Forgiveness happens when you reframe a sin as simply a mistake. When you can realize that it was just an error, and not an intentional attack, it is forgivable. Sin demands punishment, if it is truly evil. But mistakes can be corrected and undone with no consequences.

If a person is fully sane, in their right mind, with full awareness of all consequences, and actually performs a sin, which has real consequences on reality, then truly this would be a real sin. It would also be unforgivable.

However, such things are not possible. Nothing real can be threatened and real sin does not exist. You cannot attack anything real with any real consequences.

What we call sin is really a state of belief. It happens when a mind is mistaken, believing that sin is POSSIBLE in the first place, such as that reality CAN be attacked. This is impossible, so the mind that believes it must be confused. This confusion is mental illness.

Anyone who is in a state of "sinning" is therefore NOT really in a state of real sin, they are in a state of BELIEVING IN sin, but are completely mistaken. They believe something is possible which isn't. They believe they have done something they could not do in truth.

If we think that the world exists, and recognize honestly that it is cruel and full of sins, then it is unforgivable. If we think the world is really there, doing what it does, it does NOT justify forgiveness. If its attacks are true, or if its impossible proof of attack is real evidence, then there is no basis for forgiving it.

In order to forgive the world, something has to happen. You have to find a way to recognize that it was NOT MADE BY A SANE MIND. If it were, sin would be real, and the world cannot be forgiven, because making a cruel world is truly evil.

Similarly if God in his right mind made the world, and given the world IS a cruel place (come on, admit it), then God WOULD indeed be cruel and evil to make such a thing, and to subject his children to it on purpose. If God DID make the world, God is a sinner and the world is made of real sin and CANNOT be forgiven.

But if the mind that made it is having an hallucinated nightmare, which projects an imaginary world of sin, and does NOT KNOW what they are doing, then the world they make is NOT really sinning.

What we need to recognize in ACIM is that we actually went into a state of internal insanity first, believing we had sinned against God with real consequences, and this induced huge guilt. We then moved into denial and projection and dissociation to try to disown it, which eventually produced the face of innocence as a cover-up.

But it was actually from our internal state of "false perception" that WE PROJECTED THE WORLD OUTWARD. It was a projection OF our inner self-attack and the wish for death. The world was supposed to be a SOLUTION to our sin, by getting rid of what we did not want, and externalizing our guilt.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source."

"You are AT ODDS with the world as you perceive it because you think IT is antagonistic to you. THIS IS A NECESSARY CONSEQUENCE OF WHAT YOU HAVE DONE. You have projected outward what IS antagonistic to what is inward"

"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

What this means is that we actually were NOT in our right minds when we made the world. We were in an insane state of darkness, confusion and despair. Instead of sanely undoing our self-made attack, we instead projected it as a world to try to put it outside the mind. This was a magical solution to an internal problem.

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

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."

"The ego made the world as IT perceives it"

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear."

"The UNreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be."

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up?"

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." The world, as a picture of crucifixion (death and attack), was projected out from our minds, in a state of guilt and insanity. We did not make it in happiness. We did not make it in awareness of the consequences. We did not make it as a sane logical conclusion. And we did not make it in a clear-headed state of mind.

We made the world as a bandaid of denial to cover up our guilt. We made it by mistake. We chose a poor sloppy solution to the guilt in our mind, in an attempt to use dissociation to make the guilt unconscious. We tried to escape from our inner world, by projecting its contents outside. This formed the physical universe.

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that. But, though it is no MORE than that, it is NOT less. Therefore, to YOU, it IS important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition."

We didn't know what we were doing. We WERE in a state of being mistaken. We believed sin was possible, which is a mistake. We believed we had sinned, which was not true. We believed we should be guilty, which was unjustified. And we believed we should be punished, when it was un-called for. We believed in lies and deception. We had rejected truth, and reality, and sanity.

The world we made wasn't really made in a clear state of mind. It was made as an ERROR. It was an extension or expression of mental confusion. We made it in the darkness, out of fear and death, having lost touch with truly sane solutions. This produced an ERRONEOUS WORLD. A world made of error. Not really a world of sin, because the mind that made it was not sane. It was made as a mistake, by a mistaken mind.

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it."

"The world is false perception. It is born of error"

If we can then recognize that when we made the world we were not sane, and that the world symbolizes that insanity, and what we made WAS ugly and cruel and vicious and deadly, because of the state of mind we were in at the time, then there IS JUSTIFICATION FOR FORGIVENESS. As Jesus says, "forgive them for they know NOT what they do." In our guilt we insanely made an insane world. A grotesque, strange, self-denying, self-attacking, confused insane world.

"What is producing this world is insane, and so is what it produces."

Given that it IS an insane world, this means that it is NOT REALLY A SIN. Nor was the mind that made it truly sinning. The mind that made it was MISTAKEN. Which means that WHEN we are mistaken, we make the physical world. We make FROM our mistakenness, and by mistake. Given that it IS a mistake, it CAN be forgiven.

When we separated from God, two things happened. 1) We entered an insane state of mind, and 2) We projected out a physical world from that state of mind. Our task now is to CHANGE OUR MIND, to receive correction without punishment, so that we can lift the insanity from our minds. By doing so, we become able to look upon the world WITHOUT the insanity that we had when we originally made it.

Insanity is a state of attack and guilt and sin and fear and blame and all manner of distortion. This was PUT ONTO the world, or more precisely, was what the PROJECTION of the world was based upon. It is the world's roots. The world CAME FROM a belief in sin and attack and death. But that belief was a mistake. And if that belied is corrected, then you're left with a world that you made IN ERROR, FROM UGLINESS, AND DO NOT WANT.

"This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer ***in*** the mind ***that thought of them***, and loved them for a while."

The perception you have "of the world", without the baggage of sin and guilt, is what we call the forgiven world. It's a strange miscreation, an odd form, which we sculpted in insanity. And now that we are coming around to sense and reason, and can see the whole picture, what we made is now seen from a lighter and truer perspective. That light true perspective is forgiveness and it lets us look on what we DID MAKE IN HATE, but without hating it.

"the world they thought was made in hate to be love's enemy." "Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them even though they were made of hate."

ie you are changing your mind "about the world". But the world itself is still going to remain as it is. It will still seem to function in time. It will still spin. It will still have seasons. It will still feature animals eating each other alive. It will still have wars and murder and sickness and death. Because this is what you made when you were insane. You set it in motion. But now you can look at the twisted forms you made "in hell", and see them from a more loving perspective.

ONLY IF the world is a mistake, CAN IT BE FORGIVEN. You cannot forgive reality, or real sin. You can only forgive mistakes. The world is a mistake, and recognizing that you made it BY MISTAKE, lifts away all of the possible reasons why you might hate it. You can only hate the world if you believe it was a deliberate sin made by a fully-aware mind. But the world was made by someone who was ill and afraid. Someone whose belief system was mistaken. Someone who did not know, because they had rejected knowledge. Someone who was confused, because they had lost touch with reality.

You can't really hate the world if it is recognized as ... only... an odd thing you made one day when you were in a "bad mood." To acknowledge that you DID MAKE IT, actually owns up to the fact that IT DID COME FROM YOU. And this too is the key to unlocking forgiveness. Denying that you made it in fact keeps you from forgiving it, because in denying it you are affirming that you sinned. Admitting you made it affirms that you DID make it by mistake, and so can forgive it.

"Your brother thinks he made the world with you. Thus he denies creation. With you, he thinks the world he made, made HIM. Thus he denies he MADE it."

I forgive the world because I made it in error, and from error. The world is erroneous because it is false, made from a false mental state. I made it myself but I can choose otherwise. I don't have to worry about the consequences of this wrong decision, because the Holy Spirit will UNDO THE WORLD if I will let him. I can look upon the world with love by letting him choose for God for me. And this can show me with christ vision that the world is not a sin, it is just a mistake I made one day. A twisted dream I had one day when I was a little mistaken.

