All thoughts create form at some level. This is because thoughts (ego thoughts) are ideas about separation. Regardless of their specific content they are always separation ideas.
Separation ideas always therefore lead to "form" in some way.
What this means is, the idea of separation from God, having that tiny mad idea, AUTOMATICALLY means that form MUST come from it. Form must be the end result of an idea of separation. The thought ITSELF shows up as form - separate images appearing real, and eventually being so "firm" that they seem like solid matter.
Form results from thoughts of separation because separation requires us to make an illusion of how two things are different and disconnected, not sharing space or properties. These illusory appearances make it seem like separation is real and result in the illusion of "separate objects".
Any ego thought therefore emphasizes separation between illusions. As the division between thoughts intensifies, or becomes more "dense", it HAS to eventually lead to the illusory manifestation of what we would call "physical solid matter" - a physical universe - which is essentially just a very heavy/serious thought.
Or to put it simply, the mad idea of being separate from God HAD to create a physical universe. It is a completely logical progression and consequence of having such an idea. Form derives from separation.
If separation is perceived or believed to be real, some kind of universe of forms, to some degree, must seem to manifest.
Before the physical universe there were also prior "stages" if you will, subtler levels of this, which have produced additional levels in the dream. Other dimensions. These are all part of the same ego holographic dream and many of these levels feature form to varying degrees.
As Jesus says for example, nighttime and waking dreams differ only in their forms/content. Being in the physical world is nothing more than being inside the tiny mad idea of separation. It is just an idea, and is not really happening. This is why the physical universe is an illusion. It's an illusory thought of separation - a thought of impossibility.
When you can recognize the illusion correctly, you have completed forgiveness. This means being able to transcend and overlook the thought which has made the physical world. Seeing the truth of this, is seeing the "real world", ie the true nature of the worlds of form (which may pertain to physical level as well as higher levels/dimensions of form).
Overlooking illusions makes them disappear. Overlooking the thought of separation makes it, and everything which has come from it (is inside it), disappear. This is why the physical and other higher dimensional universes MUST eventually disappear, or rather be recognized as having been nothing more than a dream/illusion to begin with. Illusions recognized must disappear. The tiny mad idea, recognized as purely false, must end.
Only Heaven is reality, the home of Immortal Spirit. Only Heaven will be left when all of these illusory universes disappear. Only Heaven is the Home of God and the Son of God. Only Heaven, God's Creation, is the real truth - the real universe of oneness.
In A Course in Miracles, in the beginning, you are safe in God, happily co-creating with Him. Then along comes the tiny mad idea. The authority problem forms, level confusion begins, you go into the separation and the idea of real sin is given belief.
Believing that sin is possible, has reality, has occurred producing real effects, and is irreversible, is an unforgiving attitude. If you were to be forgiving you'd recognize that sin is impossible and there is no sin - that you remain innocent. But without forgiveness you immediately enter into the belief that sin is real.
At this point, you are already attacking yourself. You have condemned yourself by believing that you really sinned against God. You now have an unwillingness to forgive yourself. This sets up a chain reaction whereby, since you sinned, and you did it, you must be guilty of it. And since you are guilty, you deserve punishment.
This is all a judgement that you are placing on yourself. It has nothing to do with other people. Just the simple belief that you really sinned is enough to condemn yourself to death. Actually death is a completely logical conclusion if sin is real, and until the sin is undone, you will seek to destroy yourself for what you did.
So the mere act of believing sin is real is actually an attack upon yourself, a condemnation. And this automatically is going to lead to you believing that you should be punished. It will even make sense to you that you should be punished. You will agree that punishment is called for, because of your guilty nature.
If you believe in your guilt you're going to continue the process of self attack. You will allow yourself to be hurt, because you will agree with punishment as if it should be happening. You won't resist it or defend yourself against it. You'll welcome suffering and want retribution against yourself. And when you arrange for others to seem to play the part of victimizer, punisher or abuser, you are secretly wanting to be the victim because you think you deserve it.
But the more dangerous aspect here is, it isn't really others or the world or God that are going to enact this vengeance for you and upon you. It's you. Your own belief that you sinned and are guilty will compel you to believe you should be hurt. You are starting to hate yourself and find yourself unworthy of love. And you will start trying to hurt yourself. It will make sense to you that you should suffer and you will actively try to make it happen because it seems justified.
As this develops you are becoming more and more suicidal. What is suicide other than self attack, self punishment, and an attempt to destroy yourself? We should make clear here that the entire ego thought system is an attempt to destroy your identity. It's an attack on God's Son, on His immortality. It's an attempt to deny that you exist and destroy yourself. So the whole ego thought system is suicidal and self-defeating from the beginning.
