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

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

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

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

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

(Urtext T27I10)

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

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

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

"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death. The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Urtext T27I10)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Somewhat channeled just now... Thanks Holy Spirit.

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

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

Anyone who has guilt will become afraid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I rest within, go within, focus within, dwell with God within, stay within, remain calm, be at peace, connect to my holiness, step back from the world, disconnect, etc.... I feel that where and what I am is centered and calm and dwells inside of me.

Within me according to ACIM there is an inner altar, where we are host to God. And also that deep within us there is a place of complete holiness. And we're also told we can find a state of rest in an "I need do nothing" state, where we can experience a sense of calm and rest "in the midst all the busy doings on which you are sent".

The more that I forgive the world and recognize it does not exist, the more I only have "left" what is within me. If everything seemingly external or outside of me, which also includes the body, is not there and does not exist, because there is no world, then all I "have" is what is within my mind. In my awareness.

I find myself becoming aware of this inside state of calm and holiness more and more often. If I put my attention there, it's like turning my mind away from the world and looking within. Focusing on where I am coming from, not on where I am going to. Stepping back from the world and stepping back from my stepping out, and simply remaining deep within. And this inner state is abstract and simple and one and whole, not a myriad of forms and differences.

Within me there is a place of peace and calm and surrender and inactivity. It's a quiet, holy state. It isn't out there, or externalized, or projecting, or losing center, or being caught up in illusions, or upset, or thrown around by the world. It's like just sitting centered within yourself and in what you are and not leaving yourself. Not abandoning yourself. Not being pulled away on another wild goose chase.

When I move away from this state, which seems to be very natural and easy to move into as well, my focus and attention shifts to the external world. To the body. And now if my mind goes into ego, and it goes into believing the world is real, it now starts to lose sight of that inner calm. And now the mind seems to reach out, attach, hold onto things, psychologically and energetically.

Each time this happens a seeming "bridge" forms, which is based on the idea of horizontal cause and effect, or being affect-able by the external world. It feels like a cord, tying me to something. And by believing in external causes and sinners I then feel this sense of vulnerability and accessibility, wherein because I am forming these bridges of horizontal causation with external things, my attack can flow out across these bridges, and external attack can flow in to me as well. They are beliefs in affecting and being affected.

Once I am attacking and receiving attack, my psychological experience is that I am vulnerable, attackable, unprotected, and what is external can seem to come all the way into me and make contact with what I am, and attack it, and now I am affected, and now I am having effects and upsets and emotional reactions. And now I am thrown off center and am lost, and have lost sight of my inner self, and the calm is disturbed, and all sense of holiness and peace thrown out the window.

Then I forgive. I remember there is no world. And as I forgive I dismantle these inroads, these bindings and attachments and beliefs in something external having access to my inner self. And as I do, as I recognize the world is not real, it does not exist, it is not causal, it is not happening, this wipes the world off the plate of my mind. Everything external is a lie. And now what is left? All that's left is what I am within me. And what I am is deep within. And it is calm and peaceful and holy and innocent and light and gently happy and in the presence of God. And it is already there, waiting for me to just uncover it and be it.

So now what I'm noticing is, I am spending progressively more and more time within, being what I really am, and less and less time without, lost and being untrue to myself and wildly reactive and upset and terrified, caught in a dream and tempted by illusions. So it seems then that remaining within, centered, in my inner calm place, is where I really am, and if I were to just stay there, I would not lose sight of myself and bleed out into the world. And I wouldn't react to figures in a dream, or even feel particularly engaged with the world.

It then is like being passer-by, remaining within, with God, and looking without, but not moving out into the world mentally. Not abandoning my post. Not running away from the inner altar. Not getting distracted and deceived and alarmed and threatened by the external. And so I just remaining within. Like a turtle in its shell, just peeking out at the world but not thrusting myself into it. Not losing my center or going off on some tangent of a wild goose chase after dreams and fantasies of physical spiritualization.

So then if I walk the world, from within, and an remaining within as I do so, keeping in the inner holy calm while I do so, I am no longer lost in the world. I am above the battlefield. I am outside the spacetime. I am further than any illusion can reach. I am beyond the ego. Because ego is always all about going without, externalizing, abandoning yourself, leaving yourself behind, moving away from what you are, seeking and not finding, seeking anywhere but within where you already are perfect. And now I be passerby, watching, noticing, but staying close to God within.

Paradoxically, when you go within, you access the light, and then the light can project and extend outward. You do not shine the light by trying to force light out of you into the world. You do not shine light by leaving your light bulb. You do not illuminate the world or be the light of the world, by confusing yourself with what goes out. Love and light extend on their own. You only have to go within and join with the SOURCE, plug yourself into the electrical socket, and then you light up, within.

"Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin."

And once you have an inner light, it automatically radiates and extends and shares. It seems counter intuitive but the only way to give to others is to receive. And as you receive the inner light you automatically give it. Provided you don't try to take it away from yourself and sacrifice it in trying to give it to another. You are to be the light bulb, not the photons. You have to be in the inner holiness in order to have power over what is exteranal.

Going within allows you to extend and project light without. You have to move within, and become closer to God, in order to have something worth giving. And as you give it, you do not abandon your intimacy with God otherwise you stop having anything to share. And as you connect to the inner light, this also transcends the outer, and so joins you with other minds in light, because it is deep within you that you are connected to others, who SEEM to be external and separated off. We are joined together by mutually going within, so that we transcend the world, and thus are not at a distance.

There is a saying, "If I do not go within, I will go without". And this is the whole thing. When you stop dwelling within, you lose yourself and lose everything. You lose touch with what you are and with God. And the light dims and you cannot shine. In a sense, by moving inward which seems to be away from others, you actually reach a state of joining and sharing. You can't access this joining and sharing state by forcing yourself outward, because that actually produces special relationships, attachment, ownership and control.