You are quite literally A LIGHT.

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky."

Like a giant magnificent powerful light bulb.

You have a brightness. You shine. You radiate light.

You are a light being, shining brightly in heaven.

"Who is the light of the world except God's Son?"

"It is not humility to insist that you cannot be the light of the world, if that is the function God assigned to you."

""I am the light of the world. That is my only function. That is why I am here.""

Light is what you can "see in", as in total openness and awareness of what is. But this light ALSO shines and radiates, similar to how photons shine and radiate. This radiance is extension and creation.

"And truth stands radiant, apart from conflict, untouched and quiet, in the peace of God."

"you will see an altar to your Father, holy as Heaven, glowing with radiant purity"

"Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable forever and forever."

"I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love."

It is a mental light, not a physical light. But it also comprises true power, and it can reach everywhere. This light also dispels all darkness, which is healing.

Just as there are the "great rays". Just as you as a "perfect shaft of light". Just as "gone is the body in the blinding light of the son of God". Just as you are "the light of the world."

"You are wholly lovely. A perfect shaft of pure light. Before your loveliness the stars stand transfixed, and bow to the power of your will."

When you are in the dark, in the ego, you do not shine your light much. It is dimmed because it is blocked. Unlove is a block to light's extension.

Resisting God is resisting the light in you. It makes you seem dim and darkened. And then you are lost and cannot see. You need the light to find your way and to know reality.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light."

Love and light are the same, so the more you REVEAL the light in you, by removing blocks to its awareness, the more the light is allowed to shine or extend through you.

You become brighter. You become more illuminated. In fact, the idea of "enlightenment" is the pinnacle of this. That you are en-light-ened, or "lit" or illuminated by the truth of God.

Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. It is a recognition of reality, with no blockages or denial. It therefore does not block the light.

When the mind is free of blockages, light can radiate, and you literally become brighter.

This light that's in your mind, your soul, has a brilliant radiance. It extends to infinity.

Your mind is lit by the same lamp or spark as all God's creations. This light is shared and is sharing. It is relationship.

You are capable of SHINING LIGHT into another person's mind and healing it. You can extend light to another, and regardless of the darkness of their mind, illuminate their mind or "shed light" on them from within.

It is not just a matter of you sitting there shining and hoping that the person might "come around" at some point on their own. Your light LITERALLY can CHANGE the mind of another and heal it, providing HELP to those in need who cannot help themselves.

As you forgive and purify and heal, you become more actively a light in the world. Your "shining" of yourself, your giving of love, literally increases and brightens. And the more you give it, the more you are shining.

As you shine brighter, your radiance has more power and is more miraculous. It can dispel darkness, which includes therefore the dispelling of sickness and death. Ego cannot survive in the light nor can any illusion.

This is why illusions recognized must disappear - in the light, in the perspective of true perception, in which everything is seen in the light, illusions and fantasies of darkness are shone away.

You are a "light worker" in the world, in the sense that you are literally A LIGHT in the world, shining heaven's light INTO the darkness to shine AWAY the darkness.

The light that you are, brings light to the world of darkness and shines so brightly that no dark corner remains where sickness, suffering or death can lurk. Bodies are shone away in the brilliance of the Son of God. And even the whole world and the sun and stars will disappear in light.

Send light to people. It heals them. Radiate. Extend. Express. Shower them with love. Be the light of the world. Be a light in the darkness to show the way and dispel the darkness of others. The light of God is in you now.

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"I cannot see in darkness but in light."

"Miracles are seen in the light."

"The peace of God is shining in me now. Let all things shine upon me in that peace,And let me bless them with the light in me."

"Once YOUR mind is healed, it radiates health and thereby TEACHES healing. This establishes you as a teacher who teaches LIKE me."

"My Self is holy beyond all the thoughts of holiness of which I now conceive. Its shimmering and perfect purity is far more brilliant than is any light that I have ever looked upon."

"The light that belongs in you is the light of joy. ... The light of joy is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns thanks to the Father for radiating HIS joy upon it. Only God's own holy children are worthy to be channels of his beautiful joy, because only they are beautiful enough to hold it by sharing it."

"That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

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

"Like you, the Holy Spirit did NOT make truth. Like God, He KNOWS it to be true. He brings the LIGHT of truth into the darkness, and LETS it shine on you. And as it shines, YOUR BROTHERS see it, and, realizing that this light is NOT what you have made, they see in you MORE than YOU see. They will be happy learners of the lesson which this light brings to them, because it teaches them release from nothing, and from all the works of nothing. The heavy chains which SEEM to bind them unto despair, they do NOT see as nothing, until YOU bring the light TO them. And THEN they see the chains have disappeared, and so they MUST have been nothing."

"Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be FREE of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave YOU asleep."

"The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home. This light can not be lost."

"Everyone seen WITHOUT the past thus brings you nearer to the end of time, by bringing healed and healing sight into the darkness, and ENABLING THE WORLD TO SEE. For light must come into the darkened world, to make Christ's vision possible even here. Help Him to give His gift of light to all who think they wander in the darkness, and let Him gather them into His quiet sight that makes them one."

"The shining in your mind reminds the world of what it has forgotten, and the world restores the memory to you as well. From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks. And in His blessing does the light in you shine brighter, adding to the gifts you have to offer to the world."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish."

"What was a place of death has now become a living temple in a world of light."

"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal.

In many, only the spark remains, for the great rays are obscured. But God has kept the spark alive, so the rays can never be completely forgotten. If you but see the little spark, you will learn of the greater light, for the rays are there unseen. Perceiving the spark will heal, but knowing the Light will create. Yet in the returning, the little light must be acknowledged first, for the separation was a descent from magnitude to littleness. But the spark is still as pure as the Great Light, because it is the remaining call of Creation. Put all your faith in it, and God Himself will answer you."

"Not one light in Heaven but goes with you. Not one ray that shines forever in the Mind of God but shines on you. Heaven is JOINED with you in your advance to Heaven. When such great light has joined with you, to give the little spark of your desire the power of God Himself, can YOU remain in darkness? You are coming home together, after a long and meaningless journey which you undertook apart, and which led nowhere. You have FOUND each other, and will light each other's way. And from this light will the great rays extend back into darkness and forward unto God. To shine away the past, and so make room for His Eternal Presence, in which everything is radiant in the light."

Sometimes it seems as though, to say something like "Heaven and earth are opposites" is actually a statement of separation. This is because whenever we talk in terms of "two" of something we think there is duality at work. That both of the two things being compared exist.

If you compare an apple to an orange for example, both seem to exist in the same realm and so you can make a comparison. One is orange, one is red (depending on what apples you like ;-)

However, if you compare something that does exist, to something that does not exist, this isn't the same logical comparison. Comparing everything to nothing, is not like putting the two things side beside within a realm where both exist, being able to look at one then look at the other and ask yourself how they differ.

You actually cannot truly compare everything to nothing, and nor does it mean there is a duality, and nor does it mean there is a separation. Only conceptually, and imaginatively, could you ever think it possible to actually strike a comparison between everything and nothing, because nothing is... well, nothing at all.

If love, heaven, God, truth, reality, eternity, creation, sonship, is EVERYTHING, there is no room for anything opposite to compare it to. There is nowhere to be and nowhere to go outside of this everything to FIND something opposite.

So then when we draw a logical comparison between everything and nothing, we're not "making separation real" by contrasting them, we're actually showing that because ONLY love is real, and because only everything exists (in God, not earth), whatever else we're comparing it to DOES NOT EXIST ANYWHERE AT ALL.

If truly we grasp that that second item does not exist whatsoever, we are actually NOT making a real separation. And we would have to also understand that this means, love HAS no opposite in truth. The truth of the logic is that there IS NOT a separation because ONLY ONE OF THEM EXISTS.

Here is how Jesus speaks of this:

"Perfect love casts out fear. If fear exists, Then there is not perfect love. But: Only perfect love exists. If there is fear, It produces a state that does not exist. Believe this and you will be free."

