I have made a pretty big mistake with ACIM, and maybe you are doing the same. Sorry this is a bit long and rambly, I'm still coming to terms with it....

I always believed that the goal in ACIM was awakening to the awareness of God's presence, which was some kind of a singular state of being. As I read and worked with the Course it at first seemed plausible that every reference to 'what truth is like', or the high-level metaphysics, all described a single absolute state of being/mind.

I felt confused by some of the interpretations of this that other people were expressing because it seemed there was a level of truth deeper or 'more true' than what most other people were understanding. So I felt I needed to go deeper into re-reading it and re-learning what it has to say. So I started reading the urtext. And I actually learned a lot, much of which made me question what the status quo understanding was on many topics. I polished and refined my grasp of what the truth really meant, all still within this idea of 'there is only one kind of awakening', like, either you are totally doing it perfectly or you're kidding yourself.

I even saw how some people who claim to be awake were still falling short of what I believed that should really entail. I always felt a certain faith in Jesus and his example, and never could see anyone matching up to that. Yet I felt that in the Course it does directly speak to the kind of total mastery that he demonstrated. This included the ability to heal all sickness, raise the dead, have total mastery over illusions, be capable of changing form, of appearing as any kind of a body, absolute invulnerability (literally), not dying simply because you choose not to etc. I had Jesus practically flying around the room.

The thing is, all of the metaphysics in ACIM seemed to point to this potential and it made total logical sense to me that we "should" be able to wield total power over all illusions. Just like Jesus. So I had in my mind this kind of very high-level 'goal', which was very lofty, which I thought we were meant to strive to achieve. That was my idea of what it means to be fully awake, and anything short of that was not it. I felt frustrated that some people were saying they were awake and yet were clearly not demonstrating Jesus's level of mastery, and so of course that led to judgement but also confusion. Why was the Course saying one thing and then other things were happening? Why were people not matching up to Jesus's level and how is it possible there (obviously) has been an awakening of some kind in some people and yet they still can't raise the dead? The Course clearly spoke of some extremely high-level truths and implications which nobody seemed to be getting.

Well. As it turns out, the Course actually encompasses several "levels" of metaphysics. I had no idea of this, so I was always lumping everything together as a kind of super-level and then trying to attain that. I had no idea about this until Michael Murray started to bring forward this information about "the levels", or rather, the timing of me stumbling upon his videos and being ready to listen. Basically, there is much more going on than it appears, and without this extra information you'll make the huge mistakes I've made.

In very brief summary... this physical universe is only one of several levels or dimensions of the dream of separation. These dimensions are all states of mind but they also, to our senses, appear to be 'places' which have entire universes of their own. The physical universe is the lowest level. Above this there is a "spiritual universe" which is also the level at which the Holy Spirit resides. You might've heard it referred to also as the astral plane or similar. These levels are btw somewhat referred to in Hinduism and some other religions and you might be more familiar with them if you are "new age". Anyway.. above "level 2" the Holy Spirit's mind, there is a level 3 where our "higher self" resides, and also this is where angels seem to exist, the akashic records, and also this is where "the sonship" is - as separate higher selves. Above this level there is a fourth level which is the level of Christ where the sonship is ONE. Jesus 'the higher self' was the first to transcend the previous level and unify as Christ. Then above this level is Heaven - God.

Ok so... here's what I did totally wrong and this is where my spiritualizing ego got totally screwed up, and this is also probably where you are doing the same. Clearly, because there are levels to the dream beyond the physical, there are effectively different levels of awakening. This also means there are different levels of 'capability' and mastery (someone at level 3 does not have mastery over level 3 because to do that you must be on level 4). Also because of these levels, there are certain "capabilities" that are only possible at certain levels and there are certain 'parts' of the Course that are directly related to certain levels, e.g. the 'real world 'is a very high level thing (and nothing to do with the physical world). This also reveals that the Course itself 'speaks' on many different levels, in other words, in relation to different dimensions of the dream and different universes where the experience is on a whole different level. Truths which apply on one level totally superceded stuff on the levels below, so as we ASSUME that all of this is just ONE BIG LEVEL, or 'the one goal', we get really messed up and confused about what's being asked of us.

Also because of these levels, typically in order to go "up" the levels you need to go in sequence. You can't just jump to the 5th level or just pop into heaven when you're still down at level 1. And pretty much most of us are on level 1, me included. So here's the huge mistake I made.

In assuming there were no levels, and lumping them all together, and in becoming aware of the Christ-level truths in the Course, I created for myself an extremely lofty Christ-level goal, comparable to Jesus. Because I can see the parts of the Course which DO speak of/from this level (all of the course comes from the Christ level but speaks OF or as-if from other levels also), this 'highest truth' level became my concept of "the only level" or "what awakening means".

So I was basically down here on level 1, with my big ego, and trying to BYPASS all the way up to the Christ level in one straight shot. I wanted to embody and encompass ALL of the characteristics of Christ, in a kind of all-or nothing grand-master-of-the-universe power-over-everything ultra-mastery i-can-fly-around-the-room-if-i-like-and-there's-nothing-you-can-do-about-it sort of ideal. Anything short of this was "not good enough". So now I had this hugely lofty "should" or how I am supposed to be, or what I'm supposed to get to, or what I need to realize etc. And this also included this HUGE burden of 'what I am responsible for'... as if I caused the entire universe and everything in it, all by my little ego level-1 self, which is NOT true.

Having this extremely lofty goal of "be Christ", bypassing all of the levels that are REQUIRED to go THROUGH in order to get there, put an ENORMOUS BURDEN on my shoulders. A huge weight of guilt at falling short and not even barely being able to accomplish it. And believe me I tried, really hard. I even attained some small ability to bring about healing through Holy Spirit, some of the time, in small amounts. And I KNEW that the parts of the Course that speak of the Christ-level were true. So this kept me dangling from a thread, chasing after this carrot of perfection and power, but falling way short. All this did was put PRESSURE on me (and my wife) to match up to this enormous responsibility which is far beyond what 'I' (level 1 me) am actually capable of. Yes my Christ self IS capable of such things, but that's way above where I'm at or can even GET TO or ACCESS from where I'm at.

The truth is that we are only really capable of going from level 1 to level 2. The first awakening. Some people bypass this and jump to level 3 but only in extreme rare circumstances. The rest of us can only, and are only really asked to, go from level 1 to level 2, which in Course terms meaning letting go of the persona and shadow and aligning with Holy Spirit's mind and letting go of the *physical* world level. This lets us be in the "spiritual universe", or to move up from there. But we can't just jump to the top, especially not WITH the ego. And that's what we're all trying to do - a huge spiritual bypass in which our ego gets to try to be Christ.

So this is a blow to the ego. Here's little me down in level 1 world believing that I'm oh-so-spiritual, advanced, getting ready to graduate, believing that I'm more spiritual than others, and finding out that I actually am probably on this level BECAUSE I am still on level 1. Hah. Not level 2 or 3 or 4 or 5... level 1. Sucks! lol ... BUT the freedom comes from this realization..... you don't need to try to be Christ. You don't need to even try to be the higher self or to jump up to that level. You ONLY need to get to level 2 - the Holy Spirit's mind. So this somewhat lets you off the hook.

It means that you can drop all of huge expectation that you're putting on yourself to be Christ-like. It means you can stop trying to raise the dead or expect yourself to be able to. I have to tell you, I recently got a 'sty' in my eye and it was sort of infected and stuff, unsightly and uncomfortable, and I really dug DEEP into possible causes and unforgivenesses in attempt to heal it, because I was really convinced I was SUPPOSED to be able to just 'make it go away' with my mind. I did some healing, yes, but the dam fucker did not change. It didn't just disappear. So this was a blow to the spiritual ego, which thought it had to be Jesus-like or that it could. And I had to accept I just cant do that. Fuck it.

But this is really a relief. It's a huge relief to realize that you do not have to "try" to be christ. You do not have to be responsible for stuff that is in "the script" - a script written by and powered by a mind far huger than yours is now. You don't have to try to be this dead-raising master. You don't have to turn water into wine or be some extraordinary guru. You're not capable of that until probably the 5th dimensional awakening. You don't have to blame yourself for all the shit that comes from the unconscious mind that you are not consciously choosing, as if it's all your fault. You don't have to own every single little thing that happens as if, just by it happening, it proves that you SUCK and that you're a total course failure. You don't have to keep beating yourself up for "not doing the course right" ie not matching up to the kind of capabilities that you pretty much CANNOT accomplish until you ARE at the Christ level, which is not going to happen until you've at least gone through 2 or 3 other levels of awakening.

So there's all this huge weight of guilt and expectation that we've all been putting on ourselves because we're all trying to live up to this extraordinary goal of being Christ when, in fact, from this level 1, we can only really be expected to get to level 2. It's true that there is no world and its just a dream and that the Christ mind can create planets... ok... but little me, little you... at level 1, no, there isn't going to be any planets getting made. So that's not something you can be responsible for. We have this hugely inflated spiritual ego (ok, speaking for myself, but I bet you do too) that's trying to claim the "power" of being Christ while still being very limited and incapable.

We have to stop putting level 3/4/5+ realities and responsibilities and powers onto our shoulders as level 1 ego folks and stop expecting ourselves to live up to this hugely lofty standard. WE have to accept that we are NOT at the level of Jesus and probably very few people are going to be. We have to accept that even the best of the best of the ACIM teachers aren't even at that level. Not even the enlightened gurus and yogis necessarily at that level. All we need to do is do our SIMPLE job of forgiveness and development of trust in Holy Spirit and come into his mind and accept his truth and his way of perceiving. The other levels and the potency and power of those other levels will follow on from there naturally as the 'next steps'. But we can't just bypass and jump to those steps. And we have to admit we've been doing this, our spiritualized egos are about to POP, and we can take a big sigh of relief that we're NOT supposed to expect such huge things of ourselves.

This should relieve us of all the guilt, all the sense of failure, all of the exasperation at not getting it, all of the fear and guilt and frustration that we have to accomplish Christ-level capabilities otherwise we're going to die, etc. We have to strip it all back. Let go of the highest goals. Focus on the NEXT step which is just getting to level 2 - Holy Spirit's level, and letting go of the idea that our LEVEL 1 EGO is EVER going to be capable of being at the Christ level, LET ALONE even level 2. And yet it's trying. It's been trying hard this whole time to live up to some kind of universe-creating mega goal. It loves to. Even though it's a total failure at it. So we can at least admit, we don't have to think of ourselves as total failures any more because we were never meant to be level-5 ego's to begin with.

All this comes from the clarity that the Course contains levels, that we're on level 1 trying to get to level 2, and that everything else is irrelevant. Yes at some point we will create planets but not today. First things first. One step at a time. We're getting ahead of ourselves and our expectation and fear of not being able to match up to the high-level truths is, thankfully, not even being asked of us right now.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

The metaphysics of ACIM is not something that someone made up, it is not an interpretation, it is not subject to someone's opinion, and there is no room for questioning it. It is not one of many possible definitions of the truth. It is THE truth. Either you understand it as it is and accept it as logically true, or you are in denial and confusion.

Metaphysics are FACTS. The thought system of the Holy Spirit is completely logically consistent, as is the thought system of the ego. There is absolutely no room for interpretation. What is "true" can easily be determined by looking at the logical structure of what has happened and where things fit. If you master the metaphysics, you will be able to extrapolate the logical thought system to explain absolutely anything in its correct perspective.

What happens after the separation from God is completely 100% logical. Everything that happens after separation MUST happen, and it MUST happen in a very specific way. The effects of separation are not varied or one possibility among many. There is only one way to separate, there is only one scenario which comes about when separation seems to have happened, and there is only one outcome.

If you can learn the fundamental, completely logically consistent metaphysical structure of the separation, it gives you a framework in which everything else fits into place. A Course in Miracles is teaching this metaphysical structure, but it is not always very obvious. Its obscure nature tends to lead people to not even realize there is a solid "core" to the Course or that you can use this structure to perfectly explain everything the ego does, the meaning of death, and what MUST be true based on it.

For example, separation from God is not possible, because you cannot be somewhere that God is absent. God is everywhere. This immediately tells us that, logically, to believe that this IS possible is insanity. It also must tell us that to believe in such a separation is to believe in a DREAM, a fiction, something which is false or not true and not real. This is already the beginning of some very solid metaphysics, and many people grasp this basic starting point.

But then there is a progression, because as soon as there is a belief in separation, the ENTIRE ego thought system can be logically described and predicted for how it will operate, what it will perceive and believe, what it will value, and everything else about it. Even such things as special relationships, special hate, unconscious guilt and so on, are not just things that happen to be a part of the situation we're in, they MUST ABSOLUTELY FEATURE in an experience of being separate from God. There is a completely LOGICAL progression of thought and circumstance which HAS to come about when there is separation, which leads to all of these things.

