God just wants to love us.

But we fight it. We fight by trying to be in control of our lives. By trying to manage our own minds. By thinking. By directing things. By figuring out. By wanting to be in charge. Wanting to do.

But we need to become receptive.

The most frequent guidance I receive from Holy Spirit which ALWAYS runs contrary to my ego-mind's efforts, and always seems like it's asking me to do something totally the opposite of what I'm doing, is to SURRENDER.

Surrender. Relax. Let go. Receive. Yield. Step aside. Get out of the way.

There's a very important reason for us to do this. In order to receive from God, to experience His love and healing, we MUST open up to receiving. We can't be receptive if we are trying to broadcast our own ambitions and intentions. We can't receive when we're trying to control or to make things happen on our own.

Our ego mind is totally addicted to trying to MAKE stuff happen, to force it to occur, to control it, to manipulate it, to screw it up, and to resist the FLOW of God's love. Totally addicted. We just can't seem to stop ourselves from interfering, acting, doing, adjusting, planning, COMING BETWEEN ourselves and God, and generally trying to be God in place of Him.

Why are we trying to be God?

We're trying to be God because that's the only way we have of shutting God out. We are trying to be the SOURCE. We want everything to start with us, rather than it start with God. This is how the ego disconnects us from God. It puts a separation between us and God, between us and real love, so that it makes it seem like there's no CONNECTION between God and us.

Once there is no connection, and you're separate, and all alone, now you have no choice but to 'go it alone', to try to live by yourself, to make EFFORT to force life to be the way you want it, in desperate measures. We're constantly trying to collect together some semblance of safety and security having just experienced what seemed to be ejection from Heaven, or original sin, or to run away from God's wrath. We're trying to scurry off on our own with our own limited resources, our own 'separate self', trying to RELY ON OURSELVES to accomplish everything.

Once we are separated from God we don't believe we can (or want to) depend on God at all. We want to be in charge. We want to be God now. And we want to keep it that way. This its the ego operating - a sense of self that begins following the separation. A sense of self that is divorced from God and wants nothing to do with Him. A sense of self that does not WANT help from God and does not want God to GIVE help, and therefore we do not want to RECEIVE help.

The total opposite of this ego paradigm, is a simple paradigm where God gives, we receive, and we give in turn (extend). God FLOWS to us an unlimited supply of love and power, we open to and WELCOME it, we receive it thankfully, we share in it and experience it, and it OVERFLOWS NATURALLY from us. And notice here that there is no part where you suddenly take over and start to force it on someone, or do it to someone, or make something happen, which is all ego.

Instead, we have to be willing to stand IN the flow like an open door. Like a medium. We are the open door through which God flows. We have to get out of the way and not interfere. And to the ego-addicted mind that can seen very counter-intuitive and unwanted. So we have to repeatedly be guided by Holy Spirit to surrender, to let go, to stop controlling, to relax, to lighten up, to release, to receive love. We need to open our hearts back up to God again to RECONNECT with God, to plug ourselves back into God, and to then be willing to receive the flow of God THROUGH us. And this is how miracles occur.

We must be plugged into God to flow God's power. Like an electrical cord. Me must plug our hearts back into God, switch on the power, funnel and channel the power, and DO NOTHING so that it can flow. It's quite unusual to experience this.... doing nothing while EVERYTHING is happening... doing nothing while, simultaneously, trusting and having faith that GOD WILL DO IT FOR YOU. It's like being silent yet active, or still yet moving, or at peace yet enlivened. It's not how the ego wants to be at all and it seems very unusual and kind of awkward at first.

So this is what I am continuing to learn. To simply yield to God, to open to God, to expect God's love/miracle, to receive from God, to experience what God is sharing, to align with God's will, and to then be OPEN to allowing that to go beyond myself. If I connect with God I simultaneously connect with my brother. If I share in what God is, I share what God is with what God has created. "Miracles praise God's son through you."

So there is more to the PURPOSE of surrendering than just that it undoes ego and helps us to relax. The purpose is to get everything that interferes with and separates you from God out of the way, so that you can be open to RECEIVE and SHARE in an experience of God. That's the ultimate prize. To be One with Him again. But even moreso, it is the total RESTORATION of your natural relationship with God in which He is Father, you are Son, you receive and you extend creation miraculously.

This is what came to me last night. We can spend countless hours feeling guilty about something we did or didn't do, and what effect does that actually have on any kind of FACTS? None.

Being guilty doesn't change what happened. It doesn't undo what happened. It doesn't make things better. It doesn't rewrite history. It doesn't protect you against it happening again. It doesn't really have any influence over factual reality whatsoever.

So guilt is always just this 'sideline sob story' which is running alongside what's happening, but isn't really having any real connection to it.

No amount of guilt will make up for any sin or mistake or error. Guilt is actually designed to KEEP the mistake and pout about it.

Guilt is the ego's version of atonement, which says that something happened and it was judged as wrong, so now in order to atone, you must feel guilty and ashamed. You must feel this way because of what you apparently "did" to others that was wrong. And because you think you did something, you think they must therefore be mad at you, and must therefore be condemning you, and therefore you must be condemned and should become guilty to mirror that. "Appropriate guilt" is bullshit.

The only offering that you can give to someone you have seemingly 'done something to' (which is impossible by the way), is to get out of guilt and revert to love. And then you offer love as TRUE ATONEMENT in recognition that nothing has really happened. And if the person does not WANT your love but instead wants to pout and be a victim and keep the story and remain offended and are still adamant to use you for a skapegoat, then LET THEM but know that it's their choice and nothing to do with you.

Guilt doesn't change anything. It doesn't help, it doesn't repair, it doesn't atone, it doesn't make up for anything. It's completely useless and worthless and meaningless. The only purpose for it is to signal to you that you believe something that is false so that maybe you will question whether you are guilty.

"Sick bodies are accusers." "Behold, brother, at your hand I die."

Ok now, this is a lesson in cause and effect and what happens when it is reversed.

When your mind is sane, it knows it is "cause". It causes, it creates, it extends love. It knows that what it causes is its "effect".

As mind starts to deceive itself and go insane, it begins to reverse cause and effect. It sees itself as "at the effect of" something, and places "the cause" (sinner) seemingly outside of itself (its a split mind with victim and victimizer in it).

If you can imagine little arrows coming out of the mind pointing in the direction of causality, when cause-effect is reversed, the arrows start pointing AT your mind as if from outside of it. This is self attack. The mind starts producing "effects", which correspond to what it *perceives* are the kind of effects that the "outside cause" is causing.

So as the mind goes into perception and starts perceiving "backwards", it sees itself as under attack from outside of itself, even though the split part of the mind is what's attacking the other part from the outside in.

At the same time, placing causality outside of your mind or "separate from me" or "not part of me" (the split involves disassociation), you "project" ownership of that causality onto "others". You see your sin in them, and see them as causing you.

If you are an effect of an external cause, that external cause is "to blame" for putting the effects in you. They are the ones who are launching the arrows in your direction. So as your perception reverses and you now have level confusion and belief in magic and an authority problem, your mind is now attacking itself "through" what it sees as others - brothers.

This is a state of mental illness. It is sickness. And because the mind, your mind, is attacking itself in a split state, IT is putting the "effects" into you which IT is also causing from an external vantage point. A vital element to a flipped perception is that you actually perceive as if the "cause" is outside you, or that you are perceiving yourself through the eyes of others. If they are the ones causing your "effects", so you claim, you are *accusing* them of causality, or sin.

Simultaneously, the "effects" which you are visualizing as coming from elsewhere, YOU put in place, and so you actually implement sickness in FORM. This sickness shows up as your body becoming sick! If you can visualize this, it's kind of like you dress yourself in an appearance of suffering and show this to your brother, and hold this "picture of crucifixion" up in front of his face, and say "behold brother, at YOUR hand I die", as an attempt to PROVE that HE is the cause of your effects.