"The truth is simple; it is one without an opposite. "

"Love is a law without an opposite. There is no love but God's, and what He is, is everything there is. "

"There is no death because what God created shares His Life. There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist. "

"You cannot join with anything except reality. God's glory and His Son's belong to you in truth. They have no opposite, and nothing else can you bestow upon yourself."

"In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite."

To compare everything to nothing, you MUST also be aware that the nothingness DOES NOT EXIST, and therefore, THERE IS ONLY THE EVERYTHING. If there is only the everything, the thing which was said to be "nothing" DOES NOT EVEN EXIST AT ALL. It has zero existence. So all that remains, is what God created, which is 100% of existence in heaven.

Now, sometimes, the Course will tell us something in slightly subtler terms, like this:

"Heaven and earth are opposite in every way."

So once again, we need to realize what this is saying. Since heaven is EVERYTHING THAT REALLY EXISTS, and since Earth (planet earth) is the "opposite", planet Earth DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL, because it is nothing. Love, heaven, does not HAVE a "real opposite", only a fake opposite. Therefore, there is no earth, there is no world, and ONLY HEAVEN IS REAL. Meaning, only heaven exists, SO THERE IS NO SEPARATION. Recognizing this does not create a split in the mind or emphasize separation, because to properly understand this is to recognize that THERE IS NO OPPOSITE.

Heaven and earth are opposites, but this actually MEANS, that earth does not exist at all! Heaven is everything God created, earth is NOTHING that God created and has no reality or existence. It is an illusion of something existing which does not. Earth is nothing. It WILL disappear into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came.

This therefore tells us, logically, that because Heaven HAS no opposite, and Earth was "part of" what we were saying is an opposite to Heaven, Earth does not exist NOW, and it will not exist LATER, and therefore it CANNOT ever be a part of heaven, or converted into heaven, or translated into heaven, or merged into heaven, or joined together WITH heaven.

There is nothing here that can be joined! This *ILLUSION* of a planet showing up, is ONLY AN ILLUSION, not a real thing. It's not there! You're sitting on a seat which does not exist at all! There IS no world TO become one with heaven in any way! Not now, not a year ago, and not in the future. Similarly, "at no point in time does the body really exist", and the earth is just another body.

The course CANNOT be teaching that Earth and Heaven will merge together, become one, unify, or transcend the separation between the two.Here is the part where people get CONFUSED LOGICALLY about what the Course is saying:

"Heaven and earth shall pass away’ means that they will not continue to exist as separate states."

First remember heaven is everything God created that DOES exist. Second remember that earth as its total opposite (and unlike it in every way), DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL.

The IDEA that there are two states, that Heaven HAS a REAL OPPOSITE, will pass away. That idea was the idea that Earth was in fact real, existed, was alongside heaven somehow, and could be compared to it! That was FALSE. That was a result SEPARATION. When separation is undone, it is recognized, perfectly logically, that HEAVEN NEVER DID HAVE AN OPPOSITE, Earth NEVER WAS ITS "REAL" OPPOSITE only an imaginary one, Earth NEVER EXISTED AT ALL IN THE FIRST PLACE, THERE IS NO WORLD, and therefore, Heaven and Earth are no longer "opposites" because ***ONLY HEAVEN EVER EXISTED AND HEAVEN HAS NO OPPOSITE****.

(ok ok, too much all-caps ;-)

If you get this LOGIC, which should be completely clear, and is bulletproof, then you will understand what the course is telling us about why "there is no world". There is no earth OR separate universe from God's universe. The world we made, never did exist at all. There IS no opposite to heaven TO translate into heaven. Heaven will REPLACE earth and ONLY HEAVEN WILL BE LEFT, because only heaven exists NOW.

"There is no life outside of heaven" literally means, love has no opposite, heaven has no opposite, and anything which is categorized as its opposite DOES NOT EXIST. Anything categorized as its opposite, IF believed to actually exist, will create a STATE WHICH DOES NOT EXIST, and will be experienced as FEAR! The world, that we made, planet earth and so on, IS MADE OF FEAR. It is an illusion and is not even here at all! 0% existing! Absolutely just a figment of your imagination. Never existed 15 billion years ago, will not exist 15 billion years from now, DOES NOT EXIST NOW.

Earth is NOT life, because ONLY HEAVEN IS LIFE. Earth is therefore DEATH, and its "life forms" are ALL DEATH FORMS. They are the opposite of life, NOT REAL LIFE. Eternal life does not shift and change and grow and suffer and die. Eternal life is not a form or an animal or a tree or a human being body. This is a DREAM OF DEATH, because it is a dream of experiencing something that is opposite to heaven that does not really exist, but we are thinking it does. It's pure fiction, and a LOGICAL ERROR.

Heaven HAS no opposite. Life HAS no opposite. Earth is NOT REALLY the opposite of heaven right now because heaven HAS no REAL opposite, and therefore, THERE IS NO WORLD. There is nothing here in this world, as this world, TO become part of heaven, ever. Not ever. Not even in some special twisted magical way that manipulates the words in the course with wishful thinking to make it SEEM as if earth becomes part of heaven because "the two real opposites" of earth and heaven cease being opposites. This is a total logical fallacy. You can never compare "all and nothing" and claim they are BOTH existing.

Only heaven is real. Only the creations of light are real. Only God's creation is real. Earth does not exist. There is no world. This is the central thought the course would attempt to teach. The central core thought of the atonement principle, that SEPARATION DID NOT HAPPEN, and therefore THERE IS NO WORLD that came about as a "real alternative" to Heaven. There is no world, IS THE ATONEMENT. It is confirmation and PROOF, experientially, that planet earth DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL. And in this *recognition*, what appeared to exist, WILL DISAPPEAR AND VANISH without a trace, because IT WAS NEVER ACTUALLY THERE TO BEGIN WITH!!!!!!!

WHY WOULD YOU EVEN WANT THIS WORLD, given the stunning beauty and magnificence of God's Kingdom? You think this world is a fantastic place? Even the forgiven world in all its loveliness, sparkling in the light with no guilt upon it, IT STILL NO COMPARISON to heaven. Earth will always be a "strange world you made", which in comparison to heaven, if it were possible to compare them, is UGLY and LIMITED. It is not the world you want. It is not your home. God did not create it. And there is world God DID create, heaven, which YOU DO WANT, and which is the only world lofty enough to be appropriate for the Son of God.

Earth does not exist.

Do I even know what the heck the world even is and how to look at it and forgive it?

"The world is horribly cruel."

What kind of a statement is this? What's happening in the mind? Is the world inherently cruel, or is this some kind of judgement?

Certainly a sentiment of accusation, blame, finger-pointing, hating, anger, etc towards the world for "being the way it is", is a combination of the world plus a projected attack thought.

"I can escape from the world (the horrible interpretation of the world) by giving up attack thoughts."

If we take away the attack thought, ie the judgement, what remains of the world? Is it still cruel? If bodies are still dying and people are still screaming, is it still cruel? Is it cruel if your interpretation of the meaning of the scene is different?

We are asked not to be DECEIVED BY the world, which means the world is potentially deceptive. We must recognize it as false or as a neutral mirror. "The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

But at the same time we're being asked to love it and forgive it. If the world is cruel somehow, that would suggest it is unforgivable. How can you overlook a murder scene or a slaughterhouse?

But are such things cruel because they are, or because we say they are? Have we given it a meaning of "that's cruel"? Is it fundamental to what's there? Are we to look upon a slaughterhouse with laughter and happiness as we regard how shiny and beautiful and new the dismembered bodies seem to be? Or, would we perhaps indeed not even SEE these images?

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are."

Is not the real world an attempt to look upon the same world which you regarded as cruel, but without the judgement that it is cruel? To still see the slaughtering but "with love and happiness"?