This essentially is the cause of all death. Every single death, no matter the seeming circumstances or appearances of causes, is solely the result of the belief that sin is real. And all forms of sickness are symptoms of the fear of God's wrath, the desire to suffer, and an attempt to project your sin onto others in a futile effort to deny that you believe you did it.
"The wages of sin is death."
"No one dies wihtout their own consent"
"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."
"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."
So anyone who believes they really sinned, is suicidal, and is choosing to die. They are consenting to punishment, because they believe they deserve it for what they did. Every single dead body in the history of the human race has been caused by the belief in sin. It's essentially a death wish, a wish for the death of yourself as consequence of your sinfulness.
If you consider the belief that you sinned against God, attacking Him against His will by usurping his power, playing God and having authority over Him, you will now believe that God is entirely justified in vengeance. In essence, you will believe that God wants you dead - that your death is God's will. And this will then lead to the belief that you cannot go home, you are not welcome in Heaven, sin cannot be undone, and there is no choice at all.
Based on this a death wish is formed, producing the sense of the inevitability of death. It's the belief that returning to Eternal Life is no longer an option, so the only thing you can do is suffer and die. This makes death the only path you can seemingly follow. And it's this belief that makes death seem inevitable. The driving force is your own belief that you really sinned, which is already a way to condemn yourself to death.
The good thing is, that in truth you did not really sin, God is unchanged and nothing has really happened. You have only dreamed of all this and there is no real sin at all. Nothing real can be threatened so the idea of sinning against something real is nonsense. This means that if you can recognize your sinlessness, which is accepting the Atonement truth, the belief in sin is uprooted at its core. There is no foundation for sin when innocence is recognized, and this is how the atonement cures you by proving sin doesn't exist.
"Only atonement can be said to cure."
The good thing then is, that if you are willing to forgive yourself and recognize you never sinned, you are not guilty, and you are still loved by God, this opens up to the door to option B. You can now CHOOSE whether or not to go towards death or towards eternal life. Death becomes OPTIONAL. You recognize you don't HAVE to be sick or die, and you actually can choose never to die again. To never commit suicide.
By acknowledging you are welcome to return back Home to God, because you are forgiven and have never sinned, Real Life is on the cards again and you can choose it. Which means you can choose not to die! You can choose to experience eternal life, and never have to die again. To never again torture yourself, make yourself unhappy, suffer or make yourself sick. That you deserve to live and not die, because there is no sin or death and you are free.
"There is no death, the Son of God is free."
"I am still as God created me."
"There is no sin."
The acceptance of the Atonement is the end of suicide because it is the end of death. It is the end of the sense of inevitability or "lack of another option". It's the reclaiming of the power to choose to accept the eternal life you already have. And it therefore signals the end of the need for sickness and death. Those who are innocent have not sinned, are not guilty, do not deserve to die, and thus death has no purpose.
The fact is then, that most of the people on this planet are suicidal. To varying degrees, we're all trying to die. And most believe death is inevitable because they have not forgiven the belief in sin entirely.
"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."
No-one deserves to die, and no-one needs to die. In truth no one CAN die, but we can confuse ourselves with things that seem to.
"You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."
Given you cannot die and are permanently innocent, it is pointless to try to make death happen. This is why Jesus is asking you to "swear not to die, you holy Son of God." Only those who are committing suicide want death and thus choose it. Those who are awakening to truth, forgiving themselves and are preparing to go Home to God, MUST relinquish the attraction to and need for death. And this automatically melts away as the guilt and sin disappear. Without sin there is no death. And without death there is no world of sin.
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
If you have not sinned you are not guilty. If you are not guilty you do not need to be punished. If you do not need to be punished you have no basis for hurting yourself. If you stop hurting yourself you never have to suffer or die ever again. This is the secret of salvation.
This is a course in LIFE, in resurrection, and returning to your immortality. It is the end of all suicidal death and the restoration of eternal life. Death is a failure to forgive. And succeeding in forgiveness opens the gates of heaven.
When I read in the course that anger is an attempt to make someone guilty, I didn't at first relate to it. I had to stop and look at what happens, what I'm doing, when I get angry toward someone.
And that didn't typically happen all that often, but when it did I noticed it was true, what I was basically doing was trying to reinforce "how guilty" someone was. I was trying to MAKE them be guilty.
In anger there's this attempt to amplify the "guiltiness" of someone. And it's not even really tied to what they appeared to do or the severity of it. We could just be going to town raging at them way beyond what anything calls for. Probably convinced that whatever "sin" they committed is the REASON WHY the anger is justified.