So on the one hand, your body starts to manifest symptoms of sickness because your mind is sick/split and is attacking itself, and on the other hand you are simultaneously condemning your brother for being the one to cause it. You've displaced causality onto brothers and now hold them accountable for your suffering. This is why "sick bodies are accusers".

Now, here is the key central teaching, which many people don't get or don't want to accept. While it's true that bodies are not real and don't matter etc, while you have one, it is PART OF the way in which you are attempting to accuse your brother of sin. While the attack is really happening on a mental level, your body IS REPRESENTING a picture of your mind's attitude about itself. And its self attitude is the SAME as its attitude about others, due to the Golden Rule.

So now, that means, the only way that you are going to stop accusing your brother of sin, is that two things need to happen. 1) Your mind needs to have its perception corrected so that it's not backwards, and so that your mind does not perceive itself as "being affected by" a separate external cause (brother), and 2) Your body needs and MUST reflect that attitude through its FORM, in order NOT to show a picture of crucifixion to your brother.

Now, some people might say that it doesn't matter what form your body is taking or whether it "looks sick" or has some disease etc, that this has no bearing on your brother because bodies don't really exist anyway. This is true at this level. BUT... the body can only get into that state of sickness when the MIND has USED IT FOR ATTACK, meaning that it is only IN that state BECAUSE the mind is attacking your brother (by accusing him of causing your suffering). So while the body is "secondary" or a "symptom of" the mind's condition, the body does tell us what state your mind is in.

Jesus goes on to be quite clear that the only way that you can absolutely PROVE to your brother that he is not a sinner, is not merely by your mind being free from a reversed cause-effect, but also that your BODY DEMONSTRATES a picture of innocence - a body which has no flaws, no damage, no disease, no death, no harm and no breakage, in order to SHOW HIM something which is SO CONVINCING, and so irrefutable, filled with "conviction", that he will not be able to deny his own innocence when he looks upon it.

When he looks at your sick body, it stands there accusing him of sin. If he is not in his right mind, he will take this as proof of his sinfulness. He can "opt out" of that by choosing the light for himself, but if he does not, he IS CURSED by your body and mind. Jesus speaks of how those who are sane cannot be cursed, but those who believe in separation CAN be negatively affected by others, because it compounds what they already believe. This is how you "imprison" your brother.

In order to set your brother free AND YOU AS WELL, your mind has to have its perception corrected, which means that you see yourself as ONLY CAUSE, with no effects happening to you. And when your mind does that, it will USE the body to SHOW a picture of "having no effects". If your body has no effects or attack in it, and is a picture of invulnerability and harmlessness, it comes across as lovely and pure and holy. There is no "temptation" in it to suggest to your brother that there are effects in it, and therefore no PROOF that he can have done anything TO IT in sin or attack. This EXONERATES HIM. "Miracles are teaching devices."

So while the body itself may be a secondary symptom or illusion, the state or picture of what it presents to others still correlates to the state of mind. If the mind is sick the mind WILL see the "self" as attacked, and having identified itself with the body, will attack the body, and perceive the body as attacked, resulting in the body BEING attacked by the mind. Sickness will then show up in the body, proving your brother's sinfulness. Even if you think your brother had nothing to do with your sickness, your sickness IS an attempt to come between BOTH OF YOU, because separation is a two-edged sword. Dead bodies are ego weapons.

When your mind is sane, it WILL heal the body, because it will no longer be visualizing "effects happening to me". Thus no effects will show up. The mind HAS power OVER the body at all times because it is the CAUSE of the body. The mind is on a higher level than the body, and trumps all of the body's states. "The mind is responsible for EVERY condition of the body." - whether it looks like sickness or health. And a sane mind will ONLY SHOW A HEALTHY BODY, otherwise it is demonstrating condemnation! And what the body shows up, is a TEACHING DEVICE, and will teach others they are sinners if shows up as sick!

So when your teaching becomes unified, and you "teach only love for that is what you are", your body will be healed by the mind ("the mind, being sane, heals the body"), and will ONLY show to your brother a lovely HEALED body, which has been healed through miracles of love. "The mind must be stronger than the body, EVERY miracle DEMONSTRATES this", because miracles correct perception and heal the mind and restore the order of the levels, which REVERSES THE EFFECTS. "You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

Once you demonstrate to your brother a healthy body, you are showing him "brother, by your hand I LIVE." This cancels out sin and proves he must be innocent, because he cannot find the "effects of sin" in your appearance. Your healthy body exonerates him and teaches him he CANNOT have sinned, and so must be innocent, merely by looking upon it. This is why, IF YOU HAVE A BODY, it MUST reach a state of only life, only health, and only healing, and SURMOUNT DEATH, in order to reach the state of "resurrection."

Resurrection is the opposite of death. It is a state in which your mind is sane and ONLY WILLS TO SHOW LOVE, and therefore refuses (and cannot) show a body that appears to be attacked. It teaches only love by using the body as a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY. It is still only a symbol, and is limited, but it does represent the eternal life of Christ. It is in resurrection that the curriculum ends. And it is in resurrection that you overcome death entirely, SWEARING NOT TO DIE, and choosing to NEVER CHOOSE DEATH AGAIN.

You choose never to die by simply choosing to only represent life and to only unite with your brother in recognition of your mutual perfect union and innocence forever. "You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No one dies without their own consent". All death is suicide. This is a course in the living, in life, in restoration of life, in raising the dead, and expressing live-giving miracles. When the conditions of sickness are removed from the mind (guilt) there is nothing for it to return to. Love heals the body. Love heals the mind. Love shines away the body. And all that is left is love.

Your true self in God is a beautiful soul, who is whole and holy. Your wholeness is shared with the wholeness of all other souls, forming the sonship, and sharing everything with God. The rejection of sharing began the ego's selfishness - your attempt to be exclusive and excluded.

"Selfishness is of the ego but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how He created it."

In the separation, a PART of your mind attempted to believe it could attack the whole - to attack God and your real self and the union of the sonship, which is also the Son of God. This part of mind believes in sin because it believes it can and has attacked the whole, in order to set itself apart.

"The ego IS the part of the mind which believes in division. But how can part of God detach itself WITHOUT believing it is attacking Him?"

"The ego is the questioning (fearing/attacking) compartment in the post-Separation psyche which man created for himself."

"The ego does NOT regard itself as part of you. Herein lies its primary perceptual error, the foundation of its whole thought system."

A PART of the mind therefore formed a PART of your belief about yourself and others. It results in a split mind, whereby a larger portion of your mind is allegiant to your soul, while this small split-off part of mind sees itself as what's left of you. In effect you then seem to have two selves, living TWO lives.

"From an idea of self AS TWO, there comes a NECESSARY view of function split BETWEEN the two."

"The ego is nothing more than a PART of your belief about yourselves. Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate."

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not."

This part of the mind which sees itself as separate, believes that it is completely alone. That it has divorced from God and from the rest of you and others. It sees itself as autonomous, a God of its own Kingdom, and dependent on no-one. It has no relationships and does not want to share anything.

"The ego IS the belief of the mind that it is completely on its own."

"They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight, and happy in the body's darkness, where they can hide, and keep their secrets hidden, along with them. And they have NO relationships, for no-one else is welcome there."

"This is the temple dedicated to no relationships, and no return." - "The unholy relationship is NO relationship." "The ego's goal is quite explicitly EGO AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power EXCEPT ITS OWN. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation."

The ego, being a kind of symbol in the mind representing the idea of a "self who is separated off", is completely selfish. It has only self interest. It is not interested in you as a soul, or the rest of your mind. It is almost like a kind of cancer in the mind, an unnatural growth which is not supposed to be there.

"The ego is the symbol of the Separation, just as the Holy Spirit is the symbol of peace."

"If the ego is the symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt."

The ego is NOT your real self, or your real identity. It is an artificial sense of identity, mistaken and untrue, whereby this small part of your mind is at war with the rest of you, and with God.