Can you remain in happiness and peace in the face of such a scene? Maybe. ACIM clearly wants us to look at how awful and hopeless "the world" is. But it also clearly wants us to forgive. Does this forgiveness enable us to still see the same stuff but in a happier way? Can heaven gloss over the world's chaos and make it seem somehow a reflection of perfection? How can "Earth can reflect heaven or hell" work? How can earth, a false world, a cruel slaughterhouse, be seen to reflect heaven?

To love it IN SPITE of itself? To detach the "how do I see it" from the "what is there to look at"? To love regardless of the miserable scene? "They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. "

"This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here, the world OUTSIDE is seen anew, WITHOUT the shadow of guilt upon it."

So, we take away some kind of guilt "layer" that we were projecting onto the physical world, the false world, and thus lift "hell" away from it. But it remains sort of hell-like given its continued slaughtering. But somehow the lack of guilt "for doing so" renders it lovely and lovable?

"God DOES love the real world, and those who perceive its reality CANNOT see the world of death."

What is the world of death? Earth in its falseness of form, or the layer of projected guilt upon it? And in essence isn't he saying then that the real-world state of mind is so filled with reinterpretation and translation of the slaughterhouse, that every single aspect of it seems SOMEHOW just wonderful and lovable? Which prevents you even seeing any sign of "that's a death" interpretation, replaced with "that's a beautiful image of a body in a certain state" interpretation?

"God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."

Ok so now there's a world that was "made" (seemingly long-term, like an objective earth), which symbolizes death... indeed earth's cruel-seeming system symbolizes punishment and suffering and destruction. So the real world "replaces" this somehow. Yet the real world looks UPON what we made to replace it, or translates it, into this vision of the real world.

"The end of the world is not its destruction, but its TRANSLATION into Heaven. The RE-INTERPRETATION of the world is the transfer of ALL perception to knowledge."

So.... take the cruel-seeming death-symbolizing world of earth, the physical, and remove the projected guilt from it, by undoing the guilt in your own mind, and now you'll see that same world anew in another light. "You HAVE been wrong about the world, because you have misjudged YOURSELF. From such a twisted reference point, what COULD you see?"

So you made a world (earth) AND mis-judged it, which made it seem to reflect hell. And now you are to re-judge it with the holy spirit to see that it reflects heaven somehow?

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it."

So if you stop projecting guilt crap onto earth, it somehow becomes "clean" in some way such that it CAN reflect, and now you see God's reflection/image in it.

"Yet in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent. All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last."

And being in the present is required.

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth."

"The world I see is hardly the representation of loving thoughts. It is a picture of attack on everything and by everything. It is anything but a reflection of the Love of God and the love of His Son. It is my own attack thoughts which give rise to this picture. My loving thoughts will save me from this perception of the world, and give me the peace God intended me to have."

"Then let the Son of God awaken from his sleep, and opening his holy eyes return again to bless the world he made. In error it began. But it will end in the reflection of his holiness. And we will sleep no more and dream of death."

So the vibe here seems to be 1) you made the world earth, and 2) you hated it initially which made it seem like hell and 3) you forgive it and see it with light and in the present and suddenly it seems to reflect heaven, regardless of its strange twisted ways and forms, which this higher vision immediately glosses over and does not dwell upon?

"It is His holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one." "In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it."

"Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty." So... this "seeing it not"... perhaps is like you so very lightly see the body that you barely notice it and you don't focus on it and you see through it to the light. This is "overlooking" which is forgiveness, which really means "not to see what isn't really there".

"It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

This vision "looks upon" everyone/circumstances/happenings/events meaning, those which are occurring in the physical world still, but they are so lightly seen that the vision still remains transfixed upon the light beyond them?

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

So by him saying the world is a fact he's talking about the physical world.... and then is saying that we have to find a way to look at differently - a better way of looking at it, a more forgiving loving way, which causes it to be seen SOOOOO extremely differently that it doesn't seem like an evil world at all. Or shall we say, false, but forgiven? Unreal, but harmless?

So forgiveness/vision/true perception/salvation/the real world/the world God loves/the forgiven world is a different way of seeing the world we made, from a loving vantage point unlike the world, which changes how the world "strikes us", including categorizing its forms as FALSE, without accusation, while also overlooking them and seeing only a reflection of truth in them. God loves the re-interpreted version of the world, but not the version we see in false perception. This same world that we HATE, can somehow be seen with LOVE. And its hatefulness and harmfulness can be lifted from it.

"Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him."

The slaughter-house was only seen AS a slaughter house when we were slightly lacking in our loving vision? When we've risen fully above the battlefield without condemning the falseness of the world, we thus "forgive" it and see the reflection of christ in it. We don't dip down into the fragmented conflicting experience of the world, we remain floating just above its surface appearances.

"The world in infancy is newly born. And we will watch it grow in strength and health to shed its blessing upon all who come to learn to cast aside the world they thought was made in hate to be love's enemy. Now are they all made free along with us. Now are they all our brothers in God's Love."

"For He Who LOVES the world is seeing it FOR you, without one spot of sin upon it, and in the innocence which makes the sight of it as beautiful as Heaven."

"In kind forgiveness will the world sparkle and shine, and everything you once thought sinful now will be re-interpreted as part of Heaven. How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence bestows upon it!"

So ultimately what it all seems to say is that 1) We made a world in hate which produced the physical world with its forms 2) We judged it with ego to experience it as hell and label it as cruel and other made-up meanings 3) we must find a way to love that same world we made and forgive it and not condemn it, so that we can experience it through a more loving vision and regard it as in fact harmless and beautiful and a seeming reflection of heaven. So that you can even EXPERIENCE EARTH AS HEAVEN-LIKE even while you're in this world.

"And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world; a sure correction for the sights of fear and sounds of battle which your world contains. The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. Nothing but rest is here. There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing here remains outside forgiveness. And the sights are gentle. Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself."

You mean to say, after all this time, I have to actually love the goddam world that I thought was cruel and hell?!!!!!! WTF. Hah.

Most people have an idea of what duality means. Usually a world of many separate things. Separate objects, separate bodies. A count beyond one.

This however isn't a full enough definition. Duality is also a matter of NOT SHARING. It's a state of mind in which you do not want to be joined with, share with, or have relationship with, anything or anyone. It's also a state of selfishness, therefore, because it opposes sharing. It produces isolation and disconnection. The ego thought system - the world of duality - is all about selfishness.

"Selfishness is of the ego" T-7.IX.1:4

If duality really means selfishness, what is the opposite of selfishness? It is sharing. But this requires that there be someone or something to share WITH. It cannot mean that there is only you there, or only God. It also requires that in absolute reality, in God, there must be something other than JUST God, such as your brothers, to share with. For example:

"You dwell in the Mind of God with your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone." T-11.I.1:6

"Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself." T-11.I.5:7

God wanted to share himself. In fact we're also told that SHARING is the natural inherent property of reality.

"Nothing real can be increased except by sharing. ³That is why God created you. ⁴Divine Abstraction takes joy in sharing. ⁵That is what creation means." T-4.VII.5:2-5

We're told in ACIM itself, putting aside all interpretations by other well-meaning teachers and students, in Jesus's words, that God did NOT will to be the "only thing that exists". He did not will to be alone. He willed that there be ANOTHER, and CREATED at the very least one son.

He even goes on to say that God not ONLY willed to create at least one son, this son ALSO has the ability to create its own sons.

"God would not have us be alone because _He_ does not will to be alone. ⁷That is why He created His Son, and gave him the power to create with Him. ⁸Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself, as holy as He is." T-8.VI.8:6-8

Note also that it clearly states that God has SONS, not just one.

"The creations of every Son of God are yours, since every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole." T-7.IX.5:3

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are as like the Sons as they are like the Father. ¹¹Know, then, the Sons of God, and you will know all creation." T-7.XI.7:10-11

It's quite simply stating that God not only created many children, but that even those children in turn go on to create more children. The Sons of God form the sonship, which shares the One Mind of Christ. And collectively as the One Son, we all co-create with God to produce our own creations.

