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."
God doesn't have an attitude of making you guilty for doing certain things. He isn't up there judging and condemning. He isn't holding grievances or hating you for your choices. Nor does he forcibly stop you from doing whatever you want. Even if it's something that is seemingly hurtful to you and others.
When God created you, he extended his infinite unlimited freedom, giving you total free will. This was like a granting of permission, that you are free to create and do whatever you want. God placed NO LIMITS on your freedom. There are no clauses or exceptions, and no small print. You are completely free. It is because of this giving of total freedom that you are a fully created individual being.
That automatically means God isn't sitting there revoking your freedoms, judging you as guilty for the choices you make, regretting giving you freedom, wanting to enact his wrath because of the sins you commit, aiming to punish you for poor choices, or any other kind of control or coercion or attempts to stop you against your will.
God cannot go against your will because your will is actually shared with his own. To deny your freedom would deny his freedom. He isn't in the business of putting you in chains or binding you to certain rules and regulations.
With God there is always a sense of.... you can come and go as you freely wish. No-one is forcing you. You can choose heaven, you can choose hell. You can choose harmlessness or harm, peace or war, life or death.
One thing you cannot do is alter the laws of God, you cannot undo the golden rule, you cannot influence what reality is, you cannot alter what is ultimately true, and you cannot attack anything real. This is because God wills that reality be perfect and immortal and eternal forever, and reality is his creation, not yours.
You also cannot undo the fact that rejecting God results in illusions of pain and suffering, not because God punishes or makes you suffer for trying to violate his will, but because you choose and induce it upon yourself when you try to deny his nature. You literally assert that you want to suffer rather than be happy.
In granting you total freedom, you were also given the freedom to "mis-use" will, to try to will not to will, to attempt to deny what is still true, to try to use creative power to create nothing, and to attempt to repress and disempower yourself as much as you like.
God did not STOP you from believing that you could be separate from him, even though you can't. He didn't stop you from trying to attack him and his kingdom. He didn't stop you from trying to die, or making war and terror, or trying to enforce sickness, or anything else that ego would consider a sin. He doesn't WILL it for you, but he also doesn't force you not to.
Since you've been given total freedom, nothing that you choose is ever a reason for guilt. If you are free, you have been given permission when you were given freedom. God isn't holding you on a leash or binding you in chains. Nor does love enter where it is not welcome, nor does God demand or control or force anything.
God never says "you shouldn't have done that, you're sinful for breaking the rules". You cannot break the rules because you cannot violate your freedom. There are no rules because there are no limits on your freedom.
You actually are totally free to come and go, live or die, be happy or unhappy, be awake or asleep, whatever you want. But this also means that because you are totally free, you are also totally responsible for your choices. Total freedom IS total responsibility.
When you are willing to take total responsibility for your total freedom, you are also taking responsibility for the power of decision to choose what you want. You are now exercising your will to choose whether to will one thing or another, and whether to go home to heaven. This is why heaven is a choice that you have to make freely and willingly. It cannot be forced upon you.
This also then means that you can never blame anyone else for doing anything to you, because in your freedom you cannot have anything done to you against your freedom. You can attack your own freedom, in illusions, but no one can ever be guilty. Because everyone is always free. And you are always free from attack.
The secret of salvation then comes in, because in total responsibility you are the one who must have denied your own freedom. Attempting to be guilty is an attempt to deny that you are free, accusing self and others of violating God's rules and sinning against his law. But this has to be false because God has granted you the freedom AND POWER to do absolutely anything.
The ramification of this is that you could potentially choose never to go back to him. You could choose to be evil and murderous. You could choose destruction and sickness and death. Just as freely as you could choose healing and love and life. And you have done so - although you can always choose again.
This then reveals that whatever you are getting, you must be choosing, because you are free. And since freedom is power and responsibility, you must be choosing AND CAUSING everything that happens. This includes all forms of suffering, which must be doing to yourself freely. This is why you are master of your own destiny, and why you are ruler of the universe, and why nothing happens without your consent.