All that remains when there is no world, and there is no body, and there are no temptations, and there is no distraction, and you are not confused with the world, and you do not believe you are a physical object, and you recognize the world was just a dream, and you reach enlightenment, which is what God gave you. What is coming from God. And what comes from God is received within at your inner altar. And this is where you are host to Him. And when this is all you have left, and you have nothing of the world, you are ready to go home.

You can easily escape into concepts, theories, course quotes as defences, in order to avoid something you don't want to admit to.

Instead of being willing to accept something uncomfortable, you go into denial, and start fighting against the thing with dissociation and intellectual "rising above."

There are things about this world that can be quite unpleasant. Someone dying, the loss of a house, wars raging, people being mis-treated and all that.

We become upset about the thing, not really because of what it is, but because we refuse to accept it. We make something of it, and then we start reacting to what we made of it, and going off on a tangent of a whole new kind of suffering which is even worse than the thing we were avoiding.

Yes nasty things seem to occur. These are kind of like hard facts. In space and time, in physical terms, they happen. Spiritually-minded people love to bypass this and start "attacking it away" with spiritual quote fests, favourite phrases, comments about how its not real, how we're not at the effect of it, and all this. But what this then becomes is avoidance.

If we would stay with the thing and admit to it, stare it in the face, confront it head-on, and be willing to actually look at it, we would be remaining in the present. We would be being honest. We would be not going into denial or trying to cover it up or placate it or make it go away because we don't like it.

And, as it turns out, this present confrontation with the thing helps you to retain your sanity, helps you to not avoid or hide, and helps you to accept it. It's the acceptance of it that actually gives you freedom from it, rather than all these efforts to change it into something, to bypass it spiritually, to move into the intellect, or to sprit the fuck out of it to make it not be there.

For all the time I for example have been dealing with loss over the death of my wife, ACIM has offered a lot of high-level clarity about what it really is, what hasn't actually happened, and all this stuff about how its my belief in it that makes me suffer. A whole lot of metaphysical philosophising and trying to rise above it, to transcend it, to forgive it, to find some peace somehow. But in a way, this has all been a way of avoiding looking at it - a form of denial.

Acceptance is needed in order to be able to let something go and move on. You can't find acceptance by wanting something to change, to be different, to have not happened. You also can't find acceptance by not being willing to admit that the thing HAS happened. It's staring you in the face and practically screaming at you that "this has occurred." On a physical level, IT HAS.

If you avoid this fact, you are putting yourself out of touch with reality. Not that the world is real but the attitude towards this world also in turn becomes your attitude about God. If you avoid an illusion, you avoid God. If you can't look at the world, you can't look at your self. If you hide from changes, you can't embrace changelessness.

So it may be true actually that we find more peace and acceptance through allowing the world to be the way it is, accepting what HAS happened even if that seems to be "making sin real", and even if it seems somehow to be giving the ego a whole lot of credit. What's the alternative, hide from the ego and hurl abuse at it from the mountain top? Or should we own what we've done to ourselves?

ACIM on the one hand is saying things like, "its not real, it hasn't happened, it's not true, the world is a dream, it's all an illusion, nothing is wrong, there is no death" etc. But this is higher level truth. On the physical level there is much that is wrong, and there is death, and people are sick.

Jesus refers to avoiding the "facts" of the world as "a particularly unworthy form of denial." Such as trying to deny that bodies exist. Yes ultimately they don't, but that's not your experience right now. Death does appear to happen. If you deny that you will suffer MORE than if you had accepted it. The person that dies is dead, physically at least. And that has to be acknowledged. No amount of running away from it into the mind's fantasies will undo that fact.

While it is not pleasant, we do have to stop being in denial. We have to stop avoiding what's happened or happening. It's not spiritual, it's a bypass. A mis-use of ACIM's teachings has led me and many people to try living on a cloud in avoidance of the battleground, rather than to take a good hard look at the battleground. It takes some deep soul-searching to admit to this.

We can't get to the "forgiven world" without being willing to look at it through the eyes of Christ. And that does mean looking at it, not looking away from it. It means staring it down. Being aware of all the nasty shit that is happening. Looking at it with Christ so that we translate it into a more tolerable interpretation, NOT as a bypass or an avoidance or a defense or an attempt to put some distance between you and the facts.

"Let all things be exactly as they are."

"The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

"Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no-one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appear as facts."

"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."

"How can a fact be fearful, unless it DISAGREES with what you hold more dear than truth? Reason will tell you that this fact is your RELEASE."

"The body is merely a fact. Its ABILITIES can be, and frequently are, over-evaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence. Those who do are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial."

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

If you believe bodies and sickness are real, you will look upon bodies suffering and want to fix them. The nightmare of things going wrong compels you to do something in guilt and desperation. So you try to heal, but you are simultaneously reinforcing the sickness with a belief in it. You attack the sickness to try to destroy it, and fight against it wishing it would leave.

Some small measure of healing can be possible this way, beacuse there is at least a partial desire to heal and help, and this can have some effect. But it is thwarted by the conviction that it won't work, based on an ongoing attack upon the victim.

By seeing them as a body, and as sick, as if true, you pull them down from being an immortal perfect Christ being in heaven and frame them as weak and suffering, which is an attempt to weaken and destroy them.

True healing completely ignores the sickness, recognizing that sickness and bodies are lies. They are not true or real, and what they present is a decoy designed to tempt you away from the truth. The bodies screams with its fits of proclamation as to what is wrong with a person and all the ways the are guilty.

To heal is to look past this with forgiveness, to not be deceived and to not listen to what the body says is true. The forms of sickness do not matter, the type of sickness does not matter, the alleged severety or length does not matter, and how it seemed to arrive deos not matter.

Instead the healer looks to the truth and focuses only on what is actually real, not deceived by false illusions. You look for the fact that the person in God's creation is already perfect, already immortal, already unharmed and already whole. This IS the truth about them, which their body and sickness are designed to hide.

