Without that, every conclusion you make and every meaning you derive will be a bit 'off', because you don't have something to properly contrast it against.

The trouble with trying to 'wake up' from spiritual unconsciousness, is that you're pretty much in the dark. Even though the truth is completely open and available, even if someone tells you what it is, you still won't be able to fully accept it at first. It's like, it's right in front of your face but you are hallucinating so much that you don't even recognize it.

Gradually you flail around in the dark trying to put pieces of the puzzle together, but it's like assembling a puzzle without the cardboard box cover to see what the finished picture is supposed to look like.

Luckily, because the thought system is consistent, as you start to get some pieces of it clear enough, those pieces allude to the content of other pieces. A piece shaped like 'this' sort of implies a piece shaped like 'that', and isn't compatible with one of those other pieces. So gradually as the picture forms, you get a better sense of what the whole picture looks like. As each new piece comes along, it becomes easier to 'predict' what it's going to say, and it builds upon this overall sense of knowing and certainty.

Also over time you get things deeper. You might've been exposed to the simple truth a long time ago but at the time you only kind of digested it on the surface, it didn't really occur to you how far reaching it was or what it really implied about your life. You gradually realize, holy shit, this is mind blowing.

So if anything, if there are tools to help you wake up, they might be tools which helps you to contrast whatever it is your experiencing against a kind of 'template' or definition of what is true and correct, so you can at least gauge a sense of whether you're on the right track or not.

For example, God is the truth, so you can quite easily say, "God does not create xyz because God is love and love wouldn't xyz, therefore... xyz is not real." Keep comparing it to the ideal of God as unconditional love and you can't go far wrong.

But for me, one really big truth which is hitting me strongly at the moment is that this entire physical world is not real. There is a truth beyond it which is much more true and correct. So this isn't just a matter of intellectually making sense but I'm starting to live it, and to relate to the world in a very different way because of this truth. I'm developing increased strength in God and conviction of His ways, and that means becoming more miraculous as well.

It just blows me away how much I'd fallen for the ego dream and all the different places that I went searching for truth here, finding none at all. Truly if we can depend solely on God for the Answer, we'll be very happy indeed.

A simple meditation technique I tried last night with unexpected results - it basically revolves around intense listening.

1) Know/imagine that there is going to be an extremely quiet sound that you are going to hear in your mind. It's so quiet, it's quieter than even your thoughts. It will be very very subtle so you're going to have to listen very carefully. If you want to anticipate that this sound will be a voice, that's ok too, but it's going to be really really quiet and barely noticeable.

2) Spend time listening really really carefully within, listening for this very quiet sound. Do not try to listen for 'silence' or to become silent or to silence your thoughts - that's too hard. Anticipate there will be a very quiet sound you're trying to find. You're trying to seek out a very quiet sound in your mind and it's going to be really almost too quiet to notice unless you listen really really intently, so you're going to have to pay really careful attention.

3) Do this for a while and you'll probably drift into normal thinking several times and go off on tangents. Hopefully you'll remember to come back to listening for this quiet sound again and focus again on listening intently. When I did this I got distracted several times but kept coming back to listening for something very very quiet.

4) At some point when you're ready and you've been doing this a while, your mind will have quieted down and you'll be quite focused, and you'll notice you haven't heard the sound yet. If you heard thoughts or voices that's ok, but that's not the sound we want. We want to focus on something subtler, a bit like transcendental meditation. However, we're now going to switch our focus a little bit.

5) Instead of listening for that quiet sound, which we didn't hear yet ;-), we're going to now shift to listening to God. The sound is going to come from God. We're going to put all our attention on God and listen really really carefully in his direction, just as before, because God has a really quiet voice. Just listen intently, be receptive.

6) You should hopefully notice that you feel you are directly 'in front of God' and that He is right in front of you, with nothing else coming between you. It may feel more intimate than you've ever felt with God before. And you'll just keep listening and staying focused on His presence, listening to what sound He might make. You can stay doing that as long as you like.

7) Optional final step, if you want, is to ask God something, and then continue listening to see if he will answer. Even if you don't do this step, I feel it's been helping in quieting your mind and helping you to focus on God, which is communion, which is good. I was really surprised how much I felt I was in direct contact with God more than ever before, with no middle-men/thoughts anywhere.

Give it a try ?

You can't be attacked by someone else without attacking them first. You have to believe you are attackable, otherwise you'd be invulnerable. By seeing yourself as attackable, which is an attack on yourself, you are also attacking others. Whatever you believe about you is shared with everyone, and so you believe everyone else is just as attacked. You cannot attack yourself with something and believe it affects only you.

Each sickness is attack on yourself and everyone else. Each injury is an attack on yourself and everyone else. Each bad mood is an attack on yourself and everyone else.

Then, holding a focus on self-attack, you radiate and 'call for' attack, which expresses itself outwardly as a kind of invitation, energetically and mentally, which is sort of like laying a trap and sending an invitation.

It's very easy for people to come along and fall into that trap because it's a temptation. If they are not really clear about who they are and the certainty of their own innocence, they will likely buy into what you're selling and go along with it, proceeding to launch a "counter-attack" ie to give you what you want. You'll think it's not a counter attack but an initial attack because you don't recognize you attacked first. And then you'll blame them for attacking you because you don't want to admit that you attacked yourself before this all happened.

It's especially easy if you are more sensitive to energy/emotion in others ie more empathic, to 'sense' when someone has a certain attitude about themselves. I feel this particularly with many people who are overweight who actually 'call themselves' "fat", on an energetic level. They actively are walking around 'tempting' others to agree with them and to hate WITH them, in hopes of proving that they are worthless. It's really a test, and choosing not to buy into that temptation and to overlook how they see themselves is forgiveness.

