If you know what the secret to the magic trick is, you know that there is not really any magic happening. But if something is hidden, if there is information missing, it becomes possible to enter into an alternative state of awareness - a state of deception and misperception.

In that state, where you don't know that information is missing, or that something is hidden, you believe that you're seeing the whole truth. You therefore make sense of it, and it seems to be what it is, based on its appearance. You think you're seeing the truth because you think you are seeing fully.

But if you are not seeing the whole of the information, and some information is hidden, you aren't seeing the real truth. So when you then believe that you are, you're inside a hallucination.

In other words, you're seeing meaning where there is none, you're convinced you're awake but you're not, you're certain you are making complete sane sense out of what's happening but you're mistaken, and you don't even realize that you're nuts.

This state of insanity is automatically a state of imagining truth where there is none - a hallucination of the truth, which is a state of believing the truth is something it is not.

Puzzles are another good example. When you first encounter a new puzzle, you do not see the answer. It seems obscure, hidden. At first you are confused, and you don't understand it, and it makes no sense, and you can't "see" how it is possible. And yet it seems to be possible that the unsolved state of the puzzle is truth, because you see no way to solve it or see additional truth beyond that. But over time, as you question your perception, you gradually might realize that by undoing your own assumptions and reversing your own conclusions, i.e. collapsing the hallucination, the answer suddenly becomes obvious.

Once you have solved the puzzle, it's because you've seen some information, really a state of greater awareness, which has burst the illusion and suddenly you are seeing outside of it. You are no longer fooled, you've found the answer, it seems clear as day and now you kick yourself for the apparent stupidity of having not seen it earlier. In other words, you realize you were mistaken the whole time and its pretty embarrassing.

Bringing this around to A Course in Miracles, it is the same with the "illusion" that this world is a reality. There is an illusion here, in front of your face, which if you were able to see ALL of it clearly, you'd see past the hallucinations and the misinterpretations and the misunderstandings, and suddenly realize, in a state of greater awareness, that what you THOUGHT was true before, was actually false. And you'll understand why. Because now you have revealed some kind of awareness of information that was hidden before, and this information is vital to being able to see the illusion correctly. Ie to overlook the deception, to overlook the delusion and insanity, which was telling you that all kinds of other stuff was true.

So right now, unless you're in full awareness, you're still inside what seems to be a puzzle. And because there's some stuff you are blocking from awareness, there's some information you are not privy to. And because of that limitation, and because you don't even know that the extra information exists yet, you believe that you're seeing the entire truth as it appears to you. That's in spite of the fact that you're only seeing part of a scene, are coming to false conclusions, are seeing "truths" which actually aren't quite true, and are therefore having hallucinations about the meaning of what you see.

You see a dark shadow behind a door, and because you lack information - awareness of "God facts" - in your belief that you are seeing correctly you believe that "its true" that there is a scary monster behind the door. However, if you turn on the light, which reveals to your awareness extra information, now it becomes obvious it was just clothing, and you once again kick yourself for falling for the silly belief that there was a real monster there. But before that, you really believed there was a real monster, and you were therefore frightened. Frightened by an hallucination - a false belief about the truth.

When there is enough awareness of "what is here", of what this illusion IS, its structure and purpose and functioning, and the ways that it deceives, it is no longer possible to believe the magic trick. You've seen through and past all of the mistaken perceptions which you thought were showing you reality.

All of the horrifying mis-truths that you believed in, such as that sin and death were real, are revealed to be completely false. All of the reasons you ever had to be afraid, suddenly have no foundation whatsoever because the truth emerges and shows you that the things you thought were frightening were not TRUE, they were delusions and hallucinated meanings, and thankfully there is a larger explanation for them. When you don't understand what is happening or why its happening, it will scare you, because the illusory truth it presents makes it seem real. When a correct explanation is given, you're like, oh... okay then. Then you drop the false belief, with relief that you no longer have a valid reason to be afraid.

So a blockage placed on awareness leads you to believing that the meaning of reality is obscured, the truth no longer quite makes sense but still seems true, you see things IN and ON TOP OF the illusion that are not even really there (thereby hallucinating), and the sense that you make of it is actually a deception. When the blockage to awareness is lifted, you can no longer be deceived. It's like hearing the punchline to the joke, and never again can you hear the joke and have quite as much of a laugh because you know the answer. Knowing the real answer, the real truth, is revealed by awareness.