This is in fact why Jesus refers to us as having BROTHERS. The term brother means an equal sibling of the same parent. Because God did not will to be alone, and did not will us to be alone, he created MANY OF US, so that we would have permanent brothers IN heaven forever.

"Return with me to Heaven, walking together with your brother out of this world and through another, to the loveliness and joy the other holds within it." T-18.I.12:4)

"Here stands your brother with the key to Heaven in his hand, held out to you. T-24.II.7:6"

There is also a holy trinity in reality. God the father, the Sonship as the One Son comprising many sons and their creations, and the Holy Spirit. These are not conceptual or ego inventions, they are permanent.

"The Son of God is part of the Holy Trinity" T-3.II.5:4 "Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for your creation." T-8.VI.5:3)

The Holy Spirit is also a permanent eternal creation who will continue to exist along with the many sons even AFTER the atonement.

"When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed there will be no Call to return. ⁶But what God creates is eternal. ⁷The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy." T-5.I.5:5-7

So what we have now is in fact a more fleshed out picture. Heaven, God's reality, comprises God, the Holy Spirit, the Sonshsip, which form the trinity. And the Sonship includes many sons, and many creations of many sons, who are also brothers. By the way there are angels as well, created by God.

Now, such a picture does not sound remotely like "non-duality." Someone came up with non-duality as an antithesis to duality, purely as a conceptual idea. It's an attempt to try to explain what the course is saying. Except that, it doesn't quite fit.

It fits in the sense that it may describe God himself, IF God were alone and willed to be alone. As a LOGICAL DEVICE, opposite to "many" means "one", a count of one. This is what non-duality logically means. There are many flaky and wishywashy definitions out there which have tried to glue toegether pieces of the course to make it fit with this, but the PUREST form of non-duality is that "there is literally only God."

This obviously does not FIT with what ACIM says, because it's told us that God is a creator, that he has created at least one child if not many, and that his child has has its own children. Not to mention also the holy spirit being created, and the trinity existing. All of this is not properly encompassed by the concept of non-duality.

Some people like non-duality ideas because they seem to suggest the antithesis to "separateness". As if it is the opposite of ego, the opposite of separation, and the way to undo all trace of the separation from God. But this is VERY BASIC logic and highly inaccurate in its representation of what JESUS ACTUALLY says.

The purest non-duality does not support God being a creator, or God sharing, or God having relationships, or God having even ONE son, or of God creating the Holy Spirit, or of YOU existing, or of you having any creations. It doesn't even allow for heaven to exist. All it does is reduce God to a singular blob, a very lonely isolated blob, which sits there all by itself doing nothing. That is NOT what God is like according to ACIM itself.

The problem is that many people have latched onto this non-duality "concept" and have tried to FORCE the course to fit into it, because they don't have a better OR more accurate model. And in many cases also because they don't recognize the shortcomings of this concept.

It's easy for anyone to say, well, if I get rid of all the separations which implied "many things", then I will get down to "one thing", and this is oneness, and it must be what reality is like. Except that, it isn't. Not by a long shot.

Not according to what Jesus has said about God ADDING to himself, and SHARING himself, and having REAL relationship with his Son, and HAVING a son, and CO-CREATING with him. Jesus's definition of ONENESS is not what you think it is. It is not the everyday definition. It's more to do with a SHARED WHOLENESS between two beings.

"This may appear to contradict the statement “I and my Father are one,” but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is greater. T-1.II.4:7

The urtext had a much fuller statement about this:

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

In fact we are told countless times that God is GREATER than us. We are supposed to have AWE of him, as his son. That God is the FIRST cause, and we are CO-creators as secondary causes. That "I am forever an effect of God". The whole notion of equating yourself with God is nonsense because this is what the whole authority problem is about. You are NOT at the same level or role as he is.

Urtext: "Revelation is NOT reciprocal. It is always FROM God TO man. This is because God and man are NOT equal."

"God’s accomplishments are not yours, but yours are like His. ⁶He created the Sonship and you increase it. ⁷You have the power to add to the Kingdom, though not to add to the Creator of the Kingdom." T-7.I.2:5-7

There are so many aspects of ACIM that fly in the face of pure nonduality, and are contrary to the traditional idea of "oneness". It is NOT CORRECT to claim that ACIM is a non-dualistic teaching. And it is NOT correct to project an idea of "oneness" onto its statements. To be "one with" does not ERASE the fact that there are two things sharing that oneness. Heaven is all about sharing between many things, which is the opposite of many things which don't share.

In fact even individuality is an inherent part of reality. You HAD an individual existence as a soul BEFORE the separation from God ever came along. Individuality isn't even the problem. It's the unwillingness to SHARE that is the problem - selfishness is the problem. Not whether you HAVE a self.

"God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy.T-4.VII.5:1

Here ACIM has explicitly stated that God created a PLURAL OF BEINGS, in reality, who EACH had everything INDIVIDUALLY - as individuals, and who WANT TO SHARE so that THEIR collective joy increases. That is not in any stretch of the imagination a state of non-duality, or of "its all one thing", or "its all God".

What's needed is a much more accurate concept that maps to what ACIM actually says, and which supports and INCLUDES all of what it says, without trying to screen out stuff on the basis of making teh concept MORE right than the text. ACIM is a kind of "trans-duality", in which God has created many things which ARE still one. That the one and the many are coexisting through sharing. And that this is NOT duality, nor ANYTHING to do with the ego.

Heaven is in fact a holographic system. It is how God thinks. His whole creation and thought proceeds along holographic principles - where every part (son/creation) contains and IS the whole. This is NOT the same as duality. You have to open up to the idea that the many AND the one can COEXIST. That

the one IS many, and the many ARE one. This is stated here: "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. T-16.II.3:3

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. T-9.VI.3:5 "Every child of God is one in Christ, for his being is in Christ as Christ’s is in God." T-12.VI.6:1

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ²All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. T-6.II.8:1-2"

Perhaps we can be willing to stop talking about ACIM as if it's some kind of non-duality teaching when it is utterly riddled with statements to the contrary. God is a creator and has a FAMILY in reality. And you are part of that family. And God LOVES YOU personally and EQUALLY.

"You cannot enter into real relationships with any of God’s Sons unless you love them all and equally. ²Love is not special. ³If you single out part of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on all your relationships and making them unreal." T-13.X.11:1-3

"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return." T-1.V.4:1)

Btw these are ALL quotes from FIP 3rd edition. Put aside what other well-meaning people have told you and listen to what JESUS is telling you.

"The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him."

When your mind is filled with love, it projects a perfectly healed body, free of pain, symptoms of sickness, suffering, damage of any kind. And it especially does not produce death. This healthy body is a symbol in the dream, pointing towards innocence and representing a sign that attack has not occurred. It teaches anyone who looks upon it that they must be innocent, because the absence of harm of any kind in this body image proves their sins have not produced effects. This weakens your brother's belief in his own sinfulness and facilitates healing.

"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."

When your mind is not filled with love, you are unloving towards yourself and towards your brother simultaneously. This attack is an attempt to create a gap of separation that comes between you. The body itself represents this gap and symbolizes the attack. It is the wall that you use to try to demonstrate that you are separate, as a separation device.

Having used the body for attack, the body itself now depicts your attitude towards yourself and others, which is a sick attitude of attack, thus showing up as what the world terms sickness, symptoms, damage and physical suffering. This body image now symbolizes death, and it does not point towards or represent innocence and life any more. It instead points away from it and accuses your brother of having produced effects in you, proving to him that he must be a sinner. This strengthens his belief that he is a sinner and imprisons him further, rather than healing him. It is an attack.

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

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."

"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved."

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."