Jesus describes some of this in the Laws of Chaos, where he says that first there are separations into individuals/bodies, then this MUST give rise to the perception that each individual is different and therefore lacking, and this MUST then give rise to a sense of competition because others have something you lack, and this MUST mean every individual is sinful for the attack that their "independence" inflicts on each other, and you then end up trying to "get" from others what you lack, by valuing what they lack and trying to possess it - which is the purpose of "specialness" and leads to all special relationships. All of this is a completely logical progression. It's simply what must happen and must unfold based on the separation having taken place.

Another example is what happens right after separation in terms of the split mind and how it becomes at war with itself. If the mind believes in separation, in order to be separate from God, it MUST have separation within itself. There is nowhere else for the separation to be. So the mind becomes divided, believing in "self and other". This MUST mean that WILL is also split, and this MUST mean that both of those parts are in conflict. There are two wills operating seemingly separately or with separate goals, since they logically cannot be the same or in agreement otherwise they could not BE separate. They MUST be at war with each other. They MUST be in a state of conflict. This conflict leads to ALL expressions of war and attack and vengeance and eventual death. It all progresses completely logically.

The metaphysics also shows that what once was a single whole mind, or whole self (Christ), must have become divided and split apart following separation. This mind that believes in separation thus gave rise to multiple illusions of individuals. The illusion of these individuals BEING individual is completely dependent on a strong illusion of the ways they are different, and as this illusion of difference becomes stronger and more established, it turns into what we call "form", which is what the BODY is. So a body is actually a logical progression of the thought system of separation and MUST come about if the separation has happened. Bodies are just very strongly-believed-in fragments of mind appearing separate and unique in order to maintain the ongoing breakdown of wholeness. This is also why bodies are a "picture" of the destruction of Christ, made as separation devices to keep individuals apart and therefore keep Christ from being whole.

There is no guesswork here. There are no opinions. There is no interpretation. This is simply a completely logical, consistent development which takes place. If there is a separation, it has "features" which come from it quite "naturally" and which are completely unavoidable. They are not optional. Bodies, worlds, special relationships, death, sickness, it is ALL a "natural" part of a thought system of separation. The metaphysics recognizes this and gives a perfectly consistent structure to it. The metaphysics can explain WHY all of these things come about.

As you learn the metaphysics, which is somewhat deeper than just "the words" of the Course, you will acquire a kind of template or set of simple laws which you understand to make perfect sense. These can be somewhat abstract so it can require some learning to "generalize" the learning and realize that it's all based on a simple set of logic. But once you then "get" the simple logic, you can now USE that simple logic to examine absolutely any aspect of life, any activity or purpose or way that something happens, and describe it in terms of what the METAPHYSICS says about it, which will be the truth. Irrefutable truth. Provided your grasp of the metaphysics is clear and consistent and you're not making subtle logical errors, the metaphysics gives you VISION to be able to see the truth of what's happening or where things fit together.

For example, recently there have been discussions about whether you can be at peace with death. There were many opinions given. None of the opinions were relevant. The only truth is in what the metaphysics says. In the metaphysical truth, the body is a separation device, it is an illusion, and it is within the mind of Christ. It blocks and hides what is behind it and its only function and purpose is to maintain the illusion of the mind being separate. The metaphysics also tells us that since God is life, and being opposite to God is the separation, separation MUST be death. It also must be a fiction of death - a dream of death. It HAS to be. It also tells us that therefore when the body is "alive", the body is still inside a dream of death. This also tells us that the death which occurs at the end of "life" is just a symbol for death, because what happens before it is also death. This is why Jesus says "death is not an end, it is a continuation."

Also since the metaphysics teaches that death is the opposite of life, and life and peace are one, and therefore death is not peace, we VERY SIMPLY can conclude that it is IMPOSSIBLE for there to be death and peace at the same time. This is irrefutable, perfect logic. This is the truth that the metaphysics tells us. It has nothing to do with anyone's opinion, anyone's lack of understanding, anyone's version of what they think is true based on their so-called experiences, or anything else. It CANNOT be true that death and peace are the same thing or that they truly can be 100% experienced at the same time. Yet many people have tried to justify that they are at peace with death or have come to accept it. They MUST be in denial. The metaphysics makes this clear.

Another simple truth which you can conclude based on the simple metaphysics of separation, is that the split mind is in a state of war BUT it also simultaneously NEEDS that war to continue, in order to maintain a sense of being less than whole and of having an opposite. If truly the opposition were completely wiped out of existence, there would be no more possibility of being at war, and war is entirely founded on being separate and having a split will. So on the one hand, the ego now is constantly trying to attack and be opposed to the "other", but at the same time, it MUST KEEP the other as an enemy for as long as possible. It does not want war to actually SUCCEED, it wants war to be CONTINUOUS.

This is a simple logical conclusion based on the metaphysics of separation. It's not my opinion or someone's interpretation. Therefore all states of conflict and war entail people choosing to suffer for as long as possible. It also means that if one group of people wins the war and totally wipes out the opposition, there would have to be PEACE, because without an opponent there is no basis for fighting. To end the war would thus truly undo the separation, it would be the undoing of those who tried to wage war, and this is not what the ego thought system wants. This is all simple logic. So if someone comes along and has a discussion about war or conflict or attack, if you grasp the metaphysics you can use it to explain what MUST be true about war and conflict.

The separation from God is an entirely CLOSED SYSTEM. There is no room for accidents, there is no room for multiple opinions or interpretations. There is only the FACT of what has happened. You can accept it or you can deny it. If you have a solid grasp of the metaphysics you can DEPEND on it so much that you can TRUST it and you can use it to discern whether people are saying bullshit or whether they are aware of the truth. It also however requires that YOU not be in denial and you not be making logical errors. And the fact is there are a lot of people making a lot of logical errors. Sometimes they are quite subtle. But when someone thinks they know what the truth is but have not quite got it, they will defend it to the death and it must produce war.

Metaphysics reveals that there is only one truth. There is no room for error. There are facts, and that's it. You don't get an opinion. You don't get to interpret it to fit what you want it to be. You don't get to change it. In fact, this extends to your relationship with God and the fact that you keep trying to believe that God has changed His mind about you, or that you can change God. Both must be logically false. But that doesn't stop us believing otherwise, because we are insane. To not get the metaphysics is insanity, and the ego will use it to confuse you and delude you.

There is so much "insight" which can flow out about all kinds of topics if you will just learn the fundamental basic structure of separation. It also reveals to you that there really is only one problem, one dream, one solution. Illusions of how certain things seem different or unique or unlike each other, calling for a special explanation, can be "seen through" if you have the metaphysics right. You will know what to trust, and how to discern. You will be clear about what is true and what is false. You will also be amazed at how you're able to use the metaphysics as a powerful TOOL to give you the truth - what MUST be true - based on what you have learned is logically consistent, EVEN IF you have never thought about the particular topic before. The metaphysics will tell you WHAT IS the truth of the situation, and MUST be true about it, regardless of whether you even believe it yourself.

This logical consistency also builds upon itself. It's like, if you have this blueprint and you use it to place the first few pieces exactly where they belong, then you start being able to draw further logically consistent conclusions from it. It's like a jigsaw puzzle, where if you start out with the correct corners and the correct edge pieces, all of the other pieces can be correctly positioned and discerned, leading to a completely consistent whole picture. It's almost like effortless learning. You don't need to keep learning lots of individual separate modalities or pieces of information. You just get this one 'guidance system' which is the light of truth, the thought system of the Holy Spirit, which puts into perspective absolutely everything else. You switch on this one light and ask IT what is the truth, instead of being in the business of MAKING UP what you want the truth to be all the time, and it will very obviously and clearly tell you exactly what the truth is, from a clear and consistent perspective.

This is also why it is imperative to surrender your egoic attempt to always be the one who decides everything, to always be the one who decides what things mean, to always have your own opinion, to always be running "your own life" which you see as a possession of your own separate from God's will. Trusting Holy Spirit/God is trusting the metaphysics of the truth. The metaphysics completely correlates to the Holy Spirit's thought system. As you trust IT, you are trusting HIM. And as you begin to THINK WITH it, you are thinking WITH HIM, and you will start to have thoughts which are in line with, compatible with, and consistent with, HIS way of thinking, which is perfectly supportive of the metaphysics. The metaphysics of truth IS the way that the mind functions from a true perspective.

So our opinions mean absolutely nothing. Our separate viewpoints are an act of war. Thinking we know that our interpretation of the Course is right, unless it actually IS in line with Holy Spirit's thought system, MUST be a state of denial and MUST entail the authority problem - the ego trying to be the one who determines what is true or not. Only the truth is true. We can accept it, or we can be in denial. If we are in denial, believing we know the truth, we are mistaken. You can accept God's love, or you can reject it, but you cannot change it. You can deny that God is real but that won't change the metaphysics of reality whatsoever. You can pretend all you want, but ultimately, all of reality is a CLOSED SYSTEM with no options and no alternatives. It is what it is. Trying to make it be something it is not, is ego, and WILL produce the illusion of death.

"A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at ALL levels. Illness, which is really "not Right Mindedness", is the result of level confusion in the sense that it always entails the misbelief that what is amiss in one level can adversely affect another."

"All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion which created magic rested on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter, which can control the mind."

"It was the first level of the error to believe that the body created its own illness. Thereafter, it is a second mis-step to attempt to heal it through non-creative agents."

"The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else. ... To use a medium of communication as a medium of attack is an obvious confusion in purpose. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously WITH THE SAME THING, and NOT suffer?"

"The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

"LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect. What you would prove to him you will believe."

"All sickness comes from a confusion of the levels."

"Sickness is but another form of guilt."

"Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what is not true. Free your minds from the belief that this is possible. In its complete impossibility, and your full awareness of its complete impossibility, lies your only hope for release."

"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself."

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more."

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

"The ego SEPARATES through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches THROUGH it to others. You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies AND YOURS solely as a means of JOINING THEIR MINDS and uniting them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has NONE. If you use it for attack it is harmful to you. But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you. If you use the body for this, and ONLY for this, you CANNOT use it for attack. In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion IS. "

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you.Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition."

"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it. ... "You THINK you are PROTECTING the body by HIDING this connection. For this concealment SEEMS to keep your identification safe from the "attack" of truth. If you but understood how much this strange concealment has hurt your mind, and how confused your own identification has become to you, BECAUSE of it! You do not see how great the devastation wrought by your faithlessness. For faithlessness is an attack, which SEEMS to be justified by its RESULTS. For, by withholding faith, you see only what IS unworthy of it, and cannot look BEYOND the barrier to what is joined with you."

"Sickness is but another name for sin. Healing is but another Name for God. The miracle is thus a call to Him."

"Thus are you JOINED in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him."

"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. "

"Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make the separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it can not surmount."

"Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health, is to recognize in hatred the call for love."

"What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to this, and you will see all pain in every form wherever it occurs but disappear as mists before the sun."

"Only the wholly insane could look on death and suffering, sickness and despair, and see it thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly, fearful, and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there."

"Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and death, to their believers. The form in which they are accepted is irrelevant. No form of misery, in reason's eyes, can be confused with joy."

"Any form of mental illness can truthfully be described as an expression of viciousness. We said before that those who are afraid are apt to be vicious. If we were willing to forgive other people's misperceptions of us, they could not possibly affect us at all."

"Pain, illness, loss, age and death seem to threaten me. All my hopes and wishes and plans appear to be at the mercy of a world I cannot control. Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"For example, do not say, 'God did not create illness', but, 'God did not create cancer,' or heart attacks, or whatever may arouse fear in you. ... This is your personal repertory of horrors at which you are looking.These things are part of the world you see. Some of them are shared illusions, and others are part of your personal hell. It does not matter.What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning."

"The gap IS little. Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a WISH to keep apart, and NOT to join. And thus it seems to give a CAUSE to sickness which is NOT its cause. The PURPOSE of the gap is all the cause that sickness has. For it was made to keep you separated in a body which you see as if it were the CAUSE of pain. The cause of pain is separation, NOT the body, which is only its EFFECT."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

"Pain is the thought of evil taking form, and working havoc in your holy mind. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. In pain is God denied the Son He loves. In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity and Heaven. And the world becomes a cruel and a bitter place, where sorrow rules and little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain that waits to end all joy in misery."

"Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud, obscuring voice, whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Him, and focusing upon itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means TO MAKE THE BODY REAL. What shares a common purpose IS the same. This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who share in it within itself. Pleasure and pain are EQUALLY unreal, because their purpose CANNOT be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning that their PURPOSE has. "

"Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. For EITHER witness is the same, and carries but one message, "You are here, WITHIN this body, and you CAN be hurt. You can have pleasure, too, but ONLY at the cost of pain."

"Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes which will not disappear if seen aright. For pain proclaims God cruel. How could it be real in any form? It witnesses to God the Father's hatred of His Son; the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death. Can such projections be attested to? Can they be anything but wholly false?"