So here's a question. If there is a grand illusion of a physical universe, a world, and a body, and if the only reason that you believe you're even seeing them is because you are lacking awareness, then doesn't it suggest that if you had enough awareness, you might suddenly see past that illusion and realize the world does not even really exist? It was just a kind of twisting of consciousness, a distortion, which you could only experience while insane and hallucinating? Maybe the world you thought existed was your misinterpretation of reality, and only existed as a hallucination based on a lack of awareness. Maybe there is no world.

Jesus said in relation to seeing through illusions, "What is understood as nothing must disappear."

and

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. "!!

It's not just that there really is an illusion. It's only even an illusion because you believe there is one. Really, you are just misperceiving reality. That misperception shows you an illusion that there is a world. Once the puzzle is seen through and the truth is revealed, you will no longer be able to perceive that there really is a world. You will not believe it. You will recognize it was just an illusion, and nothing about it was ever really true. Like a dream. Not a real dream, but a dream-dream.

Form, matter, bodies, the universe, events, people, places, sins, guilts, death, sickness, it's all an illusion, a deception that APPEARS TO MAKE SENSE or appears to be real and true, ONLY because we lack awareness, and ONLY be cause there is some hidden information. When all is revealed, all of these illusions must disappear into the perfect omnipresent light of God, in which they DO NOT EXIST.

In reality, the world does not exist. We're dreaming it, hallucinating it, imagining it, reading into it, and are TRYING to make it a reality. It's just what you get when you haven't solved the puzzle yet, because the truth is obscured. When the truth is revealed, it will be obvious that there isn't really a world there. It was part of the puzzle while you fell for it. And now that the light has come, it is gone.

Lesson 75, "The light has come":

"The light has come. You are healed and you can heal. The light has come. You are saved and you can save. You are at peace, and you bring peace with you wherever you go. Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared. The light has come. Today we celebrate the happy ending to your long dream of disaster. There are no dark dreams now. The light has come. Today the time of light begins for you and everyone. " - ACIM

Somewhere seemingly inside you, there is a perfect self. The soul that God created, one in Christ. That's you. That's what you are.

This perfect self has nothing wrong with it at all. It is already absolutely perfect. God created it to be perfect with perfection, and it was created perfectly by perfection.

Your actual self, what you are, does not need fixing or healing or resurrecting or correcting. It is absolutely perfect right now.

This self already exists. It is NOT your job or role or function or ability to CREATE IT, to make it, to cause it, to define it, to add to it, to build it up, to produce it, or in any way to turn yourself into it.

All spiritual "learning" is geared towards typically trying to become something other than what you are. This has led you AWAY FROM what you are. Even if it seems like progress.

The truth of your being isn't actually something you need to gain or cause or accumulate. It's something you need to RECOGNIZE AN ACCEPT.

It's actually something that's already there. It's waiting for your acknowledgement. It's waiting for you to find it and see it and realize it's already there and it's always been there.

It was just covered up by your mind with its layers of denial and unwillingness and believing other things. As soon as you saw yourself as not yourself, you lost track of yourself, lost sight of yourself, and went off trying to reinvent yourself.

And the you thought that in order to become a better version of you you'd have to keep reinventing yourself, to become a spiritual being. But that's how you end up with a spiritualised ego. A converted polished tweaked alternative self that is still not the self that God created.

You'll find after a while that you cannot manipulate an artificial self into being real, you cannot perfect the imperfect, you cannot get your "not really my real self" to turn into something spiritual enough.

You can produce illusions and specialness and artificial forms of what may look more spiritual but you can't really escape the realm of illusions this way. You can polish a turd but it's still at turd. Or paint some lipstick on a skeleton, or put some clothes on a corpse. But you cannot convert this non-self into a self.

What you really need to do is very simply to seek within and find and become aware of, recognize, acknowledge, access, a self that is sitting there waiting for you to find it again. This is more an act of going within and just trying to become aware that you are ALREADY perfect.

Look for your pre-existing perfection, don't try to invent it. Look for your holy self, don't try to turn yourself into a holy self. Appreciate and acknowledge and become aware of what God has already created you to be. It's in you, lurking there behind the dark curtains.