In order to thereby exonerate both your brother and yourself, and to prove and demonstrate with absolute conviction that forgiveness has truly occurred, in which there is no sin and therefore no effects of attack, the effects themselves must be removed from the body. The body HAS TO BE HEALED. It must be restored to a condition that it was in prior to the attack, and it must only teach and symbolize life and innocence.

If it is kept with conditions of sickness or damage or broken malfunctioning parts, the body remains an accuser. And because the body is proving and teaching and symbolizing sin and attack, it proves that your mind is not TRULY forgiving your brother and yourself. If you were to truly be healed, on the mental level, your body would be healed also.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

"A broken body is PROOF the mind has NOT been healed."

The fact is that if sickness or damage remain in the body "after forgiveness", the mind DID NOT complete the forgiveness. The forgiveness MUST bring healing to the body image also, so that it can symbolize and teach and depict a representation of, and point towards, innocence, harmlessness, healing and wholeness. If the body stays damaged, it continues to teach your brother of his sinfulness and does not heal him, and therefore proves that you also are not healed.

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

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"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 final result of forgiveness MUST BE that not only is your brother's mind healed, AND his body is healed of anything you did to him, but also that your mind is healed, AND your body is healed of anything you did to it. Until that occurs, forgiveness has not been completed and the mind is still sick.

"For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

"The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ALL signs of accusation and of blamefulness."

If you do not PROVE that your BELIEVE that health and wholeness and healing and life and harmlessnes are the ONLY TRUTH, and you fail to DEMONSTRATE it with your body, by healing the body of all signs and symptoms of sickness, all disease, all damage, then your belief is UNATTESTED and WITHOUT CONVICTION. You have not put your money where your mouth is and you are lying, because the only way for the body to BE in a state of sickness if for you to MAINTAIN ATTACK, without which the body could not stay sick. The body MUST be healed in order for your mind's healing to be complete, because they are intimately related.

"Health (physical health) is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief."

When the body is healed and is no longer sick, it now COMPELS BELIEF in another that they must be innocent. It has a healing, teaching power. It is a demonstration of miracles. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this."

The signs of accusation and blame are the physical symptoms. They will be taken away by the Holy Spirit, if you will let him. So that he can restore the body to the picture that HE WANTS IT TO SHOW, to teach the healing that HE wants to use it to teach. The picture of innocence. The picture of 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."

This is what you must USE the body for, within this dream, WHILE you have one, before you disappear off to awareness of Heaven. When you are a teacher of God, fulfilling a function of "awareness of dreaming", and using the body only for communication (which is healing), the body must be healed and it must not show any sign of damage or attack or effects or consequences of sin or guilt in any way. To do so is an attempt to teach two things at once: 1) healing is true, 2) attack is true. And through such a demonstration no-one can learn anything because it is contradictory. The body is now showing a different PROOF than the person is CLAIMING.

"No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

Jesus is black and white about this. Either you heal TOTALLY on ALL LEVELS - mind, emotions, body, OR the healing is not complete.

Sick bodies and dead bodies are not part of the aim of A Course in Miracles and are not something that Teachers of God are supposed to teach or demonstrate to others, or themselves. You are only to demonstrate symbols of LIFE and immortality through the body, so that it can become a sign of life and a witness and testimony to healing and harmlessness. Sickness and death of the body are a failure to accomplish this, and a dream of death cannot be left by death only by truth, which is first approached through mental and physical health. The happy dream must entail a healed body as well as a healed mind, not merely a state of mental "transcendence" of sickness that keeps the body sick and continues to teach death.

"Only the mind and body need atonement."

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

Summarized in this classic statement - the CENTRAL LESSON, from the manual for teachers:

"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.

Oneness and sickness cannot coexist."

And this classic from "sickness is a defense against the truth":

"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."

"The test of EVERYTHING on earth is simply this: "What is it FOR?" The answer makes it what it IS for you. It has NO meaning of itself, yet you can GIVE reality to it, according to the purpose which YOU serve."

What you use the world FOR, what PURPOSE you give it, what it MEANS to you, and the GOAL that you ascribe to it, determines everything about WHY it is there and HOW you see it.

If you give the world a purpose of death, you steer towards false perception and murder and hell. If you give the world a purpose of resurrection, you steer towards true perception and heaven. And which purpose you choose determines how you interpret what you see.

The world isn't just sitting there as a WHAT. It's sitting there as a WHY. The world was made FOR A REASON. It was chosen specifically and deliberately. Its making was intentional and on purpose. It was made to serve a GOAL and to accomplish that goal. It's not just a "thing", it's a DEVICE.

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

"The ego made the world as IT perceives it, but the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made, sees it only as a teaching device for bringing you home."

It's not enough to ask "what the world is". Science can study the WHAT as long as it likes, but it's not asking the right question. You can't just look at the nature of the world through analysis of WHAT, to discover the REASON WHY it exists at all. For that, you have to ask WHY it's there at all, what it means, and what purpose it is serving. Then it becomes obvious WHY it is the way it is.

We're also taught in ACIM that everything is deliberate, because there is free will. Anything that happens MUST have your consent. Nothing happens WITHOUT your choosing it. You choose everything ON PURPOSE. You are completely deliberate, intentional, and responsible. Nothing happens at all unless it serves a purpose. And everything must have a purpose.

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

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

The world did not exist before the separation from God. It was made ON PURPOSE, to serve a goal. The goal was to deny God, to make separation real, to murder God's son, to make possible what is impossible, to bring about death, and to rule a kingdom in which God was absent. That is the original PURPOSE of this world. That is WHY it seems to be here. That is why the "what it is" is the way it is, and why it functions the way it does, and HOW it accomplishes this goal.

Make no mistake here. The world isn't just sitting there happily churning over all innocent and sweet. While the world is actually nothing, we give it belief and try to MAKE it serve the purpose of hell. We made it by rebelling against God, throwing away our inheritance, not WANTING to communicate with God, and by wanting to re-create ourselves in our own images. That's how spacetime came to be made as an opposite to omnipresence and eternity. That's that's why "the world was made as an attack on God."

So if we're just examining what the world is, we're not really looking at the rather extraordinary fact that it is in fact "the hell you made" for the purpose of fighting against heaven and trying to overthrow God's reality. That's WHY it's here. That's WHAT it is FOR. Or at least, that was what it WAS for, in the past, when we made it with our egos. The world functions the way it does simply because that's how its function SERVES the PURPOSE of destruction.

What ACIM is then telling us is that, since the world itself is nothing, and acts like a TOOL, to serve a certain purpose, with a certain USE, we can choose instead to RE-PURPOSE it. To give it a NEW GOAL. A new purpose which can serve a higher goal. We can take what we made, which was originally a weapon for destruction, and turn it into a way to UNDO the weapon. We can take hell, and convert it into a reflection of heaven, so that it will disappear in light. And we can USE it to bring ourselves and others back to God through holy relationship.

"For here, the GOAL of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the EXACT OPPOSITE of what it was."

"For, once the unholy relationship has ACCEPTED the goal of holiness, it can never again be what it was."

This means giving the world a different PURPOSE from the one we originally gave it. And that means it has to have a different GOAL than the one of murder and death that we originally gave it. So now, whatever state of mind you're in, whatever attitude you have, you have to ask yourself what you are USING IT FOR, or what purpose or goal you are trying to accomplish. Are you using it for attack to bring about the goal of death, or are you USING it for resurrection and healing and the goal of atonement, to restore the sonship and bring us back to God?

"Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me. Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor USE it for destruction.

Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE (goal) to peace, but let You USE it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming (of the higher goal)."

Let's be clear, that the power of the mind and the law of cause and effect determines that nothing can happen without your will, and anything that happens MUST be something you want. And by wanting it you WANT it to SERVE a purpose for you. To fullfill a FUNCTION. And a function is a way of operating that leads to the accomplishment of a goal. Our true function is to create life, and our false function is to destroy. Even YOU have a function that serves the creator of that function, because your function is to serve God for HIS purpose of sharing creation.

""Let me not use this to hide my function from me."