So you must recognize that the sickness is a deceptive lie, a form of denial, covering up the truth that the person is NOT sick at all. The mind is playing games and covering over perfection with imperfection. Our focus should be only on the perfection of the person.

In fact, in truth, this means the person does not really need to be healed, because their spiritual self is still as it always was - perfect and unchanging, incapable of sickness, unable to die, and always the same. It is only their mind which seems distorted and lost, trying to form pictures of suffering that don't apply.

By focusing on the true light of the person you become glad and thankful to God that he has blessed you with this divine holy gift that is your brother. And so your brother is seen as YOUR savior and healer. And by thus recognizing his changeless perfection, he shares that perfection from God with you and you reflect it back to him.

As you become aware in your mind of the Holy Spirit in him, the changeless perfection in him, and given that your light IS your brother's light, and your mind IS part of his mind, you lift up his mind FOR him and help him to remember his own light. He thus is healed because you saw him AS healed, which is a fact and a truth and a reality, and not a wish or a desire. Something to recognize.

By recognizing that your brother is healed, this strengthens his view of himself in what seems to be his own mind, because your minds are shared. And so he is resurrected in your sight and the shining of this light INTO his mind AS his own shared light and identity, prevents him from having such strong belief in his own separation.

True healing is thus the extending and sharing of light and power and life from your mind into your brother's mind to enlighten and brighten his mind so that he can see his own perfection.

"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives NOTHING in the healer that everyone else does not share WITH him. Magic ALWAYS sees something special in the healer, which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does NOT have it."

"You might well ask why SOME healing CAN result from this kind of thinking, and there is a real reason for this. However misguided the "magical healer" may be, and however much he may be trying to strengthen his ego, HE IS ALSO TRYING TO HELP. He IS conflicted and unstable, but AT TIMES he is offering SOMETHING to the Sonship, and the ONLY thing the Sonship can ACCEPT IS healing."

"Learning is constant and so vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in an instant, and change the world in the next. That is because by changing HIS mind he has changed the most powerful device that was ever created FOR change."

"When you heal, that is exactly what you ARE learning (doing). You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by perceiving (knowing) that he could NOT have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is ONLY the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he CAN, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self IS. If YOU see only the changeless in him, you have not really changed him at all. But by changing your mind about HIS FOR him, you help him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him."

"Our brothers ARE forgetful. 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 mind WE share IS shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly, they WILL be healed. Let YOUR minds shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make THEM aware of the light in THEM. This light will shine back upon YOU and on the whole Sonship because this IS your proper gift to God."

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. 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."

"But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals."

"When I am healed, I am not healed alone."

"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and let God Himself go out into them and through them."

"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."

"Consciousness was the first split that man introduced into himself. He became a PERCEIVER rather than a creator in the true sense."

In ACIM terms, before the separation from God, we simply enjoyed what Jesus calls "awareness". This awareness is tightly tied into oneness and knowledge.

In awareness, you ARE that which you are aware of. There is nothing truly "separate" to observe that isn't already you. Since you ARE that which you are aware of, you have immediate and direct "knowledge" of it. Thus knowledge and awareness and oneness is all tied together.

Awareness also has power and love and creation in it. It can cause by will the creation of extensions to God's kingdom. It extends ITSELF as a co-creator, also extending God, to KNOW that which it creates. Just as God created US through directly KNOWING us.

"God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them."

In the separation, we attempted to reject all this. We rejected oneness and introduced separation. This now meant that we wanted something to "come between" ourselves and ourselves. Between us and God. Something which can be different over here than it is over there.

As a result, mind split and now formed what ACIM refers to as "consciousness". It's a separated state. The mind in this state is NOT creative, and does NOT have knowledge. Instead of being causal and powerful and one with everything, it is instead a state relying entirely on maintaining separation.

"Consciousness is correctly identified as the domain of the ego." At the same time of course the sense of identity went from you being the whole, to you being only a part. And now in the egoic consciousness state of mind, the mind became UN-creative (mis-creative) and unwilling to be one with everything.

Mind's rejection of creation and knowledge was kind of like trying to make the mind empty, or to stop broadcasting (creating). So instead of extending and uniting and sharing, it became sort of passive and unwilling.

As a result, mind now regards itself as a sort of RECEIVER of inputs, signals, which come to it from something it regards as NOT part of itself. Not one with itself or known. As such there now develops ideas of space and time, of distance and delay, or separateness between self and brothers and God.

"Perception is a RESULT not a cause."

"Consciousness is thus the level of perception, but NOT of knowledge. Again, to PERCEIVE is NOT to know."

"Consciousness is the level which engages in the world, and is capable of responding to both external and internal impulses. Having no impulses from itself, and being primarily a mechanism for inducing response, it can be very wrong."

The perceiving "consciousness" state has now gone from being a powerful knowing creator-extender that is one with everything, to a disempowered passive state that doesn't know anything and sees everything as separate. Effectively it now sees itself as a victim or at the EFFECT OF things separate from itself.

Signals then enter the conscious mind either from without or within, and from the superconscious (God level) or subconscious (miracle level). Consciousness sort of RECEIVES these signals and thus PERCEIVES what it is TOLD exists. As though something outside of itself is making impressions upon it and giving it signals and telling it that stuff exists.

All of these signals in the perceiving mind are SENSED, in particular by the body. There is now a separation between self and other, so a separation between observer (who has awareness) and the observed. Because of the separation split between these two, it introduces the delay and distance of spacetime.

As such, every single physical object, all matter, space and time themselves, all human bodies, the planet Earth, the sun and moon etc, it's all ONLY a perceptual signal occurring in a state of separation. Separate things, being sensed by a separated mind, in a state in which the mind is not ONE with those things, and in which both the separated things AND the "separate observer" (ego) are illusions.

Both the ego mind (separated self) and the world it perceives (spacetime) depend entirely on maintaining separation and differences in order to maintain the mind split that leads to perception and consciousness. Without this "first split" in the mind, consciousness is not possible, perception is not possible, and separate objects are not possible.

