO CREATE, the same love, the same completeness, the same wholeness, AND SHARING the WHOLE OF GOD within itself, as well as sharing THE WHOLE OF CREATION within itself. All of God is in the Son, shared with the Son, and yet the Son is in some way also "divided" from God as a creation of God or thought of God.

In nonduality and oneness concepts there is no accounting for God thinking anything at all, yet alone creating a son. It completely glosses over the fact that God is LOVE, and love radiates and extends and creates. When people tell you what the definition of oneness is they become very clinical and ego-specific in describing God as a kind of "single blob". There is no love in that concept, nor does it appreciate the NATURE of Oneness, which is to share, extend everywhere, create, increase, and to experience JOY. Do you equate oneness with joy, or power, or love, or creativity, or miracles? As a logical device, no. But God is joyful and creative and all powerful and miraculous.

Now, it is possible for God to create AT LEAST One Son, and the Course references the "one son of God" in various places. And due to misunderstandings, many people have come to believe God only has one Son. So now there are two camps - a set of people believing that God is one therefore has no son or "I am God", and a camp of people accepting there is One Son (somehow) but not more. It relates to how much of the nature of God is grasped.

OK. So holograms. Did you know God thinks holographically? Do you know what a hologram is or why this is totally different to how the ego thinks? If you are thinking about God's creation or oneness without thinking about holograms, then you WILL come to false conclusions, such as that there are no divisions in heaven or God has only one Son or no son, because non-holographic logic CAN ONLY arrive at these conclusions. Ego logic is FAULTY and limited.

The essential idea of a hologram is that the whole is able to express in many "parts" and yet each part contains ALL of the whole. This makes NO SENSE to the ego, because it thinks in terms of separated space, where it is impossible for all of God to be in one part AND all of God to be in another part simultaneously. The ego will wager, "there is not enough God for God to be elsewhere, if God is fully here". And that's why the ego is BLIND to the nature of heaven. It does not account for SHARING.

Here's what the Course says about the holographic nature of God and the Sonship - note how ILLOGICAL and CONTRADICTORY these all sound, at first:

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, 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 does transcend the sum of its parts."

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite."

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other."

So Jesus is saying two things, which seem to clash. 1) God created One Son. 2) God created many sons. The conclusion here, to THE EGO, is either, a) God only created one Son, or b) The "many" or "multitude" nature of the sonship tells us that it is OF THE EGO and is therefore not real. Are either of these conclusions true? NO! They are both mistakes, and reveal the limitations of the ego's thought system when it tires to understand the EGO DEFYING nature of God.

In a hologram, the whole is present in EVERY part. Now, if you think in terms you are familiar with in this world, like physical objects and space, you think ok, if I take 1 gallon of water and I pour it into a 1 gallon container, there is no water left to fill another container. Yes? This is ego thinking. And ego thinking gave rise to this ENTIRE universe, including all physical forms, and all laws of physics, to paint a picture that attempts to PROVE that God's NATURE is NOT the way things are. And we have used physical form as a way to understand the nature of existence. This is a major error. We are BLINDED by sight of form, because forms express the EGO IDEA of separation, limitation, "measuring" how much of something there is in a finite way, and then concluding that there is lack and limitation.

When ALL of God is poured into one creation, how much God is there left to pour into another? ALL OF HIM! He does not run out. He INCREASES BY SHARING. The ego cannot believe this. The multiplying of fish and bread to feed 5000 people is a good example of this principle. Giving ALL to something does not diminish it AT ALL, it merely increases by being given away.

God puts ALL of the whole of his nature into His creation, in EACH thought. And what He creates is FULL, complete, and whole, AND shares ALL of itself with God, and includes all of God, and all of any other creation God creates. So then God has another thought, creates another WHOLE, and then another WHOLE, and another. You should get the idea then, spatially, even in ego terms, that adding more wholes INCREASES the sum total - and this is How the Kingdom expands.

To the ego, it is impossible that God be fully in one location and yet fully in another. This is completely impossible in terms of a physical object. However, bi-location is a miracle because it demonstrates that we are not bound by space or by instances or amounts. The Course says that God has many thoughts, INFINITE IN NUMBER. That amounts to an INFINITE number of Sons of God. And each Son of God is WHOLE and complete and perfect in itself, has free will just like God, extends and creates just like God (you have your own creations in Heaven), and radiates love just like God. This means each son is not just some "partial person" or limited or unlike the rest, it means EVEY son is FULL, whole, complete, absolutely unlimited, and shares EVERYTHING with God in perfection. And so do all the rest.