"I would use this as an opportunity to fulfill my function." "Let me not use this to justify a function God did not give to me."

Even all forms of sickness are there to SERVE a function, for a PURPOSE. This is why "sickness is a defense against the truth". It serves the PURPOSE of protecting you from the truth and hiding from it in darkness, by blocking the light/life, which implements forms of death. So long as a person has a USE FOR the sickness, serving a purpose, BENEFITING from it, wanting it, NEEDING it, choosing it, the sickness remains. And sickness is always ONLY there because of the PURPOSE it is serviing for the person. All sickness is intentional and deliberate and providing a function to achieve a GOAL.

"The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, "I have no USE for this." There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once."

"No one can heal unless he understands what PURPOSE sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic."

"Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously."

"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?"

So as ACIM rightly states, we should always ask, WHAT IS IT FOR? What am I using this FOR? What is the goal I am trying to achieve? What is the purpose of this? Am I using this for an ego purpose, and if so, how can I switch to a higher purpose? What was my original purpose in CHOOSING this, for what NEED, to achieve what GOAL? Why do I still believe I need it? Maybe I'm mistaken about my REASON FOR THIS and can choose otherwise?

How can I use this to FACILITATE the coming of peace, or the fulfillment of a higher function? How can I USE the world which I made in hate, to demonstrate the truth and awaken my brothers? What renewed spiritual PURPOSE can I give TO the world, to USE it in such a way, that it brings about the undoing of the world and the restoration of holy relationship and health and happiness? How can I USE the world for the GOAL OF GOD, in which everything in the world is seen with forgiveness so that it only serves the purpose of awakening and atonement?

When the Holy Spirit's PURPOSE for the world is accomplished, when the atonement is complete, the world no longer needs to SERVE this new purpose. And WITHOUT A PURPOSE, it simply now disappears into nothing.

"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary"

"And, like all the things you made, it can be used to serve ANOTHER purpose, and to be means for something ELSE. It can be used to heal, and NOT to hurt, if you so wish."

"Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation."

"What purpose could it serve? What is it for?"

"In any situation in which YOU are uncertain, the FIRST thing to consider, very simply, is, "What do I want to come of this? What is it FOR?""

"What purpose has an idol, then? What is it FOR?"

"The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it."

"Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has given it."

"For you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it."

"If I so choose, I can depart this world entirely. It is not death which makes this possible, but it is change of mind about the purpose of the world."

"When joy has come the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began."

"The Great Transformer of perception will undertake WITH you the careful searching of the mind that MADE this world, and uncover TO YOU the SEEMING reasons for your making it. In the light of the REAL reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will SHOW you that there is NO reason here at all. Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God. NOT as the Law Itself upholds the universe as God created it. But in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error. There IS another purpose in the world that error made because it has another Maker, Who CAN reconcile its goal with His Creator's Purpose."

"The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you KNEW its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a DIFFERENT view, ANOTHER purpose, can be given it. You do NOT know its purpose. You but gave ILLUSIONS of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing WITHOUT a purpose CANNOT hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, ITS purpose and YOUR function both be reconciled at last, and seen as one."

"Illusions serve the purpose they were MADE to serve. And FROM their purpose, they derive whatever meaning that they seem to have. God gave to ALL illusions that were made ANOTHER purpose that would justify a miracle, WHATEVER form they took. In every miracle ALL healing lies, for God gave Answer to them all as one."

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

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

"You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you."

"Swear not to die, thou holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One."

Ok. It's time to get honest and stop pretending to be dead!

You are an immortal being, created by God to live forever. You cannot change or be changed, and nothing can EVER happen to you. This is a FACT.

This means you cannot be hurt, damaged, attacked, broken, malfunctioning, decay, degrade, have a dis-ease, be sick, suffer, transform, change, be modified, grow old, or in any way be altered. You are PERMANENT AND ABSOLUTE This is a FACT.

Therefore you must still be exactly the same ORIGINAL SELF that God created, exactly as you were when he created you, and you must not have changed WHATSOEVER. You are STILL as God created you, immortal and unchanged and invulnerable. You have never turned into anything else. This is a FACT.

So what the fuck is this "sickness"? Anything which seems to be so-called "sick" CANNOT BE TRUE. It cannot even exist. How can it be true that you are immortal, and at the same time have it be true that you are a suffering dying self? How can they both be true of you? How can you die if you are immortal? How can you ever be sick? The sickness cannot be true and must be an illusion and a deception. This is a FACT.

"There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion."

"So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real."

Jesus is stating in ACIM that you are an immortal eternal being with eternal life, endless and unassailable, PRETENDING THAT YOU CAN DIE. You are playing a game of pretending that you are mortal in a suffering body, to cover up who and what you are. To hide the TRUTH! YOU ARE FAKING YOUR DEATH. You are literally using the body as a DISGUISE to make it look like you are dying when you're not. All the while underneath you are totally powerful and perfect still.

"Did God create the mortal and corruptible? What use has God's beloved Son for what must die?"

You use the body as a decoy, to cover up who you are and hide your true nature as the Perfect Christ. You attack the body with your mind and make it show up as suffering, as a victim. And then you use this to accuse others and the world of causing you to suffer against your will, hiding the fact you put it there on purpose. You are literally trying to fake your own death and to make it look like someone else made it happen. So that it can seem that "you died" for reasons beyond your control.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

"The sick remain accusers."

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."

"For vengeance is not part of love, and fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain."

So when you are sick, you are lying. When you are sick, you are deceiving yourself and others. It means you are insane and do not know who you are, so you're trying to be something you're not. When you are sick, you are pretending that you are fallible, weak, vulnerable, capable of suffering, diminished, threatenable, hurt, broken, having lost your peace, unfairly treated, victimized, abused and destroyed by anyone or anything EXCEPT yourself. It is a form of irresponsibility, in which you try to claim that death HAPPENS TO YOU AGAINST YOUR WILL.

YOU CHOOSE to make yourself and your body seem to be sick. So that you can DENY that you are NOT SICK. The sickness is a deception and a lie, and cannot be true. Therefore it MUST be an illusion - something appearing to be something it is not. It cannot BE a real sickness, it must be fake. Because you cannot really BE sick ever. The sickness is your attempt to DENY that you are immortal. Death is you being IN DENIAL that you STILL have eternal life. This is a FACT.

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"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"

"For sickness is an election; a decision. It is the choice of weakness"

"If sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it."

"Sickness is idolatry, because it is the belief that POWER CAN BE TAKEN FROM YOU."

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent."

What are you doing? Why are you going into states of sickness and suffering? Why are you holding up the body as an attacked picture of crucifixion, trying to demonstrate first of all that you "are" the body, and that secondly you have been attacked? Why are you using the body as a picture held up to your brother to accuse THEM of causing it? Or to accuse the world of causing it? When all along YOUR OWN MIND puts the effects into the body and then shifts the blame to someone else?

"The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions which are responsible for the body's condition."

You are FAKING BEING SICK. You are faking that you can even be CAPABLE of suffering. That you can even CHANGE or be changed. You are not even changeable. You are so permanent and endless and will live forever, such that you couldn't even really be sick if you wanted to. It cannot be "who you are" that is sick. Even if your mind becomes sick and takes it out on the body, pretending it is a body, and that the body is dying, your soul is STILL not sick.

"But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed!"

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

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that IT will suffer pain."

"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT, of what it made."

YOU CAN NEVER BE SICK. YOU CAN NEVER DIE. YOU ARE NOT A BODY. YOU ARE IMMORTAL.

So what's with this fake game of "poor-me I'm dying"? Why are you playing this game and putting on this fake show? Who are you trying to convince? Why are you making yourself out to be a punished victim, weakened and tormented, disabled and disfigured, diseased and decayed, ripe for the picking and ready to die? Who are you trying to FOOL? Why are you so convinced not only that you ARE a body, but that you deserve to be sentenced to death?