This doesn't mean that the separate objects can be perceived "as one with" the observer. If the two are separate, perception is possible. If the two are one, perception is NOT possible and separation is NOT possible and OBJECTS are not possible. Matter is not possible, space and time are not possible, without a split mind.

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing."

Thus if you are still perceiving, you are NOT knowing. Even true perception is NOT knowledge, not oneness, and not a healed mind. Thus you can seem to wake up to or attain very high states of CONSCIOUSNESS, in which you can perceive the "real world", BUT, this is not the same as the realm of total oneness which is heaven.

"Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception CAN be, is without meaning in Heaven. Perception can reach EVERYWHERE under His guidance, for the vision of Christ beholds EVERYTHING in light. But no perception, however holy, will last FOREVER."

Waking up WITHIN consciousness, in a perceptual realm, is still a split-minded state of separation. Only when consciousness ENDS, the split is entirely healed, and separateness becomes impossible, does the mind return to TOTAL KNOWLEDGE, oneness, perception is impossible, and space and time are impossible. Without the split of consciousness, there is no world. And the mind must wake up FROM consciousness in order to return to the awareness of reality.

No more dreams, no more material objects with differences, no more bodies and planets, no more observers and observed things. Only a directly known realm of SPIRIT AND LIGHT, created by God to last forever.

"To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."

"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 intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then. You will also remember that I made it very clear that the Resurrection was the return to knowledge, which was accomplished by the union of my will with the Father's."

Nightmares and happy dreams have one thing in common, they are both dreams. It cannot be the fact that it is a dream that determines whether it is happy or not. It also can't really be a matter of what the dream depicts as happening.

A dream of a beach with a nice sunset and lapping waves might be regarded as a happy dream, while a plane crash with broken bodies strewn upon the ground might be considered an unhappy dream. But this is not really what makes a dream happy or not. If you think the form of what happens determines whether you are happy, you are being a victim of the world and are blind.

There can be an illusion of happiness, whereby a dream takes on a form of happy things, or things we think of as positive or uplifting. And there can be an illusion of unhappiness, whereby a dream takes on forms we do not like such as things going wrong. And likely we will decide only to be happy along with happy things, and to be upset around the bad stuff.

But what really determines whether we are in a nightmare or a happy dream has a lot more to do with one factor alone: HOW REAL IS IT. It's not a matter of what the dream is about or what it depicts, which is a trap easily fallen into. Dreams going in your favor are a trap just as much as evil doings.

Dreams are always essentially always dreams of death. They are dreams of death because reality, which is the opposite of dreams, is always eternal life. Every dream has underpinnings of separation and conflict.

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."

So in effect, every dream you have has its basis in the separation from God, in opposition to God's nature, and in the idea of an opposite to eternal life. The themes of dreams, even the ones with the seashores and sunsets, are still rooted in some degree of separation.

What makes a dream a dream is that it opposes reality. It is a protest against reality. It's an attempt to turn reality into something unreal, something impossible, and something unnatural. Even if a dream is not real or is recognized as not real, it will always feature things happening which cannot happen in God's reality.

It isn't so much the fact that strange and unnatural things happen in dreams, because if you were to recognize it's just a dream you would laugh it off. It's more to do with the fact that you take it seriously.

A dream which is believed to be real, is given far more weight than a dream that is recognized as nothing. A real dream becomes a nightmare. If it is real, then everything that happens in it is true. If it is true, then all the experiences are real threats, real dangers, real awful situations, and real horrors.

The mind then experiences them as if reality is now a horrifying, twisted, unnatural but nevertheless real thing. As if it's true that someone has died a horrible death, or its true that everyone died in the plane crash, or its true that there was a revolting murder. Only IF IT IS TRUE does the dream upset you.

What ACIM is telling us then, is that since we're appearing to live in a dream world, a seemingly waking dream of Earth, if we believe it is real and true it will seem like a nightmare. Sometimes it will seem tolerable if the events taking place are regarded as safer, but it won't be long before it comes up with some new problems or disasters.

"The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

You can be sure then that the world is setup to be highly problematic, with temporarily illusions of reprieve and peace, in between vast hordes of horrors and stresses. But what determines whether it UPSETS you is whether your mind believes it is REAL or not. What makes it a living hell, is not so much what happens, but WHETHER it really happens. Whether it is true or not.

A happy dream then isn't so much a dream where nice stuff happens and you have a gap in between the world going to shit, because the world is permanently shit. It's more a matter of a mindset or way of looking at the world, in which it is not GIVEN reality or truth or power, and so it is recognized as not having any.

It cannot upset you because you don't choose to use it to do so. It does not hurt you because you know you can only hurt yourself by believing the world is capable of real harm. It cannot make you sick or die unless you use the world as a prop to pretend that you, as an immortal being, can suffer and die.

So what once would've been interpreted as a nightmare, comes to be reinterpreted as harmless, because you have lifted away from it the one thing that ever made it dangerous - the idea that it is REALLY HAPPENING. If the world is nothing BUT a dream, and is regarded correctly as NOT REAL AT ALL, then nothing in it can threaten you, hurt you, make you sick, or destroy you.

A happy dream is a dream thus in which your mind is free from the world because it does not GIVE it any reality, power or truth. It has power OVER the world because of this. You are now recognizing yourself as the dreamer of A DREAM, and not of a reality. And no nightmare can remain a nightmare when its heavy darkness is lifted away by the light of truth.

"There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

"The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds."

"Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be EXCEPT a happy dream? For you are asked but to forgive all things that no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to look upon the unreal as reality."

"That is why forgiveness of another is an illusion. Yet it is the only happy dream in all the world; the only one that does not lead to death." "In your relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world; the world of happy dreams, from which awaking is so easy and so natural."