The question then is, does God just sit in heaven watching all this, allowing you to suffer for as long as you wish? In a sense, yes, except that God is also loving. God does not will that you suffer, or even believe that you suffer. God wills perfect happiness. God wills eternal life and deathlessness. God wills love not fear.
In his love, God has INVITED you freely to return your awareness to him. God isn't coercing you to go there. God HAS placed an atonement plan in place via the Holy Spirit, to gently orchestrate events and repurpose the world to lead you back to eternal life. And because the Holy Spirit is perfect and powerful, succeeding in doing so is effortless for him.
This doesn't mean you are ever forced to return or to give up your dreams. You STILL have to have a little willingness. You still have to be willing to learn - because the time that you take the curriculum is voluntary. But there is a PLAN in place to ENCOURAGE you to return to God. This plan is gentle and wise.
People are arranged to meet because they have POTENTIAL for a teaching/learning situation - for a holy relationship. There are no chance encounters. Events are organised by the Holy Spirit to be conducive to education and healing. This is why we have 'lessons', which appear as trials, so that we can learn to choose again.
None of this is forced. Before we incarnate we CONSENT to plans and events and encounters based on our current needs and wants. We give free permission for things to occur so that we can learn. We exhibit willingness, to whatever degree, sometimes more than others. And our life in the school unfolds accordingly.
But at NO TIME is there ever force, or requirements, or pressure, or sneering down the nose, or judgement, or reprimand, or punishment, or keeping score, or enforced karmic punishment, or any kind of "you're wrong for doing that".
As best as is GENTLY possible, God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit orchestrates time and space to make its events as conducive to change and spiritual progress as possible. As the therapist, the Holy Spirit knows how to do this expertly and perfectly. He knows how to GUARANTEE that everyone will eventually wake up to reality, and it is only a matter of time before we all do so.
You're still free. You will eventually freely return to God because you want to. Because you see no other alternative. Because you recognize that you gained nothing in leaving and will regain everything in returning. Not because anyone has the whip out. Not because there's hell to pay. Not because there is any kind of bully in the sky waiting to kick you in the ass if you take a step out of line.
It's all very loving and gentle and consenting. This is also why the "script is written" pertains to an OPT-IN free-willed curriculum where there is an outline "plan" for atonement but not a FORCED awakening. Nor are you locked into some kind of rollercoaster you can't get off, or some kind of replay of hell that you have no say in choosing.
This is simply because YOU ARE ALWAYS FREE. Your freedom is permanent. There are no restraints, no special rules or terms and conditions, no requirements, no punishments for your choices, and no judgement from God. God does care about you and wills that you awaken, and you will do so because your will is shared. But WHEN you do is still up to you just as it always has been. And this is why accepting atonement is your sole responsibility, because no-one else can do it for you.
"It is crucial to say first that this is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all." UrT1A1
"The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself." UrM19A4
"When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego's existence YOURSELF, you will have laid aside all anger and all attack, because they COME from an attempt to PROJECT RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ERRORS." UrT7I8
"Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it." UrT8E9
"The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given" UrT9A9
"The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit." UrT1B30N
"No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance concept onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment." UrT2A30
"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." UrT9K9
"Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His." UrT8E9
"Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love OF YOUR FREE WILL, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them. The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING." UrT12F12
"Salvation, perfect and complete, asks but a LITTLE wish that what is true be true. A LITTLE willingness to overlook what is not there. A LITTLE sigh that speaks for Heaven as a preference to this world which death and desolation seem to rule." UrT26H9
"Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven." UrT18F2
"Heaven is the decision I must make." UrW138
"Knowledge will be restored when YOU meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God, who made no bargains at all. It is merely the result of your misuse of His Laws on behalf of a will that was not His." UrT8A2
"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way." UrT2B69
"Perception ALWAYS involves some misuse of will, because it involves the mind in areas of uncertainty. The mind is very active because it has will-power. When it willed the Separation it willed to perceive. Until it chose to do this, it willed only to know. Afterwards, it had to will ambiguously, and the only way out of ambiguity IS clear perception." UrT3F13
"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life." UrW135L19
"The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a matter of time. In fact, both TIME and MATTER were created for this purpose. This appears to contradict free will, because of the inevitability of this decision. If you review the idea carefully, you will realize that this is not true. Everything is limited in some way by the manner of its creation. Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its Creator, who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose." UrT2B68
The way Jesus describes the separation from God, there's a huge laundry list of aspects to this "state" that we've entered. The whole entire ego thought system and all its contents, has been given many labels by Jesus. Labels which simultaneously apply to all of it.