That God does not diminish when sharing himself fully to create a WHOLE SON, means automatically that God can create MANY sons without any diminishing of Himself at all. And all of God is in every Son. AND every Son is within every Son. And the ENTIRE SONSHIP is within every Son. This is entirely NATURAL AND NORMAL in Heaven. Heaven therefore contains INFINITE "naturally divided" (causally divided) INDIVIDUAL WHOLES - which are souls or Sons of God - each one holy and perfect.

Ok.

So now we need to talk about why some people are confused in constantly saying that God has One Son or there is "only oneness" or the Sonship is an part of separation etc. It's because people are getting PART of the picture and not the whole picture, because EGO LOGIC is telling them to EXCLUDE some parts of the holographic nature of God. They can "see" that God's oneness makes sense, but this seems to imply there is no son or at least not more than one. They can't see HOW God can have created many sons OR how a "division" is natural. And so they just can't get their heads around the nature of God or how it's possible for there to be a sonship at all.

And if you will go looking, ACIM contains specific quotes which SEEM to support the ego's interpretations by focusing on only one PART of the holographic picture, using that as justification for why "the course said this". For example, "God has but one Son", or countless references to "God's Son". Well, this leads God people to conclude that the Course is saying God doesn't have more sons. It's a mistake. With no grasp of God's NATURE - which is holographic, it makes sense people will be in error. And then they will say well, since God has only one Son, the sonship is a lie, or I do not exist, or I am God, or I do not have a self, or there is no-one here, or whatever else.

These are NON-DUALITY concepts which FAIL to appreciate God's nature. And you can see how, if it is true that God has many sons, these kind of "beliefs" are HARMFUL. They basically DESTROY the sonship, DENY the Self, and render God impotent.

When I finally understood how God thinks holographically and realized that non-duality is bullshit and a limited EGO concept of God, I felt great RELIEF about the simple recognition that "GOD CREATED ME". Me, as an INDIVIDUAL. Not me as an EGO, that's different, but that I have a HOLY SELF, which is sharing with other holy selves, and all of us are PERMANENT and INTENDED by God to have free will. When I saw this, I cried tears of joy, and also release of sadness, which had built up from the non-duality teachers, who have MISLED countless students and spread LIES ABOUT HEAVEN, resulting in the belief that "I do not exist", which can only lead to despair and depression because it DENIES GOD'S CREATION.

A course in miracles is NOT non-duality at all. The principle of Oneness is NOT that there is "only one and nothing else". Oneness truly means, sharing, creation, unlimited extension, INFINITE wholes, and a heaven filled with SOULS that live forever in a state of perfection and wholeness, sharing everything they are with ALL OTHERS including God. Why do you think Jesus refers to you as a brother? It's not just a temporary thing. You will ALWAYS be equal to and a brother of Jesus, AND at the same time, one with Him, and literally sharing everything WITH Him, AND still having your own soul, and still having your own free will which happens to be the same in focus as God's.

So now we have a very different picture of Heaven, and it has NOTHING to do with Earth or this universe. "Heaven and Earth are opposite in EVERY way." Heaven is a PLACE in the sense that it EXISTS as God's creation and you can experience it and BE there in it/with it. There are many references in the course where Jesus says "in Heaven" and also referring to Heaven as a "world" and as something God created. And given that THIS world - earth, physical universe, DOES NOT EXIST BECAUSE THERE IS NO WORLD - where IS there to BE or live or exist other than Heaven? In that sense, it IS a place, far more a REAL place than planet earth. Earth is not a place at all.

Heaven is within the mind of God. "The kingdom of God is you" is another reference to you being The Son of God and one of may sons of God. You are part of and all of heaven. Something you can be INSIDE OF and BE, and where there are infinite souls and angels, plus the Holy Spirit, plus an entire sonship of equal souls, all equal with Jesus, all individually a Son of God, AND also every one of those souls is THE Son of God as well. And each soul continues to CREATE MORE. There is nothing unnatural about this at all. All PARTS of heaven are of ONE ORDER.

Per Jesus: "The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects are of the same order." (Here "man" is the same thing as soul or son of God, not humans.)

One final word then. Each Son of God, being a hologram of God, is whole and complete in and of itself, lacking nothing. And AT THE SAME TIME, is so OPEN and so SHARING, that it is wired into the ENTIRE CREATION of God. Picture it as your mind is so expanded that you are "one with" ie sharing in, the entire sonship. God therefore experiences ALL of his many thoughts, as ONE, while simultaneously allowing them to be many.