We all know that it's very controversial among more dualistically-minded people to suggest that anyone "asks for it", especially when seemingly serious things happen to some people. But Jesus would counter that nothing happens without your consent, and this takes a huge amount of honesty and willingness to look at yet alone admit to.

Without admitting it you truly are powerless because if you did not choose this, you cannot choose against it either. But if you did choose this, yes, it is painful to acknowledge you did this to yourself or wanted it in any way whatsoever, but at the same time, this owning up gives you back power and gives you hope for being able to overcome it. Without this self empowerment there is truly no hope for recovery.

So what are you broadcasting today? Do you have a big sign on your head saying "loser" or "reject me" or "hate me" or "don't love me?". What are you asking for? Or rather, what truth would you have apply to you and everyone else equally?

There are no requirements that must be met for you to return to God. There isn't anything that you must do, otherwise you won't be able to be with God.

If there is anything in the dream or in our ego identities that is capable of preventing God, then we would be stuck in the dream forever. If anything has the power to overthrow God's will, for real, we would be completely lost. So it is fortunate this is not so.

We do pretend not to be with God, and we can seemingly 'deny' that we are with God, but even while we're denying that we are with God, we are still with Him. We also can deny that we have eternal life, but even while we're denying that we have eternal life, we have eternal life. And even while we deny that we are completely loved, we are still completely loved.

It would seem we can 'hold off' the love and prevent the eternal life and reject God's will by making certain choices for ego and death. But even these choices do not affect God's love, or our eternal life. They are mistakes. They are make-believe. They are illusions of achievement. Nothing in a dream has the power to stop the dreamer from awakening.

Jesus does describe how The Kingdom of God has certain 'conditions', and that you need to meet those conditions in order to be ABLE to be in the Kingdom. However, those conditions effectively are always met and cannot be unmet. We are pretending not to meet them, but are not actually failing to meet them. Because we haven't left Heaven for real, and leaving is impossible.

So in our unconditional love, we need to be aware that there are absolutely no rules or requirements or demands as to why you can't be included in love or why you cannot be healed or why you cannot live forever. The ego has no power to overthrow God's will or God's creation. Sure, it can be deluded into believing it can, and you can seem to side with it and believe that you're actually pulling it off. But you're not really. You're severely mistaken, and thank God it IS only a mistake.

Nobody is denied God's love. Everyone is welcome. Everyone has full and free access. And just because a cloud comes along to seem to cover up the sun, it doesn't make the sun go away. We can cover ourselves up all we want, or try to, or make illusions that *seem* that they really do so, but they don't actually. It takes the awareness of CHRIST to be able to discern that these illusions ARE just illusions and to not buy into them. Illusions are very appealing and distracting, but they are not true.

All are welcome in God. All ARE in God. Everyone is loved fully and equally. And we are all Home already. Any illusion which seems to prevent your inclusion in love is merely that, an illusion, because nothing can prevail against the Kingdom of God or keep you apart from His love.

"It is in this that the teacher of God must trust. This is what is really meant by the statement that the one responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself."

Often overlooked here is not just that it is the responsibility of YOU to accept atonement for yourself, but it is the responsibility of a MIRACLE WORKER. Accepting the atonement is an important PART of becoming ABLE to perform miracles AFTER the accepting of the atonement.

"The teacher of God is a miracle worker because he gives the gifts HE HAS RECEIVED."

When you go to the atonement and accept the truth about yourself, you will be willing to receive God's love. This receiving and willingness to accept it mean that YOU BELIEVE that you are worthy of God's truth, and therefore, SO IS EVERYONE ELSE. And therefore the atonement puts you in touch with the ABILITY and WILLINGNESS to extend The Power of God to others!

"Yet he must first accept them. He need do no more, nor is there more that he could do. By accepting healing he can give it."

By accepting healing, HE CAN GIVE IT. Meaning, after you receive healing yourself, you are in a position to GIVE HEALING to others, to facilitate it and to bright light and RELIEF to their darkness, to heal the sick and raise the dead because YOU have been healed of sickness and raised from death!

"If he doubts this, let him remember Who gave the gift and Who received it. Thus is his doubt corrected."

And in miracle-working, the Holy Spirit will give the gift of love and healing TO OTHERS through us, through our hands, because we have received it FROM him. Therefore we have been willing to be OPEN to allowing it to move THROUGH us.

Jesus also tells us about how HE DID NOT accept the atonement "for himself alone".

"I could not atone for myself alone. Listening to one Voice implies the decision to SHARE IT in order to hear It yourself. The Mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn TO EVERY MIND CREATED BY GOD, because God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son."

So Jesus is telling us simply, receive God's healing, accept atonement "first" so that you are willing to receive AND GIVE (because giving and receiving ARE ONE), and THEN you will be willing to share it and GIVE IT to everyone else, to help them wherever they are at, and to EXTEND YOUR HEALING to them.

This is why the atonement is NOT supposed to mean, "I accept this only for myself in isolation, fuck everyone else."

Nor does this mean therefore, "I am only supposed to accept atonement, therefore I will not perform miracles or do anything in the world"! A GROSS DISTORTION.

We are to accept atonement SO THAT WE CAN HELP OTHERS IN THE WORLD, to help them to heal, to wake up, and to come home to God WITH US as our brothers.

For me I want a course that can be learned, is accessible, easy enough to understand, and can be applied without too much hassle. I think A Course in Miracles does this, and that Jesus is an excellent teacher. I think he knows what he's talking bout.

I think he is very masterful and wise and has taken huge efforts in the writing of ACIM to try to be as clear and obvious and relatable as possible, so that as many people as possible can learn the course and use it correctly. After all, it would be a pretty awful course if it was so obscure and difficult and hard to fathom that no-one could actually succeed at it.

"Contradictions in MY word mean lack of understanding, or scribal failures, which I make every effort to correct."