Something just popped into my mind on our lovely walk home from the cafe.... there are different LEVELS of forgiveness.

The dream was created through this process:

Separation idea > sin > guilt > fear of punishment > death.

At each of these 'stages' there are different kinds of perceptions and choices being made for different reasons. When we're in the world faced with something that seems upsetting, it's usually an experience somewhere between the last two stages - fear and death. When we apply forgiveness, we tend to work on undoing the projections of fear, and perhaps if we dig deeper we undo some of the projections of guilt as well.

But what I found myself noticing was, I don't often get even deeper into the undoing of sin, or deeper than that - the undoing of the idea of separation.

The idea of separation entails our CHOICE to be separate from God, which was a disowning of responsibility and a desire to be different. If I am to take 100% responsibility for what I've chosen, realizing I've only done this to myself, I have to take my forgiveness ALL the way to that original 'source point' in my mind - the decision to die - to be opposite of Life.

So if I'm mainly caught up in forgiving projections and blame, that's helpful but it's maybe confined to some of the 'lower levels' or more external levels of the mind. I need to go deeper. I need to get to where I can see that I CHOSE everything about this because I wanted to be separate. That's the 'root cause' in my mind. I need to admit that I wanted to deny God and wanted to be dead. That's the pivotal point. To get there I need to make sure I am undoing the layers of fear and guilt but also the layer of a belief in sin and come to realize that this is ALL something I chose to do to myself.

Undoing fear: Seems fairly simple, recognizing we're choosing to be afraid and are projecting causes for it outside of ourselves. I can take that back. But I might still believe someone is guilty, maybe myself.

Undoing guilt: I need to now see that I'm not guilty, or at least that guilt is stemming from a sense of sin. I'm afraid because I feel guilty. Well, I need to get past feeling guilty. And as I get past it I'm going to confront a deeper level - a sense of having sinned. The reason WHY I'm guilty. And that deeper level is going to seem even MORE upsetting to admit to. Layers of fear and guilt are weaker than the layer of sin, which is also weaker than the layer of separation. These surface layers were made to cover up the deeper layers and make them more palatable.

Undoing sin: Now I'm aware that I believe I really did something bad, that it cannot be healed, that it cannot be undone or reversed. Something I'm ashamed of and guilty for. Something that supposedly 'happened'. I need to undo that and get past this perception that it's permanent, unhealable, irreversible and has had a real serious effect. This is digging into the depths of 'what I've done' and the root of my guilt. And this should lead me to ask, why did I sin in the first place? It seems like I as I progress here I should be finding out that I am more innocent, but so far it seems I'm more to blame. But I'm moving past it. It's difficult to admit to guilt, but even harder to admit to sin. The ego says, see, you shouldn't have looked at the guilt because now you've uncovered a deeper darker layer of horror. But we can move past this - we have to. Because underneath the idea that 'we really did this' (sin) is an even darker idea - that we WANTED to be separate.

Undoing separation: Sin can only arise out of some kind of separation idea, which actually is a CHOICE and DECISION to be separate. I must've wanted to sin. I must've wanted to do this, to be sinful. So underneath the sin is a choice. It's the awareness that I DID THIS TO MYSELF ON PURPOSE, for a reason. And what is that reason? Why would I separate? I have to own up to this. I wanted to be separate because I wanted to deny that God exists so that I could have an ego. I wanted to be different. I wanted to be not loved. I wanted to die. If I can't get all the way to seeing that I made this choice, then I am not going to truly be ready to COMPLETELY RELINQUISH it. I need to admit to all of the sorrow that came from this choice, and that the choice was mine. Nobody else was to blame. No-one did this to me. I wanted it. And now I'm realizing it hasn't worked - because sin hasn't really worked - and I'm not guilty, and don't need to be afraid or get punished. I'd rather be happy. I might as well give up, surrender this choice, and CHOOSE AGAIN.

And it's at that point that you actually fully let go of the decision for separation, which dissolves the ego and unifies you with God.

So as I forgive now I plan to remind myself of this - exactly how deep am I willing to go in forgiving? Am I just giving up surface projections or am I willing to get all the way to the CORE IDEA - the death wish - the decision to be without God? And am I willing to let that go. Having let go of all the projections and blame and consequences of ALL the other levels, I should be ready to squarely admit to and own up to this decision, and subsequently choose differently. I'd rather choose Holy Spirit's truth at this point and join with His version of the truth and ACCEPT GOD instead of trying to deny God. ACCEPTING GOD is ACCEPTING THE ATONEMENT.

So it seems that as we dig deeper, we uncover darker and more vicious levels of disaster. First it was palatable fear, then some tolerable guilt, but now it's serious sin and hate, and beneath that - a death wish, a desire to be without God on purpose. That's not easy to want to look at or to admit to. And it can seem like the worst thing you could possibly admit - that I wanted this suffering - I wanted to not be with God. I wanted to get rid of God. Or even as some describe it - a murderous thought - the desire to kill God's son. Pretty heavy stuff! We need to come to admit to this so that we choose differently. If I can't own up to having made this CHOICE then I'm not going to be able to UNDO that choice and choose God/Atonement instead. And if I don't, I will continue to die. It IS a life-or-death decision, although we must remember death is an illusion.

So the choice is up to us. Do we want to accept God again and allow Him to love us, or do we want to keep choosing suffering and despair and lack and destruction? It's up to us.

The secret of salvation tells you "you're doing this to yourself". ACIM also tells you "you but accuse your brother of your own sins." It also tells you that you "look within first" and then project outward, producing perception.

So the thing is, you START by attacking yourself first, accusing your self of sin. Then you look within. Then you project your own sin out. Then you find yourself in a situation where you seem to have to "forgive someone else", or at least begin the process of realizing it's not about them, taking back the projection, and then looking at why YOU are innocent.