"Your will is NOT the ego's, and that is why the ego is against you."

"The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it."

"The ego is afraid of the Soul's joy, because once you have experienced this, you will withdraw all protection from your ego and become totally without investment in fear. Your investment is great now, because fear is a witness to the Separation, and your ego rejoices when you witness to it."

"When you feel guilty, KNOW that your ego has indeed violated the laws of God, but YOU have not. Leave the sins of the ego to me. That is what the Atonement is for."

The ego is like the anti-christ. It is the idea of a complete opposite to christ, to sharing, to love, to unity and peace. It sits in the dark recesses of your mind, plotting your death and finding ways to see itself as a victim. It uses the body as its chosen home, as a weapon through which to attack others and keep them separate.

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to LIMIT communication, and thereby TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE."

"not because the EGO is a separate thing, but because you want to believe that YOU are. The ego is a device for maintaining this belief, but it is still only YOUR willingness to use the device that enables it to endure."

You have an ego in you, in your mind. Much of the time it may seem to be hidden, and you might regard youself as relatively friendly. But when the gloves come off the ego comes out to play.

If you'll notice, the ego is the idea of both victims and victimizers. It attacks and sees itself as heinously attacked. It sees itself as overpowering others with tyranny, while also seeing itself as terrorized and weak.

Whenever you are playing a victim role, you are being extremely selfish. This of course sounds like some kind of vicious accusation, to the ego in people, but it's true. Being a victim, you see yourself as lacking and in need, deprived and weakened, threatened and undermined. And these are all hallmarks of making yourself small and limited. They're all actually attempts to put ALL of the focus on you as a separate self.

In victimhood you yourself as separated off, alone, threatened, vulnerable, confused, insane, afraid, vicious, attacking, vengeful, angry, hurt, justified, unfairly treated, sick and suffering. The whole bag of ego tricks comes flying out. Precicely when you think OTHERS are being selfish in their neglect of your needs, it's because YOU are being selfish.

The ego is all about selfishness because it's totally the idea of rejecting sharing. Of confining and limiting and hoarding and possessing, owning and getting and being exclusive. Whenever the focus shifts to "only me", like "poor me I"m the only victim", you are contracting into a ball of fear to try to separate yourself off. And the reason you want to be separted off is always beacause you don't want to share with anyone. Your own interests become your ONLY interests.

The thing to realize is, that YOU, who and what you are, is in fact a WHOLE self, your SOUL, as created by God, sharing everything with everyone. The ego is a PARTIAL self, not even a full self, and resides only in part of your mind. YOU get to decide whether or not to side with the ego, to identify with it, to think of it as your whole self, and whether to see out through its insane eyes.

What YOU are, is distinct from what the ego is. The ego is a fictional framework of make-believe wishful-thinking confused nonsense, jumbled up together and screwed tightly into a ball of hatred. It wants to keep guilt, maintain fear, suffer, and induce death. It actually wants the REST of you to die, for your soul to be exterminated, and for ITSELF to perpetuate. "The ego wants YOU dead, but NOT itself."

When you feel stressed out and upset and overwhelmed and in need, and others are trying to take from you, and you are thinking of them as selfish assholes, YOU are in fact being selfish. You're seeing yourself in an egoic way, as a self in pain, a suffering victimy weak self, who has nothing to give and is lacking everything. The ego sees this way because it is deprived of God. And this means you are aligning and associating yourself with it.v You do have the freedom still to choose WHETHER to align with the ego in the mind, or to deny it and align with the Holy Spirit, or the wholeness of your soul. Moving towards wholeness, the ego in you will remain vicious and backwards, and will likely try to attack you more, or to tempt you away from the truth with its lies and slander. But what it cannot do is decide for you, or take your power away against your will. YOU can withdraw your power from it at any time. "If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

Ultimately in truth the ego does not really exist. The Holy Spirit knows it is nothing at all, nothing but a collection of mistaken beliefs which can be undone. The atonement IS the undoing of the ego, because in the light there is no sin and no separation. The ego in - the SELFISHNESS in you - must be completely recognized and undone.

"For the Holy Spirit is THERE, although He cannot help you without your invitation, and the ego is nothing, whether you invite it in or not."

"By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT. Follow His teaching in forgiveness, then, because forgiveness IS His function, and HE knows how to fulfill it perfectly."

"The ego is totally confused about reality"

"The ego is the "proof" that strength is weak and love is fearful, life is really death, and what opposes God alone is true."

"So it is with death. Made by the ego, its dark shadow falls across all living things, because the ego is the "enemy" of life."

"of pride, of arrogance, or of self-deception"

"The ego does not advertise its final threat, for it would have its worshippers still believe that IT can offer the ESCAPE from it. But the belief in guilt MUST lead to the BELIEF IN HELL, and ALWAYS DOES."

"GOD HAS GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING. This is the one fact which MEANS that the ego does not exist, and which therefore makes it profoundly afraid."

"Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war DOES deprive you of peace."

"Yet the ego is the only alternative to the Holy Spirit's Voice."

"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will. It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you."

"The ego is the self-appointed mediator of ALL relationships, making whatever adjustments it deems necessary, and INTERPOSING them BETWEEN those who would meet, to keep them separate and PREVENT their union."

"The ego is a form of ARREST, but arrest is merely delay."

"The ego IS a contradiction. Man's self and God's Self ARE in opposition. They are opposed in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive, and the ego cannot know. They are therefore NOT IN COMMUNICATION, and can never BE in communication."

"The full appreciation of its (the soul's) self-fullness (wholeness) makes selfishness impossible, and extension inevitable."

"The unhealed healer may be arrogant, selfish, unconcerned, and actually dishonest."

"The essential thing to remember always is that the ego DOES NOT RECOGNIZE the real source of its perceived threat. And if YOU associate yourself WITH the ego, YOU do not perceive the whole situation as it really is. Only your allegiance to it gives the ego ANY power over you. We have spoken of the ego as if it were a separate thing, acting on its own. This was necessary to persuade you that you cannot dismiss it lightly, and MUST realize how much of your thinking is ego-directed." "The ego is the choice for guilt, the Holy Spirit the decision for blamelessness."

"This is the Voice for God, reminding you of your Father and of your Self. This is the Voice of truth, replacing everything that the ego tells you about yourself with the simple truth about the Son of God. You were created by Love like Itself."

"Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its RESULTS, is merely to recognize that their SOURCE is NOT natural, being out of accord with your TRUE nature."

There are two approaches to spiritual progress.

1) You start out with nothing and have to attain, build, accumulate, get, learn, grow, become, seek, do something, believe in, empower, achieve, turn into, so that you will be more than you are now. So that your ego and self image will expand, and so that you will become a superhero and the God of the world. Or...

2) You start out perfect and have everything, but then you deny it and hide it, and pretend you have nothing. What you then need to do is backtrack, return, reverse, undo, cancel, deny the denial, dis-believe, withdraw power from the illusion of emptiness, remove the blocks, so that you can recognize and re-awaken to what is already permanently true. That you are with God in heaven and always have been. You "need do nothing" but accept this is already true.

We are very accustomed to thinking in terms of the first approach, because the entire ego thought system has denied God even exists, has hidden your inheritance, has thrown away any notion of you being permanently perfect, and sets you out on a path of "seek and do not find" beginning in emptiness and nothingness. We think this is normal. And we then think that salvation, love, awareness, God, our self, is somewhere else, yet to be attained or earned. Achieved through punishment and suffering and at a cost.

This is the illusion of a spiritual path. Where our whole focus is on "I don't have it now", and therefore "I need to get it". It drives the ego's focus with a complete disconnect between giving and receiving, suggesting you have nothing so have nothing to give, so need to "get" before you can give. It suggests you are devoid of love and perfection, as an attack on your true nature, hiding you from yourself, and then encourages you to seek to become more spiritual. To hide from yourself by finding yourself in another, or in the body.