"...a host of related fallacies, including the misbelief that God rejected man and forced him out of the Garden of Eden, or that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to use words which are ALMOST impossible to distort, but man is very inventive when it comes to twisting symbols around."

For me, I recognize that Jesus makes some VERY SIMPLE straightforward statements. He states facts, in the clearest way possible. He uses words which are familiar to us, and which have associations with things in our world that we recognize. He isn't speaking some foreign gobbledygook language, or trying to make things obscure. He is very direct, factual, honest, obvious and clear.

So for example in the course he uses some terms such as "Earth". I think we ALL recognize that a reference to Earth is talking about the physical planet that we're on, the ball of rock, which is floating in space. Planet Earth. I think 100% of readers should agree that Earth refers to that object. If you think that it DOES NOT refer to that object, or that "Earth is NOT really a physical planet and has some other kind of reality", something is wrong.

Similarly he talks often about the body. Even already as I write this sentence you have an association in your mind which recognizes I just mentioned the human flesh-and-bones body. That's what the body is. My human body, your biological body, the bodies of people walking down the street.

This isn't rocket science. This does not have to be difficult or hard to understand. And it especially shouldn't call for us to have to perform massive mental gymnastics, get subtle nuances, re-word things, redefine meanings, shift things around, or have massive long debates about what it means. For fucks's sake, the body is just the body!

So for example if he gives a simple statement such as: "At no time does the body exist", we're supposed to learn that he really does mean that literally. The human flesh and bones body that we're used to walking around in, does not really exist. That's the teaching. That's the fact. That's his intention.

When he then also tells us for example that "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist", the most obvious thing to learn is that once again, this human flesh and bones body does not really exist. Everything about it is geared towards separation, and it DOES NOT EXIST. NOTHING about it exists, in any way, to any degree, anywhere.

He goes on to reiterate the same simple truths in many ways, in many forms, in many statements. e.g. "As nothing, which it is, the body cannot be meaningfully endowed with the attributes of Christ." or "The body's nothingness", or "God did not create the body." etc. All of these tell us the same exact thing. The body is nothing, it doesn't exist, it's not really there. There is NOTHING ELSE to learn from this. There is NO OTHER MEANING.

You SHOULD be learning therefore that because of the many times Jesus has reiterated this simple teaching, one of many, you should be trying to learn and accept that "your body" is not really there, the bodies that you see around you don't really exist, and there are no real bodies. You should NOT be attempting to SKEW this, or to find loopholes, or ways to keep the body.

You should not be trying to explain how there is some VERSION of the body that is going to be kept. Or how references to the body are NOT really referring to the body. Or how the body is "not really physical" but is something else. Or how when he talks of the body he is only talking about it "as the ego sees it", or "as you perceive it". We have to stop tacking on all these extra clauses and exceptions and ways of DISTORTING the very basic most obvious teaching. The body is NOTHING. It's not there.

This means that all of the atoms, do not exist. It means that, the flesh and bones and organs and eyeballs and hands and feet, do not exist. Not one single part of its energy exists. None of its fluids or chemicals, none of the gut bacteria, none of the cells, nothing that gives it space, or takes up space, or is made of matter, or energy, or thought, or ANYTHING, none of it is there. That we should not be attempting to redefine it, keep it, view it differently in order to have it still exist somehow, or anything else. We need to learn to accept, THERE IS NO BODY. Zero. Totally non-existent in all places at all times in every way forever.

This is a simple teaching. It's not hard. It's not meant to be hard. You aren't required to study this course deeply for decades in an attempt to fathom the deeper mysteries of what these simple statements mean. It does not take for you to do the workbook lessons. It does not require for you too read the text 100 times. You should get it as soon as you read it the first time. The body is nothing and does not exist. It's not that hard. Jesus is not being obscure or clever or mystical or difficult or trying to tell us something in a very obscure context which only advanced students can ever get. This course is for YOU. ANYONE. To learn easily.

Statements about the body have implications. If the body is nothing, then it stands to normal sane reasoning, that anything the body is "made of" does not exist. For example if the body has carbon atoms in it, which it does, then carbon does not exist. And this by extension means, that trees which are also made of carbon, do not exist. Any if the skin cells fall from the body and become dust and contribute to the soil of the earth, then also the soil of the earth does not exist. And if the body breathes the air and depends on it, then so too is the air not real either. And as you take foods into the body and digest them and they BECOME the body, this must indicate that those foods, and their original forms, and the plants and trees and sources they came from, ALSO must not exist.

This is very simple reasoning, it's not rocket science. It's simple common sense. If your body doesn't exist as Jesus spells out clearly and easily, then it also MUST mean that anything around the body does not exist, the body's environment does not exist, and the entire cosmos does not exist. This is a very sensible and sane and rational conclusion. It's all made of the same stuff, so it applies to all of it. That means therefore that planet earth, does not exist. We could rephrase Jesus's statements to EASILY mean the same thing. e.g. "At no time does the planet Earth exist. It is either anticipated or remembered, but never exists just now." "The planet earth is a dream." "The planet earth's nothingness." "As nothing, which it is, planet earth cannot be meaningfully invested with the attributes of christ." "God did not create the planet earth."

The course is NOT meant to be ANY more complicated than this. All readers should be coming to the same conclusions. In fact there shouldn't even really be much of a process involved in "drawing conclusions". You should be seeing that Jesus has already done most of the work for you. He's already EXPLICITLY telling you outright, LITERALLY, that the body is nothing and does not exist. And he extends that in many ways to include the world as well.