"Pain is but witness to the Son's mistakes in what he thinks he is. It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassailable. It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love Which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love."

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

"Of one thing you were sure; of all the many causes you perceived as bringing pain and suffering to you, your guilt was NOT among them. Nor did you, in ANY way, REQUEST them for yourself. This is how ALL illusions come about. The one who makes them does NOT see himself as making them, and their reality does NOT depend on him. Whatever cause they have is something quite APART from him, and what he sees is SEPARATE from his mind. "

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes. "

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you. "

"Delay will hurt you now MORE THAN BEFORE, ONLY because you realize it IS delay, and that escape from pain IS REALLY POSSIBLE. Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this. You could no longer find even the ILLUSION of love in ANY special relationship here."

"This makes it an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this ALWAYS means YOU STILL FIND SIN ATTRACTIVE. No-one accepts Atonement for himself who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your one responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who PREFER pain and destruction."

"You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of displacement is to hide the REAL source of your guilt, and KEEP from your awareness the full perception THAT IT IS INSANE."

"This is the only thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain, and the complete escape from sin, all to be given you. Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of salvation lies: "I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

"I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am. My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son."

"Every illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness. Yet, in these dark and heavy garments, are those who seek illusions covered, and hidden from the joy of truth. Truth is the opposite of illusions, because it offers joy."

"No risk is possible throughout the day except to put your trust in magic, for it is only this that leads to pain. There is no will but God's."

"And to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause, and with no power to accomplish anything. It cannot purchase anything at all. It offers nothing, and does not exist. And everything you think it offers you is lacking in existence like itself. You have been slave to nothing. Be you free today to join the happy Will of God."

"To the ego, the body IS TO ATTACK WITH Equating YOU with the body, it teaches that YOU are to attack with, because THIS IS WHAT IT BELIEVES. The body, then, is not the source of its own health. Its condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function. "

"These are not laws, but madness. The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself. The body suffers that the mind will fail to see it is the victim of itself. The body's suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers. It would not understand it is its own enemy; that it attacks itself and wants to die. It is from this your 'laws' would save the body. It is for this you think you are a body."

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival. But consider what this means to YOU. UNLESS you are sick you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you possibly WANT them."

Before the separation, you were simply in heaven having a great time. Immortal, invulnerable, happy, loving, full of life.

Then the separation happened and we produced a state exactly opposite to heaven - heaven's logical opposite. A physical world in which bodies gave us constant "false perception", deceived by everything, seemingly at the effect of everything and prone to attack.

"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

"For this world is the opposite of Heaven, being made to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made."

These are really the only two states. These are the two worlds, heaven and hell.

The question then becomes, how do you get out of the second world and go back to the first?

As the course says, you might find a sudden leap into heaven as frightening, if you retained your ego and interpreted it through it. In fact the ego interprets heaven as hell, beings its unwanted opposite.

So instead, we gradually transition towards heaven. But let's be clear that heaven IS your only alternative to the physical world. There is no other place to go. It's one or the other.

It's also a fact that the world you made is false, and heaven is true. In the denial of God and the rejection of heaven, you came to believe that a world of lies and illusions is true and real.

That puts you in a position where, to return to a full awareness and acceptance of heaven's truth, you're going to have to both invest belief and acceptance in heaven's truth, while shifting your whole focus away from the physical.

As the course describes, beginning to do this begins the process of "opening the spiritual eye" and "weakening the investment in physical sight".

"Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning point. This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute."

Now, we need to keep in mind that you are either in a realm of perception or a realm of knowledge. We really only made false perception, built into the functioning of the body senses. And leapt straight from heaven to false perception, placing us in bodies.

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive something and with something."

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea."

Your goal, really, is to return to heaven. The goal of God. Any goal less than this is not enough. You are to return to your original state of reality and immortality. To identifying as Christ. To being as God created you and co-creating with Him in reality.

But trying to leap into heaven from a perspective of false perception, which is total confusion about what is true, would be too jarring. The contrast is too great, and we have gone deeply into the ego thought system.

Instead, there is a seeming path, the atonement plan, the personal curriculum, which lays out a more gradual transition. This is partly because the use of your free will choice is required in order for you to make any changes in your beliefs at all.

So it seems that, in time, we gradually then progress from abject hell, which is a heavy identification with a body, special relationships, attack thoughts, fear of death, sickness and suffering seeming real, etc, towards a more God-given inheritance of perfection and immortality.

This doesn't just mean you're going to run up against the "ceiling" or external walls of the perceptual realm, before experiencing ANY heaven. It means that you need to transition so that you are experiencing ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY heaven, just before you leave this world.

But how do you do that? How do you move "towards heaven", towards reality and truth and immortality, while still being within the realm of perceptual dreams? How do you become heaven-like or as close to your original nature as possible, while still being in a state which is fundamentally separate?

"Perception is a separated state. Those who perceive still need healing."

It's going to entail some kind of re-purposing of perception, some way to use it against itself. To use what we made, to undo what we made, from the inside out. We need a reinterpretation of the meaning of the world. Or a different vantage point or way of looking, that makes it seem like hell has been turned into something similar to heaven.

"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."

What we find out now is that there are kind of two components to what we're experiencing. There's whatever "the world is" that we made, and then there's our interpretation of it. We seem to be able to change its meaning or how it looks to us.

What we're then told is that there is a "forgiven world" or a version of hell which, seen with some kind of light, or seen with loving eyes, doesn't look like hell anymore. It's still a dream world, still an illusion, still unreal, and still false, but seems to reflect heaven's innocence.

So where does this light come from, or this loving perspective? Well, a clue is that "Perception is a result, not a cause". And "projection makes perception". We look within first, at our idea of what truth is, and then we broadcast that out, and the end result is a kind of hallucinated image, which we call perception.

So the main deal is, the question of whether when you look within you see a belief in the reality of the world, that false things are true, that you yourself are something false and evil, or whether when you look within you see sinlessness, a lack of guilt and fear, innocence and holiness. Those spiritual attributes are not attributes of a dream figure, they are attributes of YOUR SOUL, which needs to come into your awareness while you're still dreaming.

How do you go about changing your inner landscape, so that it contains only attributes which seem to reflect the state of heaven, so that when you look out you see then projected?

Well if you remember, perception is always essentially false, and the realm of knowledge is always true. The illusory world is always illusory, and heaven is reality. So in order to transition your inner world so that it "matches" heaven or is heaven-like, you're going to have to reach out beyond the illusory world and start identifying with God's creation.

"The world you see must be denied" "Beyond this world is a world I want." "No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

So now you're in a position where, you're inside a dream, and trying to shift your attention to not only see but identify with, to recognize as true, and to accept, a reality which is entirely OUTSIDE of the dream.

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there."

You're trying to learn what you ARE in the Kingdom, while still being inside of the classroom of hell. Your real identity is your soul which God created which has inherited its truth from Him.

In order for you to transition your inner identity to christ, you're going to have to start identifying with something that isn't even in the world.

The best analogy I've come up with is the comparison of two rooms. We made a room with no windows, inside heaven, kind of like a prison cell. It's a dark room which shuts out the light. The walls seem solid and impassable. There is no awareness of what is outside the walls. Your whole identity seems bound to a lump of matter, the same thing that the prison seems to be made of.

Then as you begin to reach out beyond the dream, beyond the prison, beyond believing the walls are true - the granite block of sin, the veil which hangs before the face of christ, the walls of the prison begin to become transparent. They lose their heaviness and solidity. Even your own body seems to start to disappear.

This happens only by extending your mind past the separating limits of the walls, reaching out (or in) to heaven's truth, and latching onto (identifying with) the ever-growing awareness of who you are outside the prison. Your real self, which God created, and which stands beyond the world of form.

As your mind starts to associate with being a christ-soul, and starts to believe in God's truth, and starts to accept that only heaven is real, and shifts all of its attention away from the tempting deceptions and lies of physical matter, it puts its faith and belief in reality and love and light. Things which are not even INSIDE the dream world.

"Love was never in the world of dreams."

While still inside the prison, which is fast becoming a glass room with a door, enabling you to see through the walls and beyond them to the light with "christ vision", you become able to see again.

You can see a light beyond the body and beyond the world, beyond the room, and your sense of "who and what I am" or "what is true of me" is shifting away from the body and onto spirit - a spirit which is well outside of the room entirely.

Eventually this room, which acts like a veil covering up the greater environment of heaven, becomes so transparent that it disappears, and finally you are able to see christ clearly. To recognize what you are. And to see the contents of heaven. You then move through or past the walls of the room, the room disappears, and you find yourself squarely and fully in the shoes God created for you to fill.

We may talk about true perception, atonement, forgiveness, salvation, right mindedness, miracle mindedness, sanity, the spiritual eye, and various other aspects of the awakening mind. But ultimately true perception is an act of OVERLOOKING the realm of perception, overlooking hell, overlooking the opposition to God, and fixating on the Kingdom.

Essentially, true perception is a re-purposing of perception, such that it actually UNDOES ITSELF. Similarly to how forgiveness is way of using illusions to point AWAY from illusions. True perception is a cancellation of perception. Just as false perception was an attempt to fixate perception on itself and make perceptions real. True perception points AWAY from the realm of perception entirely, and towards the light of God, beyond the dream.

"Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest."

"Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others."

"Forgiveness is the end of dreams, because it is a dream of waking."

"Forgiveness is the only road that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death."

To dream of awakening, which is the happy dream, is to dream of what it is like to BE AWAKE. To be awake is to be IN HEAVEN. Therefore, forgiveness is a dream in which you imagine yourself to be NOT ASLEEP. To be similar to the way you actually are in reality, outside of dreaming. It is a dream based on the knowledge of heaven, in which, while still technically being in a dream-perception realm, you dream a dream so close to heaven that it's almost like being in heaven itself.

Just prior to leaving the prison, with sight firmly fixed on christ, who is in heaven and not in the world, you see the face of christ through the perceptual system (based on judgement/evaluation), and this "vision" is "the real world". It's you being able to see. "God is the light in which I see."

The real world is really heaven. It is the only reality and the only world truly deserving of being described as real. From within perception we see it through a perceptual filter, then we leave perception behind and KNOW its reality. "First you dream of peace, then awaken to it."

To see the real world, is to look out from within spacetime, within the perceptual realm, using perception, but using it in a special way which enalbles you to look OUTSIDE the perceptual realm. To peer into heaven beyond the separate bubble of spacetime. You don't actually become able to BE IN heaven at this point, outside the dream, but you stand within the dream, looking through its transparent walls like an window onto God.

As you do this, as you open up to reality while still dreaming, as you disbelieve in the solidity of the prison walls, as you form a bridge to the Kingdom, as you reunite gradually with God and with love, light seems to stream into your mind.

In fact an awareness of God gradually seems to return to your mind, and starts to be "seen in" the things you see. "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind." Eventually God is ALL that you see, which causes the "things you were seeing him in" to disappear.

So what we're really doing is, shifting our attention, away from hell, towards heaven. Shifting it away from God's absence, towards God. Away from body identification to spirit identification. Away from darkenss to light.

Away from fear to love. God, christ, soul, spirit, light, love, truth and everything real, is squarely NOT a part of the illusory prison world. It is "outside" of it, psychologically. So our job is to "position" oursleves in heaven, while still in the separated realm, and shine our light from heaven, into this world, erasing it.

This is why the closer your mind comes to aligning with God's will, with heaven's light, the more that light and love are able to stream into the dream through you.

The miraculousness of heaven begins to seep into the dream. The laws of spacetime begin to be overruled as you learn "I am under no laws but God's." You start becoming able to do things which "are not of this world." Your body returns to health as a symbol of eternal life. And you become empowered to overrule death.

To be the light of the world, is to extend heaven's light into the dream. To shine into the darkness, to illuminate it and shine away death. "Eternity will shine away the world." "The stars will disappear in light."

As your perception becomes "truer", it simply means that you are not mis-perceiving, so become able to "accurately" perceive what God created. This isn't the same as knowing what's there, but we can use perception to interpret what's there. "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it." - but you CAN perceive the truth, which is heaven.

As the walls of spacetime melt, as the granite block of sin turns to whisps of smoke easily dispelled, as the light of God shines into the world through forgiveness, and as the hell we made no longer has internal sin projected onto it, the world is seen as beautiful and forgiven. A beautiful illusion. Yet "A world forgiven cannot last" because it's still an illusion of a world. And it will disappear.

"Illusions recognized must disappear."

"The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing."

"Idols must disappear, and leave no trace behind their going."

"And you will be with him when time is over and no trace remains of dreams of spite in which you dance to death's thin melody."

"Heaven is all that remains."

"When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever."