It's in this sense that you need do nothing. You need do nothing to make yourself be perfect and happy and well, because God has already done this. He's give you absolute perfection. You tried to hide from it. Now you just need to stop hiding from it and own it.

You are Christ, already. You are sinless already. You are holy already. You are everything already, and always and forever. What was all this seeking and not finding for, but to pretend that's not true?

"Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all." UrW188L1

We have appointed our own worst enemies, our controllers, our dominators, our victimizers, our haters, and everyone we do not like, to do all of these things TO us, FOR us, because we have a secret agenda.

We do not want to be responsible for our own lives. We do not want to own up to who we really are. We want to hide. We want to shovel responsibility for our own lives onto someone else. We want to be victims so that the state of our lives is someone else's responsibility and then we can blame them for what has happened in our own life.

We have disowned ourselves. We don't even know who we really are. We have attempted to shut out God. We've gone unconscious. And we've displaced ownership of our own Real Identity, our Truth, into the hands of everyone and everything that we think is 'not us'. We now say the world is responsible for our life being terrible. No it's not. Our irresponsibility is what makes it seem like the world is responsible for our life sucking.

We need to wake up. We need to take our fucking power back. We need to own up to who the fuck we really are. We need to stop hiding our light and our truth and stand up and be visible. We need to return to the truth and stop wallowing in a dark world of victimization and blame.

It is not someone else's fault. It is not them that are doing this to you. It is not the government or the neighbors or the coworkers or strangers on the street. It is not anyone else. Its YOU. YOU are fucking up your life by not being who you really are. YOU are destroying your happiness. YOU are the one who is against yourself. YOU are your worst, and ONLY, enemy.

You are doing this to yourself. On purpose.

Why are you hiding from God? Why are you hiding from yourself? Why are you pretending to be someone you are not? Why are you pretending that someone or something outside of you is responsible for who and what you are and what you're experiencing?

Nobody has any power over you. ZERO. ZEEEEERO!

You are the one who has done all of this shit to yourself, and it's you who can undo it. You can choose again. You can remember who you really are. You can wake the fuck up to reality and stop burying your head in the sand with this victimy sob-story about, oh, so-and-so did this to me, and such-and-such a government body did that to us, and they-and-them did these terrible things to these poor innocent people, etc... its all ego blame. It's all passing the buck, shifting the responsible, and acting righteous about deserving to be outraged about how everyone ELSE is wrong.

LOOK AT YOURSELF. Take an inventory of your OWN fuck up. This is all about you, what you're doing to yourself, on your own, all by yourself, without any help from anyone else. You do not need anyone else's attack or vengeance to make up for the tremendous job you are doing attacking the living shit out of yourself, all on your own. You have enough self-hate to fill a mountain, yet alone needing anyone else to come along and add a tiny amount to it. This is all about you.

Who are you? Who the fuck are you really?

"The secret to salvation is this, that you are but doing this to yourself" - ACIM

STOP IT!

Your sense of who you are depends entirely on the extent of your awareness. Awareness is your IDENTITY.

How much of your mind you are aware OF, determines the boundaries of your sense of Self.

If you have a lot of repression and denial and unconsciousness, your sense of Self will be little and confined. This is what Jesus refers to as "littleness".

You will still be aware, but your awareness will be limited. And yet, you will believe that the amount of Self you are aware of, is all of yourself. You won't even suspect there is more to you.

Everyone always believes they are their whole self. Whether they are actually aware of the whole of their self, is another matter. You could be aware of only 10% of yourself, and still believe that you are aware of your whole self.

The amount of awareness you have, if your awareness of your wholeness is limited, will also be limited. You will think you wake up in the morning and are "fully aware", at the maximum of your ability to be aware. But you won't be.

Your mind is vast. But it is blocked and divided and segmented. Your conscious self has been sectioned off into a small corner of the mind, and the rest has been made unconscious in order to hide your sin and guilt.

You will still, as the conscious self, believe that you are all of yourself, and that you are a whole person.

When obstacles to peace, blocks to awareness, denial and suppression and unconsciousness begin to be lifted away from your mind, you become aware of parts of your mind that you didn't even know existed.

That means your awareness of your whole mind increases.