But there can really be no progress at all if all we do is maintain the belief that we are not ALREADY perfect, and keep trying to become something as if we don't have it already. The ego is plenty happy to encourage you to overdo on the course, commit to paths and books and ceremonies and teachers and groups and seminars and so on, to exalt salvation outside yourself and worship it like an idol. But all this does is it turns everything you have denied within yourself, into an externalized illusion, which you now worship as though it can save you from your emptiness.

The problem is that in this approach, we're not really addressing what has ACTUALLY happened to us. We didn't pop into existence out of nothingness, with no inheritance, with no real source, and starting out with nothing. We didn't just materialize in a state of total lack and need, from which we have to spend our whole lives trying to accumulate food and objects and toys and money and fake identities and shit, just to try to build up a sense of having something, to fill the emptiness with emptiness.

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing."

We have to recognize instead that we HAD everything when we were created. We were created perfect and without needs or wants of any kind. We were created permanently, and cannot be changed in our perfection. We cannot lose what we are, we cannot stop being ourselves, and we cannot destroy what God has created.

The truth is that we in fact first denied and hid from our natural permanent immortal perfection, to PRETEND that we had nothing, so that we would seek outside ourselves to find ourselves where we don't exist. The whole story reveals that not only did we try to throw away heaven and God and our real family and identity, we actually did not even accomplish this in reality. We just fooled ourselves into believing that it was possible, and that we had done it. That sin was real. And in that we are mistaken.

So then the only way to REALLY make progress isn't so much in the forward acquisition of the world, the price of which is the loss of your soul. But to realize that our perfect pre-existing immortal safe self is ALREADY THERE, simply disguised and hidden BEHIND various "blocks to the awareness of love's presence". There's simply a pile of garbage in the way, full of fake lies and un-truths, which make it seem like it's not there, or that innocence has been lost and converted into guilt.

Our real task then isn't the ego's path of gathering stuff from outside of us to plug the holes, but to reverse our steps, backtrack, undo, let go, surrender the world, deny the denial of truth, accept the reality of God's truth, simply melt into and settle into what you already ARE, and RE-discover your real nature within. To go inside and find yourself, RIGHT NOW, in a state of immaculate perfection, undisturbed and unattacked, immortal and invulnerable, incapable of suffering or sickness or death, and utterly beyond the reach of this entire world.

It's so easy to become lost in this whole drive to go do be find add get, that we can forget we're supposed to really be RECOGNIZING that we are STILL as God created us, we haven't changed at all, nothing has happened to us, we REMAIN in heaven safely with God, we haven't really journeyed anywhere but into a detour of fear, and we are utterly beyond the reach of all dreams of death. We are constant and we are permanent and we can NEVER be hurt, threatened, endangered or destroyed. Nothing has EVER happened to us. We are utterly indestructible.

That's what waking up is about. A recognition of what has ALWAYS been true, and is still true, and will forever be true. You simply can't go anywhere, or do anything, or be anything other than God established you to be. And you have nothing that he did not give you, or which you did not create with Him. And there is nothing else. You are real and you cannot be threatened, and nothing unreal exists.

You are perfect NOW. And you need merely to relax into accepting that you are ALREADY holy, innocent and perfect. You have been all along, and everything else is a lie. We simply need to acknowledge and admit that we've been perfect all along, have never deviated or changed, and we are STILL exactly as perfect as God created us to be. Which means you have no need to seek for anything.

"Who could have done this but you? Recognize this gladly, for in this recognition lies the realization that your banishment is not of God, and therefore does not exist. You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality. Is it your will to do so? You know, from your own experience, that what you see in dreams you think is real, as long as you are asleep. But the instant you waken, you KNOW that everything that SEEMED to happen DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL. You do not think this mysterious, even though ALL the laws of what you awake to WERE violated while you slept."

"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing."

"Whom God has joined CANNOT be separated, and God has joined all His Sons WITH HIMSELF. Can you be separated from your life and your being? The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance, to a goal that has never changed."

"Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home."

"Thanks be to you, the holy Son of God, for as you were created you contain all things within your Self. And you are still as God created you. Nor can you dim the light of your perfection. In your heart the Heart of God is laid. He holds you dear because you are Himself. All gratitude belongs to you because of what you are."

"We begin the journey back by setting out TOGETHER, and gather in our brothers as we CONTINUE together."

"Ours is simply the journey back to God Who is our home."

"We have forgiven one another now, and so we come at last to You again. Father, Your Son, who never left, returns to Heaven and his home. How glad are we to have our sanity restored to us, and to remember that we all are one."

"Today we will anticipate the time when dreams of sin and guilt are gone, and we have reached again the holy place we never left. Merely a tiny instant has elapsed between eternity and timelessness. So brief the interval there was no lapse in continuity, nor break in thoughts which are forever unified as one. Nothing has ever happened to disturb the peace of God the Father and the Son. This we accept as wholly true today."

"Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its home. I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide, and all Your attributes abide in me because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable."

"In prayer you have united with your Source, and understood that you have never left."

"You are he your Father loves, who never left his home, nor wandered in a savage world with feet that bleed, and with a heavy heart made hard against the Love that is the truth in you. Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world."

"In quiet listen to your Self today, and let Him tell you God has never left His Son, and you have never left your Self."

"Now try to reach the Son of God in you. This is the Self Which never sinned, nor made an image to replace reality. This is the Self Which never left Its home in God, to walk the world uncertainly. This is the Self Which knows no fear, nor could conceive of loss or suffering or death."

"Now into Your Hands we give again the spirit of Your Son who seemed to lose his way a little while but never left the safety of Your Love."

"And turn you to the stately calm within, where, in holy stillness, dwells the living God you never left, and Who never left you."

"There is no need for help to enter Heaven for you never left. But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs about your Identity, Which God alone established in reality."

"Then will we wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions as we humbly ask our Self that He reveal Himself to us. And He Who never left will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore His home to God as it was meant to be."

"Beyond all idols is the Thought God holds of you. Completely unaffected by the turmoil and the terror of the world, the dreams of birth and death that here are dreamed, the myriad of forms that fear can take, quite undisturbed, the Thought God holds of you remains EXACTLY as It always was. Surrounded by a stillness so complete no sound of battle comes remotely near, It rests in certainty and perfect peace. Here is your ONE reality kept safe, completely unaware of all the world that worships idols, and that knows not God. In perfect sureness of Its changelessness and of Its rest in Its eternal home, the Thought God holds of you has never left the Mind of Its Creator, Whom It knows as Its Creator knows that It is there."

"Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar which abides forever deep within the Son of God. And when he hears this song again, he knows he NEVER heard it not."

TL;DR: "love people!"

As I lay down to rest, I started to get a stream of insights about miracle working.

If you ask God, e.g. "God please heal that person's broken leg", this is already starting on the wrong foot.

The thing is, the broken leg is not the problem. The broken leg is just an effect, a projection, of something going on that is hidden from sight. Something in the persons mind.

It doesn't matter what it is, what physical problem, be it a broken leg or brain damage or a weak heart or cancer or diabetes or swelling or whatever. They appear to be physical problems, but this itself is a temptation. In fact, seeing these things is actually UNFORGIVENESS. It is false perception. And there is nothing healing about that.

The broken leg isn't really what "needs healing". There isn't really something "lacking" in the leg. Instead, we need to think towards where the problem is and what it is.

"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it FOR."

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

"The mind makes this decision as it makes every decision responsible for the condition of the body."

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies."

As implied by miracles, "miracles supply a lack". We're also told that a miracle worker weakens a brother's belief in sickness by strengthening the holy spirit in them. We're also told "miracles are energizing" and "miracles are expressions of love."

So what it is that's really lacking? What is the deficiency or the thing that needs resolving? There is not enough love in the person. They have a lack of love, which is fear and sickness. It shows up in the body as sickness.