"There is no world. "Earth, the other's sorry outcome, which is heaven's opposite in every way." "The place where it is reflected is not real." "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." etc. Very simple, the course teaches normal everyday readers that planet earth does not really exist. Which is a very profound teaching. And it's our job to ACCEPT this and recognize it. But it becomes incredible at times the lengths that some students will go to, to avoid this. It is driven in part by the STRONG belief that people bring with them TO the course, based on prior experiences, that the planet seems to them to be real. All the pain, all the misery, all the experiences, the memories, all the bodies, all the relationships, all the events, which all seem to contribute in our minds to suggesting that Earth really does exist. But ALL of that is FLYING IN THE FACE of what Jesus is telling us, and so we have a lot to learn, or rather a lot to UNLEARN. Because we've taught ourselves a lot of stuff that is NOT TRUE, and is NOT what the course is teaching us.

That means we have to be willing to be mistaken, we have to be willing to question our beliefs, we have to be open minded to consider an alternative, and we have to also keep sight of THE PLAIN AND OBVIOUS. And of what makes simple logical sense. When we are reading something like the body being nothing and not existing, and we can't quite bring ourselves to accept it is true, because of our commitment to identifying with the body, we will DEFEND AGAINST what Jesus is saying. And then even a simple statement such as "the body does not exist" will be met with doubt, suspicion, questioning, deception, distortion and attempts to have it NOT mean what it means. Our egos will try to CHANGE its meaning and NOT SEE the obvious.

"We will use this simple lesson in the obvious because it has results we cannot miss."

Even the most obviously, BLATANT statements can be distorted if the mind is not ready or willing to listen to it. We can quite easily project onto the course a vast array of false perceptions. We can mangle it out of all recognition. We can take even the simplest clearest statements and FIND WAYS in which we can try to justify that they DO NOT mean what they mean. We can even take statements and give them completely OPPOSITE meanings, and feel "okay with that", as if it makes sense to us. As if it doesn't seem to contradict OTHER things we believe, because in our arrogance we think we already know what is true and don't want to question it.

To accept even the most simple truths in the course sometimes may require us to go through a tremendous purification process, letting go of faulty beliefs and backgrounds, discarding old baggage and world views, even questioning our most deeply held beliefs about who and what we are. And we do not WANT to do that. So we will resist it, and will instead NOT SEE the most simply obvious truths in front of us. Because we don't want to. We want the truth to be something else. And we do not TRUST it, because we trust something else.

So we have to sort through and sort out ALL of our other beliefs and find out if they line up with what Jesus is telling us. And that's going to be some rough territory because we COULD start trying to educate ourselves as to "what he means", and teach ourselves things that he DOES NOT mean. After all, if we don't even really know what is true, and are supposed to learn from him, then we need to really be willing to put aside out OWN teaching of ourselves and open up to BEING TAUGHT and actually learning something new. Otherwise we're not really being students, we're just being spewers and projectors of what we already decided is true.

Not that it takes rocket science to grasp the basic facts. Many things in ACIM are NOT supposed to be difficult. It's just that sometimes the truth is so profound and deep and intense that we do not LIKE it and do not WANT it. So we avoid it with an incredible array of creative means. An incredible arsenal of distortions, twists, defenses, manipulations, bandaids, and all manner of other strategies to not directly see or recognize or accept the simplest facts. No one with an ego wants to accept "there is no world" at its fullest intensity. And no one who believes they are a body REALLY wants to accept fully that their bodies don't exist.

But even with all these obstacles, even with learning disabilities, self inflicted filters, and all manner of unwillingness and denial, there are STILL some very, VERY basic aspects to Jesus's teaching that we all should really learn and agree to. The SIMPLEST of truths. Such as that the human physical biological body has absolutely no reality, value, existence, or meaning. It is NOT THERE. And also by extension, that this planet, the physical world, which is like the body and of the body, also is NOT THERE. These are fundamentally two cornerstone principles of ACIM. To not at LEAST accept them intellectually is going to produce a huge array of distortions of the course's teachings, and it has already done so.

First of all, let's touch on what the "authority problem" is. You as a Child of God, were authored by God. God caused you. His authority, or His power to Author you, designed you to be the way God wanted you to be.

You are the result of His Will, your nature is as He chooses, everything you have is inherited from Him, you only have what He has given you, you are only capable of what He created you to be capable of, your identity was given to you by sharing His with you, and you cannot change anything about yourself.

In fact, you are an extension of God Himself, you "host" God within yourself. It's not just that God is sitting there in a chair and then created you sitting in another chair some distance away. He extended out from Himself and put Himself into you, as you.

"I, who am host to God, AM worthy of Him. He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling- place in me created it as He would have it be."

"When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, He ESTABLISHED you as host to Him forever. He has NOT left you, and YOU have not left HIM."

You host Him, which is what your "inner altar" is. So you are not only a self, you are a self that also contains all of God. You are joined to God within you. You overlap with Him. You are a part of God which is also host to the whole of God. His own being is embedded into what you are. It's like, His light is shining in your heart. He is radiating through you. He is so intimately close with you that He is inside of you, and together you co-create as one.

In the separation idea, you questioned authority. Which means you questioned who was the Author of you. You questioned God. You protested against being Authored by God, and became unhappy with the fact that you were ONLY as God created you. You wanted to be not only the author of yourself, you wanted to be the author of God also, the definer of reality, and the chooser of what is true.

You wanted to become something other than you are. You wanted to change your idea of what God is. You wanted God to stop Authoring you, so that you could "be God", ie so that you could take Authority away from Him, and have this authority for yourself. Even to the extent that you wanted to have authority OVER His Authority, which is the idea of sin - the ability to affect, change, and cause God.

In concert with Him, you shared His Authority. His Power, His Authority, is in you. And it operates through you. But you wanted to be able to exercise a power that did not come from Him. You wanted a power of your own, or to regard yourself as authoritative without His Authority being the source of it.

"The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has an "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself"

In fact you wanted God not to be your Father, to not be the source of you, and to not be the Author of your identity, inheritance, or nature. And by denying that God was the Author of you, you denied that you had been Fathered (created) by Him. This was necessary in order to reject or oppose His Authority.

