Jesus's redefinition of terms continues to amaze me. When you suddenly realize that he has a whole different MEANING to a term, it suddenly opens up a whole box of insights.

For example "The world of bodies is the world of sin. For only if there were a body is sin possible." Jesus says that bodies are needed for sin. But you might think, sin came before guilt and made the world. But no. He's saying that sin is more like an all encompassing term describing ALL illusions and the ENTIRE ego world of death. Wherein everything was designed to BE sin. ie, sin is like a way of proving that illusions are real. And ALL illusions, by their seeming reality, proven by laws of physics and by "evidence", testify against reality.

A better definition of SIN might be, that "twisting" or "distorting" of reality and truth, which results in what is true and false being swapped, and what is real and unreal being confused. It is "the evil" that seems to turn reality into illusions, and make illusions seem real.

"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where truth should be, and where it really is."

Here he says that sin is insanity, and so the whole ego thought system can be said to be sin. It's the way by which there is a distortion in what is true, where true and false are confused, and real and unreal are confused. So it's not just that you commit a crime and call it a sin, it's actually that the entire physical world is deeply rooted in sin - the attempt to prove that illusion are real. The whole world is an attempt to do this. Even the rocks and grains of sand. This is because:

"The world is false perception"

And all false perception, ie distortion of mind, inaccurate perception, believing that illusions are real, thinking that death is life, thinking that what is false is true, is what the physical world is composed of. It's laws are literally the laws of sin and death.

"Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts which are untrue. They are the "proof " that what has no reality is real."

Here he tells us that ALL illusions are rooted in sin. And so "the world of bodies (the illusory world) is the world of sin." The WHOLE thing is sin. Which is why Jesus refers to the physical world, the veil across the face of Christ, as "the granite block of sin". By its laws, it acts as a mechanism for manufacturing "proof", through "physical evidence", which is maintained in order to testify that sin is real and has happened. All of the worlds happenings, seen through unforgiving eyes and insanity, are sin.

"Sin "proves" God's Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; Eternal life must die."

What this means is that, the fact that ANYTHING can seem to die, is A SIN. It's sin embodied as proof of death. Dead carcasses, dead flies, dead humans, dead planets. It was all made to try to make sin, ie "separation from God", or "that hell is real and heaven is not" be the new truth.

"A madman's dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game."

So all dreams, the whole dream world, is made of sin.

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?"

Sin, or, the physicalized material laws of the ego thought system, resulted in the eyeballs.

"Except for God's teachers there would be little hope of salvation, for the world of sin would seem forever real."

"And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack."

"It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely."

"If I defend myself I am attacked."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"Defense do what they would defend."

"In my defenselessness lies my safety."

It's interesting but, when we try to defend ourselves, under the belief that we are making ourselves more protected, more safe, more secure, we ACTUALLY are undermining ourselves and attacking ourselves. So now self attack masquerades as self defense.

The ego splits off the illusion of attack and defense because it splits cause and effect. It tries to make out that attacks are not defenses, and defense are not attacks. That you can cause in order to not be caused. Or you can defend in order to not be caused. But both attack and defend are forms of the same ego plot to weaken you.

A defense automatically presumes that you need defending, because there is something weakened, vulnerable and wrong with you. That you are frail and fragile and attackable. Without this belief in being attackable, you cannot have defenses, and there would be no point defending something that isn't attackable in the first place.

Therefore the defenses undermine your integrity and require you to believe that you need them, due to being attacked already, and therefore your defenses attack you. It's the same as with e.g. virus protection software. It is designed to save you, but the belief in viruses causes the eruption of enemies.

And so defenses are attempts at saving yourself from attack, but in fact are themselves attacks. So they cannot work. And all they do is paint an illusion that you are safer without in any way undoing the belief that you are weak or vulnerable. You then think you are safer because of the illusion of protection, but you have not really increased your belief in invulnerability whatsoever.

To be truly defenseless requires you to be convinced that you cannot be attacked, which requires you to recognize that you are immortal.

"You are immortal and you cannot die."

"There is no death. The Son of God is free."

When you defend yourself, you make yourself sick. Defenses are self-attack. You think you need to be defended and this attacks the body, making it sick. Sickness is a defense against the truth, or in other words, sickness is a self attack masquerading as being attacked by something else in an attempt to defend yourself. Attempting to defend yourself weakens you and makes you sick.

If you defend yourself, you undermine your immortality.

"The body is hardly worth the least defense."

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

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.

Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, ****by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer.**** Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:

"I have forgotten what I really am, For I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defence against the truth, But I am not a body. And my mind Cannot attack. So I can not be sick.""

---

"The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and ***hardly worth the least defense***, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?

Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source."

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."

"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be."

"Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne."

"Such is your planning for your own defense. And you believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with God made blind by your illusions, truth turned into lies, and all the universe made slave to laws which your defenses would impose on it. Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? Who else can see them and react to them as if they were the truth?"

...AND ITS REVERSAL...

"God knows not of your plans to change His Will. The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which you thought to govern it. And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin."

"Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal, and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey."

"Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. And you will recognize you practiced well by this: The body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more."

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."

ACIM

My note: Note that Jesus specifically refers here to healing the physical BODY, and to his intention that we PRACTICE this in order to then evaluate how well we did based on how meaningless the body is afterwards, as well as making the body invulnerable to and not dependent upon the world.

In our special relationships, we think of a particular person as our savior, idol, bestie, or appointed partner. We adore them with very exclusive terms and special attention. Things that we reserve only for them and for no-one else.

This is the main mode of functioning of love in most people. Special love, for special people, in special ways. Or in other words, limited love, in exclusive situations, with a very small handful of individuals.

The ego in us loves this. It loves to love only a tiny subset of the Sonship. It loves to isolate and limit and constrain all love to one special chosen target recipient. It loves to really strongly play up how important and special and relied-upon that person is, because what this indirectly implies, is that everyone else sucks bigtime.

Special relationships therefore feed the ego 'persona' - the parts of life that it wants to keep and approve of - which is a very limited slice of reality - which it will eventually still attack and destroy. And while it feeds this persona, it relegates everything else to prison, which goes into your own mind as your 'shadow' self, filled with rejection and hate and attack. And that shadow self will attack your persona self and attack your special relationship and eventually try to destroy it. And as such romance turns to resentment. That's what the ego has in store for you when you play along with the special-love game. It ends in tears.

Ok so, being a bit dramatic ;-)

The point is, most people are stuck in this game, and there is a whole other way to experience life. And that means, bringing specialness into question, which is especially difficult when you have special relationships. It means that you will have to confront a sense of not depending on special people, but instead depending on God. It means you will have to examine why you can only love this one person and not everyone else, and also find out what it is within yourself that refuses to love everyone equally. Typically it's because you do not want to love yourself at all times, but only when you yourself are 'special' to yourself, which is probably not often.

Sometimes therefore special relationships have to go through a transition in order for the relationship to become 'holy', which means, the specialness (which is really a form of conditionality and limitation) has to be brought into question. And indeed, it may have to be released, which can be very painful, in order to make way for a greater expansion of love that overflows beyond the borders of the special relationship. How can you be unconditionally loving and uncondtionally yourself without letting go of the specialness that limits and imprisons you?

This doesn't have to mean the end of a relationship or necessarily its destruction, but at times it can seem that the special aspects of the relationship undergo a breakdown, to reveal a deeper unconditionality, a deeper more genuine more honest love, that doesn't put on a mask of pretense and perhaps doesn't play into the appearance of a typical special relationship. This means the relationship is becoming holy, in which the 'real selves' are starting to relate on terms of deeper honesty and greater willingness to love. Love actually increases, but it becomes in a sense less personally confining. It become more freeing, more allowing, more accepting, and that's different than how a special relationship typically starts out.

What remains then is a TRUE relationship, not only with another person but also with yourself, where you yourself are more genuine, where you are not dependent on the other person for the source of your love, where you are able to be of service, where you love them unconditionally, love yourself unconditionally, and also love beyond the walls of the 'relationship' unconditionally. What applies to you must apply to all. And as such, as you mature into unconditional love, you are maturing into a relationship with the entire Sonship, based on love instead of rejection and special attention.

This ultimately is the only way to love yourself.

In the manual for teachers, there's a section called "Does Jesus have a Special Place in Healing". In this section, it actually talks about how Jesus CAN BE involved in healing. ie miracle working. Which ties in nicely with Jesus telling us "You will see miracles through your hands through me."

Essentially it is saying that Jesus has gone all the way to Heaven, and we should be thankful to Him for achieving this for and with us. And also that he has UNLIMITED POWER, and that He is still with us, and that we should turn to Him for help. It also speaks of how you should call upon or pray in his name, ie "In the name of Jesus Christ", in gratitude to Him and God, as part of healing. That by doing so you are calling upon the power of God.

This is why if you are to LITERALLY lay your hands on people and have Jesus perform "miracles through your hands" through Him, it is because He is currently MORE CAPABLE than you are of performing healing, and calling up on Him to do so is how you can perform miracles for others.

Here's some pertinent parts of what it says:

"Even the most advanced of God's teachers will give way to temptation in this world. Would it be fair if their pupils were denied healing because of this?"

"The Bible says, "Ask in the name of Jesus Christ.""

"What does it mean to call on Jesus Christ? What does calling on his name confer? Why is the appeal to him part of healing?"

"We have repeatedly said that one who has perfectly accepted the Atonement for himself can heal the world."

"He has become the risen Son of God. He has overcome death because he has accepted life."

"There is now no limit on his power, because it is the power of God. So has his name become the Name of God, for he no longer sees himself as separate from Him."

"It means that in remembering Jesus you are remembering God."

"his completed learning guarantees your own success."

"Is he still available for help? What did he say about this? Remember his promises, and ask yourself honestly whether it is likely that he will fail to keep them."

"Who transcends the body has transcended limitation. Would the greatest teacher be unavailable to those who follow him?"

"The name of Jesus Christ as such is but a symbol. But it stands for love that is not of this world. It is a symbol that is safely used as a replacement for the many names of all the gods to which you pray."

"It becomes the shining symbol for the Word of God, so close to what it stands for that the little space between the two is lost, the moment that the name is called to mind. Remembering the name of Jesus Christ is to give thanks for all the gifts that God has given you."

"Jesus has led the way. Why would you not be grateful to him?"

"He has remained with you."

"Would you not learn the lesson of salvation through his learning? Why would you choose to start again, when he has made the journey for you?"

"No one on earth can grasp what Heaven is, or what its one Creator really means. Yet we have witnesses. It is to them that wisdom should appeal."

"No one who has become a true and dedicated teacher of God forgets his brothers."

"Then turn to one who laid all limits by, and went beyond the farthest reach of learning. He will take you with him, for he did not go alone."

"Would God leave anyone without a very present help in time of trouble; a savior who can symbolize Himself?"

"Jesus has come to answer yours. In him you find God's Answer. Do you, then, teach with him, for he is with you; he is always here."

"When God created you (in Heaven), He made you part of Him. That is why attack WITHIN the Kingdom is impossible. But YOU made the ego without love, and so it does not love YOU. You could not remain WITHIN the Kingdom without love, and since the Kingdom IS love, you believe you are WITHOUT it (exiled from Heaven). This enables the ego to regard itself as separate and OUTSIDE its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes YOU are separate and outside the Mind of God. (outside of Heaven in another world)"

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile (being external to Heaven in another realm)"

"There is no life outside of Heaven (in the big picture). Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven (e.g. planet Earth which is "outside" the Kingdom) life is illusion. At best it seems like life ("life forms, which are not life"); at worst, like death."

"Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands (planet Earth, all things physical); senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven (granite block of sin, walls, bodies, forms). Illusions are but forms (all physical forms are an illusion). Their content is never true."

"Attack in any form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads from Heaven."

This is why the "physical universe" including Earth, which is "the strange world you made", is opposite to Heaven and an idea of being "outside the Kingdom". It was made like a kind of second "dimension", a fake universe, a bubble of spacetime within the Kingdom. Seeming to be made of the idea of exile and separation, it seems "separate from" the Kingdom, and therefore seems like an entirely cut off realm. This is why awakening from the dream of exile MUST take you back OUT of the realm of exile and INTO the Kingdom, which quite literally will seem like traveling to another dimension beyond space and time.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. 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."

This is also why Jesus talks many times about the difference between being "on Earth" and "in Heaven".

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

"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"

"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."

"And as it is in Heaven, so on earth."

"Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God."

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

"In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected."

"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits."

"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."

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

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."

"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."

Heaven is a place. Not just a state of mind. It is the reality of the Kingdom. Earth is just part of an illusory world based on the idea of exile, exclusion, separation and death. You can be "on Earth", or "in Heaven", but not both. Either you are aware of being in the Kingdom or you are aware of being in a body.

Here are FIVE passages from ACIM telling us about a body which is not sick, cannot suffer, cannot die, and symbolizes immortality.

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

-----

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, ***the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still***, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all.****IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt****, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.

Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that ****every scar is healed****, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. ****YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health.**** BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

-----

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you.Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and ****the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die****. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition. Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy.God's Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is. ****He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him.****"

-----

"****Now is the body healed**** because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. ****The body's health is fully guaranteed**** because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. ****You need do nothing now to make it well****, for ****sickness has become impossible.****

Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer."

-----

"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the world's purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement for oneself. It is the end of dreams of misery, and the glad awareness of the Holy Spirit's final dream. It is the recognition of the gifts of God. It is the dream ****in which the body functions perfectly****, having no function except communication."

God is wholeness, or Holiness. He is the whole of everything, everywhere. There is no lack in Him. He is unlimited and infinite. He is omnipresent. He is the all in all.

"The mark of Wholeness is Holiness"

"God is all in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him because He IS all Being. YOU are therefore in Him because YOUR being IS His."

Every part of God contains all of God. All of God is everywhere. All of God is shared, within Himself, with all of Himself. All of God has access to all of God. And all of God is God.

"The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it CREATED all things."

God cannot access anywhere that He does not exist, and there is nothing outside of God. He already exists everywhere, so there is nowhere to be added, and no space to add into.

"Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else. Nothing OUTSIDE THIS Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within."

God cannot create an external space, nor can he add a separate thing outside of Himself. He cannot "tack on" any kind of a creation to the outside of Himself.

The internal nature of God, however, is one of sharing. God fully shares with Himself. He is fully open. He loves Himself, and therefore gives Himself to Himself.

"Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

Within God, within His mind, within His being, there is total unlimited sharing. This sharing is a transcendence of space and time and limitation. It enables God to be a host, and to share Himself by giving Himself.

"Everything He created is given ALL His power because it is part of Him and shares His Being WITH Him."

"Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him."

"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him."

"You cannot separate your SELF from YOUR Creator, who created YOU by sharing HIS Being WITH you."

"I am forever host to God."

God wants to give Himself because it is His nature to share everything. This giving is what we call love, or life. It also leads to what we call projection, extension, or creation. Love loves itself.

"God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son"

"God shares His function with you in Heaven"

"Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

"projecting outward of God. That is why everything which He Created is like Him."

God is able to share Himself, within Himself, and can extend Himself as what we call Thoughts or Creations. These thought-creations can only occur provided they inherit the whole of God, and in turn share His will to share the whole of themselves.

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself."

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind."

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul." "ALL princes INHERIT their power from the Father"

"the Children of the Father inherit from Him"

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

Any thought-creation of God can only share what they are given, and can only give what they inherit. They also must create by sharing, and can only create by sharing, by hosting within their own being.

"By CREATING all things, it made them PART OF ITSELF. YOU are the Will of God, because this is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you ARE like Him."

"accept the Thought of God as its inheritance."

"Perceiving the majesty of God AS your brother is to accept your OWN inheritance."

"The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation."

Creation, therefore, really occurs as a kind of internal expansion, or a giving inward. God shares the whole of Himself, which produces creative thoughts, which must inherit the whole of God, and be wholly like God. "The Father and the Son are not identical, but you CAN say "Like Father, LIKE Son."

"GOD gave you the function to create in eternity."

"God gave Himself to BOTH of you in equal love"

"God GAVE you Heaven"

"God GAVE you all there is."

God also can only share wholly, or fully. He cannot only partially give, or partially create, or partially share. When He shares, He creates wholly, and creates only wholeness. And anything He creates must be completely whole. "Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole." "which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and BY this recognition knows its Creator."

"That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son." "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 because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

This means that any creation of God, any extension of God, MUST be a completely whole creation. It must be fully given, fully established, fully sharing, and fully created.

"This is the ONLY love that is fully given, AND FULLY RETURNED."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect."

This leads to the FULL creation of living thought-beings, ideas of children, which are the living thoughts of God. Each is a miracle, and each inherits absolutely everything from God. Each HAS everything, and IS everything. "You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven"

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

"God and HIS miracles are inseparable."

Absolute wholeness is passed down and is SHARED by every creation. Therefore, two things become true. 1) Every thought-creation is a completely autonomous being who is a whole fully-created being, and 2) Each being shares AND IS the whole of creation.

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy."

This results in a scenario where each Son of God literally IS God, and is PART of God, and IS EACH OTHER. There can only truly be one whole, which must be shared by EACH whole. And therefore each whole is the one whole. This is what oneness really means.

"The wholeness of God, which IS His peace, cannot be appreciated EXCEPT by a whole mind, which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and BY this recognition knows its Creator."