The body kind of symbolizes the mind's condition. So as the body seems to "wither" and "grow old" and "weaken" and seem like it's dying, it's really a SYMPTOM of a mind which is lacking love. The mind's power or light has become weak. It has lost strength.

Similarly we're told that we're supposed to be "shining" some kind of light into the other person's mind:

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

"The 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."

"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 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. "

I am continually, continually reminded and prodded by the Holy Spirit, that the ONLY thing you need to perform a miracle is LOVE. Love has the power of God in it. And love IS light. Miracles are also EXPRESSIONS of love, like the shining of the light into the mind. So it makes sense to say we are to "broadcast love into their minds" in order to heal them. We are to SHINE INTO our brothers to heal them.

The focus then isn't at all on picking out symptoms or physical ailments and trying to "target" them. Those things should actually take care of themselves and be automatically healed, when the CAUSE of those symptoms is corrected. The CAUSE is the "lack" of love, light, energy, power, in the person's mind. It's seemingly lacking because they are blocking it and have thus reduced their own light, so they now need your HELP to increase their light FOR them.

The Holy Spirit is the only Therapist and HE is the light that extends through you into the mind of your brother. You are to "inflame" and "magnify" the Holy Spirit in a brother's mind. To increase it in him.

"When a brother behaves insanely, you can heal him ONLY by perceiving the SANITY in him."

"This holy relationship has the power to heal all pain, regardless of its form. "

"Since thoughts do not have to be conscious to exist, your brother does NOT have to be AWARE of the Holy Spirit, either in himself or in you for this miracle to occur. He may have dissociated the call for God, just as YOU have. But the dissociation is healed in BOTH of you as you see it in him, and thus acknowledge its BEING."

A key thing to realize is that love isn't just love. Love and light are ALIVE. Real light is literally alive. It has eternal life and radiance. It is strong and vital and powerful. This light is the light of God because "All love is of God" and "There is no love other than God's love". So to give love is to GIVE LIFE, which produces resurrection.

"Miracles mean LIFE and God is the giver of life."

"Miracles are a spark of life."

In essence, if you think of a person as a living entity made of love/light, and if a sick person is someone who is denying their own LIFE and diminishing it, and this "absence of life" shows up as sickness and forms of death, ("sickness is but a little death"), then the lack of love that you SUPPLY to the PERSON, to their mind, shines light INTO their mind for them and supply the lack of love, which in turn heals the mind. This, by cause and effect, then causes their body to regain life and vitality.

"The mind being sane heals the body."

"Now is the body healed by miracles."

It is the spark of life/light in your brother that needs to be amplified in order to bring "healing" to their mind and body. So if you think of them like a candle, it is your job to supply a lack of light, to the candle, to increase its brightness. To shine or pour or extend extra light INTO the mind so that it brightens. This brightening automatically heals the mind and body. You empower, energize, uplift, and strengthen, your brother by giving him the love he deserves.

"In many, only the spark remains, for the great rays are obscured. "

"For the little spark that holds the Great Rays within it, is ALSO visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness."

"Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less". What is it that you temporarily have MORE OF? It is the light and love in you. It is the strength in you. The truth. The power of God which you host. The light of Christ. You who temporarily have more give what you have to another, supplying the lack of love, and invigorating and resurrecting them from the inside out.

There is also hidden benefit to this giving of love. If you yourself have some love to give, but you yourself also need healing, to the ego this would mean you only have so much and cannot exceed what you have. But in experience, this isn't what happens. In fact, as you begin to give the love you have, and continually transmit it to another, send it into their mind, enlighten them with it, it in fact HEALS YOU as it passes "through" you. And the more you work on sending it, the more YOU get healed as well. It uplifts both of you.

"Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver."

"he is healed along with you."

"Forgiveness is not real unless it has brought a healing to you and your brother."

"Miracles are the maximal service you can render ANOTHER"

Even if you start off slow, or lacking, the more you focus on sending love, in particular, EXTENDING GOD'S LOVE, the more your own mind lights up with the light of love and both of you are healed. So in fact you can HEAL YOURSELF, by GIVING the love of God to another. You can give yourself what you DO NOT SEEM TO HAVE (having blocked it on you), by giving what God has TO another, repeatedly, so that it heals you and lifts you up as you do so, reawakening your own love.

Ultimately it is God who supplies the miracles. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me (or you) to all my brothers." The Holy Spirit is also the mechanism of miracles. He has the power of heaven and earth. You are a host to them. You have to acknowledge that they are the SOURCE of all power, light, and love. "God is the light in which I see." "God is my strength" "To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power" etc. "You are forever a host to God." The light, love, life, strength, power, will that is IN you, God put there, for you TO GIVE.

"To all who share the love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that it is theirs forever."

"The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another. That is because the real vision is still so dim. Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION."

This must be acknowledged and your function or role must be filled, as the light of the world. Which is, that you are an extender of God's Will and healing. "You share the Holy Spirit's function on Earth." "Your function on Earth is healing." "What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

To do this you have to work on undoing your authority problem, because you have to be willing to allow God to be the source of your power and love (your creator), and recognize yourself as a CHILD of God, and as a co-creator/extender/relay of God's Love. Then through expressing love/light/power/will/strength/truth you can reflect your co-creating function in heaven while you're here. You more or less don't need to "do" much.

"The power of God and not of you engenders miracles."

"You do not do them." (they are done through you)

Or rather, you must not interfere, and you ALLOW and TRUST the Holy Spirit to do the healing while you transmit and hold the light. For this to happen you have to have developed trust in Him and allow Him to be in you, you must DEPEND on Him and be willing to LET HIM heal through you. This will mean having to put aside ego and purify your own mind, accept some atonement and forgive, so that you can be a functioning transmitter of God's light.

You ARE required to be very loving and fearless and strong while you do this, otherwise you cannot allow the power to move through you.

"Miracles cannot be performed in a spirit of doubt and fear."

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

So what it boils down to is, extend a crapload of God's love to another person. Directly to the person. To their mind. To their soul. Take what God has GIVEN you, and GIVE it to another. Bypass the body. Don't even pay attention to the current physical state of the person because that's based on where they USED to be at, and it's secondary, and doesn't need "direct" healing. Empower and resurrect them from the INSIDE OUT, and this light will automatically radiate out from them and bring healing to their body as THEIR mind lights up with strength and life.

The light in your mind, which is God's light, must shine/extend into another mind, to heal it. Offer God to your brothers. Open up your mind like a strong flashlight and shine into someone. Join with them by going INTO their mind and glowing your love there. Remind them of the living truth. Light them up and love them directly, mind to mind.

Experiments are in order! Go to it.

(...and why a sick body means the mind has NOT been healed)

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies." - ACIM

Think of the body as a blank canvas, onto which you can paint a picture representing who and what you are.

If you are in the business of believing in sin, you will deny it and attempt to project blame onto someone else. Perceptually you will see them as causing you in some way, and simultaneously your mind MUST implement the "effects" of that causality onto yourself.

You therefore put in place, or paint a picture of, an identity which has been affected by something external. You show yourself as suffering, you position yourself as looking like you are sick, you damage yourself, and you take out this attack upon yourself. You do so in an attempt to show everyone that THEY did this to you.

It's really the insight that we implement the EFFECTS upon ourselves BEFORE we blame the cause of those effects onto something outside of ourselves. This also would tie into the fact that in this case, cause and effect have been reversed. We express effects of sickness, suffering, damage, etc in order to attempt to accuse others of doing this to us. We actually sort of wear the costume of looking like someone who has been hurt, and then walk around trying to find someone to blame for causing it.

Projection makes perception, and denial makes for projection. But how about.... we first believe we are attacked and implement the effects that the attack would produce, and then project the cause outward?

So what we do is, we make ourselves sick, we show ourselves as a picture of suffering, and we do this with the body. The body is our canvas, our "picture" of our Self, our identity. We make the body sick in order to accuse our brother of making us sick. We say, "hah, look at me, you did this to me you fucker. It's your fault."