But then the second insight is that in order to make someone BECOME guilty, we actually have to put guilt ONTO them. A guilt that they do not have initially. Where does that guilt come from? We actually provide it ourselves, and hurl it towards them through projection.
So then we see that anger is really "what it feels like" when you are hurling guilt. The whole intensity of it, the enforcement of it, the sense of righteousness, the pushing and forcing, it's all designed to "hurl" and "transmit" guilt onto the person.
But then this also gives rise to a third insight, that if we are hurling guilt at people, and it's not their guilt, then we must be reaching inside of ourselves and finding some guilt there, in order to have something to hurl. So that means... drumroll... we're really the ones that we think are guilty.
In addition this means that the "reasons why" we claim we're being justified in anger are false - it's not because of what someone else did, we're angry because of what we believe WE did. We are accusing them of our own sin and guilt, so that we can try to make ourselves feel better and deflect attention away from the darkness within. This is why anger is never justified and you are never upset for the reason you think.
So if we're the guilty ones, it basically means we're angry at ourselves and have attacked ourselves first. And if we hadn't done this, if we hadn't manufactured a whole stockpile of guilt, we'd have nothing to hurl at other people. We wouldn't be able to FIND other people to be guilty of anything.
This then leads to the fourth insight, that if we were to undo all of our guilt within ourselves, we would never have to even lift a finger to try to find others innocent. We'd automatically be innocent within, and would look out from this innocence upon others and find them innocent also. We'd never be angry, never project blame, and would just be happy all the time.
"I am never upset for the reason I think." UrW5
"ALL anger is nothing more than an attempt to MAKE SOMEONE FEEL GUILTY, and this attempt is the ONLY basis which the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only need the ego has, and, as long as you identify WITH it, guilt will remain ATTRACTIVE to you." UrT15H10
"Anger is NEVER justified. Attack has NO foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this forgiveness rests, AND IS BUT NATURAL." URT10G1
I get this feeling that deciding on my own is not the right thing to do, given everything that's said about choosing not to decide, not doing it all on your own, etc. So then I feel torn.
But what I then see is that really, when I am in a state of indecision, fear, doubt, etc I am really not in a state of decisiveness. I probably am trying to decide, but I am not being decisive. And my attempts to decide are really delaying mechanisms to avoid the certainty of decision. In this state, I'm not really making any decisions at all anyway.
Pretty much every time Jesus says "decide", I am in a state of fear and self-doubt. I recognize then that staying in this state is not going to bring about any kind of decision, and if I want to become decisive, I have to get out of the fear.
Sometimes then, I will remark to Jesus that I don't know what to decide, and He will say, "you know". As I pull myself out of the fear and become more dynamic, more certain, more sure of myself, I then automatically feel more decisive and knowing and sure of what it is that I will do.
Then I have to even put aside this idea that I don't already know - that I even need to decide, and stop for a minute to become aware of what it is that I know already.
If I already know, a decision is not needed. If I already know, then I don't need to even get into the fearful drama of "not knowing" what to do. Then, somewhere deep inside, I tune into what it is that I know, and in this there is an acceptance, a peace and a clarity that makes it much more obvious what to do.
Usually knowing is covered up by all kinds of faffing about, doubting, fearing, drama, control, thinking, etc. None of it is really needed because it's actually all a distraction away from knowing. I can't know what to do when I'm choosing to be in a state of not-knowing. Seems so simple, but easy to get lost in.
As I go forward, and as I embark on new endeavors led by trusting Jesus etc, I find myself coming up against fears and concerns I didn't have to face before. Yet each step of the way He guides me to trust, to know, to put aside fear, and to recognize the ways that I am undermining my own certainty and decisiveness. In other words, learning to claim and work in a more empowered state of confidence.
I am finding that the more I am willing to put aside the dishonest toys of fear and self-sabotage, the more I am growing in confidence and strength and certainty. Also fear is reducing, people are growing ever-more approachable, and procrastination is melting.
This is how we gradually move into action. This is how we get off the fence and become truly helpful. And this is how we let go of the dependency on the ego as our guide as to how we should waste time.
We need to learn to be truly decisive, certain, knowing and trusting, before we might become actually willing to allow God to guide and direct us in all that we do. This somehow is tied into becoming willing to do His Will, and to follow Jesus's direction. But in a partnership of mutual agreement.
So, every feeling you have, every reaction you have, you choose to have, on your own. And it has nothing to do with stimuli or what other people are doing or what happens.
So you're really walking around with a blank slate, happy, having absolutely no reason to be upset, and then you literally are picking something out of the environment and saying, AHA, I think I'm going to claim that I'm triggered by that, I'm going to create a reaction, I'm going to choose to be unhappy.
So then you do.
And it had nothing to do with what happened outside you.