But by doing so, you made yourself fatherless, like an orphan. And so instead of being the Self that God created, you become "anonymous", attempting not to share His identity, rejecting your inheritance, and claiming to have not been Authored at all. This was an attempt to separate cause and effect, Father and Son, and to block awareness of your identity.

"and men preferred to remain anonymous when they chose to separate themselves FROM their Author. The word "authority" has been one of their most fearful symbols ever since."

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all. "

Now that an individual has developed an artificial "problem with Authority", they move into the ego thought system. Here they believe God is not their Father, who and what they are is not defined by God, they do not want to be defined by God, they are the author of themselves, and they even proceed to invent a new Father to explain their own origins.

"being uncertain of their true Authorship, men believe that their creation was anonymous. This has left them in a position where it SOUNDS meaningful to consider the possibility that they must have created themselves."

"Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of God (including himself) has arisen, and is tolerated. ... Fourth, that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him."

"The "attack on God" made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression."

"he would not accept the fact that, although he was a creator, he had been created."

While rejecting God's Authorship of you places you into turmoil, accepting it restores you to peace. God HAS established the only facts of your existence, the only truth that is true of you, and is the sole source of your nature. You cannot change this fact because it is absolute. It is impossible to alter God's will, but you can deny it. You can reject the fact that "you inherit God", but this just makes you unaware of your inheritance, which God saves for you.

"Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS. The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship."

"He has thrown away the reason for his own peace, and sees himself only in pieces. This strange perception IS an authority problem."

The question then is how to return to an acceptance of what your true Authorship is, how do you return to being a host to God, how do you become aware of your inheritance, and how do you resume your real function in heaven. Obviously this will involve the undoing or ceasing-to-do of the various ways that you play God, the attempt to author/define yourself, and the unwillingness to accept your function as extender of God's being.

It entails acknowledging that whatever you are, you are what God says you are. And you need to become okay with that. It needs to become acceptable to you, even welcomed, that you are ONLY as God created you. That ONLY the truth is true of you, and nothing else is true.

It means you have to recognize that the way Creation is set up, you ARE an effect of God, He DOES define you, you CANNOT define what you are AT ALL, and you have no desire to do so. Accepting Atonement simply means accepting the truth is true, accepting your position in the machinery of heaven.

You were created to create with God. You were created to HOST God. God is in you, at your sacred inner altar. You and God are one, and everywhere you go He is in you. You do everything together. And you are still as He created you. Nothing has changed, you have not changed His Will or His Mind, and you Will only to Will like Him, in accord with His Will.

"Instead of "seek you first the Kingdom of Heaven" say "Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven," and you have said "I know what I am, and I will to accept my own inheritance.""

This means putting aside your need to be the gatekeeper or decider of what is real or true. It means making room for God to operate THROUGH you. It means accepting that you have nothing of your own, and everything you DO have, which is everything, is OF or FROM God. Even AS God.

"Recognizing that all Power is of God is to gain all Power."

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE. Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

It means giving up trying to do everything alone, or by yourself, or dependent on your own strength, which is at best highly lacking. You HAVE nothing that God has not given. Not even strength, ability, will, power, mind, or anything. You are in a symbiotic relationship with God. You cannot live without Him.

"Symbiosis is misunderstood by the mentally ill, who use it that way. But I also told you that you must recognize your total dependence on God, a statement which you did not like. ... God and the Souls He created ARE symbiotically related. They are COMPLETELY dependent on each other. The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not. God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly. He gave them His peace so they would not be shaken, and would be unable to be deceived."

You and God function like a Team. It's kind of like He is the hardware, His mind and power is His software, He creates you as a new piece of Hardware, and downloads His software into you. Without Him you have nothing. With Him you have everything, but you only have what He has given, and what you create together.

So it's really a matter of humbleness and honesty and a willingness to make room for you to host God again. You have to receive Him. You have to allow Spirit to guide you again. You have to plug your mind back into your Soul. You have to become an instrument through which healing can occur. And you have to be willing to let your mind be loving so that it can not interfere with the automatic extension and expression of love, which is miraculous.

In your purified state, you resume the proper function as the Light of the world, because HIS Light is in you and extends through you. You resume your place as powerful miracle worker, because HIS power operates through you. You act as a relay station for His miraculous love.

"The miracle extends WITHOUT your help, but you ARE needed that it can BEGIN. ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED."

Your proper function is to express God and Christ. To be in such a state of cooperation and alignment and agreement that their functioning empowers your functioning. You thus become a miracle worker, able to give what you are receiving, to others. This is simply because having been Authored by God, He has given YOU the ability to Author, and thus you become able to create and to work miracles. To extend and express what is in you, which is God Himself.

The final acceptance of being host to God, and thus that God operates through you to others, is what establishes you as an UNLIMITED miracle worker, and is the acceptance of the atonement. It requires you acknowledge God is your True Father, the ONLY cause of what you are, that you are not caused BY anything else, and therefore resume your place as a Son of God, co-creator of miracles and life.

"Souls were given their own true authorship"

When you act as/with Christ, operate through the Holy Spirit, and activate the Power of God, there is nothing your holiness cannot do.

"24. A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. EXPLANATION: You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

"A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. " simply reflects on this arrangement of beings. You host God, God is in you, God is the source of miracles, Holy Spirit is the mechanism, it extends THROUGH you, TO ALL OUR BROTHERS, or perhaps to an individual brother. You operate as a "physician of the lord" to go out and profess Christ, healing the sick and raising the dead as a miracle worker. This is atonement - being part of the great crusade to give to those what they seem to lack.

"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment.

Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

This is an important point. When you are being forgiving, you do not continue to LOOK AT the thing that you were forgiving. Sight of it was the result of NOT forgiving.