He describes the separation as a "detour into fear" for example. He describes that any state where there's even a slight lack of love, as a state of sin. He describes the whole of spacetime as the idea of death, in that "without the idea of death there is no world" - an entire dream of death. He describes that any state less than wholeness will induce sickness and disease.
He also equates sickness with the denial of God. He equates sin with insanity. All forms of unforgiveness ie judgement come into it. All physical sensory states of false perception. Every conceivable form of attack and murder, war and destruction. ALL of it applies to the WHOLE system. Even though it may appear that all these things are *separate things* unrelated to each other.
That means that everything in the ego thought system is a state of fear, death, sickness, judgement, false perception, confusion, insanity, sin, murder, evil, unreality, war, conflict, suffering, denial etc.
What this then tells you about the true nature of fear, is that when you are afraid, you're not just having a small emotion of fear. You're actually "doing the whole system".
You're being entirely ego. And it's a total package deal, in which you are doing all the other aspects of the separation as well. Fear is an attack, fear is denial, fear is conflict, fear is insanity, fear is sin, fear is death, fear is sickness, fear is deception, etc.
If you also consider the split mind, given that Jesus also refers to the separation as a matter of dissociation, going into a dissociated state means one part of your mind is seemingly cut off from the other. This happens in fear. In fear you believe that you are a victim and not a victimizer, that something is happening to you against your will, and you're not the cause of it. It's a state of projection and blame. Fingers are pointed anywhere other than yourself, so that you're totally out of touch with the fact you're threatening yourself.
All special relationships are affected by fear as well. There is mistrust, inequality, and idol worship, all of which inspire a sense of fear that the other person will take away what you lack. Or even the fear that you've given them the right to do something to you. To be special is to be at war, which means to be conflicted, therefore uncertain, therefore afraid. The entire fall of man is a fall into fear - a detour into fear.
(re leaving the garden of eden, being cast out of heaven) "There is, however, considerable clarification of this concept, which must be understood before the real meaning of the "detour into fear" can be fully comprehended. "
We need to understand how and why fear is not just fear on its own, separate from guilt, or separate from death, or separate from sin. We need to RECOGNIZE that ALL the attributes of the ego ALL go together. You can't be participating in one without the other. Fear is actually death. Fear is actually sin. Fear is actually every possible aspect of the ego system rolled into one. Just as death is sin and war is murder and blame is guilt and insanity is judgement.
When you are afraid, you are not "just afraid", helpless and weak and unvinvolved, or cut off from the other ego aspects. You must also be being unloving, attacking, murderous, blameful, judgemental, hurtful, guilty, deceptive, confused, insane, sinful, etc.
Eventually we have to realize that all aspects of the ego system are ONE system, one idea, one problem, one state, calling for one solution. To not be deceived by the idea that you can be participating in only a little part of the system and not the whole thing. All illusions of the separations between these different things are not true. The entire ego, the whole separation idea, is rolled into every part of it. It is all the same.
Before the ego existed, you had a self, created by God. Just as everyone did. In the separation, you denied your self. The denial of self, was an attempt to destroy your self. But you had to have something to identify with. So you shifted your sense of "what am I" away from your soul, towards an ego that you invented.