But really most of the time we spend in undoing all this projected crap, it's not really even the original problem. The original problem is that we do not love ourselves. We attack ourselves. We have judged and condemned ourselves. We've believed ourselves to be unworthy of love and forgiveness. And it's only later that this becomes projected onto the world and other people, which produces a mess we have to then clean up before we can even home in on the real issue.

If you think about it, your only job then really involves the forgiving of YOUR SELF, which would automatically remove the need to project sin onto others in the first place. Your SELF ATTACK needs to be undone, in order to have no sin TO project. And if you are not experiencing love, it is because you have not forgiven YOUR SELF. You have blocks to the awareness of love's presence because you do not believe you deserve to be loved. You don't love other people because you hate yourself first.

Forgiveness is not really complete until you return to a state of love, whether it seems to be about another person or yourself. Only when you can love the person that was an enemy, are you fully done forgiving them, and now welcome them with open arms. If you do not love yourself, it's because you have not forgiven yourself fully. Which means that you have grievances against yourself. You have beliefs about your own sinfulness. You are convinced of your own unworthiness and are hurting yourself.

If you were to address this actual problem, this inner self hatred, this suicidal self-abuse, the secret sins and hidden hates, not even on a basis of feeling guilty about accusing your brother of it, it would clear everything up. Jesus says you don't have to seek for love, you just need to remove the barriers you've built against it. Those barriers are barriers against YOU, against loving yourself. They are within you. And it's only later that you project them as a hellish world in ways that interfere with your relationships.

You are the one who needs to forgive, and you are the one who needs to be forgiven. By yourself. You need to learn to stop unloving yourself. You need to find out all the ways that you do not love yourself or are unwilling to do so. And they will indicate all the ways that you do not want to love others because YOU do not believe YOU deserve to receive love. And then you need to undo that belief so that you can recognize your entitlement to love.

Miracles function by applying to both YOU AND another. And so your unwillingness or inability to love another is only evidence of your unwillingness to love yourself. You would have to love yourself at the same time as loving them, and so you do not love them, because to love them you'd have to love yourself. And so you hold back your love of others because you don't want to love yourself. You are unwilling to love yourself because you hate yourself. And Jesus tells us not to underestimate the sheer extent of this hatred.

Ultimately though, the key is, that by recognizing you do this attack to yourself, the secret of salvation can offer you a way out. By healing your relationship WITH YOURSELF, by allowing yourself to receive love, by loving your own self first, you will automatically see the world differently. You will see a forgiven world only because YOU are forgiven. You will see forgiven brothers only because YOU have forgiven yourself. You will see a reflection of God in the world ONLY because within you you have no sin and guilt and God (love) is accepted as present in your mind, and so is projected onto the world.

It seems incredibly simple when you get down to it. So much ego time is spent lost and confused and caught up in external problems and other people and dramas and all these projected forms of your own self attack, such that it makes it seem most of the time it's not even about you. But its ONLY YOU that needs to get healed FIRST, to accept atonement FOR YOUR SELF, so that you can in turn be available to heal and help others. To offer love to them, you have to have love to give, and you can't have love to give when you don't acknowledge your own lovability.

You don't even really need to deal with trying to "forgive others" or to "forgive the world" or to "be more loving toward people". What you really need to focus on is getting your self to be more loved, by YOU. To find out why your relationship WITH YOURSELF is broken. To find out why and where you hate yourself, how you are denying yourself, and why you don't want to admit to being God's beloved child. All the rest is an ego distraction and a form of denial, an attempt to pass the buck and make the problem be outside your mind so that your own self attack remains hidden.

When YOUR mind gets corrected, your PERCEPTION will get corrected too. "Perception is a RESULT, not a cause". Perception doesn't even need to be "worked on". There is a massive amount of distraction with people thinking that they have to fix and shift their perception. You cannot DIRECTLY shift perception because it is a SIDE EFFECT. Spiritual perception is a RESULT of fixing YOUR BELIEFS about YOURSELF. It's what you sense AFTER you have looked within and have projected your inner world outward. As a man thinketh, about himself, so does he perceive.

This is all an inside job. YOUR MIND has shit in it that needs healing. All the world related to your self and the healing of yourself is entirely within you. You can use holy relationships or guidance or whatever else help along the way but ultimately, simplifying it greatly, Jesus is just asking you to 1) get yourself back to love and 2) then you'll share that love with others automatically.

Love goes out automatically because of its nature, and you don't even need to make it do that. It has its own function to do that. You just need to stop blocking it. And you do that by forgiving yourself for what YOU have not done. When you see your own sinlessness you'll see the sinlessness of your brother. When you see your own innocence you will see his. Once you do that, the rest will take care of itself. Seek the Kingdom of God within you and the whole world will be made forgiven.

One thing has been a constant throughout your whole life. You have always been you alone. You have always been a separate person, autonomous within the confines of a body, and not once has there been anyone in there with you. Everyone else is just like you, in that they are unlike you, and unlike everyone else. And never have you found anyone who is the same as you.

This experience comes with a sense of "I am only me", completely cut off from others by a wall of bodies. And that seems to suggest "I am wholly myself." And yet, it is not an experience of knowing who you are, but of being out of touch with who you are. It's an experience of "I don't know who I am" while at the same time clutching at straws to define who you are. Looking for something to identify with, to convince yourself it is your self, because you have lost yourself.

You have been lost, confused, afraid, alone, lonely, weak, powerless and constantly bombarded with attack. And every time it has been "only my self" that has experienced this - the poor-me victim. And every time you have been unhappy it has seemed you are unhappy alone, afraid alone, suffering alone, sick alone, guilty alone, dying alone. And not once has it seemed that anything you have felt within yourself has been the same as that of anyone else at all. You haven't even had the slightest clue what anyone else is thinking or experiencing.

This is the experience of what we might call someone who is "being an ego". It is the automatic experience of anyone whose sense of self is a "separated off" self. A self that is excluded, isolated, imprisoned in a body, kept apart from sharing anything with anyone, and thoroughly limited to what the body dictates.