Forgiveness is NOT ABOUT looking "at" bodies and at the world and regarding them as sinless and holy. This is not how forgiveness functions. Forgiveness does not make something real and then try to look past it, nor does it make something real and then attempt to endow it with qualities of love and perfection.

To forgive the world does NOT MEAN to keep looking AT the world in a loving way. To forgive the world does NOT MEAN to love the world and believe it is God's creation. To forgive does not mean that your SIGHT stops at the outside surface of material objects and still regards them as reality. I'm sorry but that is NOT forgiveness.

To forgive means to OVERLOOK. It means to SEE PAST. It means to NOT FIXATE ON. It means to NOT BE DECEIVED BY. It means to GIVE NO REALITY TO. It means to CANCEL illusions. It means to DIMINISH illusions in your sight so that you can see THROUGH THEM and PAST THEM to the truth (Christ) that was being hidden BY them.

The world stands like a block of sin before the face of Christ. So does all bodies. You have to OVERLOOK THEM if you want to see Christ in your brother. The Christ in him is BEYOND HIS BODY.

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined."

"Beyond the bodies that you interposed between you, and shining in the golden light"

"And place no value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is."

You have to OVERLOOK PHYSICAL OBJECTS. Your sight, your spiritual sight, has to take the place of your body's vision (which lies to you and only looks at bodies). To be forgiving, to forgive your brother, and to forgive the world, does not mean you're still SEEING THE WORLD or seeing bodies. Nor does it mean you still see exactly the same stuff you saw before but with a sense of innocence and loveliness. You are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SEEING THIS WORLD.

Those of you who believe that God created this planet, are particularly apt to be mistaken about this. It is an error to say that your aim is to "love the world". Your love would dispel the world. "Eternity shines away the world." You cannot love what isn't really there. You can only love the reality and truth which is BEYOND the world. To want to keep the world and the bodies and keep SEEING them, and keep being BLINDED by sight of form, while trying to simultaneously reach a state of love and forgiveness, is IMPOSSIBLE. You have to let the world go. You are NOT being forgiving if you keep fixating on it.

All things in this world are the form of sin and error. You must learn to OVERLOOK these errors and see PAST them with reason. Only this way can you "see God in everything you see". It's not because you keep seeing the world AS God. You see God IN PLACE OF the world. Behind the world. He was hidden BY the world. That was why you made it, to shut him out. To forgive is to recognize that this illusory world IS NOT THERE, HAS NOT HAPPENED, AND DOES NOT REALLY EXIST. Only by looking PAST forms to the Christ BEYOND can you recognize God's Son.

When your mind stops at the outer surface of objects, you are blinded and the extension of your mind has been arrested. If you arrest the extension of the mind you foster separation and induce illness. It is unnatural to see this world and bad for your health. You need to see PAST its illusion in order for your mind to JOIN with the Christ that is hidden BEYOND the world and beyond bodies. It is the only way you can communicate and it is the only way you can love. Love shines PAST illusions and renders them unreal and irrelevant. The world is irrelevant. The body is irrelevant.

It's like in the Matrix movies... you have to learn to see the 'matrix code' instead of being deceived by illusions of a world that doesn't exist. Then you can get out of hell and get back to being in Heaven.

Only love is real and "love was never in the world". Love wants the world to end.

"Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins..."

"...brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked, and disappears"

"He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the face of Christ"

"Strength overlooks these things by seeing past appearances."

"By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth"

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."

"You can overlook your brother's dreams. So perfectly can you forgive him his illusions"

"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."

"For it is your unwillingness to overlook what seems to stand between you that makes it look impenetrable"

"(body)... Its eyes ADJUST to sin, unable to overlook it in any form, and seeing it everywhere, in everything."

"Let love draw near them and overlook the body, as it will surely do"

"Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ has vision which has power to overlook them all. In His forgiveness they are gone. Unseen by One, they merely disappear because a vision of the holiness which lies beyond them comes to take their place."

"When you have looked upon each other with complete forgiveness, from which no error is excluded and nothing kept hidden, what mistake can there be anywhere you can not overlook? What form of suffering could block your sight, preventing you from seeing past it?"

"In your madness, you OVERLOOK REALITY COMPLETELY, and you see ONLY YOUR SPLIT MIND everywhere you look."

"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."

"See him as guiltless as I look on you, and OVERLOOK the sins he THINKS he sees within himself. "

"Condemn your Savior not because he thinks he is a body. Far beyond his dreams is his reality"

"But what is that to those who have been given one true relationship, BEYOND the body?"

"He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes."

"This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. "

"To see a brother in ANOTHER body, SEPARATE from yours, is the expression of a wish to see a little PART of him, and sacrifice the rest."

"And while you see your brother as a body, APART from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him AND you. "

"What witness to the wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? He is INVISIBLE in such a world."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin."

"If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awareness of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within you, there is a force which no illusions can resist. This body only seems to be immovable. This force is irresistible in truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended for what is quietly passed through and gone beyond?"

I've been through a lot of crap in which I've had to deal with medical issues for my wife. She's been close to death's door a couple of times. I had to literally decide whether to continue her life or not, and she's been on life-support twice.

But what I personally went through was a confrontation with the idea of death and its inevitability, and an intense ego challenge as to whether to believe it or not. I had to decide whether to side against death and seek for life. To decide whether there was a real alternative and possibility. It wasn't about her, it was about whether I believed that death is the only option or not.

This awakened in me a reversal, a 180-degree turn, pointing away from the direction of death towards eternal life. It awakened a much greater awareness of the Holy Spirit, who has the goal of eternal life. And it made me ever more cognizant of our immortal nature as given by God.