So really, you're this kind of walking talking reacto-machine which just fires random reactions all over the place for no particular reason.
If nothing outside of you is really to blame or really has anything to do with why you are upset, and your upset is just YOUR OWN STUFF which you need to be fully responsible for, then you quite literally are manufacturing every interpretation and every reactive experience that you're experiencing, inside yourself, by yourself.
So once you start to take responsibility for this, then this is breaking the spell. It's breaking the connection between something happening and you then having a reaction and blaming the causality of it on the thing - "it caused me to have an effect" gets broken.
Once that starts to be broken and you stop CONNECTING or JOINING fake external causes/triggers with internal effects, and you realize the cause is IN YOU not out there, now you're in a different scenario. You cause all of the effects you are experiencing, AND you are causing all of what SEEM to be the effects of outside causes. You are causing your own reactions!
So now you can stop having reactions, by choosing not to. Or you can at least own up to being the one who is choosing to have it. And what begins to happen as you begin to 'stop' making the tie between external causes and internal effects, and reclaim the tie between internal causes and internal effects, is you start to realize they are not and don't need to be joined.
So that means, if you wish, on a whim, you could decide NOT to have any reaction whatsoever to something you'd normally react to. And conversely, you could decide to react on purpose to something ridiculous that would not normally call for a reaction (a bit harder to do without the unconscious element).
So as you practice this you grow stronger in the awareness that your reactions aren't actually caused by anything outside you, and that you can - at will - choose not to have them. By owning them you disconnect from the ego and automatically choose Holy Spirit. And by severing the tie between external causes and internal effects you now regain access to your inner causality.
So how about you then learn to simply choose to no longer PRETEND to be at the effect of external causes, and maybe you ADMIT that you cannot BE affected by anything external WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT (including death). And then you find yourself laughing because you realize you're being upset for absolutely no reason and because of no cause, which gives way to laughing for absolutely no reason and with no cause. Because when YOU are the cause, you are aligned with GOD the Cause, which is nothing but joyful.
While doing a fervent forgiveness process, I started to think of my relationship with God. This is where things get juicy. We might not think of whether we are really loving God because we typically are not aware of God, he's not exactly popping up in front of our faces or coming along to trigger us. But there is certainly a hefty body of emotional and psychological disturbance in between us and Him.
So I started to forgive God, along the lines of looking at what I believed I had done to God, and what I believed God had done to me. This included looking into whether I believed I'd sinned against him, hurt him, offended him, upset him, made him angry, changed him, etc.. and vice versa whether God had ever attacked me, sinned against me, hurt me, rejected or abandoned me, judged me, etc.... all ending up with the firm resolution that no, none of this had occurred. And then once that was out of the way, it's possible to more directly accept atonement and see that God still loves you and finds you innocent and so on... the relationship with God heals.
Jesus told me this was "good", to look into this and forgive God for what I thought He'd done to me, and to forgive myself for what I thought I'd done to him. None of it had really happened or had any truth to it. This was all beautiful and lovely. But you can bet this led to a MAJOR catharsis afterwards. I've found this before as well. If I receive a shit-ton of love from God, it can trigger extremely deep catharsis. We all probably have some deep unhealed shite surrounding our direct relationship with Him, and this stuff has to be brought to light and healed.
"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely ***the sense of loneliness and abandonment all the separated ones experience***. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering and intense fear of loss."
All of this stuff has to be healed. Every separated self experiences this automatically. We are all, with egos, experiencing a belief in being abandoned by God, rejected, alone, afraid, unworthy etc. No one is excluded from this. Until atonement is accepted and we are reunited with God we are forced into a state where depression, anxiety, fear, worry, loss, helplessness, misery, suffering, sickness etc are all part of the territory. It's a very deep sense of suffering that keeps God's love at a distance.
Our relationship with God must be healed of all of these horrors and looking directly at these things is not easy. It requires that you "forgive God" and yourself in relation to him, to directly undo the "separation" between you and Him, and thus the separation itself. It's one thing to forgive your brothers, but you MUST also forgive God everything you've ever accused Him of or believed true of Him in error. And make no mistake this can be the biggest emotional hurdle you will encounter because it has been ongoing for many lifetimes, through all worldly experiences, and for the whole time you have been away from home.
I used to attack myself pretty severely through the fear of being judged by others. I was painfully shy and perceived a need to withdraw in an effort to protect myself, but all this did was hurt myself deeply.
My shyness was a coping mechanism for protecting my sensitivity. I had failed to learn how to express myself fully, and it didn't help that I was an introvert. I had trouble learning social skills and asserting myself. Every social interaction was literally painful.