The ego is really the idea of the denial of life, of God, and of your soul. It is the attempt to eradicate you, which is why all its efforts lead to death. While the ego seems to be a self, it really is a lack of self. It is the absence of you and the rejection of mind. It masquerades as a self, when in fact it is the opposite of having a self.
Having identified with it, when people talk about oneness and non-duality you might feel frightened, as if it means that YOU are going to end. So long as you are identified with your ego, which is a false and second self, you will interpret any movement towards God as threatening.
The ego does not understand union or oneness and interprets it as death. This is also why you have ego rebounds and feel afraid and offended when you try to move into the truth. It's not really that YOU are under threat, it's that the ego is. But having identified WITH it and believing it to be what you are, you interpret ITS fear as your own.
So then the idea of returning to oneness, seems threatening to your ego, because your ego indeed cannot exist in oneness. And if you think that your ego is your self, YOU WILL not want to wake up. It will seem to threaten you. Especially the idea that the ego does not exist at all, is taken by the ego as an attack, and YOU will experience this as an attack upon your very existence. But only IF you believe the ego is your self.
The truth is that when the ego is undone, this happens as a result of YOU dis-identifying with it. Or to put it another way, you reintegrate yourself, identifying with your soul/spirit, reclaiming your mind, and dis-associating from the ego. This means you stop believing that the ego is your self, or that you even have an ego. Once you can recognize that your self, and your ego, are two different things, you are no longer threatened by the idea of undoing it.
A return to heaven is not really a return to no self. In fact, the ego is the state of no self. It is the state of self denial. It is a denial of life and a denial of existence and of identity in Christ. Returning to heaven is a REUNION with your real self, a re-identifying as a soul or Son of God in the Sonship, and a reclaiming of your true nature. You actually are returning to HAVING a self. That's why this is all about RESURRECTION.
The self God created you to be is permanent and will always exist in reality. Your Holy Self is God-given and cannot ever be destroyed. It's only your identification or sense of "who am I" that has become confused. Shifting your "who am I" from the non-existent ego to the permanent soul, can be nothing but reassuring and authentic.
Some people interpret the course to mean there is either a oneness or a duality, either God alone or many egos. And that undoing egos results in God being alone again. But this is not sufficient or accurate. God created you as a real living being, and it is you IDENTIFYING WITH ego that produces the ego and the separation, NOT the creation of an individual identity. You were an individual (who also shared everything) before this all happened.
Returning to God is not the annihilation of your individuality, it is the reclaiming of your individuality. The ego is NOT individuality, it is the rejection of having any real identity at all.
"God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."
I was being controlling. I did not want things to be the way they are. i wanted to stop them being the way they are and be different. I could not accept that this was okay or that it should be this way.
But I did not realize the effect that this control has on the world.
When I resist what's happening, I resist by attempting to control and reject what's going on. I try to shut it out, at the same time as trying to put into place some kind of 'alternative' that I think is better or more correct. So there I am in a state of strong rejection, and strong enforcement, simultaneously - which obviously is conflicting and therefore upsetting.
I did not realize that my attempt to resist and control was actually CAUSING the situation I was looking at, to appear to me in the way it was appearing.
The more I did not like what was happening, the more I tried to stop it and control it. But the more I did that, the more the situation seemed to get further from how I wanted it.
The more we control, the more we resist. So now that I am in resistance, that resistance only becomes stronger as I become more passionate about forcing things to be how I think they should be. In fact, it's really impossible for me to HAVE things the way I want them, because to make them be that way takes a tremendous amount of control and manipulation, which means I am in tremendous resistance, which means I am not in a state of acceptance.
There never will be a time when I can both be controlling and enforcing situations while also experiencing acceptance. So in effect, i will never be able to experience that the outcome I wanted has actually occurred and that I am at peace with it. Unless that is I became SO incredibly controlling that I violated boundaries and rights attempting to get others to change. Which would of course be completely inappropriate on many levels.