This is pretty much the "model" of the course's levels and metaphysics that I've converged towards over time. Simply that there are only two states, realms or worlds. They are logical opposites. And while we're in the world opposite to heaven, we gradually transition our truth, reality and identity over to the other world, such that toward the end we are almost entirely heaven-identified and vigilant only for the Kingdom.

Our task is simply to ANCHOR ourselves into our soul, remember who we really are outside of the perceptual dream environment, tune into God, leave all perception of form behind, forget the world and embrace our true nature, inherited from God.

You are the spirit that God created. You are the reality that God established. You are the power that God extended. You are the will that God has expressed. You are the light which God radiated. You are the truth which God gave you. You are nothing and have nothing that does not come from God. And nothing in the world of illusions has ever changed that.

"So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awaking, and allowed his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls with love to waken him; a gentler dream, in which his suffering was healed and where his brother was his friend. God willed he waken gently and with joy, and gave him means to waken without fear."

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And from this dream the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son."

Did you know you're living inside a giant hologram?

(this may take a bit to explain, so bear with me)...

Actually, that's only the half of it. There's a reason why you are inside a hologram, and there's a motive for making it that the ego wants to keep a secret.

The purpose of the physical universe, as a hologram (a holographic dream), is to profoundly obscure awareness of God. The ego has used it to create a way of experiencing which seems to be completely devoid of God. The physical universe was made to literally shut God out and to make it look like He does not exist. And it's done a pretty good job, because we all believe it. And you don't even realize you believe it.

As Jesus says in ACIM: "Nothing so blinding as perception of form".

So, how does this work and how does it obscure God, and why is form (physical matter) blinding? And what's this got to do with holograms?

Ok so bear with me as I try to explain, this is VERY hard to explain because it defies a lot of ego logic, so let me know if I lose you.

First we define what God is like.

God is oneness. God is omnipresent, meaning He exists everywhere. And God is whole and completely equal everywhere. What this means is, if you could think of God as occupying 'space', no matter where you are in that space, God is *exactly* the same there as He is in any other part of it. Over here He is God, over there He is God. No matter where you are in God, it's exactly the same as everywhere else.

It's kind of like if you were to take a road trip inside God you'd be driving for a while and then remark to yourself, you know what, this place looks exactly the same as the place we just came from. Exactly. Then you drive some more and it still looks exactly the same. It's almost like you aren't going anywhere. Ok so God is the same everywhere.

Now there's another part to this. This may be hard to imagine, but ALL of God is in all *parts* of God. (NB: The ego will say this is IMPOSSIBLE!) As you think of God as occupying space, and you're driving in that car to different parts of God, and its all the same, you might still be tempted to believe each 'part' or 'location' in God is actually a DIFFERENT part, but just 'looks' the same. Like, as if the whole landscape is a giant set in a movie and its all painted in white paint. You're accustomed to thinking that the stuff 'over there' is not the same as the stuff 'over here', in some way. Its sort of similar with God.

ALL of the properties of God are everywhere. ALL of the awareness of God is everywhere. ALL of the attention of God is everywhere. So then when you ask yourself, what parts of God are 'here', in this location, the answer is, ALL of Him. And when you then ask yourself, well what parts are over there in that other part, the answer is also - ALL of Him. And what about those parts you were driving through 50 hours ago... ALL of Him was there.

To the ego this would have to mean, well, if all of God is here, then there's no other parts left to be elsewhere, so elsewhere there is no God. But in God's reality, in God's 'universe', somehow God is capable of being fully present in every single part of it at the same time. In this sense its almost as if God is PERSONAL, personal and local to every single part of existence, and yet, simultaneously personal to ALL parts at the same time. (Revelations speak of this intensely personal quality.)

You could kind of think of God as though there are trillions of copies of Himself, which the ego mind might be able to grasp. Except that in God there are no separations. Absolutely all of God's being, all of God's mind, all of God's identity, all of God's wholeness, is SHARED by all parts of existence. And when you try to think of this in terms of what you are USED TO, in the physical world, you can only relate to like a large stretch of land that you call 'The United States', within which there are many different distinct places. But if this land were God, everywhere would be the same and there would only be ONE of anything. Hard to get your mind around!

Now, this is where the ego comes up with a device to shut God out.

As we know, the ego's only tool is "separation". What the ego does, is it tries to take the omnipresent oneness of God and start to make it `look like` God maybe ISN'T the same everywhere, or ISN'T fully present everywhere. The only way it can obscure God, i.e. make it seem like God has gone away, or that God does not exist at all, is to go against the nature of God. So if the nature of God is, all of Him is the same everywhere, the ego's attack will entail the idea that only PART of Him is PARTIALLY present in each location. And this implies that God is riddled with contradictory differences. (The ego is contradictory, God isn't).

So now it's kind of like, you're driving in that car through God and you notice that, some of these hills are starting to take on a different shade of color. There's some slight differences in how things look over here than how they looked back there. At first, the separation isn't strong or well defined. In fact it starts out very subtly with just a 'hint' of differences. Then as you keep driving the intensity of the separation increases, and it really starts to stand out that different parts of God are different in quite noticeable ways.

What's happening at the same time is that the ego is now suggesting, by manipulating your perception, that maybe God is not fully present here. Maybe God has some parts of Himself which are sort of 'tied up' elsewhere, or occupied or busy with something else, so he can only be partially present. And also the ego is suggesting God isn't the same everywhere. The way God is over here is not quite the same as over there, and the over-there parts are somehow distracted from being fully present here.

This is how the holographic dream is born. A hologram is the concept that "the all is in every part" - which is pretty close to the way I described God being if God were a 'space'. i.e. All of God is fully in every part of existence. If you want a primer on holograms or whatever maybe check out The Holographic Universe which is quite an interesting book.

Anyway. Basically, at the early stages of the hologram forming, a lot is still shared and things are still almost-one. But the 'density', if you will, of the hologram, increases by continued ego belief in separation. The ego starts noticing and emphasizing the ways in which different parts of existence seem not to be the same. And as this grows stronger, it starts to seem more and more as though only a small part of God is still present here, because all the `other parts of God` are apparently quite different and have become quite finite and specific, and they're all localized to other parts of existence. So what exists over there maybe does not or cannot exist over here.

As this progresses, in the mind, the hologram 'solidifies' more and more. Or another way to describe it is that, formless reality in which everything is the same everywhere starts to 'descend' into localized properties, differences, separations, divisions, fragmented identities. The more separate and clearly defined these differences become, the more the awareness of God's omnipresence, God's total attention, God's total awareness, and God's equal presence everywhere, APPEARS to be shut out of awareness. If it seems true to you that differences are real, and that you start to look AT those differences and breathe reality into them, then you will become fixated on the ways in which God is NOT THE SAME ANYWHERE.

Not only is God not the same anywhere, but this also has a dire conclusion. If you really strongly believe in the reality of differences, you must start to fixate only on the appearance of what's left. All of the different 'forms' of difference. And those forms of difference is what we call PHYSICAL MATTER. The solidification of wholeness into locality, the contraction and density of 'energy' if you will, is what happens in the 'lower levels' of the hologram. The further into separation and differences you go the more 'solid' everything starts to look, and the less there is any evidence or awareness that God is present, even AT ALL. At a certain point you would be forgiven for even believing that God does not exist AT ALL because ALL you can see are the intense, real-seeming differences of physical matter. The physical universe 'stops' God from being able to be in all places at once, or in all places equally, or in all places fully, replaced with the idea that everything is separate from everything else.

So while holograms start out subtle, or what scientists call 'diffused', the lower levels of the holographic 'dream' are much more divided and separated out and form 'images'. When you see the little images on your credit card which look 3d when you see them from different angles - those are a form of holograms. You see an image, and yet when you look from another angle, you see another image. Its as if ALL of the images are somehow 'in' the one location, SHARED. But on the level of physical matter, you can only ever see ONE of the versions of the image at a time. You can't see the 'all'. You can't see all of the angles of the little dove or whatever it is in the hologram, because it is obscured by the rules of the physical universe.

So when the Course is saying, nothing so blinding as perception of form, what it's saying is, physical matter is a very dense level of a holographic interpretation of God, which has the effect of completely obscuring any trace of oneness or all-ness, so that you fixate on only one version of one image, in which it seems like NOTHING is shared and therefore there is no God. 'Sharing' is the same as 'Oneness' so if there is no sharing (co-existing in the same space) then God doesn't exist.

In the physical world, an object does not seem to have anything shared with another object. There is no sense of there being any unity between them. There is nothing 'the same' that is exactly the same in both. This defies the property of God that all of him is everywhere. And then because the stuff that is `in` one object is NOT the stuff that is `in` another object, defies the property of God that all of his same properties are in all objects at the same time. So if you look at that matter and you BELIEVE the illusion that it is trying to SHOW you, its statement of 'what is', you will be blinded from seeing God.

Physical matter LITERALLY was made by the ego to make the properties of God totally obscured and distracted away from. If you believe physical matter does not share anything, you do not have awareness of God. It blinds you. If you do not believe that physical matter contains all of something which is also fully present in other parts of matter, you are blinded to God. Matter, in all its forms, is a giant blanket of the 'undoing' of God's reality, God's omnipresence. It is a physicalization of the idea of separation, but even moreso, the idea that God's law-defying everywhereness is NOT what existence is like, and therefore God does not exist.

It is designed SPECIFICALLY to shut out the awareness of God's presence so that, IF your mind is aligned with it and IF your mind functions according to the 'laws of matter' then you WILL NOT SEE GOD. If you SEE MATTER, you do not see God. Not fully. If you do not see PAST matter, you do not see God. If you fixate ON or look AT matter, you will not see God. Your mind needs to become able to OVERLOOK (forgive) the ILLUSIONS that are presented to you BY MATTER ITSELF.

This isn't just a matter of fixing your mind and staying in the world and not seeing God. Your mind needs to go back `up` the hologram to the point of Oneness, eventually, so that your awareness is able to discern that a) God is fully present, b) All of God is here, c) All of God is everywhere, and d) All of God is the same everywhere. If you believe that MATTER IS REAL or MATTER IS TRUE, then you cannot be aware of God. If the form of matter dictates how your mind perceives or you believe in its ILLUSION, you cannot see God. Matter is BLINDING. That is its function. And it will never have another function until it is undone.

What the ego in your mind does, is it looks at matter and uses it as a 'model' for what is true about your mind and what is true in your perception. Its illusion infuses into your mind and you take it at its word and consider it 'reality'. You buy into its illusion, its way of obscuring God, and its statements of the ways in which God is not here, God is not everywhere, God is not ALL in ALL. That is matter's message. That is the 'state of existence' of the physical universe, designed solely to shut God out - IF you believe it is real.

This also leads to another way to say, the physical universe is just a holographic dream, and it is just an illusion designed to obscure God, and NEVER will it be Heaven (because heaven is formless), and THE WORLD IS NOT REAL. Matter is not real. Separate forms are not real. Bodies are not real. Planets are not real. Physical matter is AN ILLUSION AND NOTHING ELSE. It is the illusion that God is dead and can never be real.

These are all ways of expressing the idea that God is not God, and that can never be true. And this is why eventually the physical universe WILL DISAPPEAR.

I have no idea if I explained this well or conveyed what I wanted to. I had a profound experience a few years ago which SHOWED me an EXPERIENCE of this - I experienced what it was like to go up the hologram in my mind, back toward Oneness, and how this allowed me to be AWARE of God's presence - all of His presence in every part of the dream, and how this totally defied what 'form' was trying to telling me was the truth of existence. So I speak from experience, but these things really defy the ego's logic so it's very hard to put into words. Let me know if I need to clarify something.

All is not as it seems in this world. The physical world ITSELF IS the 'form' of the egos attack on God, and IS its defense. You think you only have defenses in your mind inside your body. But the physical universe as a whole is a giant defense mechanism - IN the larger mind of the Son of God. You're literally looking at the MIND of the Son of God attempting to shut God out. That's what this world is.

In A Course in Miracles, the truth is completely consistent. It represents a thought system of Oneness, in which everything correlates perfectly. There is no contradiction in Oneness or in the Truth.

Everything about the thought system of the Holy Spirit, of God, is completely LOGICALLY consistent. It is also true, that the thought system of the ego is completely logically consistent. The only difference is that the ego’s system is based on a fallacy, a premise which is not true - the idea that separation is real and possible with real effects.

Because the truth is 100% consistent, it is not necessary to guess, wonder, be confused, misunderstand, interpret, warp, figure out, avoid, speculate, or otherwise be less than certain about what the Course is teaching. This means the Course CAN be learned and understood with 100% consistency, 0% guesswork, and 100% certainty.