I did not realize what I was doing to myself. My perception was that other people were perceiving me in a certain way, which I was simply trying to get away from.
After a social encounter, particularly one with strangers or where I had to go into someone else's home or be surrounded by a crowd, I would feel deeply, deeply hurt. I would become strongly embarrassed in the midst of the situation, would tense up, become very quiet (paralyzed) and experience things as though everyone was judging me.
I would return home with a very very deep inner emotional pain, a feeling of "hurt", that was so strong I had no choice but to have a deep cry in order to deal with it. Every social encounter seemed like a total failure and something I did not want to be a part of, making me avoid them even more. It was deeper and stronger than any other emotional upset about any other situation in life. It felt absolutely horrible.
When strangers would even walk past I would immediately cringe and feel attacked. I suspected they were a threat, and saw them as enemies or someone I did not want to be around. They seemed to have power over me and I hid away and withdrew in an effort to avoid people.
I had no idea what was happening in my perception or what I was doing to myself. I only thought that other people were hurting me and causing me to feel like shit. It seemed to all be their fault, and they were the ones who we being judgmental.
But over time I have gradually, slowly learned, that this is not the case. It was difficult to come to realize this.
I saw that I was in fact judging everyone else. I saw them as judged in some way, although this seemed to be subtler and concealed behind my reaction to this perception. Seeing them as judgers automatically meant I was judged by them and therefore at their effect. The effects this produced in my own self was the deep hurt.
I had to realize that in order to see them as judgers, I had to believe they were the ones being judgmental, which was in fact my own belief. I was making them out to be judgers. And that meant, I was simultaneously judging my own self by seeing myself in the role of "judged" by them.
It never really had anything to do with other people judging me either. In fact, probably in 99% of cases they were not being judgmental at all. They were not even interested. They weren't saying anything about me or pointing a finger or anything. But I had this "mental illness" of strongly believing that I couldn't go anywhere without being under attack. And it wouldn't matter if someone pointed out that no-one really cared to judge me because they were too busy with their own selfish interests, I couldn't see it.
What I was really doing was seeing myself as judge-worthy, disassociating a part of my mind and projecting it onto others, seeing them as the judger rather than myself, and then creating the effects within myself that correspond to how I perceived others to be perceiving me. I literally was hurting myself. The hurt I did to myself was far worse than anything anyone else ever did, and it was all because of how I was mis-perceiving.
Underneath this fear of judgement there was a belief that I deserved to be judged, because I believed I had sinned and was guilty. I didn't see myself as worthy of love and therefore perceived that others agreed with me. My direct self-attack turned into indirect self-attack that appeared to be coming at me from other people, but was really coming at me from within a part of my mind that I did not recognize as myself.
I was being both the judger of myself, and the one who was judged. Or in other words, a victimizer and a victim. I played both roles but only saw myself as playing the victim role, and unfairly so. The mere act of perceiving oneself in a victim role automatically creates effects in yourself, typically emotional reactions which try to correspond to the causes that you see as outside of yourself. Because I saw others as judging me severely, I felt severely hurt. Truth is, both the perception that others were judging and the hurtful effects of the judgement were both put in place simultaneously by myself.
I needed to forgive myself. And this has taken a very long time and it's been a very gradual slow process. Over the years, a sense of being separate from others has diminished. A sense of being trapped in myself has diminished. A sense of frustration at not being able to fully express has diminished. A sense of it not being okay to simply be the way I am has diminished. In fact, recently there has been a growing, wonderful freedom, of finally not giving a fuck.
This funnily enough manifested in recent hairstyles. It suddenly became fun to play with looking ugly, rather than trying to look pleasing. And I don't mean this ugliness is another judgement, just that, I've found myself being really "ok" with looking whatever way I look without it meaning anything or causing a judgement.
This is so freeing. It now becomes more of a "playful" experience, where it doesn't matter one way or another, and where I'm growing stronger in my willingness to present myself in whatever way I like without caring (worrying) about what people will think of it.
You may have noticed over time that in my writing I now swear a lot more often. I used to be so repressed that I would never swear, and thought I was more special or holier than others by not doing so. It's now more of a pleasure to swear. To some this may seem like I'm turning 'evil' but that's not the case. I'm becoming more authentic and more myself, censoring myself less and recognizing that I am free.
Taking responsibility for everything I am experiencing shows me that I can only be upset if I hurt myself, no-one else is the cause of what I feel, and therefore I am set free of concern for massive people pleasing or not showing up fully as myself. I was trying to be everyone but myself, to be something I am not, and to disown myself. There is nothing but pain and suffering there when we do that.