Realize, that IDENTITY, is very tightly tied into how much awareness you have of your mind. If you are only aware of 10% of the mind, you will believe that everything you ARE aware of is all that there is to you. Your sense of SELF is limited by the outer edges of your awareness.

As your mind becomes freer of blockages, and things which were unconscious become conscious, your awareness is going to increase. And along with that, you are going to become more aware of a "larger Self", or a bigger sense of Identity. Your identity is going to expand.

Gradually your sense of "Who am I" is going to expand away from littleness into magnificence and grandeur, and thus your sense of Self will expand. You will "turn into" your Higher Self.

Really, it is just a matter of revealing, uncovering, remembering, making conscious again, and becoming aware of again, parts of your own mind which have been hidden and kept in the dark for a long time.

We call this clearing out of the clutter, "purification", and it produces an "awakening", i.e., simply an increase in awareness. Becoming aware that there is more to you than you realized.

That you are not just a little self stuck in a body. You are not just some little victim in a dream. You are huge and powerful, you are Christ.

And the amount of awareness that you are going to have as a result, is going to be much more than you have been used to. You literally will be MORE AWARE than you ever thought was possible, because you will be AWARE OF more than you ever thought existed.

When there is nothing left hiding in the darkness, no secret sins or hidden hates, and no more unconsciousness, and no more shadow or persona, the mind will be made whole again - fully aware of all of itself at once, and that is what it means to become aware of your Real Self. Spiritual awakening.

Aware of all that is - God.

In ACIM's teaching, there was originally just one "level" or realm in which to exist - The Kingdom of God, Heaven. This is true because the Kingdom is one logical state or nature.

In the separation, we invented a second level or logical state, by trying to be opposite to the Kingdom. This wasn't a partial opposition it was a total opposition, like light and darkness. This second state is a state of dreaming and perception, opposing knowledge. It's technically inside of Heaven, but it a belief in being exiled or outside of it. So this forms a kind of second "level."

We often visualize the two main levels as "above and below", where Heaven is the higher level and Earth is the lower. The two levels contrast and oppose each other in EVERY way imaginable. Light vs Dark, Reality vs Illusions, Life vs Death, Love vs Fear, Immortality vs Mortality, etc. Some refer to the two main levels as level 1 (heaven) and level 2 (earth).

Within level 2 (earth) - "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way", which is the level of "all perception", there is a wide spectrum of states of mind ranging from false perception to true perception. But it's often helpful to contrast them more extremely which suggests two additional levels within the level of perception - the lower dream and the higher dream.

In the lower dream there is false perception, physical objects, form, bodies, the world/earth, attack, sin, death, sickness etc. In the higher dream there is true perception, no physical objects, no bodies, the real world, no sin or sickness, no death etc. They are effectively opposite states WITHIN level 2.

It's important to realize that this basic logical structure is infused throughout the course, because Jesus is at various times talking within the context of different levels. For example he might talk about the higher dream of true perception, and it can sound glowing and lovely, but if you forget that it is within the CONTEXT of level 2, you might be tempted to forget that ALL of the rules that apply to level 2 still apply.

For example the course tells us a glowing report about the real world, or the forgiven world, or true perception/salvation, but at the same time it also reminds us in other passages that "the real world still is but a dream" and "those who perceive (at all) still need healing." So within level 2, the dream of perception, even when we're talking about true perception or forgiveness or the healed body, we have to keep in mind that both the rules of true perception (higher dream within level 2) AND the rules of level 2 itself are simultaneously applying.

Confusing these levels, not being clear about which statements are referring to which levels, not understanding which contexts certain statements are given in and not keeping in mind that the larger context of levels 1 and 2 always apply when discussing anything to do with the realm of perception, can lead to a whole lot of confusion about what stuff means or implies. This is part of what's called "level confusion", not knowing which level is above or below or inside of another.

The general story, in summary, is that you began in level 1, you dreamed of level 2, and while dreaming of level 2 you dreamed of a level 2 inside of level 2 - a lower dream of hell and form, and then the holy spirit provided a higher dream - a level 1 inside level 2, which reflects the real level 1 of heaven, to lead you out of the dream into reality.

It's important for us to be willing to look at the world and recognize that it HAS NO MEANING. The world ITSELF is utterly meaningless. It was made as a projected idea of the opposite of God. God is entirely meaningful, so his opposite means nothing at all.