This is why there are many references to God having only one son. When it's speaking of this, it refers to how God experiences all Sons as though they are all the same and one, experienced simultaneously and so sharing that they do not seem "separate". Yet they are still divided. And then when the course speaks 250+ times about the many sons of God, this is not contradictory because God DOES have many sons AND one son.

God thinks holographically. All of God is in every son and all of every son is in every son. The whole sonship is in every son and every son in the sonship. You are the ONE SON of God, AND you are one of many. This is heavenly logic, not ego logic. When every individual PART of the sonship has returned to its true nature, all of the sonship as a whole communicates with God again.

The only other point to make I think is the difference between division and ego separation. In heaven you are divided from others and from God. But only in the sense that you are a loving family who shares everything together. Loving families are still individuals yet joined. The individuality does not go away. When walls are erected between family members, ie artificial separations are introduced, there is denial of the sharing, denial of the oneness, and denial of wholeness. This UNNATURAL DIVISION is the ego. This is what the course refers to as separation.

You have to get your head around the idea that you can be individual AND joined and that this is normal, natural and real. It is not your individual soul nature that makes you an ego. It is not that you are PART of a huge family of souls (sonship) that makes you an ego. What makes you an ego is that you withdraw your connection from God, withdraw your connection from the sonship, and become ISOLATED behind artificial imaginary walls of denial. It's got nothing to do with whether you are an individual or not.

Perhaps the most misunderstood thing about ACIM is the belief that ego means separate self, and therefore means individuality, and therefore having an individuality is ego. THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!! Individuality is not the problem. Cutting your individuality off from sharing with the whole is the problem. Trying to be a "part" of the hologram that does NOT contain the whole. Trying to not be an effect of God. Trying to cause God and change Him and affect Him. Cutting yourself off from the sonship. Believing you are not equal to all brothers. Being special. THAT is the problem and that is what the ego is made of, not your individuality.

Individuality does not mean you are separate from God, it means you are one of God's Son's. YOU DO EXIST. Just not as an illusion of an isolated self who has no connection to others. What is death but the end of all connection and the bringing about of total separation from Life? Joining with Life does not make you disappear! It's not about "you're not really out there". It's more like, "you are MORE than you APPEAR to be." You are God's Son and one of many sons. You are one with God and with all others and you SHARE with them all, one in sharing, not in number.

ACIM is not non-duality. And ACIM is not about the ego's idea of what oneness means. ACIM is not teaching that God only has a single son "separate from" the many sons. Heaven is a cascade of creation and miracles and light and souls and beauty and sharing and union and freedom. This is why YOU are responsible for everything YOU CHOOSE. Choose again.

When you are in the world and the world seems real, and you feel like life is meaningless and empty, instead of seeking truly within you tend to seek without.

The ego has asserted that the absence of meaning is real, and that the truth is not already here. You fail to look within for it, believing it is not there now. So you start to look outside yourself for a substitute. Surely the meaning is out there and can be found, in the world?

This sets you on a path of seeking, at which the ego is chuckling because you're now falling for "seek and do not find", trying to find something out there which only exists within you.

The ego then reasons that it will keep the world real, but that somewhere within the world there is something worth finding. If you read the "laws of chaos", the ego's laws eventaully result in a desire to find something "special" within the external or in others - special love - which is substituting for the belief that you don't deserve or have real love already. It suggests you can really find it and that it will be your salvation.

Keeping the world means that any quest to find truth must find it within that context, so "the truth is out there". This immediately means that you will start to try to make some aspect of this world special and spiritual. Some aspects of it or some attitude about it will seem to be spiritual while others will seem to be unspiritual.

This is really the ego split mind which is perceiving some parts of what is as good and some as bad, trying to emphasize the good and reject the bad, which increases separation. The ego then begins to claim that the good stuff is "not the ego" and the bad stuff "is the ego". In the pretend name of getting rid of that which is unspiritual, it over-emphasizes that which it deems spiritual.

The good stuff is what your persona likes to keep, and the bad stuff is what you put into your "shadow" which is unconscious mostly. This results in you starting to try to change your persona, your conscious self, to "make it more spiritual".

So the ego has this entire path laid out for you, to "become more spiritual" by seeking externally and trying to find some alleged truth IN the world. This leads many people down a path which very much seems spiritual and positive and "better than the dark crap" but is actually an ILLUSION of spirituality.

While the ego is busy trying to make it seem like you're becoming more spiritual, you're actually moving away from your spiritual self (which is within, and was there all along), and is trying to get you to "find yourself" outside of yourself.

This leads to a variety of delusions such as that there is something sacred about the world, or the divine cosmos, or the universe is conscious and helping you, or that certain special objects or music or clothing or foods are all more spiritual.