There are some people out there especially those who are painfully shy, who appear on the surface to be sweet and nice but have a strong persona, a facade of everything being alright all the time when underneath there is a searing self hatred and repression and sense of unworthiness and of not being "allowed" to do anything. It's a state of self imprisonment. I still at times struggle with limiting myself and Holy Spirit having to remind me "you are allowed". I often thought I was imprisoned by someone else in life, but really it was my own doing.
Some of these people who are suffering from self-inflicted unworthiness and quiet suffering, turn to suicide as an escape. My own life became one of depression and despearation and a growing feeling that I was approaching some kind of "end". If I had not met my wife at about that time I probably wouldn't be here.
A sense of an "end" was a sense of intense separation, isolation and being cut off from everyone. I was ostracized "by society" for an earlier "accident", but really it was a way for me to do this to myself, to give me a good reason why I should suffer in silence and be unhappy. I have had to crawl out of my own self-inflicted hell-hole. Some people are not able to do this. There was a guy at my workplace who was similarly shy who no one would suspect was suffering painfully every day through false perceptions, and he shot himself.
I am thankful for the Holy Spirit and Jesus who have helped me immensely to come out of my nightmares and into a happier place. I still have work to do but everything keeps heading in the direction of heaven. A Course in Miracles has been a God-send in terms of correcting my perceptual distortions and helping me to undo the grossly self-inflicted false beliefs that torture and condemn from the inside out. I am so different to how I used to be now that I don't recognize myself in photos.
Freedom and relief from suffering comes from the recognition of what we are doing to ourselves. We are the ones who need to forgive ourselves and undo our own self attack. There is a way out of hell, because we are the only ones keeping us in hell. No-one is keeping us here but ourselves. Fear of judgement is secretly the fear of being judged by God, which is an attempt not to go Home by justifying self attack. But there is a better way. And that means, if we will become willing, we can go Home to God and be happy. Thank God for that!
To the ego, its key difference in atonement is that something really DID happen. It then has a form of atonement which involves attempting to make up for what you did, to pay for it. That typically means being guilty for a long time and suffering sufficient punishment and sacrifice.
But there's a problem with that, because no amount of punishment will actually undo the sin. If you're holding out for a pardon or are pleading for forgiveness, good luck. It won't happen. The ego knows this because it has no real intention of ever forgetting that the sin happened. Which means, there really IS no way that you will ever make up for it. Everyone believing in sin will condemn you forever and no-one is going to forgive you on your behalf.
One single little tiny sin to the ego is justification for you to die a horrible death. Make no mistake, it has its eyes fixated on that simply because it is logical. If you DID do something wrong, then you DO deserve everlasting damnation. Because if what you did was REAL, then it cannot be undone. What is real simply is real, and nobody can change it.
This is why the ego creates this scenario where you "really do stuff" in the world, then that stuff gets quickly locked into the past where it cannot be changed, the consequences of it seem real and prove that you did it, and then there is literally no escape. So then you will fear punishment in the future. And that fear of punishment will never go away so long as you still agree that you really did sin.
The ego isn't going to find it in the bottom of its heart to forgive you and let you off the hook, lest it be for a devious purpose of making sure to eventually strike you down at some later date, reminding you of what you did all over again. It has no intention of forgiving you ever. It's idea of atonement is never-ending punishment, and forever in hell is not long enough.
In this world, no matter what you do, it is a sin, and you are automatically guilty until you die. Every time you breathe, every time you move, everything you say, every action and every consequence, is sin taking place. Stuff happening and pretending to be real. Every second of every day condemns you to death, even if nobody points it out. The ego knows what you did and it will not forgive you.
This is the kind of atonement which does not work, you cannot accept it, it cannot bring you freedom or peace, and it will just keep guilt and sin intact. This all hinges around keeping the sin real and believing that it really happened. Everything that comes from that, all of the so-called atonement, is nothing but a fake promise to make you suffer unnecessarily with absolutely no change in its death sentence. Once condemned, always condemned.
There is another atonement which works and which is freely available and which you have access to at any time you want it. This other atonement can set you free of not only the need for punishment or compensation, but can literally cancel out any need whatsoever for you to be punished. This other atonement has the capability of actually finding you innocent, and not after any amount of time at all. The innocence on offer is permanent AND immediate, and there is nothing keeping you from it.
A process of undoing perceptual errors and false beliefs should and must lead your mind to the atonement. It lies on the other side of believing that sin is real. First you must undo all belief that fear or guilt is called for, and then realize also that sin is not the truth either. Whatever you did, you did not do it in reality, and therefore it was not a "real sin". It was a make-believe sin, because there is no such thing as real sin.