I did not know that trying to control a situation makes it worse, and takes it further from acceptability. How can anyone ever find the peace of acceptance through being controlling? Good luck.
The more I saw the situation is needing to be controlled because it was 'out of control' and unacceptable, the more the people involved seemed to become even more out of control and unacceptable. Funny that. They reacted to my controlling efforts with their own resistance against my attacks, so no wonder the scenario I was trying to get away from simply became more stuck and rigid. What you resist persists.
My strategy is now shifting. I need to learn to be accepting, not controlling. Allowing, not enforcing. Permitting, not resisting. And that means, or at least seems to mean to my ego, that I cannot have things the way I want them. Which to the ego, seems to suck, right?
My ego wants to have a world where I get to 'control' certain things, even if it's only in the scope of my 'own life' or my 'own body'. I still want to have that control over 'my' life. And so that really means, I am wanting to control MYSELF. How strange is that?
Control isn't the same as free will. And having no control does not mean you don't have freedom. In fact you have more freedom when you are not controlling. How's that for a paradox? Control takes away your freedom instead of giving it to you! Yet another way in which the ego says one thing and does the exact opposite.
So then, to my intellect, it doesn't understand how I can be accepting and uncontrolling and still be in any way 'happy' about what's going on, or how I can have any 'say' in what's going on. It doesn't understand how it's possible to accept what is, and yet have the freedom and power to do something to change something. It sees acceptance as the doorway to powerlessness, to no choice, to passivity and victimhood. Interesting how the ego sees it this way in order to avoid acceptance, because if you become really accepting you become empowered.
Acceptance without powerlessness or passivity. A novel concept.
You as Christ have not been changed even a tiny little bit by anything that supposedly has happened in the world.
You as Christ are perfect love, perfectly invulnerable, perfectly loved and adored by God, and perfectly healthy. You are absolutely immortal. You stand as a beacon of perfect love shining as a brilliant light and nothing can happen to you.
This is your real identity. This is what is buried underneath layers and layers of bullshit in your mind. False beliefs about who you are. False beliefs about who did what to you.
Nobody has ever done anything to you wholly intentionally in full awareness and sanity. Anyone sane could not harm another. Anyone sane could not do anything to victimize you. If anyone has ever seemed to do anything to you, you are grossly mistaken for believing that they did so on purpose, intentionally, from a completely sane and aware state of mind. They were NOT in their right mind. And it is only by not being in the right mind that a person could even conceive of treating you as anything but the perfect love that you are.
So if there's anyone in your story who has ever seemed to do something to you, and you believe that they did it from a place of rational mind, a place of love, a place of full awareness, you are mistaken. Nobody has ever done anything harmful from a state of sanity and love. That person must be insane, and they must not realize what they are doing.
This is why Jesus says, "forgive them for they know not what they do". There is a tremendous recognition in this statement. It sees that when a person is 100% love, they can only be loving. When they are not 100% love, they enter into illusions and darkness and despair and DO NOT KNOW what they are doing. So they can only act mistakenly, wrongly, incorrectly, and with faulty reasoning or justification.
They can't ever do something unloving from a foundation of perfect love and innocence. So whoever hurt you, whatever they did, they were NOT in their right mind, and this is why they are forgivable. It's only because you believe they WERE in their right mind and that therefore they deliberately chose to do what they did, that they are guilty. They did not choose sanely. THEY were experiencing an unlove, an unworthiness, a guilt, a self-attack, a shame and an abandonment, and they tried to project this onto you thinking you were the same. They were just mistaken.