The fact is, it's not possible to accuse another of doing something to you without YOU experiencing the effects. The ego says, no, if you do something to someone else you can escape the effects. But in truth, the mind does not work that way. Whatever applies to you applies equally everywhere. So in order to accuse someone of attack and sin, YOU must picture yourself as attacked and sinful.

YOUR body is like a picture which YOU hold up in order to show to OTHERS what you believe THEY are! It is not just a picture of yourself, it is a picture of BOTH OF YOU. This is because the body is a device for separation and that is two-sided, the selves on both sides are kept apart and affected equally - as within so without. The body then as a separation device is a picture of YOU AND YOUR BROTHER in a state of attack!

You can't hold up a picture of THEM and say, you're sinful and I'm not. Instead you hold up a picture of your "self" (the body) in an attacked state as if to say to someone else, "this is what you are". You're talking to yourself, accusing yourself, and picturing yourself as suffering.

So you can't accuse without attacking your body, meaning you're trying to USE the body to attack someone and the result is that your body MUST become a picture of attack, showing symptoms of a belief in attack. If it applies to your brother, it applies to you. You try to take them down, and take yourself down in the process. This is why all death is suicide. As Jesus says, use the body for attack like this and it will appear weak and it will die.

The opposite of this is that if you do not attack "through" the body, you do not project sin, you do not accuse yourself of sin, and you see the equal innocence of yourself and another, you will not "picture yourself" as attacked, and thus the body WILL SHOW a picture of you in a non-attacked condition. Your mind will project a body which is "healthy". It must.

When the body is not used for attack, and is used only to express/extend love, the body will appear "lovely", or a symbolic picture of a self which has no attack in it. Thus all signs of sickness and disease must vanish from it, and it will demonstrate what you believe is true. You can't project an image of a body which is sick while being truly in the truth, any more than you can project an image of a healthy body while your mind is attacking.

Essentially, this also leads to the realization that when someone dies, they literally have committed suicide, but they also have attempted to "attack with death". Their attempt to die is an attempt to accuse everyone of being dead, to affect everyone, to make everyone suffer as well, and is an attack on everyone. The body becomes a picture of death to show that the mind is using it for attack. It is like a suicide bomber or a kamikaze attacker who is attempting to throw their own body at their enemy in an attempt to eradicate them.

Death is the ultimate attempt to destroy EVERYONE as well as yourself, except that it is only yourself that ends up suffering. It's like saying, I so hate everyone and so believe in separation, that I am going to completely cut myself off from all Life and therefore shrivel up and be weak and die, because this is what I think of myself and you, and I believe that both of us should not exist. What applies to me applies to you, and if I am dead so you will be as well! But the result is that the person's body itself dies, and other people's do not.

Whatever you attempt to do to God, you do to yourself. If you believe that God should be dead, you will destroy yourself. If you try to kill God, you will kill yourself. If you try to make out that God is sinful, you will become sinful. If you try to assert that God does not exist and you have escaped from God's Life, you will die. God won't, you will. Just as other people will not die when you attempt to kill them with your death, but you will. You will do it to yourself. YOU CANNOT ATTACK WITHOUT HURTING YOURSELF FIRST. All attack is self attack, and all attack will destroy YOU and not your so-called enemy.

This is why this is so ridiculously obvious, that it is in YOUR BEST INTEREST not to find anyone sinful or guilty, because it MUST mean that you are sinful and guilty, and YOU will suffer terribly. What you do to another you do to yourself. What you accuse your brother of you have accused yourself of. And what you would have them experience, you will experience. You cannot escape from the law that what you do unto others you literally are directly doing to yourself. You cannot get away with murder without you dying as well. You should recognize it is in your best SHARED INTEREST to not hurt or accuse anyone else, because doing so directly hurts and accuses you.

If you attempt to hurt someone else without hurting yourself, you are buying into the ego's thought system, which is a lie, and you will still receive the effects of your own attack. It is the ego's grand illusion that something can apply to you without applying to others and vice versa. The truth will always be true, and the law will always be in place, that the only way to attack another is to attack yourself and show your attacked self to them, and they may not even be attacked at all. All attack separates you from the other, which protects them in a way. This is why attack on God did not affect God, but affected you greatly.

Death is a weapon that doesn't work. It is always an attempt to prove that someone other than yourself made you be dead, accusing them of sin. Sin is punishable by death alone, in the ego's thought system. To die is to make a statement that everyone is a sinner, all are evil, and they have caused you to die. No-one dies without being a victim, and no-one dies without accusing the world of doing it to them. This is also why death is futile, because it is self-destruction which has no real effect on anyone else and only makes yourself worse off. To choose it is insanity.

It's fortunate that in the metaphysics of truth, there is a kind of protection against death. The illusion of death cannot assail the kingdom of God. God cannot be affected by what is unreal. Attempted attack or death is actually a movement away from Life and a movement away from existence. It is withdrawal, not attack. All forms of attack or illusions of attack seem to be outward expressions but this is an illusion. All forms of attack are withdrawals away from everything. Death is a collapse away from Life, and therefore confines all of the effects of death to the one who dies, not to who they were attempting to make dead.

God has been completely unaffected by our attempts at using death to hurt him. God cannot be changed whatsoever. This is also why death is merely a state of denial. It is powerlessness, weakness, is completely ineffective, and literally does nothing. It is a state of a lack of all will to live, and therefore all will is absent from it, and as such it is a state of total unwillingness and can produce no real effects at all. It is not a cause at all, being purely a state of being at the effect of everything. How WEAK it is then, this weapon of death which is supposed to be the ego's most extreme form of attack possible... the stronger the attack, the weaker the attack. Death is the most pathetic attack of all, causing nothing real to happen.

We do not need to die. We do not need to be under attack. We do not need to be sick. We do not need to suffer. But if we want to be free of these things, we cannot be accusing ourselves and/or others of sin. We USE OURSELVES to show our brother what we are accusing them of, which turns us into shriveled up sickly prunes with no ability to do anything. We cannot escape our own wrath. Accuse others of causing sickness and you will be sick. Blame them and you will suffer in guilt. Try to get rid of God and you will get rid of yourself. Your body is your picture of your state of mind. All of its sicknesses MUST GO if you are to show that you fully believe in your innocence and invulnerability. To be invulnerable is to not be at the effect of anything in the world, and therefore not to PUT EFFECTS into your body.

You need not attack yourself today.

"You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of turning the other cheek." - ACIM

We are addicted to the body. We talk about the body as if it is the same thing as the person. We talk about what they are wearing as if they are the body wearing it. We ask what they are looking at, as if because the body is looking so are they. We talk about what the body did, what the body ate, and how the body slept, as if it was the person doing these things, which we then celebrate the body doing. We cover the body in clothes and remark at how wonderful WE look. We think we are it, and this is a major confusion of identity.

There is a PROFOUND degree of body identification in this world. Take a look at the news. You can be pretty much guarantee that almost every single news report will feature people who are heavily in victim fear roles, heavily bodily identified, not overlooking the situation whatsoever, and quite unconscious, discussing what happened to bodies. And then you have the whole "he did this to me" "she did that to me" "they were doing this and that". Always pointing to bodies, because only bodies can sin. "Only if there were a body is sin possible." "Only the body makes the world seem real." Always mistaking bodies for people.

And then we look to a spouse or a child or a parent or a neighbor or coworker or some other stranger and we say, look, behold, there is a person. But all we point at is the body, using our own body to sense its presence, and seeing little else.

Bodies are not souls, they are not real, and God did not create them. Parts of our mind are using the body temporarily but any confusion about the mind BEING the body is level confusion, magic, sickness, authority problem, body identification, attack thinking, blindness, and evidence of blocks to awareness. But this is how the whole world is operating almost all the time.