"This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time" Such a person has not really changed in terms of their perfection, but they have changed in terms of their relationship. There has been a communication breakdown between themselves and others. The body depicts this breakdown as a tremendous hurdle which filters and translates everything into confusing symbols. This is a person who once was free, but who has been locked up inside a body and has forgotten what it means to share. Their mind seems isolated and unaware of anyone else's mind.

Let's say there is no such thing as "an ego" at all. There are only people. And some of these people have decided to try to cut themselves off from others. They have done this by placing themselves inside a prison cell, and have tried to identify with that prison cell so that their whole sense of self narrows and confines to within its walls. They are a self which once was glorious and magnificent, expansive and unlimited, which has dimmed its light and condemned itself to a dungeon, to die alone and in solitude.

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real. "There is no man who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this has been the result of his own free will, he must regard his will as if it were NOT free, or the obviously circular reasoning of his own position would be quite apparent."

"For his belief in limits HAS imprisoned him."

"An imprisoned mind is not free by definition. It is possessed, or held back, by ITSELF. Its will is therefore limited, and not free to assert itself."

It is unnatural to be only yourself. Some people will model what ACIM says on the basis that, when you are awake, you are wholly yourself. And therefore when you are in ego, you are not entirely yourself, or are unwhole. But this is not entirely accurate. It is more accurate to say that when you are in ego you are ONLY yourself to the EXCLUSION of others, and when you wake up you are waking up to being MORE THAN just yourself. You are a whole self AND MORE THAN a whole self.

The entire premise of being "in ego" or "in separation", is that you are excluded from others. You are not sharing with them. You are not identifying with them. You don't regard them as part of you and you see yourself as a standalone, independent, self-reliant being. Not that being self-reliant is wrong. In fact you were created to be wholly sufficient and complete and lacking nothing, sharing the power of God. It isn't that you are "capable" that's wrong, it's that you try to be capable ON YOUR OWN.

This means that fundamentally the separation is really about you rejecting your inheritance from God. It's about you not wanting to be an effect of God. A rejection of God as your father. An unwillingness to acknowledge that you ONLY have what he has given you. That you do not have anything, nor can you BE or DO anything, WITHOUT him. That everything you are, comes from him, and is part of him and shared with him. Rejecting all that God has given is what makes you "separated off".

As soon as you are separating yourself off, to be a powerful being who does not want power, you immediately disempower yourself. You immediately enter into fear, because you know deep down that you have actually stripped yourself of power. You know you are not capable anymore. You can't successfully do ANYTHING on your own, although you can try. It will fail in some way. Anything you make will die. And all your mis-creations will crumble. You can't give immortality to anything because you are denying it in yourself.

You can be with God and be guaranteed of success. Or you can be without God and be guaranteed of failure. Realize then that everything that you try to do ALONE, WILL FAIL.

Everything. You are fundamentally in a state of fear whenever you try to be without God, think without God, do without God, see without God, think without God, live without God. You are fundamentally rejecting success, and life, and power, and happiness, and health, by trying to go it alone. Imprisonment as a solo-self is not freedom.

What this reveals then is that, for your whole life, you've been acting LIKE an ego. You've been trying to independently figure everything out, to understand what everything is, to give meaning to everything based on your whims, opinions and beliefs, and there is nothing that you've ever done that wasn't a solo effort. Even when you did things in a team or with others, you were still alone. And even your efforts to be a part of something bigger than yourself kept you in the dark.

This means there is a logical premise at work, behind every failure, and guaranteeing everything you do will fail. And it goes like this: IF you are a separated-off self, you LACK EVERYTHING. And therefore everything you do will be a mistake, will break, will be wrong, will upset you, will make you suffer, and will be depressing and frustrating. Being alone IS a limitation.

IF you are a separated-off self, you are automatically in a state of fear and anxiety which you will not be able to get rid of. It doesn't matter how much you work on it. It doesn't matter what path you take, what you believe, what choices you make, what thoughts you have, how you feel. Nothing you do will work completely, if you do it separately. Doing it separately CAUSES you to suffer. Doing everything alone PUTS YOU IN PRISON. There is NO freedom there. Or as some may put it, "there is no rest for the wicked."

"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss."

See how Jesus confirms that if you are a "separated one", you WILL experience all manner of unhappy things. Note that he also says that since the separation, no-one has been sure of ANYTHING...

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."

We have quite literally entered into a state of FAILURE, by participating in the separation. It is a state of being flawed, of fundamental attack, insecurity, unholiness, suffering and despair.

The problem then comes when you start to believe that there is something you can DO about it, WITHIN the confines of this situation, that will make it better. You will try to fix it yourself. You will try to think your way out of it with your own thoughts. You will try to do techniques on your own. You will be the one who decides what you prefer and what will work for you. You will make all the wrong choices. And you will always be the central figure in every single thing that you do. Your whole life will revolve around yourself, and you will be trying to SAVE this self at the same time.

This self will do A Course in Miracles. This self will pray. This self will try to become more spiritual. This self will try to become separately enlightened. This self will try the latest techniques and sample the spiritual buffet-line, looking for something it thinks it needs, something it has lost. Some kind of salvation, which will save it from all the fuck-ups and failures that continue to plague it. And as it seeks for this, it will not find it.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"Yet the ego, though encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso; - do not FIND it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as, "Seek and do NOT find."

The problem is that it is this very sense of being an isolated self that is the ENTIRE problem. The confinement, the walls that surround you, the body, the gap, the lack of communication, the broken relationship, the isolation and the exclusive specialness, all CONTINUE the problem. Being "separated" is the problem, the problem is NOT being a self. Because when you are separated, you are NOT being yourself.

This "self" that you are working WITHIN the confines of, trying to get IT to be holier and more awakened, just stays WITHIN those confines and does not want them to ever be questioned. It doesn't consider that ITSELF, or, its way of identifying itself as "separated", is the whole problem. It's the ONE problem behind all problems. The one issue that isn't getting solved. You think you are already all of yourself, and only yourself.