A meaningless world is not necessarily therefore an upsetting world, or lacking world, or a world that can't reflect positivity. It can't of ITSELF be positive, or holy, because it is nothing. But it CAN act like a completely neutral mirror in which holiness can be reflected.

And meaninglessness does NOT necessarily mean depression, darkness, boredom, despair, suicidal tendencies, or lack of purpose. These are in fact all MEANINGS of the ego which it projects onto the world. True meaninglessness is devoid of ANY meaning, either positive OR negative.

The world is therefore really nothing, or you might think of it as neutral. It has no meaning of its own and can only act to symbolize something GIVEN to it. You therefore have to give or project meaning ONTO it to make it mean something at all.

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real."

The world thus acts like an empty mirror. You can project egoic ideas of hell onto it, or ideas of heaven and love. You can project God onto it. Since the world HAS no meaning, the ego rushes in to try to give it a hellish meaning. It projects meaning of sin and fear and attack and death. But this only happens when you don't recognize that the world is meaningless. If you don't regard the world as a MIRROR, in which a REFLECTION is seen, because it has no real image of its own, you mistakenly associate the reflection FOR the mirror itself. And now you think that what you projected ONTO it is what it inherently IS.

The world is kind of like a void, or am empty shell. It is nothing in itself. So you give it meaning. You ego gives it the meaning of hell, while the Holy Spirit helps you to give it a the meaning of heaven. Whatever meaning you give it, it REFLECTS back to you. It reflects rather than IS anything, because it is meaningless and so does not have ITS OWN meaning to give you. This makes it act like a mirror.

This reflection IS an image, and is not heaven itself, but is a reflection of heaven. God can be seen reflected IN the world (because he's in your mind), because the world ITSELF is NOT God. Being NOT God, or God's opposite, it has NO meaning of its own, and so CAN reflect HIS. The challenge then is to put aside the projections of hell that you have GIVEN to the world, the meanings you have given to everything, and allow yourself to RECOGNIZE that the world IS meaningless. Without your projections of hell, it is NOT hell, OR heaven. It is just a blank canvas.

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."

The thing is that when the mirror is crowded with egoic images, dreams you project onto it and perceive, it becomes dark. And now you are looking at a reflection of darkness IN the mirror, and mistake the darkness FOR the mirror. And now the world seems like hell, and the darkness makes it impossible to see God's reflection.

When you are willing to recognize that the world is a neutral meaningless mirror, really NOTHING, with no meaning of ITS OWN, this is in fact a good thing, and not a depressing thing. It means you are willing to stop projecting FALSE images onto it, or to give it a meaning it DOES NOT have, or to try to MAKE it mean hell. By not putting images of hell onto it, you do not see hell IN it. Recognizing it AS a mirror opens your mind to NOT KNOW what it is, and to instead allow the Holy Spirit to project the real world's reflection for you to see.

When the mirror is spotless and clean and devoid of ego projections, this LACK of meaning acts like a shiny surface in which EVERYTHINGNESS is reflected, rather than like a dirty dark mirror which filters OUT the reflection.

In the true reflection of God's meaning IN the mirror of the world, God's reflection is seen IN the world, and now the world appears to REFLECT heaven. It now appears to share heaven's MEANING, because heaven's meaning (love etc) is projected ONTO it, an so reflects BACK to you through perception. "Projection makes perception." "Perception is a result not a cause."

By being open to acknowledging that the world it NOTHING in itself, and is MEANINGLESS in itself, you are in fact becoming open to allowing God to put HIS meaning there. And thus is the world redeemed and saved from projections of hell onto it. And in an empty space, devoid of ego attack and sin ideas, the world can now reflect heaven.

And thus doing this can make you HAPPY because you can recognize that hell does not really exist when you don't GIVE hell to the world. And the world can now seem to turn into a happy dream, where heaven is reflected and God is seen IN everything (as a reflected IMAGE of God). Such a world is the forgiven world, in which everything seems sparkling and bright and new and lovely. And in this state the body is healed and incapable of sickness. And now you are ready to go home.

"In the world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality. And on this alone it is correct."

"It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize the meaningless, and accept it without fear. If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes which it does not possess, and crowd it with images that do not exist. To the ego illusions are safety devices, as they must also be to you who equate yourself with the ego."