"God's wholeness IS the wholeness of his Son."

This means that each Son of God IS the other Sons of God, as well as being an individual Son of God. "Individual" does mean "undivided". And thus each brother is all brothers. And every soul is part of God. And every child of God is every other child of God. And all of them share the same whole - all of themselves - with all the rest.

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

"For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself."

"to know your brother IS to know God."

This produces the Sonship, which is the family of God, the Kingdom of Heaven. And having inherited everything from God, as His perfect extensions, each Son of God is a fully created being and has SO much freedom and autonomy that they are established as TRUE co-creators - free-willed "separate" beings.

"the Sonship is your Soul"

"you are part of God, and the Sonship is one"

"in a relationship in which ALL the Sonship is together blessed"

"Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but KEEP your will forever and forever limitless." "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."

This doesn't merely mean that they just do God's bidding, or that he dangles them like puppets, or that they are slaves to His will. They have been WHOLLY created, and therefore do in fact have free independent will. But remember that, at the same time, this will is ALSO shared with everyone. And to remain free it has to be shared, yet still retain freedom.

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

Blessed with free will, in a sense "free from God", or as "separate beings", individuality has been established. They are individual because they are whole in and of themselves. Yet they are one because they share everything.

"For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

"be reminded of His Son, our holy Self, the Christ in each of us"

"every member of the family of God must return"

They now proceed to naturally share everything that they have, because this is their one nature. They can only share everything because it is by the sharing of everything that they exist at all.

"You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

"We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law of mind."

"Every mind MUST project, because that is how it lives, and every mind IS life."

So in turn they create their own creations by sharing everything and hosting them within their own mind and being, just like and with God. And as such the Kingdom continues to expand internally as a continuous line of extension and creation.

"all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order." "As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations."

"YOUR creations belong in YOU, as YOU belong in God. You are part of God, as your sons are part of His Sons. To create is to love. Love extends outward simply because it cannot be contained. Being limitless, it DOES NOT STOP. It creates forever"

"YOUR creations add to Him, as YOU do. But nothing is added that is different, because everything has always BEEN"

Wholeness, within wholeness, shared by the whole, in which each whole is the one whole, and all wholes are one. And yet at the same time, there are many wholes because God constantly shares itself. And all living beings therefore continually create and extend and think and give, and the increase of the Kingdom is endless.

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation."

"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die."

"A co-creator with the Father must have a Son (your creations). Yet must this Son (your sons) have been created like Himself. A perfect Being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed (by you and your brothers and God), nothing to add and nothing taken FROM; not born of size nor weight nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of ANY kind."

"You do not know YOUR creations, because you do not know your brothers who created them WITH you."

"for in him you will find your creations, because he created them WITH you."

The simple fact that God, who is whole, gives the whole of himself, wholly, to wholly create whole beings, who share the whole of himself, alignes exactly with the holographic principle. That the whole is in every part, and every contains and IS the whole, and every part is the SAME whole. And therefore all the wholes are one.

This is why heaven is a truly holographic structure. Not holographic in the sense of 3d projected images - which have nothing to do with holograms. But in the sense that the whole of God is in every creation of God, and every creation of God IS the whole.

"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."

This is what heaven is like. It is not some singular blob that sits there by itself. It is not just some kind of singular oneness which doesn't create or extend. It isn't populated by God alone. It is not devoid of individuality. Nor is it devoid of relationships or free will. It is host to an entire family of unlimited thought-beings, and every part of it is part of God, and part of you, and of your own spirit-children.

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually"

"Each Soul knows God completely."

"By HIS willingness to share it, He becomes as dependent on you, as you are on HIM."

"God is as dependent on you as you are on Him, because HIS autonomy ENCOMPASSES yours, and is therefore incomplete WITHOUT it."

"TOTALLY dependent on their One Creator for EVERYTHING"

"God and the Souls He created ARE symbiotically related. They are COMPLETELY dependent on each other."

"God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly."

This is why certain other conceptual models of reality are not a good fit. Traditional ideas of oneness don't quite cut it, because they fail to acknowledge that oneness MUST share itself, MUST extend, and MUST be given to create.

Ideas of non-duality don't cut it either, because God is a creator and HAS to create whole expressions of Himself, forming a divine family. He does not will to be alone, or that you be alone, or that you will beings that are alone. All of heaven is about creation and sharing and openness and inter-dependence.