It also leads the person's persona to become quite lost in the conceptual intellect, which is attempting to pretend to be spiritual way beyond what it is actually experiencing. It's attempt to reach out to lofty spiritual ideals is so far removed from "actual experience" that it can't help but go into the head and turn into a concept of the truth. It then believes it can find the truth by searching in the intellect or using the intellect to find it. This is a dead end.

It also causes the person or persona to become quite fake and filled with illusions of being spiritual. The trouble is, that the persona is a device for getting rid of anything about yourself that it deems not spiritual enough, and the only way to become really ultra spiritual is to get rid of as many bad parts as possible.

This turns into self sacrifice and a false idea of being selfless where you practically sell your soul in trying to be holier than thou. And in this you lose yourself, thinking that you're meant to serve and obey and do things you don't want to do. You'll take it very seriously and try to be as lofty and heightened in consciusness a possible, which usually translates to having a lot of thinking and conceptualizing. You then lose touch with reality, or at least, you lose touch with what you are really experiencing, and go into a fantasy land.

This fantasy land is the ego's idea of spirituality. It believes it can attain enlightenment and yet stay separate from God, becoming a God of its own making. This is a trap for every seeker. Everything spiritual-seeming, every illusion of spirituality, is offered up as a temptation or bribe to get you to actually abandon yourself and believe in the reality of an external truth even more. Believing in an external truth also means believing in an external God. Yet God is within you.

Sometimes that ego bubble bursts as the persona breaks down and the repressed rage of the shadow comes screaming into awareness to ask you to please acknowledge your real self and your actual experience, instead of your fictional life of ultra-specialness. This can be very unpleasant and come across as a form of insanity, but in a way it is a form of healing which is attempting to awaken you to the fact that your very own spiritualized persona is what has been destroying you all along, with its attempts to "perfect you" and transform you, instead of accepting you as you are.

These are difficult illusions to overcome, largely because the mind is unaware of what the persona is doing, and is unconscious of what it's shoving into the shadow. Many are led astray by this ego illusion of being spiritual. It is not really spiritual at all. There is no wholeness to it. There is a lack of authenticity to it. There is no real personality behind it.

Beware then, that as you attempt to become spiritual, the ego has an entire bucketload of tricks and temptations and traps and false masks for you to wear, to dress you up and make you look like you're being spiritual, even to yourself. And the only reason you fall for it is because you yourself believe that the truth is not in you. You agree with the ego that it is somewhere else and that you need to find it, which takes you on a long pointless journey to nowhere.

Once a seeker always a seeker, until you stop seeking and see the futility of it. What you are trying to find is yourself, and God, and truth and love. It's already in you. It's just covered up with illusions that make it seem like it is not there and cannot be there. But it is there. It was there all along. This is why the course asks us to remove the blocks to awareness of it, instead of seeking to find love somewhere else. We don't need a replacement for love, we just need to realize and accept where the love is.

There are really only two modes of functioning of which you are capable. It really does boil down to a simple "this or that" decision. Either you are in love, or you are in fear. Love has only one nature, but fear masquerades as an untold number of illusions. All of them are fearful and they represent egotism. But they are all essentially a withdrawal away from love.

To love is an outward expression. It is extension. Love shines and radiates out of you towards others. This love seeks to uplift, empower, heal, nurture, strengthen, join, share, communicate, connect, give, supply, support, make whole. Love is always given/extended through you from God and goes out to your brothers and to the world. It is an outward transfer which entails you loving and joining with everything.

Love, and all expressions of love, are miraculous and healing. Love is powerful, it is happy and joyful, and it is peaceful. It is meaningful. Love is sanity. Love heals and resurrects. And love can reverse all forms of suffering. Love shines like a bright light, and as you give it, you receive it because it is shared and for all. As you give it, you shine, and in this shining you illuminate both yourself and others, and in this light you can see, and what you look upon is illuminated with love and is lovable.

The opposite of this is fear. Fear is separation, contraction, withdrawal, and inward focus. Fear is selfish, victimizing and victimized. In fear you feel afraid, angry, upset, hurt, weakened, sick, tired, stressed and damaged. In fear you pull way from others and the world, you hate and attack, you feel imposed upon and controlled, and eventually die. Fear is an attempt not to extend love, not to give life, and to be alone. In fear you will feel alone, cut off, isolated, imprisoned.

In fear you will feel like you've been taken hostage, all the happenings around you will seem like they are against you with no escape, all problems will seem insurmountable and unfair and cruel, and you will feel like you're in a dark pit of hellish despair that you can't get out of. It's as if you've been taken hostage by a tyrannical ruler who has imprisoned you and kept you in a dark hole in the ground. And everywhere you turn there will be enemies and haters and attackers and prison guards.