"You think that what upsets you is a frightening world, or a sad world, or a violent world, or an insane world. All these attributes are given it by you. The world is meaningless in itself."

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy. But because it is meaningless, you are impelled to write upon it what you would have it be. It is this you see in it. It is this that is meaningless in truth. Beneath your words is written the Word of God. The truth upsets you now, but when your words have been erased, you will see His. That is the ultimate purpose of these exercises."

Have a look at this picture. It seems like an image of a person. You can see a hand waving. You can see the person's head and shoulder. There's a person there, isn't there?

Well actually, take a more discerning look. There is no person in the image. It's a wall with a shadow on it. Look at the shadow, what is it? Is it a thing in its own right? In fact, the shadow isn't really a thing at all. It's really nothing other than "the absence of light."

It's not as if "a darkness" came along and put itself onto the wall, forcing the light to go away. It's the reverse. It's merely a seeming appearance of light not being present. And that's not even remotely the same thing as "darkness being present". Even in this physical world, by the laws of physics, light dispels darkness, darkness does not dispel light.

So there is light, and there is the absence of light. People think of the absence of light as "real darkness", as if it's a something, has substance, exists. It doesn't really. It's just a lack of light. What happens when the light shines brightly? The shadow disappears completely, because the "lack of light" has been supplied and filled up with light. Then there is no more shadow, no more "illusion of darkness."

Believing that the shadow or the darkness are a real something, that they represent a life form, that they are alive with a mind of their own, that it is doing something, that has will and power and causality, that there's an entire "something happening" there... that's all totally illusion. Total fiction. It's nothing other than light's absence. It's an illusion that "light is not everywhere", which can't be true because real light is infinite and omnipresent. In the light of God, there is no darkness.

And so you can't call the darkness "real evil". It's not. It's absolutely nothing more than what appears to be light's absence. As soon as light shines, light shines away the darkness. The "darkness" that seemed to be "its own thing" has no defense whatsoever against this light. Light dispels it instantly. The shadow can't say to the light "I will not be shone away". It vanishes. It has no power, no mind, no will, no decision, no say in the matter. Because it literally is nothing.

Believing otherwise is as if to say, a fictional illusion of darkness chooses of its own free will to scream with a voice that says "I shall not be removed", which has absolutely no effect and has no power whatsoever unless YOU believe in it. And this is why Jesus says the ego (darkness) is nothing but a tiny mouse. And the darkness HAS no power unless YOU give it power. And it's only YOU trying to MAKE the darkness "be something" that makes you delusional and believe that something "dark" is happening (suffering, death etc).

This world, the world we made in the "separation" from God, is nothing other than a shadow. A seeming illusion of light's absence, in which the shadow itself SEEMS to take on shapes and forms and to do things. There even seem to be events, living creatures, and stuff happening to them. But ALL of it is fiction. It's entirely just "darkness" pretending to exist. And all of this darkness, what holds it in place in the mind (by the mind), is simply an attempt to DENY THE LIGHT. To block it, and to try to give "light's absence" some kind of reality or truth that it does not and never will have. You can't make an illusion real.

When you're looking at the shadow and thinking, that's really a "something", now you've lost your mind and gone into the ego - the belief that darkness really exists and can oppose the light, or do something to the light, or cause the light to stop shining. The belief that "darkness can hide." Darkness cannot make light go away, anymore than the shadows under a tree can determine for themselves that they continue to stay put when the sun moves its location.

There is a very subtle fine line between *recognizing* that all of this shadow stuff is JUST light's absence, an illusion of darkness, versus starting to READ INTO IT and believe that the darkness actually has its own properties, a life of its own, that it is making stuff happen. That's when you fail to recognize the illusion for what it is. That's when you're going unconscious and hallucinating that illusions are real and darkness is real evil and terrible things are happening.

Look at it. This world is nothing but a shadow. It's nothing but a blob of the appearance that light is absent. It is NOTHING on its own. It has no reality. No substance. No real solidity. It's not really there. The instant the light comes to shine upon it, it must VANISH. Darkness has no defense against the light.

"Eternity will shine away the world."