The Course itself is written in very exacting LOGICAL terms. Jesus contrasts what is true, versus what is false. This is very deliberate. Our main problem is we have CONFUSED what is true and what is false. We’ve mixed them up and switched them around. In our confusion, we NEED clarification as to what is actually true, and what is actually false. This is achieved by contrasting, in very black and white, clear, irrefutably LOGICAL terms, the difference between them.

e.g. "This is only this, and this is not that, therefore that is not this." This is logic.

e.g. "This is all that exists. That is the opposite of this. That does not exist." This is logic.

e.g. "Only heaven exists. Earth is opposite to heaven in every way. Therefore, Earth does not exist." (There is no world). This is logic.

e.g. "The opposite to love is fear. Yet love has no opposite. Therefore fear must produce a state which DOES NOT EXIST". This is logic.

Logical FACTS cannot be denied. They must be accepted if you want the truth, even if it means letting go of stuff you long held to be true, given that it is NOT consistent.

Jesus very specifically, and intentionally, uses extremely intensely black and white language where it is appropriate. He does not blur boundaries. He does not umm and ahh about what things mean. He is very intense in His absoluteness, certainty, clarity and consistency.

He very deliberately uses language which intensely draws lines between what is true, and what is false, so that we are left with as little confusion as possible. This *contrast* clarifies the DIFFERENCE between what is true and what is false in no uncertain terms. Jesus is deliberately extreme. This lends the Course much of its black and white, all or nothing, life or death "intensity". I have a hunch this is why many people experience *overwhelm* when reading the course, because it stretches the mind to extremes so much, and seems very "intense" because of the extreme contrast.

This is what we NEED, because our only perceptual problem is that we do not RECOGNIZE what is true, versus what is false. We do not recognize God (truth), because we think that when we see an illusion (lies) they are in fact true. This is because we’ve attempted to turn God into an illusion. We then believe illusions are God (ie real). This LACK of discernment between what is actually true and false, is the sole basis for our confusion and unconsciousness.

Just by the mere act of even exposing yourself to the "book" itself, reading its extremely LOGICAL words, its black and white CLARITY, you will experience CORRECTION. Simply from reading it, even if you don’t "get it" or do anything else with it. Simply reading for example something absolute like "there is no sin", is capable of inducing RELIEF. It is healing.

I can’t begin to tell you the number of times just merely reading phrases like this has melted me. The very FORM of the language itself is designed TO HEAL, by bringing CLARITY to what is true, and what is false, which corrects our false perception, undoes our confusion, and alleviates fear.

The very SPECIFIC, deliberate, intentional LOGICALITY of the Course is very important. Not only is it healing due to its ability to bring clarity, it also means that if you understand the logic *correctly*, it is completely CONSISTENT throughout the truth. Everything Jesus says about truth MUST be consistent with everything else He says. IT MUST.

If something does not seem to fit or correlate, it’s because there is some LACK OF AWARENESS of the LOGIC that is being expressed. This often is due to level confusion and false conclusions.

To put it simply, the Course contains a metaphysics which is a system of TOTALLY LOGICAL thinking, which transcends all words, and which is a "structure" so completely logical that IF you grasp even part of it correctly, you can RELY ON the part you learned and form ADDITIONAL CONCLUSIONS based on it, which are absolutely consistent with what Jesus is teaching. This, however, ONLY works IF you are perfectly grasping the LOGIC, otherwise you will make errors, which will produce FALSE conclusions and confusion.

This means, if you learn the METAPHYSICS, the "core" structure of reality and the ego, everything will "fit together" and be consistent. It will also build upon itself as you gain more clarity. You will be able to REFER TO that which you already learned which is 100% true, using it as a REFERENCE, to compare and contrast..... is this new information *perfectly consistent* with what you already know to be perfect truth, or not? In black and white terms, if it IS, it is true. If it is NOT, it is not true.

A grasp of the metaphysical LOGIC provides you with a tremendously powerful tool, because you can build upon what you already know is 100% true. This makes your grasp of truth STRONGER with every step. And this in turn makes the truth CLEARER. One seed of perfect clarity is all you need to be able to DEDUCE whether everything else is *completely consistent*, logically, or not.

This is your automatic barometer or "bullshit meter", for determining whether what people or the Course say is true or false. This means you do not need to "figure out" what is true. You ONLY need to come to CLARITY enough to see and understand LOGIC, so that you can let the truth itself tell you whether something is consistent with it or not.

Without something to refer to which is 100% absolutely true, we do not have anything TRUE to compare things to. There is no context or perspective into which to put things. That puts us in the dark. We will then be UNCERTAIN, lost, confused, unsure what the truth is or is not, and will then enter into tremendous debates trying to figure it out. And most of that time will be spent in either speculation, or make-believe, or wishful thinking, or ego-based conclusions, which are NOT CONSISTENT.

This is because WE are trying to author the truth, instead of ALLOWING the truth’s OWN built-in consistency inform us as to whether something is true, or something is false.

Since the full picture of "every topic ever talked about" is quite large and complex, it can take some time to logically compare and contrast what the course is saying in terms of its WORDS, versus making sure that the MEANING is completely CONSISTENT without contradiction when we keep everything ELSE the course says in mind.

We should realize that the whole truth is in every part of the course, but in FORM, often it SEEMS like taking one part of the course in isolation "means" something which it CANNOT MEAN, IF what the truth says elsewhere is true. If there is not a logical consistency, and if anything does not FIT PERFECTLY into the overall picture, into the thought system, SOMETHING IS IN ERROR.

What we need to learn about the Course, is that the metaphysics are ONCE removed from the truth. The words in the course are TWICE removed. Transcending the words is the only way to learn what IT MEANS. Or in other words, the logical FACTS of the Holy Spirit’s thought system have absolutely no wiggle room for interpretation or denial. Only the truth is true.

It is our job only to DISCERN CORRECTLY what is true, and what is false. This can ONLY be accomplished by a full appreciation of the METAPHYSICS, not the words. The words should only be there to reveal pieces of the truth and to point to aspects of the LOGICAL CONSISTENCY. If what we are reading is confusing or does not 100% comply with the rest of the truth, we are in error.

One of the biggest struggles with learning the Course’s metaphysical foundation, is when we THINK that our grasp of the Course’s statements IS logically consistent. If we are actually 100% onto the truth, which is possible, then good for us. If we are "off", but believe we are "on", THIS ITSELF is due to a CONFUSION about what is true, and what is false.

Anyone with an ego WILL BELIEVE that they already know what is TRUE. This is of course a trap. The ego is no different to God this way, in that both stand by whatever is true. The only difference is the ego believes something is true which actually is FALSE. It will defend it just as vehemently as God would, believing that to do so is to protect "self" and continue logical consistency. The problem is since the ego is blind to truth, and therefore limited and incapable of seeing the WHOLE truth, it comes to false conclusions based on its LIMITED awareness of information.

When the ego is believing it knows what is true in the course, defending it "to death", its blindness MUST make it mistaken. It will believe it knows or gets the course. But the ONLY way to grasp what the Course REALLY MEANS, is to have a PERFECT GRASP of the LOGICAL CONSISTENCY of the METAPHYSICS. Otherwise if you have DIFFICULTY with PERFECT LOGIC, you will come to false conclusions. Everything else is storytelling, fiction, interpretation, ego opinion and guesswork. And a whole lot of confusion.

The question then is, whethere YOU are truly being LOGICALLY CONSISTENT in every way possible on every Course topic. If there are "holes" in the logic alone, this is the only criteria for being in error. Not because of someone’s experience or authority or way of writing or years spent doing the course or how many workbook lessons or how proficient with miracles or how old you are or how publicly recognized.

The ONLY barometer for whether you are grasping the Course CORRECTLY, is that you can SEE a highly UNIFIED picture, in which all pieces fit perfectly, with NO CONTRADICTIONS, and an ability to DISCERN even the subtlest of nuances. Fortunately, the metaphysics TELLS YOU what somethig MUST MEAN, based on what is LOGICAL. You can rely on it, depend on it, and refer to it.

And you are supposed to. THE TRUTH IS YOUR GUIDING LIGHT. IT tells YOU what is true. The metaphysical logic TELLS YOU whether a given course quote means one thing or another. Not the ego’s ability to figure it out. Not a person’s prowess or personality. Only the truth is true.

There IS only one true metaphysics. There IS only one truth. Jesus HAS given a PERFECTLY LOGICALLY CONSISTENT COURSE. If we do not SEE the logical consistency, it’s because of our ego. Use that as a MIRROR therefore to show you where you MUST be in denial, with a willingness to be MISTAKEN, so that if the Course says something is TRUE, and it is consistent, you must ACCEPT IT. That means dropping your ego’s personal opinion.

We do not get to decide what the truth is. God established the truth. The metaphysics of the course reflects the truth. The WORDS of the Course are BASED ON the metaphysics. Grasp the metaphysics and none of the words will confuse you!

For example.

Fear is the opposite of love. Yet love has no opposite. An opposite to love must produce a state which does not exist.

This is LOGICAL. Similarly, Heaven has no opposite, "earth is opposite to heaven in every way", therefore IT IS PERFECT LOGIC to say that "earth does not exist." The logic itself tells you this must be true.

For example.

What is not love is murder. Anything which is not 100% perfect love, is murder. Even slight disagreements or even "agreeing to disagree", which is an illusion of peace, IS MURDER. You can deduce WHY this makes sense, if you look at the logic, and why this is *black and white*.

In the thought system of Oneness, what applies to you applies equally to everyone. There is nothing true about you which is not true about everyone. Everyone shares the truth (God). In truth, logically, you cannot attack your brother WITHOUT directly attacking yourself. DIRECTLY. Because what is true of them, INSTANTLY and ALWAYS is true of you. If they are hurt, you MUST be hurt. If you "cause" them to change, YOU must experience the effects.

...WHICH MEANS LOGICALLY.... if there is a thought system in which something applies to an other which does NOT apply to you, a separation has been introduced. This separation MUST logically come between you and your brother. It then means, what applies to you, SEEMS not to apply to them. SO.... if you were to attack your brother, it would SEEM, you can "cause them" to experience effects, which YOU do not experience! This is 100% logical.

This therefore means, in the ego thought system, you can seem to attack/cause your brother and ESCAPE ALL CONSEQUENCES (effects). This LITERALLY MEANS, logically, you can "get away with attacking", ie, escape the attack, ie you can attack without being affected. With no repercussions. This is PRECICELY the meaning of "getting away with murder."

And this is why, if there is any SHRED of belief that what appleis to someone else does not apply to you, because you are not ONE, that you are not perfectly equal in every way, you ARE being MURDEROUS! Hence, logically, what is "not love", MUST be murder, even if it seems to be a tiny degree of difference. Every argument on this forum is murderous!

Every difference of opinion is murderous! People being in separate bodies is murderous! This also means, the logical truth of the Course REDEFINES the meaning of "murder", by clearly demonstrating FOR US what murder MUST BE. Murder is not ONLY one person stabbing another to death. It is ALL degrees of attack.

It is also easy to logically conclude, that even though in a thought system of "cause being separate from its effect" (Father separate from Son), even if it SEEMS like you can get away with murder, YOU DO NOT. Because it is TRUE, that the thought system of Oneness ALWAYS APPLIES. Oneness has no oppposite, so its thought system has no true opposite. Which means, logically, even if you think you CAN get away with being murderous, YOU DO NOT escape the effects of what you cause! Therefore, you ARE attacking yourself when you attack your brother, and your body WILL suffer and be sick if you use it to attack others. Not my opinion. Perfect metaphysical logic.

All of this is LOGICALLY DEDUCED. It is a perfectly logically consistent conclusion. THIS MUST BE what the course says is true. This is METAPHYSICS. There is NO opinion here. This is not my personal viewpoint. If you see ANY logical fallacy, by all means let us know so that we can find a TRUER and MORE CONSISTENT truth.

It is possible to use simple logic to understand EVERYTHING that Jesus is telling us in the Course, in terms of what the Course MEANS. This DOES include the correct recognition of what ANY kind of terms mean, including often hotly contested CONCEPTS such as "worlds" or whether God could have created the Earth or what the Earth even IS. It SHOULD tell is EXACTLY whether there can be multiple sons and what perception IS. LOGIC can even tell you what death must be, and explain WHY the separation‘s "end result" was the manifestation of FORM as a "physical universe" with illusory planets and bodies. This is concludeable by LOGIC ALONE with zero opinion. The ONLY correct meaning of what these things really are, MUST BE LOGICALLY CONSITENT. Otherwise it is conjecture, aka ego bullshit.

The same is true for all Course theology, all creation stories, determining whether there are multiple sons or God, how the entire ego thought system functions, what is heaven, what is not, and everything in between. The only question is, WHAT IS LOGICALLY TRUE AND CONSISTENT?! The Course’s TRUTH is absolutely 100% consistent.

If we are not seeing HOW it is consistent and something seems not to fit, it comes down to our ego - our own ability or lack of to LOGICALLY RECOGNIZE what is true, vs what is false. If we have difficulty with logic, or dealing with black and white statements, we WILL have difficulty understanding the course, and MUST come to false conclusions. That too is part of the logic.