It is SO habitual, so ingrained, and so accepted as normal, that you see it very subtly infused into every advertising, every conversation, every interaction of body folk. It's become totally habitual. Always with the "you", in reference to the body self. "They" in reference to groups of bodies. The whole word of the law is written based on what bodies do to bodies and whose body did what to whom. Copyright law doesn't even acknowledge discarnate entities as valid authors, such as in the case of Jesus and ACIM.

It is so heavily assumed that people are bodies in this world, due to massive widespread body identification, that it is literally everywhere. In all walks of life, in all forms of communication, people think they are human beings with arms and legs. This is a problem, because it is not true. And we have to actually deprogram ourselves of this belief. And as we do this, we're going to start becoming VERY aware of the fact that the whole world is going against the truth in this way. That 99%+ of the population relates at a body-to-body level and does not see beyond it.

You can see how the development of christ vision, the opening of the spiritual eye, the clarification of spirit identification, recognizing YOU ARE NOT A BODY, you are spirit, is an entirely different kind of way of relating to people. It totally steps back from the entire association between "you" and "your body". It denies the assumption that your brother is his physical form. "You're looking great today Paul". Well, no, Paul isn't flesh and bones and you are blinded by perception of form. If Paul's like, oh hell yes, I'm looking great today, then now we're into Paul being body identified and having level confusion. And if Paul decides to confuse himself with his body in order to confuse his brother with a body in order to have a body relationship, well now he has a cell mate and they're both in hell.

This is how profound the course is. We have to learn to dis-identify ourselves from the FLESH AND BONES body prison. We have to learn it is NOT OUR SELF. We are not made of bits of flesh and strange organs. It does not look like us. It is not a representation of our true nature. At best it symbolized health and wholeness but your soul absolutely does not have a penis or vagina, nor does it make shits, nor does it sip the cool-aid. "I am not a body I am free" should mean that totally literally. 100% NOT even REMOTELY the body. Not even a tiny bit the body. Such that the body is utterly UNLIKE you in every way. Just a random picture of a form. Because "The body cannot contain you who are life." and "What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

When we show the body to our brother, identified with it, we are offering him hell and damnation, having damned ourselves to it. We give him what we have given ourselves. We can only offer him a body if we think we are a body. And this means we are offering him something valueless and meaningless. Which is a way to attack him and strip him of his divinity. Neither you nor your brother are physical. Your mind is non physical. Your soul is formless. UTTERLY FORMLESS. Abstract. Shapeless. Boundaryless. Unlimited by space or time.

When we make the body sick we use the body to accuse our brother of sin. This is an entire teaching to do with how the body symbolizes attack and communicates a message of proof of sin in order to find your brother unworthy. But it goes even further, not just including typical sickness, and even beyond sex. It goes as far as to say that EVERY way that you use the body determines the message it symbolized and if you have ANY KIND OF BODY IDENTIFICATION, this is an attack on your brother AND yourself.

If you show the body to your brother mistaken for yourself, you are communicating that he is not himself, and this is an attack. Just as body identification produces sickness, believing you are a body is denial of yourself and your brother. If you depict it to him with an attitude of "this is my self, look at me", you are trying to cause him to be confined to his body also. You cannot possibly see his true self if you cannot see yours. You cannot possibly appreciate his divine christ nature if you think you're not christ but a body. We need to rediscover our soul, our innate inner truth, God-given, if we are to RELATE in any kind of real, loving way to anyone.

If there is not a movement towards recognizing yourself as spirit, NOT a body, there is no awakening at all. That is the whole direction of the curriculum. Moving away from body identification, confused about who and what you are, towards clarity about the fact that you are not a body at all and never were. When "you" (body) look in a mirror you should not be believing that you're looking at yourself. Vanity is ego. When "you" (body) puts on the latest clothes that you fancy yourself in, you shouldn't be believing that this changes who or what you are at all, nor do these clothes define you. You could wear a sack of shit and be spirit identified knowing your true nature is absolutely golden and that the body has nothing to do with who you are.

Sex is only a small part of the body identification issue. It's a cornerstone and a reason to keep perpetuating the focus on bodies and the belief that people are physical forms. Confusing mind and body and believing the body can create, can cause, has power, can live, and is important. As Jesus says, "the body is hardly worth the least defense." "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." "God did not create the body."

So isn't it clear, that in order to exist, and to be created by God, you have to become very very clear that you are NOT a body in any way whatsoever, you don't need one, you don't want one, and you don't have one. Because "to be without abody is to be in your natural state.", which is a state of being solely spirit.

It is by identifying ONLY AS spirit (and not a gender or a sexual preference) that you free yourself FROM the body and become able to return home to God. You cannot be believing that ANYTHING "true" of the body is true of you. You are not male or female. You are not gay or straight or bi or anything else. You are spirit. You are immortal. You are made of light. You are divine. The body cannot possibly be anything but a fake artificial picture of a fake artificial self in a fake artificial dream pretending to be a someone. And the body cannot go to heaven with you. "Leave it behind, it cannot enter heaven."

But you, as spirit, can enter the spirit world. Your spirit is the only way through the gates of heaven, to reunite with God, the creator of your spirit, where "the only function of spirit is to extend God's being." There, your spirit has always dwelt with its maker, and has never really left. It is your spirit that is permanently recognized by God as holy and complete. "The soul never leaves the sight of God." "God's children are as equal as learners as they are as souls." Only your spirit self is the reality of you. Everything else is an illusion that you have become tangled up with, confused with, lost in, and believing is you. The body is not you. You are eternal.

"Look upon all the trinkets made to hang upon the body or cover it, or for its use. See all the useless things made for its eyes to see. Think on the many offerings made for its pleasure, and remember all these were made to make seem lovely what you hate. Would you employ this hated thing to draw your brother to you, and to attract his body's eyes? Learn you but offer him a crown of thorns, not recognizing it for what it is, and trying to justify your own interpretation of its value by his acceptance. Yet still the gift proclaims his worthlessness to you, as his acceptance and delight acknowledges the lack of value he places on himself.

Gifts are not made through bodies, if they be truly given and received. For bodies can neither offer nor accept; hold out or take. Only the mind can value, and only the mind decides on what it would receive and give. And every gift it offers depends on what it WANTS. It will adorn its chosen home most carefully, making it ready to receive the gifts it wants, by offering them to those who come unto its home, or those it would attract to it. And there they will exchange their gifts, offering and receiving what their minds judge to be worthy of them.

Each gift is an evaluation of the receiver and the GIVER. No-one but sees his chosen home an altar to himself. No-one but seeks to draw to it the worshippers of what he placed upon it, making it worthy of their devotion. And each has set a light upon his altar, that they may see what he has placed upon it, and take it for their own. Here is the value that you lay upon your brother, and on yourself. Here is your gift to BOTH; your judgment upon the Son of God for what he is. Forget not that it is your Savior to whom the gift is offered. Offer him thorns, and YOU are crucified. Offer him lilies, and it is YOURSELF you free."

If you see yourself as being victimised in any way, mistreated, not respected, attacked, hurt, threatened, judged, abused, terrorised, not recognised, hated, left out, invalidated, accused, misrepresented, subject to racism or sexism or homophobia, in any other way somehow slighted or offended by anyone OTHER than yourself, they your ego has formed a FACE OF INNOCENCE, and you ARE in heavy denial!

This face of innocence is a facade the ego wears to DENY AND COVER UP the internal guilt, to hide itself from itself in self-hate. The internal guilt is denied, so that it is not even recognised as existing at all within you, and is then projected. It is then seen IN AND AS everyone else other than oneself. It then appears that everyone but yourself is doing something TO YOU against your will that is un-asked for and undeserved.

This projection of guilt and ego frames you as an innocent victim of it in OTHER people, which in turn justifies an angry counter-response - since you see yourself as doing absolutely nothing wrong at all, which points a further finger - a second layer of projection - designed to hide the first, to further reinforce the ways that other people have obviously sinned, been guilty, committed evil acts, failed to live up to standards, or any other way that they are defective.