The ONLY reason that it seems as though the world of darkness persists or SEEMS able to RESIST the light, or choose against it, or deny it, or block it.. the only reason you SEEM to be even ABLE to have a "block to awareness" to PREVENT light from shining upon you and keeping you in the light "against your will"... is because you HAVE free will. You can choose, and you can believe in things, even if they are not real. And it's your free-willed, God-given free will attempt to DENY THE LIGHT, by choice, that is "causing" what seems to be a situation where the darkness is "persisting". That you seem able to "block God". That sin seems possible.

All you are doing is choosing to deny the light with your mind, and hold onto the dark shadows, to try to KEEP the light from shining away the world. And this takes mental effort. It requires active denial. Because the instant that you surrender and let go and stop resisting the light, the darkness must be dispelled.

This is also why Jesus says that "illusions recognized must disappear". The instant you *recognize* that that thing you thought had reality/mind/causing you etc is NOTHING but an ILLUSION of a shadow, seeming to be a "something", but is literally NOTHING other than light's absence, the minute you stop believing there is REALLY a "living scene" with a person standing there waving, you have RECOGNIZED it's just an illusion.

You see through the illusion - which is what FORGIVENESS means. To forgive is to overlook - to overlook the darkness and NOT BELIEVE IT IS ANYTHING. You recognize - that's just light seeming to be absent. And this recognition transcends whatever FORMS the shadows are seeming to take. And you see clearly, without interpretation, there is nothing there, just light seeming to be a little absent. That recognition DISPELS the illusion that the darkness "was alive and doing stuff." And so the illusion is broken. The light of awareness shines upon the illusion and shines it away. The illusion - the darkness - DISAPPEARS.

Look at that image again. It's just light and its absence. Think of this world. It is just light's absence. Just a shadow, a nothing. In heaven, from reality's perspective, there is no world. There was just a brief moment of seeming "lack of light", and then through willingness the light was allowed to be recognized as NOT absent, and thus the darkness was dispelled. Recognizing Heaven's truth makes it impossible for darkness to remain. And what is that darkness - it's the ego. The ego is just another word for "what does not exist." It's just another way to say, "light seems absent, but it's not".

When the entire universe is recognized as being NOTHING other than a mere shadow on a wall, in which NOTHING is happening whatsoever ("all events are nowhere"), and the only NEED is to supply the light, the light will come.. and the universe will vanish. The Earth and all the planets and stars and galaxies will vanish in this LIGHT. And "Heaven is all that remains". Because there is no Earth, no world, no universe. There is only the Kingdom of God. The living world of light. Pervasive light that is everywhere WITHOUT shadows, where darkness DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL.

I found this to be quite eye-opening. Recognizing first that the world IS a meaningless world. But that meaninglessness should not have any connotations of negative, depressing, sad, lost, etc. It actually has NO meaning of any kind, good or bad. That's because earth is in fact NOTHING AT ALL, ie "there is no world." We then GIVE the world meaning by projecting meaning onto it.

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly."

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy. But because it is meaningless, you are impelled to write upon it what you would have it be."

If you project the ego's meaning onto the world, which really is a depressing dark twisted kind of meaninglessness, it picks out aspects of the world and makes them seem like sin and attack. If you project God's meaning onto the world, it overlooks differences and sees a reflection of heaven in the world instead. You either WISH for hell or WISH for heaven, and what you wish for, you see, because you value it and believe in it and want it to be real. You project it ONTO the meaningless world to GIVE it whatever meaning you want it to have.

You use it like an EMPTY MIRROR, and can look at it through heavenly eyes (christ vision), where you've lifted AWAY the fales meanings you gave it, and project LOVE's meaningfulness onto it - your OWN face of christ. The world then can HOST A REFLECTION of heaven, seemingly harmless and safe and lovable. But this still is only because the world has no meaning of its OWN, and you are seeing reflected BACK to you the meaning you want to see, which is the meaning you PUT there. Seeing a reflection of heaven IN a mirror also doesn't change the fact Earth is still ONLY a meaningless world, in its own right. And being nothing, it will disappear.

"In the world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it."

If you are trying to be separate from God, you are trying to be the antichrist.

If you believe in separation to any degree, this is the same thing as believing that you are in darkness, and therefore that you are evil.

Although you may say you don't believe in evil, or that it is relegated to only those who are in the extreme of it, evil basically is the opposite of 'live' (spelled backwards) and, more than just a play on words, is the attempt to be different to what God created.