It is also true, that the Course CAN be learned, the Truth is NOT obscure, the Truth is NOT mysterious, it IS possible to understand what Jesus means on ALL topics, and there should be NO confusion or disagreement about what Jesus is teaching. The only conflict comes from different ego’s attempting to have their truth be the one truth. Only the truth is true. We can ONLY ACCEPT IT, together, in agreement. We cannot MAKE IT.

Learn the metaphysics, and you will see what the Course is really saying, meaning, intending, and what is TRUE. This will transcend ALL words, all people’s opinions, even your own. If all you want is to let the truth TELL YOU what is true, you will learn the Course. To learn it REQUIRES that you put aside all of your own ego, otherwise you will misunderstand it.

"The Course" is not in the book. It exists as metaphysical states of mind whose relationships and interconnections are 100% logically defined. Everything about the ego can be described with perfect logic. Even creation is logical. Jesus is nothing if not EXTREMELY LOGICAL, because only that kind fo black and white clarity will show you what is TRUE, and what is FALSE.

IF we were to only ever talk of *metaphysics*, there would be no ROOM for opinion and no room for the ego. Then there will be peace.

Sorry this is a bit longish... it's hard to explain.

The physical world is a holographic dream. But the way that it is holographic isn't very obvious. And most people do not believe it is a dream!

Firstly, a hologram is not a projected 3D image. It is not the hollywoodized concept of an artificial three-dimensional object projected in space that you can view from any angle. That very loosely is tied to the idea of a hologram and they just ran with it and turned it into a marketing exercise.

Holograms have some interesting properties which describe the way that this world is put together, and the reason why it is a dream.

You will see a hologram on most credit cards. It's the little shiny symbol in the corner which, if you look at it from different angles, appears to let you see a virtual object suspended in space. You actually seem to be able to look at it from different angles, even though it's a flat image. They use this on cards because they are hard to manufacture, requiring precise laser technology, so this offers a certain level of protection against fraudulent cards.

The idea of a hologram is that information about the whole of something is present in all of the parts. On your credit card, information about the image of an object as viewed from countless different angles, is embedded into each tiny particle of the image. It's as though there were thousands of cameras recording images of the object from different angles, and then all of these images were overlaid on top of each other. Therefore each part of the image contains a ton of information, much more than just one particle of image.

One way to produce a hologram like this is to create tiny 3-dimensional bumps which you project different images onto from a specific direction. When your viewing angle changes, you see a different side of the bumps thus forming a different image. That's a very loose approximation of how a hologram works.

One of the properties of a hologram, therefore, is that if you remove a physical portion of the holographic image, it does not lose a specific portion of the information stored in it. That's because the same information is present in all of the other parts of the image. It's like storing the same piece of data a thousand times scattered across the surface. Chopping off a part of the object does not lose information stored in that part, it only reduces the overall sum total of occurrences of the information.

In the book, The Holographic Universe, it was described for example that a person had a portion of their brain removed. It was believed by science that certain memories were stored in that part of the brain, and that removing it would definitely produce a memory loss. However, afterwards, the person still could recall the memory, it was just a little fuzzy. That's because the memory was actually stored throughout the brain in a holographic manner, meaning that "all" of the memory was stored in "every part" of the brain. Removing one part of the brain did not remove a specific portion of the memory. The memory could still be recalled and reassembled because all of it was stored in all parts. Just with a little less clarity. The brain is holographic.

So in a hologram, each specific part of an object isn't JUST that part of the object, it is also connected to and shares information with all of the other parts. This is also similar to the scientific theory that matter is energy which exists as a kind of field of potentiality, which, when you look at it with consciousness, it condenses the field into a tight point and shows up as a particle. The particle then seems to be the only part visible so you think that that's all there is to it, but the particle actually is still intimately connected to and extends into the field. Thus there is an extension beyond the form of matter.

Another word that describes this extension beyond the form, and the idea that the part contains the whole, is a "symbol". Symbols are representations of something greater beyond themselves. They are not the thing, but they're sort of a condensed representation of the core qualities of the thing. They allude to something beyond themselves, and they point in the direction of the whole of the thing they represent. They don't show up as the thing in its entirety, only as a small image which "symbolizes" the thing. And what is it that we know of that are built from symbols? Dreams.

Now, the reason that we can't usually tell this physical universe is a holographic dream, is because as much evidence as possible that each part (particle) is connected to the "all" has been squeezed out. The matter that shows up, as form and objects and bodies and worlds, are symbols representing energies that are far bigger than the objects themselves, and which connect the objects together. In other words, there is a lot of SHARING going on behind the scenes, but by the time the energy field coalesces into tight concentrations - as matter - you only see the concentrations ie forms, and you don't realize that these forms are symbolic of something more beyond them. You fixate on the form of what is visible and think that this is all there is, as though the symbol is not really a symbol but is actually the whole 'thing' in completeness.

So at the most extremely spread out end of the hologram, which is the physical universe, it APPEARS that there is no sharing. Particles do not seem to share the same space. They do not seem to be connected. Everything seems to be separated out. Objects do not really touch each other, but are held at a distance by forces. And so this makes us believe that each object does not share anything with other objects, particularly if you fixate on the object's form and appearance. This is an ILLUSION. It's an illusion composed of SYMBOLS, which you have interpreted incorrectly to be NOT symbolic, and instead see only the condensed form of the hologram, which makes you think that physical matter is entirely fixed and is showing you all of what exists.

This illusion, then, that matter is all separate and that there is no sharing going on, deceives you to believe this world is not a hologram, because you don't SEE the ways that the particles are joined together, or joined to the whole. You also don't see the ways that the whole is present in every part. You don't recognize, and your body can't show you, that this so-called reality is actually just a SYMBOLIC collection of temporary images, not a final end-state in its own right but a place that points beyond itself.

Just as your dreams at night are highly symbolic, so too the physical world is completely symbolic. There are established massive symbols in this world which represent all kinds of aspects of the separation idea. For example, outer space, empty and black and cold, symbolizes the unconscious mind, whereby instead of there being light everywhere, light is denied and reduced to tiny concentrations - which you call stars, which are symbols of the ego and the conscious mind as separated selves. If you go into it, there area many many symbols in this world representing the structure of the ego and its interpretation of the truth. The body is a symbol of the idea of separation from the whole environment, for example. It is not just a form and a finite thing in its own right, it REPRESENTS the idea in the mind that you are separate from the whole. It is a symbol with a hidden background.

Most people do not think they are inside a dream. They think that there are no symbols anywhere. Yet they might loosely say from time to that that something seems symbolic. When you have synchronicities and things seem to correlate and be "connected", that's you starting to realize and tap into the hologram, into the field of energy, which is diffused beyond just physical appearances. You're sensing and noticing that, uncannily, two seemingly separate symbols are actually related. ie you start to realize that there is something CONNECTING things together in a semi-meaningful way (synchronicity is "meaningful coincidence"), and coincidence means co-incidence, ie two things correlating, because they share a holographic background.

Dreams at night occur at what you could call a higher level of the hologram. As such, in a night dream, the seemingly concrete, fixed quality of matter is not as "dense" as in the physical universe. Therefore the reality of the dreams are much more highly and obviously symbolic, not just that the objects and events in them symbolize things you experienced in the daytime or whatever, but that they actually represent things. Dream interpretation isn't just an attempt to derive meaning from something that has no meaning, it is actually based on the fact that dreams are entirely composed of SYMBOLS, and those symbols are the structure of "dream reality" because dream reality is holographic, objects and events are representations and not things in their own right, and everything is joined together beyond just the appearance of its form.

Sometimes you will notice that you have dreams which are far more symbolic than others. Sometimes you'll have a dream where it seems effortless for objects to transform bizarrely into other objects. I remember having a dream where I walked out the front door and there was like a dog barking and something changed in my mind and the dog turned into a small child and started to talk to me and then something else happened and the child turned into an adult. This is possible because in these dreams, the "form" or the fixed condensed material quality of the reality experience, the holographic reality, is not as dense and not as concrete. Abstract weird stuff happens.

It's much easier at that level, where matter has not concentrated so tightly, for forms to SHIFT and change quite naturally and normally. Forms that shift and change, by the way, is the foundation of all "life forms" that GROW and change over time, demonstrating that their reality is not actually fully fixed. And symbols can more easily transition into other symbols at the deeper level of the abstract hologram. The very form of objects can convert into other objects, as symbols shift around.

I also had a dream once which explicitly explained to me the holographic nature of dreams. In this dream I stood on a small bridge. There was nothing else in the scene. Then around me in all directions were apparently images, but each of these images was a symbol. It wasn't that I took the appearance of the image at face value, but instead, I recognized that the images were symbolic and therefore they "led" to something that they REPRESENTED. I could literally FEEL and sense that these symbolic images were not only connected to "other realities", but that the way the image was showing up wasn't "the whole" of what existed. It was just one finite expression of what it represented.

So it was possible to actually sort of "go into" the image, into the symbol, which caused it to expand as I moved closer to the environment that the symbol represented. I was able to travel through holograms this way. And it was then possible to take some other part of the environment, and go into it in similar fashion, upon which it would also expand out or elaborate into an entire scene based on that chosen focus. This showed me that the dream reality is highly holographic and fluid and symbolic and that everything is connected together behind the appearance of the symbols.

The physical world is less obviously symbolic and holographic because it is more DENSE, and that means the shared energy field - the all - has been very strongly broken out, to create the ILLUSION that each part barely has any trace of a connection to any other part. The extreme of separation is so strong between parts that you would be forgiven for being convinced not only that each object is not a symbol at all, but that there is nothing "beyond" the form of each object, nothing is shared, nothing is connected, and there is no reality beyond appearances. This is the lowest "level" of the hologram, where the unfied field, the shared symbolic nature of this dream, has become so cemented and "physicalized" that it barely seems possible to you that it is a dream at all. So extreme is the degree of concentration and contraction o the energy here, that it's almost undetectable to sense or tell that everything is joined.

That is, perhaps, unless you are an "empath", which is someone whose mind is able to sense where the symbols lead, and can expand upon what lies beyond them as though tuning into the hologram's symbolism and travelling in Spirit to its source. This is also why empaths are able to actually tune into "real people" that show up on television recordings or in movies, because even though the recording was done in the past, there is STILL a symbolic holographic connection between that IMAGE and the actually thing it represents. The mind can go into that image and sense and explore things about what the image shows, navigating through the symbolic hologram.

This highly obscuring, difficult to discern, God-blocking, reality covering, immense illusory dream, which seems to have solidified into a consistent solid world, is precisely what you wanted! This is why you used a holographic dream to create a world of separation, an illusion, where the illusion IS that the world is NOT symbolic, it is NOT a dream, and it APPEARS to be solid and real with everything separate.

We've pushed the hologram to the limits of physical density, causing particles to remain very fixed-seeming in their arrangements, which has created the ILLUSION of a place of form where consistency is very very sustained over long period of time. Objects don't apparently change into other objects, and you as a limited mind do not SEEM to have hardly a trace of power to change objects into other objects, because they're being held in a physicalized state very strongly, unlike the conditions in a nighttime dream which is much more maleable. Unless you're Jesus ;-) Events mostly do not seem to be symbolic. Bodies seem to function based on non-holographic laws. And nothing seems to be connected to a greater whole.

Then you are left only with the appearance of the physical matter, you make up laws about it based on its behavior, and then you justify that your science is correct based on its illusion of consistency, and have moved into the "linear" perspective. But the truth is lateral, vertical, because if you move out of the physicalized EFFECT and back towards the abstract CAUSE, you become able to modify the physicalization of matter to take on a different form. And this would be considered miraculous.

This therefore shuts out the idea of GOD, which is a reality where everything is shared. This is because the world was made as a defense against God and as a way to OBSCURE the truth that God is omnipresent, that ALL of Him is fully present in all parts. In physical matter, this could not be more obscured as an illusion that the all is NOT in ANY part, and therefore that the all does not exist. That was the PURPOSE of the physical world. To hide God from awareness.

So just because you think this world is an objective, verbatim kind of reality, it's not. It's a holographic dream. And sometimes this holographic dream actually does shift and change in symbolic ways that defy all logic and scientific explanation. Quite literally, sometimes, people report cases where an entire building which did not exist the day before, suddenly materializes in a known location that simply was not there. Somehow, it simply shows up in the dream hologram because of some kind of shift in the energy focus.

Also quantum physics is starting to reveal how objects at a distance can share the same reality - that a particle of light can be in two places at once, and that changes to the particle in one location AUTOMATICALLY changes the particle in the other location with NO TIME DELAY. This is "physically" impossible, in terms of a fixed dense world of form and matter, but in terms of holographic dreams, it is TOTALLY NORMAL! In fact, that this isn't happening more often is very abnormal, and shows you the extent to which we have designed this "world" (which is nothing more than an illusory dream) to APPEAR to be very fixed and separated.