The "mask" of innocence is worn as a face psychologically, really a disguise, as part of the ego. And it is especially part of the spiritualised ego. Having denied that oneself believes oneself to be guilty - which is still an ongoing internal belief - on sees oneself as "not guilty", and thus innocent. But this is a fake innocence covering up a persistent guilt. The guilt is then projected onto others and associated with them, as though attached to them and part of them.

It is particularly viciously reinforced by an increased level of anger and resentment, as a REACTION to what is now perceived as something other people are doing to you and not you doing to them. The more you feel justified in anger the more you project even more separation and increase the sense of dis-association between you and the guilt. This is designed to make sure it seems that you have nothing to do with the guilt, and it is entirely associated with someone other than yourself. The more this is believed the more unconscious you become as a helpless victim.

What this entails really is self attack, which began long before the projection of guilt. Self and self innocence were denied, producing an accusation against oneself as an attack upon oneself. This is a denial of self as God created you. This is an opinion of oneself - an ego view of oneself - that is far short of the divine holy self that God created you as.

This vicious self-attack produces guilt, inferiority, judgement, self-hate, and various other forms of self destructive behaviour. This is DENIED, which makes it seem largely unconscious or at least disowned and "not part of me". And the result of this is projection. It is given away in order to try to make it not be a part of oneself, or within one's mind. It is seen as "outside" the mind, external to the self (body perimeter), as though literally someone other than oneself, seen as an inherent built-in permanent PART OF someone else. And now it is THEY who are guilty and full of sin.

The result of this is then the formation of a face - a facade - a persona - a cover-up face of innocence, which sees itself AS innocent, but with fake innocence. This fake innocence is shallow and is merely a smokescreen to hide the self-hate that is behind it. Thus self-denying person then believes they are doing no wrong, asking for no harm, doing nothing to hurt others, and are completely benevolent, yet conveniently also are experiencing being "unfairly treated" as a victim. And this of course, if it were true, means anger is completely justified and everyone else should die for THEIR sins against the innocence.

The fact is however that this still remains a SELF ATTACK, because the mind is still hating itself, still believes it is guilty, does not want to admit to this, is IN DENIAL, and refuses to even look at what is being denied. The unwillingness to look at the denied guilt is because of the belief that IT IS THERE, and that it is dark and real and terrible. And the ego DOES believe that you are full of sin. So instead of looking within, it looks without, to find the guilt there instead.

Once the guilt is denied and projected there forms an extremely long lists of all the sins, errors, guilts, mistakes, faults, weaknesses, defects, horrors, and various other forms of unholiness that are regarded as the truth about OTHER people, and not oneself. And THEIR guilt and sinfulness is kept apart from YOURS, so that you are in no way associated with it, and can maintain an illusion of being the innocent one.

Being subject to an incredibly long list of things other people are doing wrong, and thus attacked and victimised BY, is DESIRED AND CHOSEN, so that the face of innocence can be maintained. Even if it seem to hurt oneself to do so, and even if one has to be willing to BE victimised - or so it may appear on the surface - this is ACCEPTED as the natural cost of being able to find someone else to be the fall guy for the guilt.

We even in the extremes are willing to be attacked, hurt, made to be sick, destroyed and killed off, if it will mean that someone ELSE can be accused of sin. And then we can say, "brother by your hand I die." This means that we literally are willing to suffer, be sick, and die, if it means the sick body can accuse someone ELSE of causing it to be the way it is, so that the mind can be exonerated of the sin IT believes it has committed against self, others and God.

But not for an instant does the guilt leave your own mind, not for an instant does your mind truly become healed of it, not for an instant do you escape what is being denied, not for an instant do your accusations of other people's wrongfulness NOT target you, not for an instant do you escape the murderous consequences, and not for an instant do you get away with NOT being hurt by the projections. Yet alone the fact that you then hurt yourself through other people due to the way that you see them as causing you to be hurt, which you want.

Ultimately this means that this whole mechanism is STILL a way of attacking and destroying yourself, of hurting yourself, and that you are doing this to yourself. This is the secret of salvation. Recognizing that it is YOU who is accusing yourself of guilt, it is YOU who is projecting the guilt, it is YOU who is in denial, it is YOU who does not want to admit to wearing a face of innocence, it is YOU who wants to be a victim, and it is YOU who keeps using people to attack yourself. And not once do you really WANT it to stop, because that would mean having to be more honest, stop scapegoating, look within at the guilt, and undo it. Those who are dissatisfied with OTHERS, are incredibly dissatisfied with THEMSELVES.

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins."

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further."

And if you think you are not condemning yourself and it is only others that are condemning you, you ESPECIALLY are doing this. Your denial can be very strong and it can make it seem like you are not doing anything wrong AT ALL, that you have never chosen or provoked the slightest attack, and it is entirely everyone ELSE on your list of sins that has failed to measure up to God's standards.

Admitting to all this takes a greater willingness to be honest, to stop attacking yourself, to stop hating yourself, to stop projecting blame onto others, to stop believing that other people are the guilty ones, to stop judging others as the ones with egos, and to be far deeper in the willingness to look at WHAT YOU ARE DENYING. Because only by admitting that you are denying how much YOU hate yourself, are you going to ever stop finding a thousand ways to encourage others to hate you FOR you.

Projection of guilt simply keeps the separation going, and the ego absolutely loves that, as it hides behind its wall of "I'm completely innocent, I'm not doing anything to myself." You are trying to destroy yourself. Look at that! And stop doing it.

"The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears, at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good.

This aspect NEVER makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse. The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly wears can tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a well-known fact the world deals harshly with defenseless innocence? No-one who makes a picture of himself omits this face, for he has need of it. The other side he does not want to see. But it is here the learning of the world has set its sights. For it is here the world's reality is set, to see to it the idol lasts.

Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand condemned, because of what I am." On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them will not escape.

Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what YOU are has now become his sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved, and kept in darkness, where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. You can be neither BLAMED for what you are, nor can you CHANGE the things it makes you do. And you are each the symbol of your sins to one another, silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are.

That you are what your brother made of you seems most unlikely. Even if he did, who gave the face of innocence to you? Is this YOUR contribution? Who is, then, the "you" who made it? And who is deceived by all your goodness, and attacks it so? Let us forget the concept's foolishness, and merely think of this; there are two parts to what you think yourself to be. If one was generated by your brother, who was there to make the other? And from whom must something be kept hidden? If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what YOU are made of. Who is there to see? And what but is attacked could NEED defense?"

This is a slight technicality which the ego forgot to mention.

If you knew and could see that any attempt you make to influence or hurt or affect another, immediately has direct repercussions upon yourself, and that it is absolutely impossible to escape ANY of the effects, then you would have no choice but to always love.

It is ONLY because you do not see, ie are not aware, that this is true, and applies in every situation, that you think it's possible to get away with one set of rules applying to someone else that does not apply to you. Or that you can cause something without experiencing the effects.

The ego is entirely based on this idea that you are not equal to your brother in some way, that they can be the one who is a sinner and not you.

This creates the tremendous illusion, commonly believed-in by most of the planet, that you literally can attack or judge or harm or condemn without having any side effects whatseover.

This is false. It is not true at all.

You could call it karma. It's not pay-back. It's not compensation. It's the simply fact that WHATEVER you do, you WILL do it to yourself and everyone.

"Whatever you do unto the least of my brothers you do unto me" ... or something like that. Every way you treat everyone else, you are treating Jesus and God the same way.

Not necessarily that they will receive the treatment you are dishing out, but you will believe they are.

What applies to others applies to you. At all times.

There are no loopholes. There is no exit clause. There are no workarounds. There is no hope of being especially skilled or capable or clever or imaginative in how you figure out how to cheat the system. The system is not cheatable. God's laws are pemanent.

This is what "shared interests" are all about. You, being literally one with your brother, SHARE everything with them, and therefore receive everything you give.

This is also why giving and receiving are one. What you give you will receive.