So you have to peel away all these layers of false belief that you've formed in your mind which still are convinced someone did something intentionally to hurt you. There is no such thing as intentional hurt or willful hurt or intentional victimizing. Victimizing can only occur in the minds of those who believe they are not loved by God and who have attacked themselves already. This is why they act out. This is why they find scapegoats, and maybe is why you ended up being their target. They were not sane. You need to recognize this in order to be able to let go of feeling unfairly treated and blaming them for what they did. Again, as Jesus said, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Underneath all of this, you are still absolutely loved by God, absolutely innocent, absolutely immortal, absolutely unchanged and unaffected by anything in the world or history of time and space. You are perfectly whole and innocent and healed and powerful. You are unassailable, invulnerable, immortal, permanent and strong. Nothing can happen to you. Nothing has ever happened to you. This is the secret truth hiding underneath all of the LIES which try to portray you as having been affected, changed, modified, hurt, damaged, or in any way made to be or mean something other than God intended. You are not any of that. You ARE and CAN ONLY BE as God intended.
You are Christ. You are holy and innocent and free.
The ego does not exist. It cannot be loved or embraced. It cannot be turned into a friend. It cannot wake up or heal or convert into something spiritual. It is nothing but an artificial idea of impossibility, and as such is impossible. It does not exist, cannot exist, and has no reality. To have a relationship with it is it attempting to have a relationship with itself.
Light dispels darkness. Ego is darkness. Love is light. If you shine your love in the direction of the ego darkness, it simply will disappear, because it does not exist as anything other than the illusion of the absence of love, which is impossible. It's not there. Shadows are not truth, light is truth. And darkness cannot hide the light. You cannot "love your ego" without your love disappearing it.
While it may be a stepping stone to learn not to fight with the ego, since that is the ego fighting itself, and to not resist it, and to not attack the body, and to undo all basis for ego thinking and reactions "to" the ego, this is only so that the ego itself is undone. The ego is already undone, we just are hallucinating that it exists at all. It never existed to begin with.
Eventually we have to look within and be willing to see that not only is there no sin, there is no ego either. There IS no central core of isolation. As the clouds which promised to conceal an underlying artificial identity clear, you discover that there is nothing there. It was not what you expected. There is no ego to go up against or even to really undo. Enlightenment is a recognition and not a change at all.
Holy Spirit knows that the ego does not exist and this does this forgiveness teach:
"T-9.IV.5. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear."
(do not use fearfulness or making illusions real in an attempt to relate to or deal with or undo or address the ego at all)
"2 Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it."
(do not make the ego a real thing and then attempt to have a relationship with it or deal with it or change it or do anything really about it directly)
"3 Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you."
(True forgiveness is fore-giveness, it gives ahead of time. That means, it looks WITH a forgiving attitude, IN ORDER TO ENSURE that it is not mistaken, so that it does not MAKE error or ego, so that there IS no ego or error to have to undo. Only when forgiveness fails do we enter judgement - he who would not forgive must judge - which makes the ego, and so if we simply remain fore-giving the ego does not come into manifestation at all.)
"4 Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven."
(Pretty straightforward isn't it? If you make the ego real in any way then you will start to fight with it and believe that you have work to do or stuff to fix or whatever, and doing so you will be stuck.)
"5 What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent."
(Error does not exist because true forgiveness fore-gives, failing to make errors or perceive erroneously, and therefore RECOGNIZES that there IS no error, therefore there is no ego.)
"6 By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it."
(There is no ego, period. Believing there is an ego, is an attempt to make an ego real, which is impossible. Ego is fiction. It's just a useful concept for teaching that it does not exist, and nothing else.)
Look at all these clear statements by Jesus testifying that you can either be IN HEAVEN, or ON EARTH. They are TWO WORLDS, two places, two locations if you will. You can be IN heaven, or ON earth. When you are on earth, you are not in heaven. The two worlds do not overlap. One is real, one is illusion.
"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."
"It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heavens peace."
"earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form."
"It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. "
"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
"Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds."
"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. "
"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing."
"God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."
"In Heaven as on earth this is forever true."
"It does not matter if you think you are in earth or Heaven. What your Father wills for you can never change."
"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits."
"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the ACTUAL CONDITION of what was but reflected TO them here."
"Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven."
"In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected."
"So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. "
"Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven."