So then some people will say that you have to GET RID OF, ie KILL AND DESTROY, this self, in order to be free. In order to be truly spiritual, it has to die. This is utterly bullshit. It's just another in a long line of solutions which separated selves have come up with for how to deal with their suffering. The whole act of trying to BE separated off is an attempt to destroy the unlimited nature of yourself, in the first place. So making the self FULLY dead is just a continuation of that. Self needs to expand, not die.

"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds."

The self does not need to be destroyed. The self needs to EXPAND its definition of its identity. It needs to realize that it is MORE THAN the confined limited sense of self that it has been living under. That it is MORE THAN ITSELF.

Because ego really is just a notion of selfishness or being self-absorbed, as though to say, putting your whole attention on YOU EXCLUSIVELY. If you being exclusive is the problem, destroying you isn't the solution. What you need is freedom from exclusivity.

"You have made much progress, and are really trying to make still more, but there is one thing you have never done; not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body."

What Jesus is saying here is that the one thing we have never really done is question THE PRISON that we're in, the sense of what it is that has defined us as "separated". We have not brought into question whether we actually ARE separated, and have not been willing to realize that ALL our suffering has been CAUSED BY that sense of isolation. If I am ONLY me, then I have become separate.

Identifying WITH the body has made us narrow and limited. The body is narrow and limited. It's like an anchor in time and space. When we think of it as "my self", we have to think of ourselves as narrow and limited. And now we are small and special and selfish and cut off. We have to forget the body in order to expand the sense of self beyond the separation. The body symbolizes the separation (as a separation device), so we have to open up to being MORE THAN a body. And if I am more than ONE body, I am more than JUST myself.

Before the separation, every soul that was created by God in heaven, was whole, and also overlapped with each other. Everyone shared everything including identity. Christ is the one identity of every soul, and every soul is a member of that identity. I am christ and you are christ and we are one as two christs. The fundamental premise here is that everything is shared including yourself. You are you, but YOU ARE ALSO me. You are everyone. Therefore you are more than JUST a separate being - you are not just ONE creation of God, you are all of them.

It is natural therefore that you should regard yourself as ... fully wholly yourself, AND fully wholly everyone. This is a normal sense of identity. You are the whole sonship. You are in fact the entire Kingdom of God. And all its contents, every part of it, all its beings and creations, are a part of your self. This is what a natural identity is supposed to be. You, as an individual whole being, are ALSO one with everything.

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"The sonship is your soul."

"Is he the Christ? Oh yes, along with you."

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

"The separation" was nothing more than a WITHDRAWAL of the parts of you which are shared with others, a retreat into fear, into being small and scared and vulnerable trapped in a little tiny body in a corner of spacetime. It was simply your unwillingness to SHARE YOUR SELF, and an attempt to have exclusive ownership and control over who you are. It was just your attempt to break away from the family unit and orphan yourself, like a black sheep who has become estranged and unwanted.

After the separation you simply wandered off "alone", as though you had been unplugged from the hive mind, disconnected from the input of spirit/soul, and unable to communicate with God anymore. You saw yourself as lacking everything and absent of anything. And so you were starting out empty and bereft. You had nothing left but your little sense of "there's only myself left". And this "only me, not you", formed your sense of identity. This is what we call "an ego". It's not really something new you made, it's the self God created that has been locked in chains.

The one thing we therefore need to do for salvation, and the one thing we may never have done in our entire lives, is consider that we are NOT JUST OURSELVES. We are more than just ourselves. To really truly SHARE with anyone we have to BE them. We have to open up to an identity, a sense of self, that INCLUDES OTHERS. Others have to actually become a part of you again. Not to the exclusion of you, nor calling for your destruction. You are a self who is whole, who must also reconnect to the whole.

If your every effort to go it alone and do everything independently of God has meant AUTOMATIC FAILURE, in every case, then your ONLY salvation from all forms of suffering is to stop doing everything on your own. The end of separation is simply the end of "trusting in your own strength" to the exclusion of all else. It means waking up from a sense of "I am only me", to "I am us." From ME to WE. From individual, to mutual. This is what shared interests are about.

Only if I am willing to let God decide WITH me can I be sure that the decision will be accurate and wise and certain of success. Only if I am willing to let the Holy Spirit judge the meaning of everything for and with me, can I be sure that the meaning I SEE is correct and sane. Only if I admit that everything I do alone WILL BE FUCKED UP, by default, can I be open to allowing myself to be HELPED. Opening up to His Help is opening up to RECEIVE.

The Holy Spirit is there to HELP us. He is the help, because he is the notion of being more than limited. He is unlimited, as we are in truth. And to remember our unlimited nature we have to be open to allowing something MORE THAN JUST ME to participate in everything I do, think, feel, plan, decide, pursue, live, say, etc. Only by allowing God back into our lives, in effect, can we resume our natural state of DOING EVERYTHING WITH HIM. And therefore, no longer being alone.

Everything you have ever done alone, no matter what it is, no matter how intelligent you've been, no matter how much you planned and schemed, no matter how much you figured out or understood, no matter how many concepts you came up with or how accurate they were, ALWAYS produced suffering in one form or another. Because all of them were attempts to narrow and confine yourself. And always because of the simple fact that YOU DID IT ON YOUR OWN.

That was ALWAYS the problem, because being alone is unnatural. God did not will that you be alone, so to be yourself you must rejoin the brotherhood of light.

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone."

"To be alone is to be separated from Infinity, but how can this be, if Infinity has no end?"

"There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as HIS Son, for yours were created in honor of Him."

"He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you; He does not thrust it UPON you."

"To be alone MUST mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot BUT be sick."

"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY."

"God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him."

"The gratitude of God Himself is freely offered to everyone who shares His Purpose. It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it YOURS. Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."