At first it seemed my challenge was to just deal with life-threatening sickness and to go through the stress of it all. Trying to make it go away and stop it like most people would. But what later evolved was a questioning of sickness itself. Having to decide whether to believe in sickness and death or not. Everyone was buying into death and giving me messages of hopelessness and I had to decide whether to believe it.

If I were to continue believing death was inevitable and unavoidable I would have no remaining faith in life. But if I were to question whether death is the only option, it would open me up to entertaining the idea that I should refuse death and turn away from it. I would have to deny and refuse to accept the naysayers and the doubters and those who expertly believed in death's inevitability.

It wasn't really that my wife was going through life-support scenarios and having to play out all the possible "what could be the worst thing to happen" in my mind. It was more that this was actually a spiritual lesson in which I had to make a firm commitment. Was I going to seek for her resurrection or not? Did I want eternal life or not? Did I support miracles or not? Was I really going to get real and LIVE the teaching and be a miracle worker or was I just going to lay down and let death have its day?

When the Holy Spirit told me in the midsts of this drama, "resurrect her", it was immediately clear what the purpose of all this was. When I sought Jesus's counsel and he told me in no uncertain terms that I must not terminate her life, I knew I was being steered towards miracles. And I had to somehow find the strength and determination to find another way.

Instead of therefore simply "going through" another nightmarish experience, or regarding it as pointless, or seeing it as something to be avoided at all costs, what was really playing out was a spiritual lesson in which I had to decide whether to side with life or death. And by that I don't just mean normal life in a temporary body but eternal immortal life. Was I going to believe in a miraculous resurrection that flies in the fact of everything everyone is telling me, or was I going to just fall into a hole and let death happen.

Well. As it turned out I did decide to side with life, and this has since been catapulting me into far greater vigilance and clarity. I see now that instead of just going through a hellish experience that I would try to avoid, it instead became a huge turning point. I had to bring into question whether death could happen, what life would be like, and even whether she was even really sick at all. Was I going to allow her to remain sick or was I going to challenge even her on her own sickness? Was I going to insist that she not be sick?

This is where resurrection entered my mind as a real alternative and as a possibility. And this is where I made a giant leap forward. I now recognize that I must in fact NOT BELIEVE IN SICKNESS AT ALL. I have had to come to realize that even my wife's sicknesses are fake. I've had to realize that she in her mind is deceiving herself and "playing a game of death". I've had to come to recognize HER immortal self which cannot BE sick, and I've had to start siding with her immortality OVER her mortality.

This has in fact given me tremendous clarity now because, the more I dwell on immortality the more clear it becomes that anything ELSE is not true. How can a person be sick if they are immortal? How can appearances of suffering exist if they are IMPOSSIBLE in God? How can a person's signs of death be true if God created that person to live forever? I am now holding this up in my mind and comparing and reminding myself and her, that she cannot BE sick, the sickness is a lie, and SHE IS NOT SICK. I was not able to so fully commit to this or be convinced by it before this confrontation with death.

How else am I to truly be in support of life, as God defines it, than to question all sickness and death? I've even had to question it in those closest to me. I've had to decide to side with the real life in the soul within each person, on their behalf, and for them, even if they don't believe in it, and even if they are actively trying to work against it. I can be of NO HELP at all unless I can stand up for God's truth, and I can have NO HOPE at all unless there is a REAL possibility of an alternative to death. There is an increasing POWER in me now which is pushing death and sickness aside.

My whole focus is now shifting to resurrection, to life, to support, to healing, to the assertion of life, the cancelling of sickness and death, the withdrawal of power and attention from sickness, the clarifying that people are not even bodies, the utter refusal to accept that someone can even BE sick, and the clear recognition that all sickness is a lie.

Even if this entails recognizing that a loved one is lying, and even if it entails not believing my own eyes, and even if it means having to not be tempted by appearances of death because part of me believed sickness and death WERE possible, and therefore I was torn and confused. I was not clear on whether I sided with life or death and was in the muddy territory of wavering back and forth. Not firmly committed to life or its opposite.

For me now it's not merely a matter of trying to struggle through life and avoid sicknesses and try to stave off death as long as possible. I am now actively MOVING TOWARD ETERNAL LIFE. Moving in the opposite direction to the ego's goal of death. Focusing on and strengthening the idea of immortality, unchangeability, invulnerability and permanence. Attuning to the immortal soul within myself, and in others. Looking for the life and the truth and the light. Seeing miracles in light and as light.

I am now heavily flying in the face of the entire world, going against everything everyone says and believes, rejecting the "nature" of this world's nature, against the grain, being unlike the world and unlike the body, refusing to accept death and refusing to allow others to remain in self deceptive states of suffering. I am having to be UNPOPULAR in order to do this and to NOT side with the mass opinions of others. I will now assert only the life-affirming and HEALING attitude of resurrection and miracles. The strength of siding with God and with the Holy Spirit, and the utter refusal to fall into traps of temptation.

Only the immortal is real. Only the unchangeable is real. Only the invulnerable is real. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing real can be attacked or made sick. Nothing real can die. This is the only truth. There is ONLY LIFE, there is no death. Death is the world's biggest lie and I will no longer lie to myself or to others that mortality is natural or acceptable. It is the FIRM CONVICTION that there is only life, that raises the dead, and I WILL see miracles.

"Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him."

Here’s what I‘ve learned from ACIM and recent experiences.

1. The body does not really exist at all, except as a temporary projected 3D image coming from the mind. It is an illusion. It has no mind, soul, will, power, or causality.

2. When the mind believes in separation and goes into ‘ego’, it regards its identity as an illusion and materializes an illusory self image, which shows up as the form of a body - a device for separation. It then confuses its identity with the body and becomes unaware that it is making it show up. Even tough the mind is projecting the body, and continues doing so unconsciously, it now believes it IS the body. (The body needs no healing for it cannot make itself sick, but a mind that believes it is a body is sick indeed.)