"It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know this star is there."
"Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and, although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here."
"For there is nothing in Heaven OR earth that it resembles, and so, however much you seek for its reality, you CANNOT find it, because it is NOT real."
"The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven."
"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."
"The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him."
"The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here. ASPECTS of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of UNREALITY. Aspects of reality can be seen IN EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. Yet only God can gather them together by crowning them AS ONE with the final gift of eternity."
"Because my feet are on the ground and my hands are in heaven, I can bring down the glories of Heaven to my brothers on earth."
"As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete."
"And who would pardon Heaven? Yet on earth you need the means to let illusion go."
"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. "
"On earth, it is your ONLY function, and you must learn that it is ALL YOU WANT TO LEARN."
"Before you make ANY decisions for yourself, remember that YOU HAVE DECIDED AGAINST YOUR FUNCTION IN HEAVEN, and consider carefully whether you WANT to make decisions here."
"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs. But here on earth the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give."
What God creates must be permanent because He is permanence and can only create like Himself.
Therefore, if something is not permanent, if it changes at all in any way, if it is born or dies, or if it comes and goes, or transforms, or isn't always the same forever, then God did not create it.
Since God is reality, being the consistency and constancy needed for there to BE a "reality", some state which never wavers and is completely reliable, then anything that wavers or changes is not REAL.
Therefore, the physical world, the physical universe, everything in it, all bodies, everything you see here, and all forms of perceiving it, cannot be real.
Since what is real actually exists, permanently, and since what is unreal cannot possibly exist because it is not permanent and always changes, what changes cannot be REAL.
Therefore, because the physical universe is constantly changing, it CANNOT be real, and it MUST be an illusion. God cannot have created it, and it cannot really exist.
It is as plain and simple as this.
God is infinite. Infinite means in-finite, not finite. Finite means limitations, and limitations allow multiple possibilities. Infinity does not mean 'all possibilities'. It means all REAL possibility, but in terms of number, there is only ONE possibility. Infinity means oneness - one possibility, one reality, one way. This is how God is infinite. Infinite does not mean that God creates all kinds of forms and many multitudes of different things. God only creates ONE state of being and nothing else.
Nothing real can be threatened, because nothing unreal exists. God cannot be threatened because the physical world and all of its weapons of separation does not exist. This world is nothing but an ILLUSION that a world exists, and if you believe it and perceive it then you have fallen for the illusion and are not awake.
"There is no world." This is the central thought the course would aim to teach. - ACIM
Can I ACTUALLY do anything to change this outcome/situation whatsoever?
If the answer is NO: surrender and accept what is.
If the answer is YES: surrender to Holy Spirit and let Him inspire you what action to take.
Either way surrender brings peace of mind. Letting go of control.
Is there actually anything you can really do to change [xyz problem] right now? And be honest about it. Usually the answer is no. If you can't change it, then why have any upset about it? Why fret or worry about it? Why even get into a STORY about it? Why even try to wrestle with it, resist it, fight it, be angry about it? None of that will change it, right? So it is actually FUTILE. Why bother spending your energy doing what is completely futile? Your energy is better spent in what is productive and constructive and possible.
Otherwise you are fighting with impossibility, and you will lose.
Surrender.
This is somewhat the basis of the AA idea "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the power to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
You need *discernment* in order to be able to tell if you can REALLY do anything at all to change matters. Discernment requires Holy Spirit's thought system, because you need to decide based on TRUE or FALSE, rather than right/wrong/good/bad/happy/sad etc. And thus you need a lot of HONESTY and willingness to admit the truth.
So discern. Is it true that you can change this? If not, then you might as well just surrender and accept it. There is much more peace to be had there. Then join with Holy Spirit for inspiration and guidance and proceed from there. Fighting an impossible fight is a complete waste of time.
I suppose this is also in line with what Eckhart Tolle suggested (and others) ... 'resist nothing' or as the Borg in Star Trek say, "resistance is futile".