In higher, more symbolic night dreams, it's possible to do things to bend reality, modify objects, transcend physical laws, transform one thing into another etc... all quite naturally, because that's what's possible when you know that everything is ONE, and everything is joined together. Form, matter, objects and appearances, including bodies and worlds, are nothing more than SYMBOLS, and those symbols can easily shift and change "form".

Having mastery over this dream illusion gives you the ability and mastery to defy all of the so-called "physical" laws, which are merely laws based on visible concentrations of the one field, and to do things like walking on water, changing objects into other objects, disappearing sickness, reversing death, etc. The miracles Jesus demonstrated merely shows us that this dream is a holographic illusion which is completely malleable, its form is nothing more than a temporary expression of an idea, and everything can be modified.

This world isn't real. It is a dream. It's an illusion of a world. It's a temporary concentration of an idea of separation, an idea that "the all" does not exist, and the idea that nothing is shared. It takes the form of a hologram which goes from a state where everything is one, to a state where nothing is one, and every level in between. The all IS in every part, because every part is not the WHOLE, it's just a portion of the whole. You are not seeing the whole picture! And if you believe solely based on "appearances" that physical matter is all that there is, you are completely falling for the holographic illusion that nothing is connected.

Everything is connected. All is One. At at the very peak of the hologram, everything is shared everywhere. God is omnipresent. All of God is in all parts fully, and this completely defies all physical laws. The physical laws do not apply to MIRACLES because miracles are expressions of the abstract source of the hologram, from the field of mind and energy which transcends particles and concentrations of matter, and which all of the symbols POINT TO.

So yes, you're dreaming. You're inside a symbolic dream right now, right where you are, as you read this, with your holographic dream body. All is not what it seems. There is reality beyond this apparent world, and appearances are not reality. Thus there is no real world here. At most, this world is a SYMBOL, and not a finite concrete objective wholeness. And yet even as a symbol it is just a symbol in a dream, and this dream is not real, because DREAMS ARE NOT REAL. That is why there is no real world here, no real death, and no real sickness or suffering.

We are meant to wake up from the entire holographic projection and return to the abstract source of truth where ALL IS ONE.

"The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. 2 It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. 3 Yet the ego, though encouraging the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. 4 Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: "Seek and do not find." 5 This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep"

The ego is simply an attempt to deny the existence of love. Using it, you deny the existence of love within you. This means you put in place a belief, that you do not have love in you. That you are not made of love or are inherently love.

Since love is the absolute core essence of what you are, your soul, to suggest there is no love in you is an attempt to say "love is not your identity." Your very "self" is brought into question.

This creates the belief in a LACK of love within you, and also the belief you are NOT love and cannot BE loved. This is brought about by the idea of sin, which suggests you are separate from Love - from yourself, and from God.

Since you believe it’s not in you, and you feel empty and lacking, you have now become "needy". You’ve invented a fake need - an absence of love. This compels you to SEEK FOR LOVE. You reason it is not in you, so it must be ANYWHERE else other than in you.

The problem is, it is not ANYWHERE ELSE other than in you, shared with God. So as soon as you start to seek for it, you move AWAY from where it is, and TOWARDS where it is not. It is not "out there", outside of you.

This compulsion to address the "hole" in your heart by finding what’s "missing", sends you on an extraordinary journey away from yourself. You are literally trying to "find yourself" anywhere other than where you are, within. You are also therefore trying to find love, anywhere other than where it is, within.

This then means you don’t believe the love is going to come from yourself. Someone or something OTHER than you has to provide it. So now, whether or not you have love, or even your self, depends on someone or something outside of you providing it. If they fail to provide it, it’s their fault. I they provide it, you worship them. Anything other than seeing it in yourself.

This also means therefore, you now believe that someone else has taken posession or responsibility for your love, and your self, as if having stolen it from you. You now see your self and your love, in other people, locked up inside them, as though it’s stuck in them. And now it’s your job to steal it back from them. You believe it belongs to you, and that you’ve lost it.

What you are looking for in them, however, is not real love. You already believed that there is no real love in you. You already chose not to have real love. You saw yourself as unworthy of it when you believed in sin (separation from love). This made you perceive that there is no love outside you either, because you will perceive externally what is within your beliefs. A lack of love in you will show you its absence outside of you. So real love is nowhere to be found.

Instead, what you seek for is a replacement for love, a substitute for love, and for yourself. You are seeking for specialness, some sense of "value" that you want and think is worth having - or which will save you from your emptiness. And you are also trying to find a substitute identity, something which can stand in for who you really are. Something which seems special and can somehow be similar to the love you lost sight of. You want to become spiritual and special and the best you can be.

This is all described in the laws of chaos.

Law #1) The truth is different for everyone - this results from everyone failing to see an equivalent love in themselves. What they see themselves as they believe is truth. If they are not all the same love, their own selves are different and conflicting, so now the truth is different because identities are different.

Law #2) Everyone must sin and deserves attack and death - comes about from having attacked yourself and believing that someone else did it to you. Disowning your own love and your own self was an act of becoming irresponsible, through disassociation, and therefore someone else is responsible for what you are. That means it seems like they took this love from you, so you are justified in attacking back to re-acquire what they stole, or to force them to give it to you.

3) God is believed to agree with your lack of love - since you yourself believe it is true, see love/God as separate, and as having attacked, you believe the truth is that love is no longer love. That means God is not love, so God agrees you are not love, which means God cannot help you to get your love or self back. If neither of you are love, you have to get it somewhere else.

4) You can get from others what you lack - since they stole it you feel justified in getting it from them. In the least, to have them willingly shower you with specialness. In the worst, to rip it from their dying limbs in a murderous attack. What is it that you are trying to get from them? A replacement for the love you lost - specialness and a replacement identity.

In addition to this process, the absence of love compels you to find a substitute in specialness. A lack of love makes the illusory world seem real to you. You are blind to its fantasy because your lack of love makes you feel imprisoned by it, like a needy inmate. Your mind now is in a split state, because you’ve introduced a separation between you and love. Between you and yourself. This has split your mind and you are now split minded, in two minds.

When the mind is split, it sees one half of the split as different to the other in some way. Typically this skews the mind‘s associations where one part of the mind seems to contain illusions of innocence, and the other part illusions of attack/guilt. One part is thought to be your self, the other not yourself. This is disassociation.

The mind associates more with the part which seems innocent as a way to avoid the pain of "no love", ie sin, and relegates the rest of the belief in sin to unconsciousness. This later is projected out and is not associated with as "my self". It is considered "other than me", even though it is inside the same mind. "Ideas leave not their source", so your "enemy" is now inside your own mind, making it able to attack you. It is you attacking you. All attack is self attack. (The secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself).

The part of mind that tries to focus only on an ILLUSION of love, an illusion of innocence, an illusion of spirituality, an illusion of peace and happiness, remains in conscious awareness. It is what has been "permitted" into awareness. "You" then think that this self is ALL of yourself. You do not see the rest, yet alone see it as yourself. You think it is "outside you", because it is external to your persona, but is not outside your mind.

This special part of the mind, the persona, makes the world seem real and then attempts to section it off into "good and bad", "right and wrong", "spiritual and ego". This is because the mind has done the same thing to itself, labeling some parts as innocent and some as guilty. It separates the world and labels some parts or behaviors or diets or clothes or actions as "spiritual" and some parts as "evil". Then it pits them against each other.

The shift towards trying to include and accept only the parts which seem spiritual, and to reject the parts which seem evil, reinforces the artificial sense of sef which your mind is trying to build. It is trying to assemble a fake self, a replacement self, to replace the one you hid from yourself.

Since this all takes place within one "realm", whether your mind or in the world, it means you’ll create an ILLUSION of spirituality, and will try to change the ego into a "more spiritual" self. You’ll surround it with all kinds of things which look and sound spiritual, based on judgement and selecting between illusions.

The problem is that this fake self which is trying to only accept the most spiritual illusions as a sign of awakening, is also attacking the rest of the world, and yourself, to try to get rid of any trace of evil/sin.

In the name of "perfecting your self" - your fake self - you’ll attack your real self constantly to pick it apart and find any little thing wrong with it (which you judged/condemned as true of you), to get rid of that and keep only the best parts. This gradually rips you apart piece by piece. It is actually an act of self destruction, because eventually there will be nothing less. It is self attack in the name of self improvement or "self help".

The more that you try to develop a replacement self, and to make it spiritual, the less there will be of you. It will create a facade of niceness, seeming spiritual, trying to love everyone, being positive, people pleasing, idol worship, wearing the right clothes, saying the right words, getting dressed up for the lord on sundays to asuage guilt, having all the special books and charms and magical things. All to create an illusion of spirituality.

The problem is this spirituality is constantly under attack by the very parts of Self which that same fake self has judged as evil. Having made sin real, the "sinful others" - your own unconscious self, is now your constant enemy. You’ll try to hide from it and avoid it. You’ll try to keep it "in others" or "other than yourself". You’ll see it outside of you and attack it and condemn it to disassociate from it. And yet it will haunt you and keep coming back into your awareness, back into your life, to remind you of what you think of yourself. Because it is in your mind and you can’t make it go away without healing the split.

This fake spirituality takes constant defense. It is exhausting. It also does not work - to undo sin or guilt. Yet it is filled with promise and hope and yearning and striving and trying and being passionate about all these magical illusions of wonderfulness. And it still leads to death, be sure of that.

The more you seek for love the less love you have, the less life you have, the more you will become sick and die. "All sickness is a form of seeking outside of yourself." When this fakeness is pointed out, it is taken as a terrible attack. A horrifying truth. In particular when the special relationship is undermined, or shown to be fake, it can be very upsetting. And so wages the supposed spiritual war between good an evil. Between yourself and yourself.

The ego is simply a device you made to show you a distorted version of the truth. It only has one function, to block love. To shut out spirit. It will never have another function. But a person with fake spirituality will try to change the ego into something spiritual. To take it into the light. To make it be closer to God. This will threaten its destruction, and the "you" who is identified with it, will take this as an attack. This is the source of all ego rebounds, and much sickness, which implements defenses against truth to "protect" the ego.

The problem here is, your sense of identity has become associated with the ego. You are then trying to convert yourself from emptiness into "having love" or "being spiritual", but while still holding onto the ego. This makes you try to change the ego into something spiritual. It cannot change. It cannot become spiritual. It has a fixed function and a one-track mind focused on death. You’ll have a constant bouncing back and forth between fictional spirituality and despair and fear. Identifying with it automatically keeps it. Keeping it and trying to change it into the truth does not work. Ever. It has to be dis-identified from, to reclaim who you are.

But because we have identified with the ego, and we’re tired of suffering, and want to become more spiritual, we try to change "our self", which now is the ego. All this will do is transform the form that the ego is showing up as. It means changing up your life to "look" more spiritual. To do the spiritual things and not the non-spiritual things. To emphasize how evil the evil stuff is, and how spiritual the spiritual stuff is. To create a special little corner of the world safe from the bad stuff. For a while.

You can see many Christians doing this. Not all, but many. Some, in fundamentalist extremes of ego, heavily believe in "good and evil" and will do anything they can in a war against evil to judge it and make it very wrong, while also trying to cultivate an "image" of being more spiritual. This then entails wearing the "Sunday best", being "good", condemning "evil", adjusting behavior, avoiding sinful behavior, and generally creating an illusion of spirituality. It is very judgemental because there is so much separation in it.

You can also see this in most of the world’s religions. People with their false Gods, their idols, their shrines, their special songs, their statues, their rituals and traditions, their special clothing, daily behaviors, sacred images, holy locations, and various other magical things. You also see this in all super-positive approaches (magical unicorns) and all super-negative approaches (witchcraft etc). Both, being a belief in a special external power, or external love, are beliefs in magic. Just different sides of it.

These are all ego distractions of false spirituality. Also the new-age movement with its positive thinking, magical charms and paraphenalia, law of attraction, yoga, special kinds of body activities, etc is all part and parcel of an illusion of spirituality. Things which seem like they will achieve something, but achieve the opposite, is the hallmark of the ego. The test of any genuine spirituality is whether it "really works" to bring about more awareness of love.

All of this is an attempt to "find yourself". It’s the same thing as trying to find love. Believing that it is OUT THERE, and that if you just try hard enough you will find it. The ego has a response for you. It will tell you that you need to make a lot of passionate effort to become spiritual. It will encourage you to do lots and lots of "spiritual practice". Even if it overwhelms you. Why?

Because it denies that you are already very spiritual. It takes you away from the love that is already in you. Having a really strong passion for "finding the truth" and "finding love" and "becoming spiritual" actually makes you feel hopeless and worthless and unloved. It takes you away from the love that you are already. Appreciating what you already have (gratitude for what God has given) is a better strategy.