3. When the mind believes it is the body it’s projecting, and starts reading ACIM talking about how you are not a body, and since the mind in this state is unaware it is projecting the body, it takes this to mean 1) the body exists separate from the mind, 2) the mind isn’t putting it there, and 3) therefore I must "detach" from and transcend everything to do with the body and go into my mind. "Seek not to change the world", "I am not a body I am free" etc is all geared toward DIS-IDENTIFYING with the body. Remembering that you are NOT the 3D image you are projecting.

4. Since mind in that state is unaware it’s projecting the body, it tends to think this means "body and mind are separate", and "I must change my perception OF the body, and the world, and this is all I CAN do", as though the body and the world exist ON THEIR OWN (separate from your mind), and not because of your mind. So the mind sets about divorcing itself from the body and trying to shift away from it. This is accompanied by the belief that you must learn to accept the body and the world "as it is", in whatever state it is in, and do NOTHING to try to change it. This justifies never performing miracles, and not being responsible for having power over sickness and death.

5. As mind takes notice of all the teachings which speak of changing your perception OF the body and the world, in order to transition your IDENTITY back to mind/cause, you will start to experience increasing AWARENESS that you are causal. Level confusion and cause-effect are corrected. You realize more and more that mind causes everything, including the state of the body and the world. You have to now question the prior belief that you just "ignore" the world and go home, and realize now that it is coming from you.

6. The previously unconscious projective power of the mind, which is making the body show up, starts to become unavoidable and conscious. To be not a victim does not just mean transcending a sick body and letting it die, it now means acknowledging the second piece of the puzzle that you were not aware of before: your body is coming FROM your mind, at all times. While it’s still true that you must learn to NOT BE THE BODY, you must now take charge of what it is and the form it takes, what it represents, what it symbolizes, what it teaches and what it demonstrates. Because the body is now starting to become TRANSPARENT, meaning it is becoming a window into the mind, rather than a cover over the mind.

7. You realize eventually that even though "you are not the body" is a huge central teaching of the course, and you’re supposed to recognize yourself as not being affected BY it, that inevitably leads to a causal relationship where you are the CAUSE OF IT, rather than it being the cause of you. There is no middle ground of "body doesn’t cause me but it exists on its own." The body MUST have a causer. Someone is making it show up. YOU ARE!

8. This is the deeper KEY to the mind-body relationship that few ACIM students are willing to see or accept. It’s not just about changing your perception OF things, it’s about realizing YOU ARE THE CAUSE OF THEM. "Projection makes perception" doesn’t just mean that you project ONTO what is there. It means you LITERALLY PUT STUFF OUT THERE and THEN perceive what you put there and interpret your perception! "There is no world apart from what you wish" "The world IS perception". You also have power over your projections - you are a creator. And when you exercise that power, miracles happen. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this." It’s not JUST about dis-identifying with the body, the world and external causes. It’s ALSO about realizing YOU ARE THE DREAMER, and if you weren’t dreaming, there WOULDN’T EVEN BE A WORLD TO PERCEIVE! "There is no world."

9. This leads to having to admit that there is a CONNECTION between your mind and your body. It is not merely something to transcend or separate from or leave behind. There is a direct line of causality coming from the mind to MATERIALIZE the body. MInd is the projector. And this is the TIE that "unconscious projectors" deny even exists - a reason why your body is under the authority of your mind, why it symbolizes and represents your state of mental health, and why "sick bodies are accusers". Your body is an image you hold up to represent what your MIND believes is true of you and others. Your body is an image IN YOUR MIND, that your mind is fully responsible for.

10. This ultimately MUST lead to the resurrection state, in which the mind FULLY IDENTIFIES WITH SPIRIT. This doesn’t mean it just separates from, denies, drops dead, or leaves behind the body. How can the body STAY showing up WITHOUT a mind to project it? It cannot lay on the ground looking dead WITHOUT a mind putting it there AND MAINTAINING IT. "The mind being sane, heals the body." And when the mind is fully sane, and is done with dreaming, it will STOP DREAMING THE BODY. It will stop projecting one. The body DISAPPEARS, literally! When the mind regards its identity as SPIRIT, it becomes empty of all illusions, and does not hold a picture of an illusory body in place. The body becomes *transparent*, its image fades, and it CEASES TO EXIST becaue the light shines it away. "Illusions recognized must disappear." This is the only way out of the dream, not through death or sickness or old age!

"The mind makes this decision as it makes every decision that is responsible for the body’s condition."

"The mind that made the body can make another."

"At no time does the body exist."

This is the central teaching of the course. It is simply the principle that MIND is the CAUSE of everything - your body and your world. It has power OVER everything it projects. It chooses WHAT will appear out there, and then perceives it. It PUTS OBJECTS THERE. It materializes matter. "Your mind has the power to create worlds." There IS NO WORLD other than the one YOU ARE PROJECTING. It’s NOT just about you projecting ONTO stuff, onto the world, onto people, or onto your body. You are the one who puts that stuff there in the first place! This is the responsibility we all have to own up to. "Your brother thinks he made the world with you."

The world is a fluid, flexible, non-fixed liquid pool of mental possibilities and illusions. MINDS are dreaming it into being. Bodies are showing up because body-identified minds, which are sick, are trying to manifest illusions and make them seem real. None of this is really here. We’re just collaborating in a grand dream. The world is NOT OBJECTIVELY REAL and nor is the body.

I summary, your task is to:

1) Dis-identify from being a body and realize you are immortal spirit and causality is in your mind.

2) Remember that your mind is MAKING your body show up and the state or health of your body REFLECTS your mental health.

3) Recognize your body is an illusion that YOU were believing in, and without your belief it CANNOT EXIST. Thus you reach resurrection, your illusion of death disappears, and you return to what you alway were - pure spirit in heaven.