In that sense, most of the people in the world are evil.

However, evil is not real. It is not possible to be really evil, because evil means darkness and darkness is an illusion. It is not possible for darkness to remove the light or replace the light. On the contrary, light shines away darkness by its mere presence. This is why darkness has no real power over God's Kingdom.

Similarly, what you think of yourself as being dark, which can take on many forms such as believing you are unworthy of love, that you are guilty or afraid, etc... these are all forms of believing in darkness. You think that darkness has come to block out the light and that it has succeeded. That is a magical belief and is essentially 'evil', if there were such a thing.

Efforts that you might make to make darkness real, or to side with darkness, or to think that darkness has some kind of power over the light, are efforts to enact 'magic'. These can be nothing more than attempts to make illusions real or to turn things which are untrue into true. This is always impossible of course, and darkness really does not exist at all.

So while you might be currently pretending to be the antichrist, fear not, because your efforts have no real effects and God still knows that deep down you're really Christ. This will never change. And your attempt to make yourself into the antichrist (the ego), really is just a make-believe fairytale about it being possible. It isn't.

Regardless of how evil you think someone is, or what special cases you reserve for evil, or how evil you think you are, and believe me if you think you're anything less than 100% innocent you believe you are evil, it doesn't matter to God. God loves and forgives absolutely all, knowing that we are really incapable of sin and that evil is not reality.

You're not really evil. Your darkness is just an illusion you use to pretend to hide the light, and what you keep in darkness or keep from the light seems to take on a kind of reality. You hide it to protect it because exposure to the light would show you that it is not true and does not matter. Unconditional love would sweep it away and pay no attention to it. You only keep your, twisted, wicked evil ways hidden, because to expose them to light would show you that you are just mistaken and cannot ever be evil at all.

You are christ, holy and innocent, permanently loved by God, incapable of sin and are absolutely forgiven. If you are the antichrist, it only means you are christ pretending not to be christ. Ultimately we are all christ and there is no antichrist at all.

'I'm not the antichrist but I play one on TV"

If someone tells you that something is medically wrong with a person, your mind will narrow. You'll probably find yourself focusing on their body. You'll feel like you are locked into the situation with no way to escape it. Somehow your whole attention is on the problem and it seems like there is nothing you can do about it.

This sensation that you are locked into a physical state with no way out, means your mind has become imprisoned and it is also imprisoning the other person. It is holding sin against them and giving reality to their body. This means you've entered false perception, which is why you are in fear and feeling powerless. You think the person is their body, so your eyes are now fixated on their body as if it - thus them - has a problem that cannot be fixed.

The problem has to be first recognized in order to resolve it. Because the problem isn't in fact the idea that something is wrong with the body-person, the problem is really that you're seeing them as a body and are being unforgiving. You have confused their body for their self, thus confusing your body for yourself. And now you feel threatened and unsafe and in danger because you've identified with what can be attacked, joining your brother in false empathy and suffering.

To recognize the problem is to realize the problem is not so much what you see, but how you are seeing, or from what vantage point you're seeing from. And false perception will gladly show you that a person is exclusively physical, omitting any sign that they are not a body or any awareness of anything about them that isn't solid. You'll then think this is all there is, and therefore it is the only reality, and this is why you suffer in an unsolvable problematic space.

The problem is that you have lost sight of the truth about yourself and them. They are not a body, and nor are you. They are not a symptom or a sickness. They are not physical. Your physical sight on its own without the input of true vision is blinding you by perception of form, limiting your awareness to a tiny fragment of what's there. Your vision has become dark and narrow and this is why the whole situation seems impossible to solve.

To see physical sickness as real is to be blinded by form. To believe there is something wrong with the body is to anchor you in false perceptions. To regard the body as in danger is to completely ignore the mind. But to recognize nothing real can be threatened is to realize everyone is immortal and cannot be sick. Ultimately, that the body is not really there are all, because only the mind is real.

"Let me recognize the problem so that it can be solved."

"Let me recognize that this problem has been solved."

"Let us be determined not to collect grievances today. Let us be determined to be free of problems that do not exist. The means is simple honesty. Do not deceive yourself about what the problem is, and you must recognize it has been solved."