"the whole family of God, or the Sonship"

"the Holy Family"

"If you created GOD and He created you, the KINGDOM could not increase through its OWN creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would NOT be co-creators WITH God. As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations. In this way only can ALL creative power EXTEND OUTWARD. God's accomplishments are NOT yours. But yours are LIKE His. HE created the Sonship, and YOU increase it. You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

"The Kingdom is forever extending, because it is in the Mind of God."

"Your gifts TO the Kingdom are like His to YOU."

"God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you, who are co-creators with Him, extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit."

"And His Sons, who create LIKE Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the INCREASE of the Kingdom depends on it, just as THEIR creation did."

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation."

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"You, too, have a Kingdom which your Soul has created."

"I have a kingdom I must rule."

"God HAS kept your kingdom for you"

"Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from BEYOND this world."

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him."

"His Kingdom has no limits and no end, and there is nothing in Him that is not perfect and eternal."

"For Christ DOES rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and HIS Kingdom."

"The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation."

"My Kingdom is not of this world, because it is in YOU. And YOU are of your Father."

"Because you are all the Kingdom of God, I can lead you back to your own creations"

"What God calls one will be forever one, NOT separate. His Kingdom IS united; thus it was created, and thus will it ever be."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the right of the Soul, whose beauty and dignity are beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the love of God for His Creations, who are wholly worthy of Him and ONLY of Him. Nothing else is sufficiently worthy to be a gift for a creation of God Himself."

Identity is completely tied to how much awareness you have.

Everyone believes that "all of their self" is defined by what they are aware of.

When you look within, whatever you are aware of as being within yourself, you will regard that as all of you. If you do not see yourself causing or choosing things to happen, you will believe you did not do it.

It doesn't matter how much awareness you have, either.

You could have a tiny amount of awareness, a very limited sense of consciousness, and would still regard whatever you are aware of as all of yourself.

But what happens when you take away some blocks to awareness and you become aware of some part of you that you didn't even know was there.

Your sense of self expands.

Who and what you are, is tied to, what you are aware of.

As blocks to awareness are removed, your identity changes. Your sense of who and what you are transitions from an isolated, limited, small little being, to a grand, expansive, unlimited and immortal being of light.

It's kind of like russian dolls. If you were inside the smallest russian doll in the middle of the stack, you would not be aware of much. As each layer is removed from the inside out, your sense of "what is there" or what is present, increases. Eventually all limitations are removed.

Your self does not actually expand, as such. Rather, you are already unlimited and infinite and omnipresent, because you are Created by God to be so.

Rather, you have placed severe limiting devices on your awareness and it has seemed to "narrow down" your sense of what you encompass. This is the idea of "littleness". You have tried to make yourself very small and limited. And you did this by adding blocks to awareness, so that you would not be aware of all that there is to you.

So as you lift away these artificial blocks, you find yourself (literally). You find more of yourself. More of what there is to you. More power, more choice, more freedom, more will, more responsibility, more causality, more love. Your identity increases. "You" seem to expand because your notion of self is having its limits removed.

As limitations are removed, you may even experience this as though your identity is being threatened and that you are dying.

You may have experienced this for example when you make a big life change and move to live in a new location or city. When many things change, aspects of you which had formed your identity, based on limitations, are shaken up in a big way. You can start to feel overwhelmed by all the new stimuli, behaviors and habits and patterns which are no longer supported start to break down, and you can start to experience a quite strong sense that you are falling apart and "dying".

This is really that the old sense of who you were, your limited self, is being broken down and the limitations themselves are being recognized for what they are. Rather than thought of as defining you, you're learning from a larger perspective that these things are not really a part of your identity. And so they seem to have to be let go, which the ego - who wants to cling to these as "identity", experiences as loss or death. I have experienced this a few times when we moved to a new city and I did not know why I felt like everything was falling apart.

Nevertheless, this gives way to an actual increase in identity, a removal of limitations, a freeing-up of borders and boundaries, and a sense of rising up to a higher level. You are becoming more of yourself and are opening up to awareness of discovering things about yourself that you did not even know were there. Choices and powers that you have that were hidden. Things you have the freedom and power to cause which you forgot you even had.

Eventually when you remove all blocks to awareness your unlimited underlying identity will be revealed. There is really no limit to who and what you are, buried beneath these blocks. So when you finally realize that you literally are unlimited, your identity now shifts away from littleness to the most magnificent expansive beingness. Your true identity as God's Son.