This the ego does not want you to know - that you actually cannot sin at all. It's entire story hinges around you believing that your sin was done in, and to, reality, having real effects on something real, effects which are irreversible and unforgivable. Effects which prove and demonstrate that your innocence is destroyed and you will forever be damned to hell. None of that is possible if your innocence is intact, and to be intact it must mean that whatever you think you did, you did not really do.
So this all depends on your willingness to entertain the idea, that sin is not REAL. That whatever happened, wherever it happened, and no matter how it appeared, or what the seeming consequences appear to be, all of that is within an IMAGINARY DREAM. The dream may well seem real, but it is your task to question that *assumption*, because it is entirely based on believing illusions. None of those illusions are reality and there actually is no real proof of real sin.
Anywhere that sin can really seem to take place cannot be real. That is why the world is not real. In reality, real sin cannot happen, because innocence is permanent. So wherever innocence is, that is real, and it is in that place that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists. To believe that your sins are not REAL, and therefore are forgiven, is to recognize that a world made of sin and which demonstrates sin is also not real.
You have not sinned because the separation from God cannot happen, really, and what appears to be separation from God - a physical universe - is not reality.
You have not REALLY done what you think you've done, and it has NOT, absolutely HAS NOT, had any effect whatsoever on REALITY. It has not hurt God, it has not offended God, it has not made God hate you, it has not changed God's mind about you, and it has not really done anything at all that's actually real. The so-called consequences are all imaginary and happening only in an unreal dream. Regardless of their apparent severity. There is nothing that you can do in this dream that cannot be forgiven.
So sin is not real. That automatically means separation hasn't happened, because sin is the idea that it has happened. If separation has not happened and you have not really sinned, then....... ...... you must still be innocent, right? God must still recognize you as innocent. You must have not sinned at all. You cannot have stopped being innocent because you did not really sin. So your innocence is still intact and THAT means, you are still WORTHY of God's love.
Your own ability to see, agree with, claim, and accept that this is TRUE of you, depends entirely on your willingness to stop believing that you have really sinned. Only then can you yourself allow and accept the truth, that your innocence is guaranteed, your worthiness has not been defiled, and you STILL are forgiven because you have not done anything really wrong. Only when you can accept that will you be able to genuinely admit and accept the truth of the atonement.
Nothing really happened! It was just a dream.
In the acceptance of this atonement, your sins are recognized as NOT being real sins, and in that view your sins are forgiven. This is what true forgiveness means. This is the state of a forgiving mind, shared with Holy Spirit, in which you do not see anything needing to be forgiven because there is no real sin. You BECOME forgiving when you enter this state at the END of your "forgiveness process" or process of undoing or purification.
THEN..... once you have accepted the atonement, it means you have accepted that God loves you, you are worthy of love, you are WILLING to receive love, you will ALLOW love, and you will BELIEVE that love is justified. You will believe that you can be loved, are loved, and can love yourself. THEN, because you are willing to admit to your own lovability, you WILL also admit to the lovability of your brother. You will overlook and forgive them just as you have yourself and now MIRACLES WILL BE JUSTIFIED.
You are now in a position to express love, having received it and accepted it, and having gotten rid of the blocks which were stopping it from expressing. And love will flow through you and be shared with others. And love is powerful. It has within it the power to HEAL and enlighten. It knows no limits and has no boundaries. There is nothing your holiness cannot do. Expressing this love then becomes second-nature, and working miracles is now the "right" that you have claimed entitlement to. Miracles will flow naturally because of your willingness to truly express love, having loved yourself.
Accepting atonement for yourself is your sole responsibility, SO THAT you can reconnect with God and start to SHARE love with your brother. It means the same thing as undoing false perceptions so that your own mind can become willing to be a conduit for love, SO THAT love can then flow through you and extend outward, which will be seen as miraculous in its effects. Illusions will not limit this love and sickness will have no power to stop its healing power. You have taken up your position as a Teacher of God and are now a miracle worker.
"You but accuse your brother of your own sins." - ACIM
Every single occurrence of you being angry at someone, blaming them, being afraid of them, believing they are doing something to you, being hurt by them, getting revenge, or whatever... every single interaction with people that is anything other than pure LOVE, is your attempt to GET RID OF YOUR OWN SINFULNESS.
You have no other reason to be doing this. It is purely an exercise in trying to deny that you believe you're sinful. That is enough to account for the ENTIRE spectrum of all ego-based relationships and interactions with others.
You really don't have issues with anyone else. You really don't have a problem that's got ANYTHING even REMOTELY to do with another person.
You have a problem with YOU.
YOU believe that you really sinned. That's all.
That's absolutely your only problem in the entire world. Your belief in your own sin is driving ALL of the other ego expressions, nightmares, attacks, reactions, upsets, fears, all suffering, and even death.