The more the ego can emphasize how much love you lack, the more it can compel you to seek for it. The more estranged your are from your own self, the more you think you will find it outside you or in someone else. The more you disown your own love, the more you will blame others for making it go away. And the more you try to find it, the LESS you will find it.

You already had it! Seeking for it makes it seem like it’s not here. Seek, and you will not find it. And you will not find love or truth, or health, or happiness, or wholeness, or peace, or willingness, or power, or unity, or joy, "in" the world outside of you. If you are doing that, prepare to be disappointed. This is the ego’s guarantee.

After you have recognized these illusions and have stopped trying to pretend to be loving or spiritual, through radical honesty and authenticity and responsibility, sorting out what is really true and what is really false, and have surrendered the seeking, and have seen through the TRAP of believing that you are not ALREADY love, you will return back to where you started from. This is the "journey without distance". Your destination, the love within you, where God put it, required no real distance at all. To find it, you didn’t need to travel in dreams at all.

Love is already in you. God put it there.

Your SELF, your real identity, is already in you. God put it there. No-one can give it you you and you can’t find it anywhere. Because you have not lost it.

The only problem you have are the blocks to the *awareness* of love’s presence WITHIN YOU. It’s already there!

It’s just covered up. It’s hidden. Love being hidden makes it seem like love has "gone away". This suggests that you really did become sinful, as if you sin made innocence become corrupted. You never did. You just *covered up* your innocence with a cloud of images of sin, and then tried to cover that up with illusions of innocence. Sin did not corrupt your innocence, or make you unworthy of love. It just temporarily blocked your awareness of it being PRESENT, right here, in you, as you, right now.

You have no needs. You need do nothing. You need not seek for love. "You are the love you’ve been looking for." All that is needed for enlightenment is the recognition of this truth. "Enlightenment is a recognition and not a change at all." It means recognizing where love IS, that you ARE IT, accepting that it is COMPLETELY TRUE OF YOU, your willingness to receive it from God, and your willingness to accept it is IN YOURSELF ALREADY! Accepting the atonement is accepting that you never did lose the love that you are.

You already have the light in you. You already have the truth in you. You just don’t believe it’s there or that you’re worthy of it, or that you want it, or that you need it, or that you can have it, or that it hasn’t gone way. Love didn’t leave you. Love didn’t reject you. You left love. This is the inheritance that we threw away. And which is waiting for us to reclaim. God has kept our love safe for us, forever.

We ALREADY HAD EVERYTHING we needed. God already gave it fully and shared it with us. It was after having it that we tried to throw it away. But we could not get rid of it. You can’t make love go away. You can’t get rid of God. But you can deny it is there by blocking awareness of it. Remove the blocts, and hey presto, OH LOOK, I AM ALREADY LOVE!!!! I’ve been the love that I‘ve been trying to find, all along! Surprise!

"The world was made as an attack on God." "The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible." "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it" "The world is the picture of the crucifixion of God's Son". "The world was made as a place where God could enter not." "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." "The hell you made".

Okay so, apparently, we MADE some kind of a world, which was designed to attack God, is made of illusions, tries to shut God out, depicts the death of God's Son, and is totally opposite to heaven as a form of hell, where bodies sin and try to prove death can happen.

So now we're in a position where we can ask a really interesting question. What do we do about this? How is this resolved? What's the Holy Spirit's solution? How should we be regarding or viewing this hellish realm of sin and attack and death that we made? What is the way to return to Heaven? How does God deal with this situation?

There are many significant parts of the Course which talk about the fact of what this world IS. It's nature. As described above, an illusory hellish dream of sin and death. In some of the perspectives Jesus gives, he reminds us of how meaningless, pointless, non-existent, purposeless, substanceless this world is.

This seems to be a very important aspect of how we overcome it. A recognition of what it is and what it is not. No rose tinted glasses, no fluffy romantic language, no trying to make it out to BE Heaven or to BE God's creation. Just a simple recognition of its illusory nature, a picture of impossibilities and nonsenser. Just a straight forward honest appraisal of what we made and why it is not real. For example:

"(mind) ... it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"There is no world" "The world sill spin into the nothingness from which it came." "Eternity will shine away the world." "A world forgiven cannot last."

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal."

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while." ... "The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?" ... "Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers." ... "Yet they are not deceived by what they see." ... Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

So in this perspective, Jesus teaches us that this world we made, is an illusion of a world, which we mistakenly think is REAL. And we're supposed to recognize it's an illusion/dream and not believe in it, we're supposed to recognize it holds nothing that we want, that it is unreal, that we are not of it, the body is not who we are, and really that none of it is happening. "All events are nowhere." It has no consequences, nothing that happens causes anything real, there is no real sin. "All changes wrought are substance-less." And this proceeds all the way to the world disappearing. "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

There is no particular love-loss for the world in this view. It's just simple honest recognition of the fact that it is a world made from the denial of the Kingdom, dreamed in an attempt to attack God and His Son, it is illusory and has no real effects, no part of it is valuable or permanent, and it doesn't really exist.

There is, however, also an additional component to coming to recognize "awareness of dreaming of hell". To realize the world is not the real world. And this has to do with the Holy Spirit's reinterpretation of what we made.

The world we made, was made in total "false perception". The body was made to be fixed in a state of false perception, where it does not overlook/forgive ANYTHING. It is blinded by perception of forms. Its vision stops at the outside surface of nothing. It "sees" only what BLOCKS vision. "These eyes made not to see will never see."

The body's eyes can only report that "the world seems real" "it seems to exist" "it seems to be happening." They only see "sin is real" "bodies are sinful". We jumped all the way from perfect Heaven to total hell. We designed the world to be a total opposite to reality. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way." But what does the Holy Spirit do with this hell that we made?

What he represents and makes possible, is an alternative way of looking at the hell we made. A re-interpretation of it. This doesn't really CHANGE IT, because it can't BE anything other than an illusion. You can't make it BE Heaven - God already accomplished Heaven's creation. But you can learn not to be deceived by it, so that when you see it, you don't BUY INTO IT. You don't MAKE it real to you.

"the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made".

"This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream's ALTERNATIVE, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in making up the dream. They are the glad effects of taking BACK the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released, because the mind acknowledges "this is not DONE TO me, but I am doing this." And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and ALL the dreaming of the world undone."

His goal is to UNDO the dreaming of the world. To take back the cause of it. To stop the making of it. To cancel it, reverse it, dissolve it, erase it, disappear it. To STOP DREAMING. This is His aim and guarantee. But before this happens, something happens to how you experience the world you made. We're introduced to this idea that the WAY YOU SEE, perception, can be modified and repurposed, so that you gradually invest in the dream less, believe it's illusions less, are convinced it is a picture of real sin and death less, and so learn to overlook/forgive/forget it.

This means that initially, it seems as if the world is really hell. Unforgiven, it is a "real nightmare". The body is designed to fixate on the nightmare and make it seem real. But we have the ability to change our mind, which changes our beliefs, which change our perceptions. We can choose again and NOT believe in what the world is showing us, and to regard the body as DECEIVING us. It's still a picture of hell. It's still "the strange world you made." It still seems to run by ego laws of death and everything in it still is limited and flawed, per the laws of illusions/death. But if you don't BELIEVE IN IT, you don't take these appearances at face value. You are not deceived. You are not tempted.

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach."

"Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, and disappears before His holy sight."

"Lead us not into Temptation" means "Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

"And he will reinterpret ALL temptation as just another chance to bring him joy."

"I am the light of the world" "It is the perfect answer to all illusions, and therefore to all temptation. It brings all the images you have made about yourself to the truth, and helps you depart in peace, unburdened and certain of your purpose."

We're also told that God loves the world. Even though the world is an imaginary illusion of death, a picture of hell, somehow God still loves it so that He does NOT believe in it or mistake it for Reality. But let's be clear, that loving the world does not MAKE the world BE love. It doesn't MAKE it holy. It merely looks upon it WITH love and holiness, forgiving what is there, not believing in what it depicts. The picture of crucifixion turns into an empty MIRROR, in which you see YOUR reflection. In this, the world is meaningless in and of itself, so by taking away its meanings you reflect only Gods' meaning INTO it. This makes the world SEEM holy or heaven-like.

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world."

"What the world is, is but a fact. (it is a picture of hell) You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose **how** you would see it."

"God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right?"

What he's clearly saying here is that you have dreamed of hell, in an attempt to destroy God and His son. And Earth is still Heaven's opposite. But this hell only seems to have any reality while you believe it is real, while you are judging and deceiving. God does not believe in hell being real. He knows there is no real sin or death. So he looks UPON hell and does not make it real, does not see any proof of real sin in it, sees no evidence of real death happening, and so has no grounds for being anything other than loving. Laughing at it. Shining it away.

So now in the Holy Spirit's true perception, everything about the world is OVERLOOKED, ie not taken at face value. The world is regarded as a thin veil of nothingness hanging over the face of Christ. Substanceless, causeless, not doing anything, imaginary. An image of crucifixion still, but depicting nothing but a fantasy. An image of death and sin still, but depicting only an idle wish that sin and death can happen. It's not taken seriously. And so he does not see REAL sin in it. In this way, the picture of crucifixion is forgiven.

Here before your eyes is a vision of hell, a veil of death, which the body wants to report as real, but which the Spiritual Eye recognizes is entirely fictional and absurd. Not even worth paying attention to. But because the Holy Spirit does not see "real sin" in it, he does not project sin onto it, or judge it, or condemn it, or mistake it for reality. It is now a picture of death, interpreted as nothing, depicting fake sins, containing no real sin, and so it is forgiven. It is not seen as "full of sin". Nor is it sinless. It is a forgiven illusion, seen through and disregarded,.

And so instead it seems to symbolize innocence and holiness. If no attack or hate or judgement is laid UPON it, it's merely seen as a thin veil of illusions. It has lost its heaviness and darkness. It is now a very light picture of darkness. A thin picture of solidity. A loved picture of illusions of hatred. Because the world you made is always an illusion, always artificial, always not real, always false, always a depiction of impossibilities, and always nothing. Not taken seriously, it ends in laughter.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone ***what more remains to keep a separated world in place?*** For place has gone as well, along with time. (end of spacetime.) Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate **it could not remain where separation is impossible.** Forgiveness proves it is impossible ***because it sees it not.*** And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

"Can what has no beginning really end? The world ***will end** in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no one, limitless in gentleness, ***will cover it***, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ***ends the world*** that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone."

The illusion of forgiveness covers the evil world by not BELIEVING that it is real. By recognizing SIN does not exist. So this picture of sin is false. The perspective of the big picture reveals the world's illusion, and correctly perceives it as a deception. It REPLACES the world's meaninglessness. It SHINES AWAY the world because illusions recognized must disappear. A forgiven world is a world recognized as FALSE. A FALSE world, perceived WITH love, which overlooks and shines away the world. God erases the world with love. You cannot love it and keep it. A world forgiven cannot last.

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world (heaven) HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT (heaven). And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made (Earth, illusion), ***and do not want.*** The only effort you need make, to give this world (Earth) away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (heaven), is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"Until forgiveness is complete, the world does have a purpose. It becomes the home in which forgiveness is born, and where it grows and becomes stronger and more all-embracing. Here is it nourished, for here it is needed. A gentle Savior, born where sin was made and guilt seemed real."

"When not one thought of sin remains" appears to be a long-range goal indeed. But time stands still, and waits on the goal of God's teachers. Not one thought of sin will remain the instant any one of them accepts Atonement for himself."

"***The world will end*** when its thought system has been completely reversed. Until then, bits and pieces of its thinking will still seem sensible.The final lesson, which brings ***the ending of the world***, cannot be grasped by those not yet prepared *****to leave the world and go beyond its tiny reach.*****"

"The world will **end** in joy, because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come, the purpose of the world has gone. The world will **end** in peace, because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will **end** in laughter, because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. **In blessing it departs**, for it will not end as it began. To turn hell into Heaven (symbolically) is the function of God's teachers, for what they teach are lessons in which Heaven is ***reflected*** (symbolic)."

To turn hell into heaven simply means, to learn to recognize that the world is not REALLY hell, it is not REALLY anything. It's claims are ignored. It's proof is thrown out. It's picture of death are laughed at. It's sins are not taken seriously. It's illusions do not deceive. The picture of crucifixion is SEEN WITH love, and a **reflection** of love and holiness is seen "in it". As if looking upon a picture of devastation and war in an extremely happy mood. What it claims to be is not what it is. You override it. And then the world disappears completely.

"**A world forgiven cannot last.** It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time."

"Eternity will **shine away** the world."

"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, **no walls, no bodies**, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"The world (Earth) stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as ***nothing more than just a fragile veil***, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last **for only what it is.** (an illusion of a sin/attack/death world.) And now ***it cannot fail to disappear***, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant ***is the world forgot***, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."