What it boils down to is a very, very simple difference between the two approaches to life. Each approach entails a different kind of seeing. Fear places you in false perception, where the whole world seems like a prison. Love places you in true perception, where the whole world is harmless and forgiven.

Love entails giving in order to receive. As you give love, as you shine your light, as you extend, you yourself are uplifted. "Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver." Even if you start out in fear and lack, efforting to love more will empower you and lift you out of darkness. To love is to fulfill your natural function. You are supposed to shine. You are supposed to radiate. You are supposed to give and extend and reach out to join with others in love. AS you do this you automatically are protected and saved and it raises you up into the light where you are happy and at peace.

When you don't do this, you must recoil and withdraw into fear. You will step back and not give. And it will now seem that the world has taken from you. A gap will form in between you and others. You will develop enemies and opponents. You will hate some of them and hate yourself for hating them. You will become weak, afraid, lost, alone, and suffer in the dark. You will feel isolated and sick and like no-one is on your side. The world will loom heavily over you as if it has power to make your life hell. And all the while you will be trying to get, to take, to have, to own, to possess, to be special, and you will feel selfish. And everything offered by love will be missing.

It really is as simple as if you have only one choice. Either you give love or you lose love. It's like there's an emotional beacon in you, in your heart, where either your heart is giving outwardly and energy and light are flowing out of you in support of others, or your heart is cold and empty and you are withdrawing and escaping as an enemy of the world. Either your energies express and extend outward, or you hold yourself back. Either you feel loving and warm and bright, or you feel hateful and cold and dark.

You get to make this simple choice at all times. You can switch on love at any time. You can feel it in your heart. Even in the midst of any other illusion of suffering. And yet the ego is expert at making it seem like there is no way out of suffering and love will not help. Can it be as simple as that your heart is not switched on? Of all the many seeming problems, stresses, upsets, emotions, can it be that simply loving more will cure it?

The ego would say no, it will tell you that each of these problems is unique and needs a separate solution. And what it thinks it needs it tries to get. And yet getting it does not make you happy. Underneath all the complicated forms in which fear arises, and all the ways you can feel unloved, there IS in fact only simple solution to all of them. Simply love more. It lifts you out of all upset feelings, it brightens you, makes you feel happier, stronger, more confident. It dispels fear and erases upsets. It heals you.

Being 'human' can seem so complicated but actually what's happening in your mind is incredibly simple. You are like a piece of machinery whose function is to extend the love of God to others. That is all. "The only function of spirit is to extend God's being." You are host to God and extend God. That is all. Your only choice is to continue extending God at all times, or separate yourself off into isolation and fear, in which you will experience all forms of suffering. And at any time you can switch back into fulfilling your function as the light of the world.

The only way to be happy is to fulfill your function. To love. To express love. It's completely natural and produces miracles. It is holy relationship. It is God's will. It is God's will that you love and be happy and healthy. Love makes this possible and guarantees your health and perfection. Either you extend God's love, or you will attack yourself and make yourself sick.

This is why Jesus says "teach only love for that is what you are." It's an extremely simple choice, between love or suffering. To love is to heal and to be happy. To love your brother is to uplift and resurrect him along with you. Your focus should not be on yourself and your needs, or your body. These vanish when you love your brother. Focusing on your body makes it sick because mind is supposed to extend PAST it to others. The light has to shine, to produce health. The light shines PAST sickness and bodies, because it is forgiving.

To love or not to love, that is the question. And only love can make you happy.

"Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of ***all illness*** because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY. "

"Salvation is a lesson in giving, as the Holy Spirit interprets it. It is the re-awakening of the laws of God in minds that have established other laws, and given them power to enforce what God created not."

"We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered BY the eternal TO the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it INCREASES as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL delusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world, which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them. "

"You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you react to each of them AS THOUGH IT WERE THE OTHER. For love cannot abide in a world apart, where, when it comes, it is not recognized. If you see your own hatred AS your brother, you are not seeing HIM. Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves, and recoils from what he fears. And you react with fear to love, and draw AWAY from it. But fear ATTRACTS you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself. Your private world is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into it. And all the love your brothers offer you, YOU DO NOT SEE. "

"You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was GIVEN you. Each is a WAY OF SEEING, and different worlds arise from their different visions. See through the vision that is GIVEN you, for through Christ's vision, He beholds Himself. And seeing what HE is, He knows His Father. Beyond your darkest dreams, He sees God's guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance, which is undimmed by your dreams. And this YOU will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the Father FOR you."