ALL of it. Just stemming from YOUR OWN belief that you are truly, honest-to-God SINFUL.
Therefore, you do not even really need any kind of corrections that attempt to address ANY of that other stuff. That other stuff is NOT the problem. It's all symptoms! It's all side-effects of your attempt to avoid your real problem.
Your ONLY problem in the entire world, in your entire life, is your self hate. And for that, you need to undo it with FORGIVENESS.
You ONLY need healing for your belief that sin is real, and that therefore YOU ARE SINFUL. This idea of sin is the idea that it is possible to ACTUALLY separate from God, and that you have done so. It is an attempt to make this idea REAL, and to own responsibility for achieving it.
This is the root of all evil. This is the cause of all sickness. This is the belief in death and that death is both justified and deserved.
If ALL you ever do from now on, is throw out ALL of your practices which attempt to bandaid your life, and every strategy that tries to deal with egoic relationships problems, and focus SOLELY on undoing YOUR belief that YOU are sinful, I do believe that is ALL that will be necessary to wake up.
The "sinful self" must go. And with it will go ALL of the effects that come from it - guilt, fear, punishment, suffering and death.
Just work on forgiving yourself. Just purely focus on owning up to your own self hate, and how you BELIEVE that you have committed "real sin". Undo that belief, accept the atonement. You did NOT really sin. You are innocent.
It's not even really about forgiving others or taking back projections or any of that. The big secret is your own DEATH WISH which comes from your OWN BELIEF THAT YOU ARE SINFUL. You have no other problems.
You think you are not worthy of God's love because you think you are sinful, and that God could not love you as a result. Well, there's good news. YOU DID NOT REALLY SIN because sin is not reality, and that means GOD DOES LOVE YOU and you are WORTHY of being loved. You are NOT worthy of dying.
Absolutely everything else will fall inline if you correct this. Everything else will take care of itself AUTOMATICALLY once that illusion of sin is removed.
What is self-attack and a belief in sin, other than suicide? It is your self crucifixion.
It's not that God isn't sending, giving or sharing. God is automatically doing that all the time.
But are you receiving it?
In order to receive it you need to get yourself to where you deeply BELIEVE that you HAVE RECEIVED. Right now.
It's not enough to believe that you 'will' receive at some point in the future, or that you haven't quite received it 'yet', or to be in a state where you're watching for it to come.
You need to put a 'timestamp' on the MOMENT when you believe that you have fully received, so that any time after that you will continue to believe that receiving has already occurred.
God doesn't work based on maybe's and sort-of-did's. God works in the absolute, in a mode of completion and wholeness.
Now, this may not necessarily mean that what you believe you've received, ie the healing, that it will 'show up' in form yet. And your body may not yet show you that you have received. It may still demonstrate symptoms of not receiving, or or sickness. But you are meant to ignore that.
See, the ego, the body, the world, will try to tell you one truth - that it's 'true' that you are sick and unhealed. And even while it's telling you this, YOU need to get into the belief instead that this is NOT the truth and that it's TRUE that God HAS given and that you HAVE received. You must defy all of the signs and signals coming from anywhere other than God. You must believe God MORE than you believe the body.
So this takes an act of faith. An act of believing God's truth IN SPITE OF what anything else says or does.
When you do this, and you take the leap to God's truth over all other truths, being "under no laws but God's", and you stay firm in that belief that you have received because God has given and God never fails to give, it shouldn't be long before the healing shows up in form.
It's like placing an order for a product on the internet. You find what you want (healing from God), you place an order for it, and you 'pay' for it. This payment means choosing to believe that what you've bought is YOURS. It's yours because you paid for it, but you do not necessarily have it in your possession yet. But you have now a 'legal right' to it because you paid for it. It just happens to be somewhere else temporarily.
You wouldn't suddenly believe that it's no longer yours, or that you will not receive it, just because it hasn't been DELIVERED yet. You would have certainty and faith and knowing that it WILL be delivered because you've done what was needed in order to ensure that. Believing that God HAS given healing and that you HAVE received from God, now, is you placing your order. It won't then be long before your 'package' of healing will show up.
So it's okay to believe, yes, I've received from God, but I am not seeing it yet. But don't let the 'not seeing results yet' disuade from the conviction that you have received God's gift and that it WILL show up. Expect it to show up. Expectation is important in divine healing because it defies fear. Fear inter-fears with "deliverance".
So decide,right now, you believe God has given, God never fails to give, and therefore you need to receive. Believe right now you have received. Get that really settled in good and solid. Feel it. Believe it. You have received God's blessing. Now ignore everything that says otherwise and don't waver and don't let illusions or ego interfere with that 'faith' that this is true. And it will come.