You cannot be guilty because the fact is that you cannot even sin. Sin is the idea that something REAL can be attacked. But "nothing real can be threatened". Reality is NOT attackable. Reality is PERMANENT AND CHANGELESS. "Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all."

"Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."

Nothing real can ever change. YOU are real and can never change. GOD is real and can never change. Your brothers are real and can never change. Nothing real EVER changes because it is ABSOLUTELY FIXED. So you cannot sin against or attack or destroy anything real. That means you cannot be sinned against, nor can you sin, or become sinful. You cannot stop being innocent because "my sinlessness is guaranteed by God." You are PERMANENTLY INNOCENT.

So the idea that you have become evil, have attacked God, are unworthy of love, have committed a crime, cannot be forgiven, deserve to be punished, should suffer, are guilty, should be destroyed etc, is completely unfounded. It's all based on a lie that you even CAN DO these things. You can't. You can never attack or hurt or damage anything real. And anything which SEEMS like it can be attacked or hurt or damaged CANNOT BE REAL.

Bodies show up with their seeming "proof of sin", with their images blasted in your face, with their testimony to your senses, showing you pictures of destruction and crucifixion, to try to tempt you to believe that this is a FACT. That sickness is TRUE. That it's HAPPENING NOW. But this cannot be true at the same time as you being immortal. You cannot be immortal and mortal at the same time. How can the sickness be real? How can the body even be real? How can a person ever actually BE anything less than perfect?

Either you are immortal and you cannot die, or you have NEVER been immortal and you are ALWAYS dead. You either have eternal life and are permanent and absolute, or you are merely some relative dream fiction temporary body story that begins and ends, which is not life and is a dream of death.

"Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible."

YOU CANNOT DIE. So why are you pretending that you ARE?

This is the whole issue of the separation from God. Immortal endless beings trying to force themselves to be mortal. Trying to DENY that they are STILL immortal. Pretending they have brought an end to the immortality and that life has been stopped. That you have CHANGED what God created to last forever, and have thus overthrown his will. That you are more powerful than God and have been able to destroy the indestructible.

Let's stop today playing this game of death, playing at dying, playing at suffering and being sick, playing at being guilty and unworthy, playing small and little and weak and helpless, playing at being victimized and paralyzed and struck down and attacked and helpless. We are POWERFUL BEINGS. We can NEVER DIE. When will the game of dying end? When will we bring an end to the illusion of death and proclaim that THERE IS ONLY ETERNAL LIFE?

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you."

"These are specifically first that the body is for attack, and also that you ARE a body. Without this, sickness is completely inconceivable. Sickness is a way of demonstrating that YOU CAN BE HURT. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

"Do not look to the god of sickness for healing, but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him. When you acknowledge Him, you will KNOW that He has never ceased to acknowledge you, and that in His acknowledgment OF you lies your Being. You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

"These testimonies which the senses bring have but one purpose; to justify attack and thus keep unforgiveness unrecognized for what it is. Seen undisguised it is intolerable. Without protection it could not endure. Here is all sickness cherished, but without the recognition that this is so. For when an unforgiveness is not recognized, the form it takes seems to be something else. And now it is the "something else" that seems to terrify. But it is not the "something else" that can be healed. It is not sick, and needs no remedy. To concentrate your healing efforts here is but futility. Who can cure what cannot be sick and make it well?"

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

Am mortal, fallible, and full of sin,

And know I am the perfect Son of God."

"The body can be healed as an effect of true forgiveness. Only that can give remembrance of immortality, which is the gift of holiness and love. "

"You are God's Son. In immortality you live forever. Would you not return your mind to this?"

"Yet what is it except a game you play in which identity can be denied? You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everything set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality."

"The body does not change. It represents the larger dream that change is POSSIBLE. To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you found yourself before. There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not."

"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."

"In your brother is the light of God's eternal promise of YOUR immortality." "Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF. Yet God's Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM."

"The miracle of creation has never ceased, having the holy stamp of immortality upon it."

"Immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or will be, because it implies NO CHANGE AT ALL."

To prove that your mind is restored to sanity and to its truly immortal nature, you must also be willing to prove physically that you are invulnerable. This demonstration of invulnerability requires great confidence, in that even when others attempt to harm you, the consequences of their attack disappears and is undone. You become "bullet proof" and incapable of being hurt by anyone.

You are literally being asked to show your brother, to prove to him visually, that on ALL levels, you have not been hurt by him. This includes and demands the healing of the body, so that it does not transmit a double contradictory message. The body must not be allowed to testify that HE DID attack you or your body, otherwise it continues to PROVE that he is a sinner.

This requires the use of miracles to override all external sources of attack, undoing all consequences of sin, and maintaining the body in perfect condition. Only by reversing or preventing any effects of attack by another, can you truly demonstrate to him that he HAS NOT attacked you OR your body. And only by showing him the complete ABSENCE of evidence to support his belief that he sinned, can you exonerate him and teach him his innocence.

Your body then becomes a SYMBOL of your own innocence, because it now represents your harmlessness and immortality. And by pointing TO your innocence, it also testifies to HIS. It cannot testify to his innocence if it retains ANY trace of harm or damage, which means that until forgiveness has brought a PHYSICAL healing to your body, it is not real or complete. And until it has transmitted healing TO your brother as well, through physical demonstration, forgiveness is not complete.

When you brother attempts to look upon your body which he believes he DID successfully attack, and does NOT see any proof of attack there, because it has been healed and undone by miracles, it becomes impossible for him to CONFIRM his own sinfulness. And in the demonstrated PHYSICAL PROOF that he did not do anything, the body testifies with a power greater than a thousand tongues, and beyond words or claims, that HE MUST NOT have attacked you. And therefore your body's unharmed condition shows him that he MUST still be innocent, and in its harmlessness induces HEALING in him, because his belief in sin is proven false.

This also extends to you demonstrating that your brother has not hurt you psychologically, and is not responsible for your suffering. Which ties into the secret of salvation that "you can be hurt by nothing but your thoughts" and "you did it to yourself." When someone appears to upset you, you are deceiving yourself and are using him as a scapegoat for your self-attack.

What you're supposed to do is assert that NO ONE CAN HURT YOU. Which is a position is great confidence and assertion. Whereby even if someone tries to hurt you, you act as if they have had NO EFFECT on you. Which means you do not hold anything against them.

To forgive therefore means to hold no sense of sin or guilt against anyone, REGARDLESS of what they do or attempt to do. Even if they accuse you or try to hurt you, you stand in the face of their onslaught unharmed and unwavering, like a rock in the river. You do not USE it to hurt YOURSELF, and so do not demonstrate that you can BE attacked. You show your brother, both mentally and physically, that he HAS NOT done anything to you, and you do not make him responsible for your condition, feelings, or physical state. You act as if you are invulnerable, and in fact are. You show him, "you can't do anything to me, not even physically."

If you think ACIM is not teaching you that you HAVE to heal the body in order NOT to accuse others of sin, then think again. The body MUST reflect the healed mind, and until it does, you HAVE NOT healed the mind. Sickness and pain cannot be kept, if you are to PROVE that you are healed and that you have power OVER it. Death and sickness must be UNDONE in order to demonstrate that you are the resurrection and the life.

This doesn't mean you ARE a body OR that the body is immortal, which it cannot be. But the body DOES symbolize your mind, as an outward picture of an inward condition. Its sickness is part of your effort to PROJECT SIN, and you cannot allow it to show up as a picture of crucifixion or proof of attack, if you are truly forgiving.

The pertinent quotes...

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"To witness sin, and yet forgive it, is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. He holds not the proof of sin, before his brother's eyes. And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own."

"Health is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief. No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream."

"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 which 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.

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"His dreams are happy and his rest secure; his safety certain and his body healed"

"With THIS as purpose IS the body healed. It is NOT used to witness to the dream of separation and disease."

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

"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT, of what it made."

"That is why the Bible says "There is no death," and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist."