Surround search terms with " " double quotes for exact matches e,g, "drops of healing rain"

It's possible to rationalize and justify ANY viewpoint you want to take. If you look, you will find all kinds of reasons in support of your opinion. The thing is, you won't think it's your opinion because you'll justify how your opinion is 'reality' by saying, look, look at the truth, look at the evidence I found.

But what you don't realize is, you can flip-flop your opinion and change your mind about what you're trying to prove is true, and then you'll start to see all kinds of evidence supporting THAT viewpoint as well. And again you'll probably tell yourself, well, look over there, that proves that this viewpoint is true.

And again you've fallen for the same ILLUSION.

The world does not have a meaning of its own. There is no truth in the world. It does not contain facts or proof. It is not objectively real. But we keep looking to it to TELL US what the truth is. And each time we find some evidence we fall into this blindness about how this proves what is real or true. And if that evidence supports our case, which it usually does because beliefs create evidence, we'll keep believing that the world contains some truth.

The trick is to realize we are always CHOOSING the meaning that everything has, we are always GIVING meaning to stuff in the world, we are SELECTING the evidence that we resonate with to support whatever our belief is, and we are always being SUBJECTIVE.

What if I told you there IS NO TRUTH in the world? At all? And that every time you are 'sure' that something is proven in the world, it's actually still just you making it up as you go along, projecting belief into the neutral world and giving it meaning? And each time you say, see, this proves it, these are all the external reasons 'why', regardless of whether it's for or against, you fall into the same ego trap of not realizing it's a blank canvas.

You literally hallucinate the meaning you want to see in the world to justify the viewpoint you are CHOOSING to see SO THAT you will see evidence to prove its truth and to have faith in it. And then you switch to some other belief and do the same. And each time you think, see, I'm seeing the factual real world. You're not. You're only ever seeing your MIND CONTENT. Your fiction. You make up the story as you go along and the world never proves anything on your behalf. You RATIONALIZE why various things you pick out support your case and point to them as proof to support your view, not realizing you view is entirely your choice.

Ever had one of those times where you get all excited about something and you find all these reasons why it's the best thing you can do and why, when you do it, things are going to be better, and all this, and you find all these explanations to support it. Then some time passes and... this delusion starts to occur to you as maybe being flawed, and you start shifting to the opposite viewpoint... maybe this is not the thing you should do, bla bla bla, and then you start to justify why it is NOT the thing you should do, finding evidence to support that as well. But it was never that the world proved in favor or against either viewpoint - you're making it all up as you go along!!

So each time you look OUTSIDE YOURSELF for answers, for truth, for proof, for evidence, to determine some kind of inherent meaning or inherent objective factual truth, you are kidding yourself.

Your mind is NOT able to separately 'observe' what it perceives without interfering with what it perceives, because what you perceive is IN THE MIND that is perceiving it. Even quantum physics points to this. You can't look at something and say, I'm looking at this objectively and I'm only seeing what 'is really there', and then use that to explain why you should or shouldn't do something, or why something is right or wrong or good or bad or whatever. Each time you observe you MAKE ILLUSIONS and hallucinate. In that hallucination you dream-up rationalizations and justifications, and as you project what you WANT to see, you see it - projection makes perception.

So don't be fooled thinking you have a faculty for neutrally observing the world or neutrally finding evidence outside you that is there all on its own with no involvement from you. That's a victim viewpoint. YOU PUT IT THERE. And you will dream up whatever you want to in support of whatever you happen to be deciding is what you will dream is true today. There are no neutral thoughts - there are no neutral perceptions.

Ok, so today I will dream that it's a great idea to move to live in Hawaii, and I'll screen out everything that tells me its not a good idea and focus in on what tells me its a good idea, and that'll make it seem like its a really good thing to do. And then by convincing myself that its a good thing to do, I'll then say, well, I didn't have anything to do with deciding this - look at the objective evidence, it's clearly what I should do because of this and that and the other.

And then you'll be like, ok I will move to Hawaii because the external evidence shows me its the best thing. ie the situation or the world outside me is 'telling me I should' go there (which is a victim standpoint and disowning of power and responsibility). And then you move and its crap and you don't like it or its too expensive and you want to go home because you're living a DELUSION.

You're not being authentic and honest with yourself about the HUGE part you play in what you are perceiving and choosing, and how you are PRETENDING that you are not choosing so that you can blame it on external circumstances and BE A VICTIM. So long as we keep looking outside of ourselves to the world to 'ask it to tell us' what is out there, we're going to be victims.

So where will you turn for truth and facts? Truth and facts are of God, learned through Holy Spirit. He is the only one who can be 'objective' and not contribute hallucinations to your decision making.

When you thought that you had hurt your relationship with God and done something really bad - sin - you didn't think you were worthy of love any more. You felt ashamed. You went off on your own feeling sad and unhappy and afraid.

Love was the most beautiful cherished thing you could possible have and you felt that you'd lost it. And since you lost it, you have not found anything anywhere near as valuable.

To substitute for it you made up all kinds of TOTAL SHIT to try to substitute for what you lost. All kinds of inferior, stupid, ridiculous stuff that isn't even valuable or worth anything. You tried your best to imbue it with some kind of 'value' or 'meaning' to justify why you wanted it, but you didn't want any of it. Not really. All you wanted was God's love again. Sin, guilt, fear, idols, sickness, death, you thought it would fill the hole in God's absence, but none of it is worth anything and you are deeply disappointed.

So now here you are feeling like you have sinned and are guilty and afraid and unworthy of any amount of love at all, feeling all terrible and sorry for yourself, like you only deserve to die and be shoved in the ground because you're so worthless. You surround yourself with all these bullshit trophies, trying to celebrate sin and guilt and fear and death, putting stuff on pedestals to try to idolize it like it's worthy of you or meaningful to you. It's all just crap. It's not worth SHIT in comparison to God's love, and you know it. You think you want the world, your money, your possessions, your toys, your relationships? It's all a substitute for God.

But you think this is all that you deserve. You think this is valuable to you. You think it's all you have left, some minute disgusting tiny little speck of light amidst and cold dark world. You think your nightmares are worthy of you and that you deserve to suffer and die. You feel so sad about how you rejected God and threw away Heaven and all the tremendous beauty and life and happiness that you once had. Now you've got stuck with this stupid ugly world that just continues to decay and die and proves that God isn't around any more. All your favorite things decay and die. You really just want to go Home.

The fact is, that what you think you did to God, was actually not successful. It's like you launched a missile and then turned your back believing it was certain to hits it target and destroy it. But you never actually saw it be destroyed, you just assumed it must be true. And off you went on your sorry little adventure all by yourself, lonely and afraid and feeling lost and abandoned, shameful of what you did and guilty as to be deserving terrible punishment. But you were wrong. You were terribly wrong. Here's the good news.

Your attack on God did not work. At all. Sorry if that's bad news, but God is totally unharmed. He wasn't even phased. He just laughed at your silly attempt and didn't take it seriously at all. All your upset is for nothing. All your suffering and guilt, you don't need it. All your sense of sin and horror and terrible justification for punishment, it's all completely uncalled for. You were MISTAKEN! Big time. Huge time. Massively mistaken.

You haven't hurt God whatsoever and God is not mad with you whatsoever. He is very very happy and still loves you just as much as He ever did. And you're just terrified that what you thought happened is so true and has had such a real effect that you can never go back and be loved again. You still think you deserve to die for what you think you did. But you don't. God WELCOMES you back to Him. He is EAGER to love you completely. He has waited all this time for the opportunity for you to acknowledge that he finds you completely innocent. COMPLETELY INNOCENT.

You can go Home. You can return to God. He's not mad at you. He's not going to punish you or make you suffer or reject you. He never did that the first time. You've just got the wrong end of the stick. Everything you thought was true that isn't true - it's not true at all. All of the sin and guilt and fear that you think you deserve to be burdened with, none of it is called for. It's all completely irrelevant. All that baggage, those huge swaths of darkness and despair, it's all unnecessary. YOU CAN BE LOVED!

God is waiting on you to just simply let go of all this shit. All these lies about how bad you are. All the bullshit about your sinfulness. All the crap about how guilty you are and how afraid you should be. And that death-wish, come on... its totally bullshit. You don't deserve to die whatsoever, not even close.

All this stupid stuff seems to stand in the way of you accepting God's love. It's not like God is waiting to forgive you. It's not that he's delaying until you confront him so you can hash it out in a thunderstorm and clear the air. He's already totally convinced of how much He loves you and how innocent you are. It's all on you now. You're the one delaying and suffering needlessly. It's all your own reluctance to surrender. All this story that you've devised to explain why you can't go back to God... all this baggage and resistance... it's totally unfounded and is just a big mistake. You don't need any of it, not even a bit of it. Let it all go! You're forgiven - you didn't do anything wrong!

God's waiting to give you a great big hug of love and joy and happiness! Right NOW! He's ready. What's stopping you? Why do you still believe you committed a sin when He clearly is totally convinced that you have DONE NOTHING? It's really quite silly. This whole entire world is all there based on your conviction that you sinned and can't be forgiven. Sort of a big waste of time. You can stop trying to convince yourself at any time.

Those silly toys you made - sin, guilt, fear, death, they aren't true. They aren't what you deserve. They don't prove anything. All you really want to know is this - God loves you now and always has and always will. Your relationship with God has not suffered! God just wants to love the crap out of you. He is willing and welcoming. Love is available. The doors are open. Come home, prodigal son! You have done nothing wrong. Let go of everything else that keeps you at bay. Trust you can be loved again. You deserve it. You are it.

You are the love of God. Everything is OKAY! Rejoice!

It is important for you to claim the atonement for yourself, because you are an extender of God's love.

If there is a block in your awareness, whereby you are not willing to receive love for yourself, love is not going to be able to flow through you to other people.

Love comes from God, goes through you, and extends outward to others.

If you put up a roadblock in your mind where you are not willing to receive love yourself, you will be incapable of allowing that love to fully flow through you to others.

You only will see God in everything you see when God is in your mind, and God has to be in your mind FIRST. The doors have to be open for the light to shine through.

You might think it is important to learn to love others as much as possible. I thought this was what I was supposed to do, becoming very loving and try to love all the time. But Holy Spirit corrected me on this.

He said, "you must love yourself first."

If you cannot love yourself, you cannot love others. The amount of love you can give entirely depends on how much love you have. If you are empty of love, you can try to fake it, to sacrifice, and to strain to try to love others, but you will hit walls and limitations.

There will be ways in which you also believe that other people are not lovable, they are just too irritating or annoying or upsetting, or they make bad choices or attack you or whatever. You will think that it is because of them that you cannot love them, or that you can only love them conditionally some of the time.

When pushed to your limits you will find out that in fact the thing stopping you from being able to love this monstrous enemy is your own inability to love any more than you already do. And the reason you can't do that is because you're hitting the limit of how much you love yourself.

So then it becomes a matter of, it's not really other people that you can't love another ounce, it's yourself. You yourself are hitting the limits of how loving you can be, because there is something about your own self that you do not love. There is a blockage in you, an unwillingness to let that much love be present in you.

So now it's simply impossible for you to love other people that much extra without FIRST addressing what it is about your own self that seems unlovable. You have to make room for love in yourself before you can love others that much more.

It seems ideal and appealing to be very loving to others as much as possible but you simply will not be able to, or willing to, and you will stop short of being able to find that much love and compassion in you, simply because you yourself are not willing to let YOU be loved that much.

The challenge then is learning to let yourself be loved, to become open to love and receive love for yourself. This means undoing false ego beliefs and self attack, so that you can come to believe the truth is true and be actually WILLING to accept the truth - your innocence - your lovability. You must therefore accept Atonement FOR YOURSELF, SO THAT you can access and receive love, be open to love coming to you, open to it flowing through you, and thus be able to offer it to others.

When you do this, when you take that sole responsibility of accepting atonement for yourself, it means you are now willing to receive love and recognize that you CAN be loved and are loved. This willingness to acknowledge the worthiness of love within yourself GIVES YOU the ability to see love and worthiness in others, you will believe they deserve that love also, and then you will give it to them. This is the START of your ability to be MIRACULOUS, because miracles are always expressions of love.

You must receive the gift of love first in order to give it. You must receive the miracle for yourself first in order to give it. You must heal yourself before you can heal others. And you must forgive yourself before you can extend forgiveness to others. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. It is the privilege of the healed to heal. It is the privilege of those who have accepted miraculous truth for themselves to perform miracles to help others be freed from their illusions of suffering.

Accepting the Atonement for yourself, as your sole responsibility, should never be seen as meaning that other people are SEPARATE from you or that they are excluded from your atonement. Once you have accepted atonement for yourself you ARE accepting it on behalf of everyone else, and it WILL result in you becoming loving towards others and able to perform miracles for them.

Many people use this "sole responsibility" as an argument for some kind of "private awakening", which excludes everyone else and it used to explain why you would not then perform and miracles. Its meaning is totally the opposite. To accept the atonement is to accept oneness, which applies to YOU AND EVERYONE because it makes you an extender of love. You must take responsibility for accepting it for yourself, SO THAT you enter into a state of SHARING, and are then able to EXTEND THE ATONEMENT to other people in the form of miracles. The atonement justifies being a miracle worker.

Someone said to me that they do not believe it's possible to walk on water.

The simple response to this is, you are unlimited and there is nothing your holiness cannot do. Your beliefs are your CHOOSING. If you want to believe something is not possible, it's not because it isn't possible, it's that you're CHOOSING that it not happen. And you think your belief is justified based on some kind of evidence or truth but it's TOTALLY MADE UP.

There is no fence-sitting position where you can just decide what is and isn't possible. GOD is the only one who determines what possibility is and what impossibility is. You can accept what is possible or you can be in denial.

"Believing" that you can't walk on water is a CHOICE NOT TO DO IT. Believing that you CAN, is a choice to do it. There is no in-between state of getting to decide whether or not it is possible.

This also ties in with you being ruler of the universe.

"It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

There are no exceptions.

If you comprehend the secret of salvation also, that you do everything to yourself, you have to realize this simple fact. YOU HAVE FREE WILL. You have freedom to CHOOSE. And that means whatever you choose, happens. Whatever happens, you must have chosen. And if you do not want something to happen, do not choose it. You choose it by believing in it.

Belief is a choice and a switch, not merely a REFLECTION OF some other worldly law. If you believe something is possible IT IS, because this is in alignment with your TOTAL FREEDOM. If you believe something is not possible, you are implementing an ARTIFICIAL LIMITATION on your holiness.

This isn't a state where you can have a once-removed impartial evaluation (ego) of whether something can happen or not. It is an ACTIVE DECISION. Either "I will not walk on water" or "I will walk on water".

The fact is that you are unlimited in what you can do. "There is NOTHING my holiness cannot do." That nothing is ABSOLUTE. Nothing you can imagine or dream up is beyond your ability. YOU ARE TOTALLY UNLIMITED AND FREE.

And that means that if you are sitting there saying, well, I'm skeptical of miracles and I don't believe you can walk on water or levitate or turn water into wine or raise the dead, THEN SO BE IT. YOU ARE CHOOSING THAT THIS BE TRUE FOR YOU. It is an attack on your unlimited power and a decision to cower in fear instead of demonstrate your freedom.

Literally, we are making everything up as we go along. We make up the rules, the laws, the limitations, the restrictions, what we think is and isn't possible. WE are the ones who put the limitation on ourselves. We just totally invent them out of thin air. Because in this world, there IS NO TRUTH, so we just keep GIVING IT ALL THE MEANING IT HAS and DECIDING, choosing, believing, in certain degrees of limitation or freedom.

Let's be clear. There is NOTHING KEEPING YOU IN THE DREAM. Other than YOURSELF. Other than your choosing. Death has no power over you. Nothing in the world can make you ill or weak or sad or afraid. There is no cause in the world that can KEEP YOU BOUND in hell. NOTHING CAN OPPOSE YOUR WILL. There is no alien will or alien power that can keep you locked up in a prison of YOUR own making. YOU hold the key. YOU are responsible for CHOICE. You are supernatural.

Whether something CAN or CANNOT happen is up to YOU. Whether something IS or IS NOT possible is entirely a matter of you either applying artificial limits, or lifting them away. Because you are naturally unlimited in what you can do so if there's anything "I can't do" that's you DECIDING NOT TO. No-one and nothing is imposing limits on you OF ANY KIND.

Walking on water is nothing compared to the fact that you MADE A WORLD WITH YOUR MIND.

"You maintain the world in your mind, with your thoughts."

Yes, you dreamed up a universe. So walking on water is insignificant in comparison to the POWER OF THE MIND.

So you are free. You get to choose. Can you walk on water? It's not even a question of whether you can. It's ONLY a question of whether you CHOOSE TO DO SO. Because you are unlimited, free, all powerful, and totally UNRESTRAINED in your holiness.

Skepticism is an attempt to simply CHOOSE a selection of beliefs in LIMITATIONS, freely, for no particular reason, while attempting to justify that these limitations are REAL by believing in them and trying to explain them. They are ALL MADE UP. Every limitation is fake. Every restriction is SELF IMPOSED. Every sickness is SELF INFLICTED. Every law of space and time and physics is SELF MADE.

"I am under NO LAWS BUT GOD's" and God did not create gravity.

Walking on water should be effortless, easy and natural. Anyone can do it. The ONLY question is whether anyone WILL CHOOSE TO. Because all arguments of "you can't" are utter bullshit self-imposed limitation and fear.

Ego projections boil down to a very, very simple dynamic.

1) I decide what I want to see in someone.

2) I interact with what I now see in them as if I did not put it there.

The way I interact with what I see in others, is quite bizarre. It's really insane. I'm trying to accomplish two opposite goals at once.

1) I want other people to be what I say they are, by projecting my sin and guilt onto them, "convinced" that they really are that way.

2) I then demand that they stop being what I am seeing them being, and that they be the opposite, and that they are the one who has to choose differently. This is "forgiveness to destroy".

So right off the bat, this is a state of conflict. It's me who is seeing other people are doing "something wrong", and then it is me who is insisting that they change their behavior. So now I'm holding it against them when they don't change "for me". And they won't.

I'm literally demanding two separate outcomes simultaneously. I want people to be what I decide they are, and then I want them to not be what I've decided they are, simply because I'm in denial of being the one who has laid down the ground rules to begin with.

So I'm going around basically projecting shit onto people, deciding ok, you are doing this and that wrong and should be doing this and that instead. And then the rest of my "play" is to react to that accusation. It tends to go one of two ways.

1) They are wrong and they shouldn't be doing what they're doing so they are the ones who need to change, not me, and if they don't, I will victimize them. I will hold it against them.

2) They are wrong and they shouldn't be doing what they're doing, but in a hero savior role I will now swoop in and save them from "themselves", those sorry bastards, since they refuse to change themselves and seem 'helpless' and needy.

Each time I react to something being incorrect or unacceptable in another, who exactly is it who has made that person out to be wrong in this way? Are they inherently wrong in this way or have I actually decided to see them this way, and therefore it's my judgement of them? And now that I am responsible for what I'm seeing, having put it there to see, it's now my responsibility to admit that I'm interacting with my own projection.

As Jesus says in the course, generally speaking we will project our own sin outward and try to disown it (disassociate) and then we will attack what we've projected, accusing it of being sinful and bad, in order to create a sense of separation between it and ourselves, so that we can keep it away from our identity.

We will attack our own sin, thinking that we're attacking it in another person, believing that to do so causes them to receive the punishment and not us. Except it doesn't work because the sin never leaves our own mind (ideas leave not their source), it just seems external because we are in denial of it.

So it really all boils down to this. Whatever interaction I seem to be having with "the world", if I don't like it, it's because I'm the one who is deciding on what I am seeing "in" it, and am reacting to it as though it's really out there. And regardless of whether I am liking to do that or am feeling frustrated or upset or whatever about "what they are doing", I am the one who is making them out to be doing that to me. Because I want to. Because it gives me an opportunity to disown some sin.

ie, I love to suffer. I choose suffering on purpose and position myself as a victim on purpose, so that I can seem to be at the effect of the world, so that I can then explain that the world has caused me and therefore the world is the sinner, not me. I might suffer and be sick or afraid or upset as "effects" of what they supposedly did to me (even though I invented those effects in myself, by myself), but I secretly am getting away with murder by "using" the person as an outlet for projecting my own sin. Now they are the sinner and not me, and I'm suffering... poor me, but at least I am not the sinner any more.

So the ego's mantra is, I wish to suffer in order not to suffer. Or rather, I will see the world as attacking me and attack myself with it so that it seems that I'm not attacking myself with it.

We are to demonstrate that we cannot be hurt, or made sick, or caused to die, as a result of this world. And whenever these things seem to be happening, you can be assured that you've positioned yourself as a deliberate victim, in order to pretend that the world is responsible for what you are experiencing. You may be suffering, you may be sick, you may even end up dead, and it will conveniently seem as if the world made this happen against your will, but nothing could be further from the truth.

No-one dies without their own consent. And anyone who dies has secretly arranged to make it appears as if they did not choose it at all. Death is an attempt not to choose, by pretending that you have no choice, by pretending that others have taken all your power away from you, making you an "unwilling" victim, in a state of unwillingness, such that it appears death happens to you against your will. How convenient. It's a total lie.

Death is unwillingness to admit that you are pretending to die and are blaming everything on anyone other than yourself. This is why death is failure, and death is failing to wake up from the dream. Death is impossible for anyone but self-imposed victims. Death is not life. It is not success or graduation. It is the total opposite of life. It cannot happen without being severely against yourself and against the will of God. Therefore it cannot happen "peacefully" nor can it happen AT ALL unless you attack yourself.

I never really knew how much my 'mind' seems to think that it has an answer about everything. It can't seem to shut up. I am completely addicted to the belief that "thinking equals knowing". And it's becoming apparent that it will come up with an answer even if it has really no grounds for knowing. And it will share that answer like it's some kind of fact. I go around clucking like a chicken making all these mental noises and thinking that I'm actually speaking truth, when in fact all of the things that come out are just stories and ego-based comments. I'm some kind of babbling idiot.

All of these activities seem to make up a 'me' that I really thought was aware and speaking truth. But everything coming from my ego mind is deception and illusion. In every way possible, my mind is constantly attempting to seek for the truth outside of it, and separate from where truth is.

I realize more and more, that God is the ONLY location of truth. The ego quite literally is running around this world believing 'it' knows everything, when in fact it knows absolutely nothing. It thinks it knows what is true, but it absolutely doesn't know any truth at all because truth is GOD!

The ego is not a faculty of knowing and the ego mind is NOT CAPABLE of knowing anything. All it can do is imagine and think and believe that it can obtain and hold the truth. Yet it is not a faculty of connection to Truth (capital T). It is not a device that can even perceive what the truth really is. It is obsessed with finding partial answers in amongst an absolute minefield of fragmented possibilities, seeking deeply to have the 'intelligence' to 'solve' apparent problems by delving into them even deeper, which makes them worse, and which turns into an exasperatingly frustrating experience of loss and failure.

It relies completely on analysis of the situation. In other words, it has already made everything seem real and now goes into detail trying to explain 'why' whatever is happening is happening. And as it digs for this answer in a swampland of confusion, it always comes up empty handed. It never finds any sense of absolute certainty, although instead it comes up with what it thinks is certainty, which is really, honestly, not complete certainty. And no matter how many times I take this trip with it, even if it comes up with what the world would think of as 'the' answer, it STILL is not the answer.

There is still no sense of completion in the search, no sense of complete acceptance, no sense of finding a truth which encompasses everything so fully that there is no doubt left. It is quite literally incapable of finding such a Total Truth within the realm of partial ideas, partially perceived distorted perceptions, false ideas, cleverly imagined possibilities, carefully explained analysis or any other approach to trying to find truth IN the illusion. All the time this ego mind has been looking for truth outside of it, in everything and everywhere other than in God, believing it is actually POSSIBLE to find truth outside of itself.

All of this activity is geared towards a completely impractical waste of time, to always avoid a real solution or answer, to avoid healing, to ignore God and to shut out the correction which would undo the perception of there being a problem in the first place. The ego is absolutely not interested in truly solving any problems whatsoever, or of really succeeding at finding 'the' answer that gives a satisfying and acceptable explanation for 'what is' (i.e. it is not interested in accepting God). It is only interested in dissecting and studying them deeply, wearing a hat which says "worlds best problem solver" on it. It seeks and does not find, all of the time.

It constantly fails to find a real answer, anywhere, about anything, in spite of the fact that it fervently believes it CAN find an answer, which makes it an obsession. And since the answer can never be found, going looking for it (seeking) always comes up empty handed, frustrated, lost and confused, obsessed over why there 'should' be an answer, and simply not letting go of the total absorption with its own reliance on itself.

Absolutely every ego activity, thought, behavior and process, entirely stems from this ... insane search, which is absolutely guaranteed to fail, because the very thing that would actually conclude the search and bring an answer is the very thing which would inherently UNDO the entire ego. God is the answer and God is the only truth. God is the only place where you will experience a sense of wholeness or completion or a sense of peace at having 'found' something which actually completely SOLVES all problems. And the problem is only solved by rejoining and being one with God/Holy Spirit, which the ego has absolutely no interest in.

The ego would have to SURRENDER, which means stopping searching, stopping seeking, stopping looking for, stopping figuring out, stopping imagining outcomes, stopping trying to control the situation, stopping giving energy to fruitless pointless conceptualizing and storytelling, stopping running away from God, and stopping believing in separation in all its forms. The ego mind is only even in a state of doing things 'on its own' BECAUSE OF the separation from God which gave birth to it. The separation from God was a separation from truth, answers, facts, reality and peace of mind. For the ego to believe it can find any of these things is insanity.

It seems to want to now be in the driver's seat, in charge of running the show, playing God, depending on its own prowess and utilizing its own separate intelligence and intellect to solve aaaaaaaaaall of the problems that have arisen because of its own seeming existence. How can the ego solve its own existence when IT is the problem it's trying to solve? How can it be free of a problem when its attempt to solve it creates it? How can it pursue the truth where it is not, expecting to find it, and have any hope of doing so?

The only truth is God. The only answer is love. The only response to any situation is love. The only sane practical solution is to extend God. The only response to the world is unconditional love. The only practical and wise response to any problem is to HEAL IT NOW through the miracle. And the only way for the problems to all 'go away' is for the EGO to go away. It is our very own ego self, our intellectual mind, our reliance on our separate faculties, and our intent to never surrender to actually ASK GOD FOR THE ANSWER, that ensures we will just keep spinning our wheels in suffering.

The ego will never be the truth. It will never find the truth. It cannot know the truth. And it is not the truth. The ego is FALSE. Your ego self is false.

Your TRUE SELF is in God. The truth is in God. And who you really are is in God. The answer to every problem is in God. The end of suffering is in God. The practical application of healing and correction that truly ANSWERS all problems is in God. And God is all there is.

The ego wants to believe that God created this world.

The ego believes the world is real.

The ego believes the body is real.

The ego wants to keep all forms and bodies.

The ego believes bodies and forms are alive.

The ego believes there is value in keeping objects.

The ego does not regard the world as unreal or a dream.

The ego insanely believes the illusory world is reality.

The ego believes God created its world and justifies it.

The ego tries to make its illusory world permanent.

The ego attempts to give the world reality and keep it real.

The ego does not want to look past the world.

The ego does not want to forgive or overlook the world.

The ego puts the world on a pedestal and worships it.

The ego has no conception of a world beyond this world.

The ego is totally in denial of the existence of heaven.

The ego has no desire to believe in a spirit realm.

The ego believes that there is nothing beyond its world.

The ego believes there is nothing beyond the body.

The ego believes you don't even have a mind.

The ego believes your body is your mind and thinks for itself.

The ego believes your body is the cause of life.

The ego both values and hates the body.

The ego manifests as the form of physical objects.

The ego is permanently stuck in false perception.

The ego made the body so as to only fixate on sinful forms.

The ego regards all forms and objects as real sin.

The ego believes everything the body senses and sees.

The ego uses the world as an attack on God and reality.

The ego made this world to defend against reality.

The ego made this world to try to block and deny God.

The ego constructed this world as a wall of sin and death.

The ego uses the world to block the reality of Heaven.

The ego believes that bodies are special and are living.

The ego values the body as a place to hide from God.

The ego does not question whether the world is real or not.

The ego has accepted that the world is real to it forever.

The ego has no intention other than to destroy everything.

The ego manufactured this planet for a reason.

The ego made the world to obscure God's nature.

The ego invented an artificial nature to replace God's nature.

The ego made the world to be completely unnatural.

The ego runs the world based on unnatural laws of death.

The ego has no intention of waking up, nor can it.

The ego pretends it can become spiritual.

The ego spiritualizes the world to lead you away from spirit.

The ego does not want you to leave this world and go home.

The ego regards this world as its home and yours.

The ego has placed the world on a pedestal and worships it.

The ego doesn't believe the world is a dream at all.

The ego has investment, faith and trust in the world it made.

The ego made bodies to ensure your unconsciousness.

The ego surrounded you with forms of error to trap you.

The ego made a world filled with temptation.

The ego made hell, and this world is hell.

The ego has no desire to go towards light or truth.

The ego leads entirely towards darkness and death.

The ego is unaware of the truth about God and Holy Spirit.

The ego sees life here as death and death as life.

The ego is threatened by reality.

The ego has no reality.

The ego's world is not real.

The ego's world is a delusional system of insane dreamers.

The ego made physicality to blind your perception.

The ego made space and time to live inside of.

The ego made planet Earth and all galaxies and worlds.

The ego made the world from unwillingness to accept truth.

The ego materialized the planet from a desire to attack God.

The ego ensures that all things it made will die.

The ego provides no escape from problems of any kind.

The ego built sickness into the world.

The ego tried to make death an inevitable part of spacetime.

The ego does not want you to question the world's reality.

The ego doesn't want you thinking of the world as illusion.

The ego hides in the world, in the body, in the darkness.

The ego is threatened by the idea that there is no world.

The ego sees God as the undoing of itself.

The ego sees the Holy Spirit as making itself invalid.

The ego sees eternal life as death and mortality as life.

The ego doesn't really exist, nor does its world.

"Illusions will not last. Their death is sure and this alone is certain in their world. It is the ego's world because of this. What is the ego? But a dream of what you really are. A thought you are apart from your Creator and a wish to be what He created not. It is a thing of madness, not reality at all. A name for namelessness is all it is. A symbol of impossibility; a choice for options that do not exist. We name it but to help us understand that it is nothing but an ancient thought that what is made has immortality. But what could come of this except a dream which, like all dreams, can only end in death?

What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. Yet could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form? Who asks you to define the ego and explain how it arose can be but he who thinks it real, and seeks by definition to ensure that its illusive nature is concealed behind the words that seem to make it so.

There is no definition for a lie that serves to make it true. Nor can there be a truth that lies conceal effectively. The ego's unreality is not denied by words nor is its meaning clear because its nature seems to have a form. Who can define the undefinable? And yet there is an answer even here.

We cannot really make a definition for what the ego is, but we can say what it is not. And this is shown to us with perfect clarity. It is from this that we deduce all that the ego is. Look at its opposite and you can see the only answer that is meaningful.

The ego's opposite in every way, in origin, effect and consequence, we call a miracle. And here we find all that is not the ego in this world. Here is the ego's opposite and here alone we look on what the ego was, for here we see all that it seemed to do, and cause and its effects must still be one.

Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"

Suffering is really in the mind. It is not really in the physical universe, in the world, or in the body. What is physical does not really suffer. The experience of suffering is psychological only.

The world and the body are a projection in the mind. The law of projection is one of giving, or of pushing outward, based on what is within. In its pure form this is the extension of the Kingdom of God. In its distorted ego form, it is the pushing outward of an inner state of sin, guilt, fear and denial.

The ego thought system in the mind therefore tries to deny and "get rid of" what it does not want, which ultimately it YOU, by first attacking you and then projecting the attack. The projection of attack, in an attempt to give without receiving, which is murderous, is an way the mind "hides from" its own content. The physical world and the body arise as make-believe images and now act to disguise what the real problem is.

This means really that it is your psyche that suffers, and your mind that is hurt, and it is the mind that needs healing. It is your beliefs that twist your thoughts, and distort your perceptions. And it is really only the mind that can seem to be sick.

But when the mind IS sick, it has entered into denial and separation. And as the law of projection now functions, the mind tries to dissociate (separate) from its own suffering. It tries to push "separateness" outside of itself, to create distance and delay between itself and the problem. This produces spacetime. And the whole physical world and body arise to SYMBOLIZE and represent the inner state of mind, as if the mind itself has become physical form.

This means that if the mind is sick, it WILL attack the body and render the body as a sickened image, a broken body, showing up as if deformed or malfunctioning or damaged. And this body now acts to testify that IT has been attacked. And since the cause of the attack is not SEEN, because it is in the mind, we instead look to the world to explain HOW it came to suffer.

We even look to the body itself to ask how the body could make itself sick, and also look to the body to make itself well. But the body cannot attack itself, or heal itself, because ONLY THE MIND puts the body there. And only the mind attacks the body. And only the mind heals the body.

Or to put it in a better way... if the mind attacks itself first, it will project an image of an attacked body in an attacking world. If the mind heals itself first, it will project an image of a healed body in a healed world. There are many statements in ACIM that support this. And it means that the only true way to heal the body is to heal the mind, so that IF the body is projected, its form will symbolize and represent and point towards its origins - as a mirror of a sane and harmless mind.

"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."

"And it grows old and dies, because that mind is sick within ITSELF."

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

"Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as NOT within the body, and its innocence is quite APART from it, and where ALL healing IS."

"The lesson is the MIND was sick that thought the body COULD be sick; projecting OUT its guilt caused NOTHING, and had NO effects."

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that IT will suffer pain. It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret"

"The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience."

"For your beliefs converge upon the body"

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."

"Your PERCEPTION of the body can clearly be sick, but project this not upon the body."

"Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source."

"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."

"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."

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

When you dream at night, your mind is perfectly capable of creating entire environments in great detail. These dreams are not real, and so are projections of ego thoughts from the mind, but at the time they seem like real places. Your mind is able to create oceans, streets, buildings, people, all manner of creatures and locations.

It's even able to embed an extraordinary variety of subtle feelings into the scene or ways of experiencing what's happening, such that it seems to mean something very specific to you, or so that you get a certain impression from it.

Your mind can create people and experiences which are a perfectly symbolic representation of any idea or feeling or experience it cares to make. It has at its disposal an absolutely unlimited number of variations in both appearance and meaning and emotional content. If you can imagine it, your mind can invent it.

As your mind projects such environments, it can also sometimes project you as a character in the environment in a third-person manner, or sometimes you can also experience it from a first-person perspective. You can manifest any kind of body. The body can also be changed into any form and express any kind of disease or situation regardless of any rules or laws whatsoever.

In your dreaming, objects can be transformed into other objects. You can pass through objects, you can fly, you can control things with your mind, you can communicate telepathically, you can have encounters with any kind of being imaginable, and you can teleport instantly to any location. There is practically nothing that's impossible.

All of this happens inside your mind. All of this is your mind "dreaming", which correlates to Jesus's definition of "projecting". The mind is literally projecting a three-dimensional movie scene down to the finest detail, complete with storyline and all manner of events and interactions. As such, this projection "creates perception".

So as you're in the dreaming state, your mind is literally projecting everything you then "see". So if it projects a beach and an ocean on a sunny day, this projecting manifests those things in full and then you witness them or "perceive" them. The projecting comes first. The perceiving comes second.

Now, in the physical world, you're tempted not to believe this same mechanism applies. You believe certainly that you perceive, and that you perceive what seems to be a world out there complete with people and places and events, but you don't for a moment think it possible that your own mind is projecting it. But it is.

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus speaks of projection and many have come to interpret this to mean that you project ONTO something which is already out there. This is the result of not believing or recognizing that your mind actually makes the world appear in its entirety, or that this world is in fact just another dream. Yet Jesus tells us:

"...What you seem to waken to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same."

However, because we do not recognize or believe that this "physical world" is just another dream environment, that our mind is perfectly powerful enough to create in the finest detail, we think that it must be really "out there" objectively, or that it came to be there from some other powerful cause.

The result of this unawareness as to how it truly comes into being, is the belief that when ACIM talks about projection it's talking about what your mind projects ONTO this pre-existing world. People will then work with their "forgiveness process" to take these projections back and undo them.

There is some validity to that step because even inside of the dream itself, there is a whole other layer of "personal projection" whereby individuals add an extra layer of projection and denial to everything they see in the world. They project extra guilt and sin onto others and onto the environment. So to take back those projections is a very helpful step in owning up to who and what you are.

However, that's not the only form of projection taking place here in this dream. The dream ITSELF is a projection. You could say, your personal projections are coming from your own private mind, as one Son in the Sonship. But the collective Sonship or Christ mind is also projecting this entire world. That's who the dreamer really is.

You can take back all your personal projections and come to a place of clarity or awakening, becoming aware of this world with a clear perception of it. This means your perceiving has been clarified. This is an awakening to true perception. But this does not mean that you have undone PROJECTION. Projection comes before perception because projection makes it possible to perceive.

Once perception is purified and is clear, which will produce an experience of being awake WITHIN the dream, able to perceive the dream clearly, there is then another stage where the projecting OF the dream needs to now be undone. Removing projections onto the dream is the reversal of perception, which is where most ACIM students focus, but we have to realize that the projection that made the "stuff" we are perceiving clearly is also an activity of the mind which needs to be undone.

Undoing the projecting of the world itself - yes the physical world - is the second layer of awakening. It means realizing that you are still dreaming this world, you are still manifesting objects and people and environments, and you are still inside of a dream. You are still subject to every law that the dreaming puts in place, because those laws are established in the projecting of the world. You may be fully awakened to be able to see the dream clearly, but now the dreaming itself needs to stop.

When you are projecting personal stuff onto the world, it's like having a dream within a dream. You are already inside a dream (which you think is a real world) and now proceed to dream within it. Just like a daydream. Your projections at the personal level therefore place your unconscious crap outside of your conscious separate self. But it still exists within the world. Taking all of that back and fully undoing it won't undo the world itself, because the world itself is being projected on a much greater scale by a much bigger mind - the collective Christ Mind.

For you to see a car or a house or a person or a tree means that these forms have been projected by the Christ mind. The Christ mind is unlimited in its power to dream of forms. It has invented an entire universe, just like your little personal mind invents fictional places and characters at night - stories which are entirely believable and which you experience as though completely real.

Therefore, if you are still perceiving at all, if you are still having perception of the presence of objects, forms, people, buildings etc, then this must mean there is STILL projection happening from a larger level of mind. The reversal/healing of that collective projection is the undoing of this entire so-called "world".

This is the level at which the Course addresses when it says "There is no world, this is the central theme the Course would attempt to teach." It literally means that this physical world and everything in it is a dream, a projection, which DOES NOT REALLY EXIST AT ALL, just like how our nighttime dreams do not really exist at all.

Literally, all physical forms are ILLUSIONS, i.e. dreams. They are not there at all. There is no truth to them, no reality to them, they are absolutely completely fictional in every way. The mind is making them up. And when this is fully recognized by the whole Sonship, this entire physical universe will be recognized as having never existed - i.e. it does not exist now, and it never will exist, and there simply is no world here.

This is also why the Course tells us that "at no time does the body really exist." Many students love to keep the body and make it special and explain how the body does exist or how it can be seen in the present moment or used for a holy purpose or whatever. Ultimately, factually, in Jesus's words, it DOES NOT EXIST. It is an illusion at most. It cannot exist in Eternity and it does not really exist at all.

Now, you can see perhaps that in the ACIM community there is a tremendous amount of confusion because of these two kind of "levels" in the making of illusions. The level of the personal individual conscious self and its seeming scope of influence or illusions, and the level of the collective shared mind of Christ which IS responsible for dreaming this entire universe.

For the most part, most students are fixated on and can only really relate to the experience of being a separate self in a separate body, the projections that their personal self makes onto the allegedly pre-existing world, and so their undoing process usually entails taking back projections that are placed onto other people, or changing your mind "about the world" instead of attempting to change the world itself.

This has produced a huge division in the Course community between those who believe the Course is telling us to find a personal sense of peace "in" the world, in spite of the world, in spite of sickness, in spite of death, and those who believe that this ultimately falls short of the whole truth and that the entire world itself is not there. The result is an attempt to be at peace with sickness, to keep the body and deny it through some kind of transcendence, and still results in death. This distortion of the Course then produces two camps.

The first camp basically sees themselves as a little individual body self, who has their own personal stories and projections. They do not consider the world to literally not exist, and cannot conceive of how they might have power over it. What they end up doing is focusing on undoing their personal stories and projections "onto" the world, or "onto" others, as though this is all that the Course is asking them to do.

They will refuse to believe anything beyond the scope of this, and will justify it with various quotes from the Course. Now, the thing is, they are not wrong. The Course DOES teach that at the LEVEL of the personal level, you need to take back projections from others, find peace in spite of what's happening, come to see God "in" the world because God is in your mind, work on changing how you look at the world rather than trying to change the world, never attempting to take the spirituality of the Course to others because it seems like a private process, and just generally everything which fits nice and tidily into this "box" of how the individual separate self perceives an objective world.

There are plenty of parts of the Course which tell us seemingly straight-out that this is what we are supposed to be doing and that this is the truth and will use this interpretation to justify not doing anything outside of this definition. The thing is, A Course in Miracles actually has multiple "levels" of truth, and this is not a contradiction. There are truths which apply on a certain level.

In terms of the personal self, we do indeed need to stop projecting shit onto other people and change how we "perceive" the world, to reach true perception or to have corrected perception. However, this isn't the end of the story. The people who see the Course as saying this, which is easy to do given that this actually is part of the process of complete awakening, will try to fit EVERYTHING the Course says into this box. And this also includes miracles.

To these believers in personal awakening inside the dream, they tend to justify that other things the Course says must fit inside the box of correcting perception, in order for there to seem to be consistency and integrity. And you can sort of find slightly skewed interpretations of what these other parts of the Course say to make them seem to "fit" into that box. And this is what has happened with miracles.

Such people will then explain that a miracle has got something to do with perception shifting, correcting perception, the process of waking up to true perception or is just another way of saying "changing your mind" about the world. This is understandable given that they see the Course as one whole consistent unit and don't realize that it's being presented on multiple levels, or that there are multiple levels of sleeping.

The Son of God, Christ, is the source of the dream of death - the dream of this entire physical universe. And within Christ, within that dream, there is a fragmentation of identity into the Sonship, which comprises many individuals, and each individual has their own separate seeming "private world" of misperceptions. But what they are mis-perceiving is the dream which a HIGHER LEVEL has dreamed, thinking it is a given and is real and is outside the scope of their conscious awareness. Indeed it is outside the scope of their identity, because it's coming from a level of much greater unified identity as Christ - the ONE Mind.

Therefore to try to explain what miracles are or what Christ is, these individuals will try to fit all of the Course's references to miracles and Christ into the same box of "what applies to individual Sons". And that's a mistake. This gives rise then to a complete stripping down of what Christ is, a stripping away of the POWER that must be present to dream an entire universe and make it seem physically real, and a complete diminishing of any concept of "real miracles" which have the power to do anything - including healing the sick, raising the dead, walking on water, or whatever.

Trying to fit all of that inside a "I am a separate Son, one of many" kind of box, to have it make sense TO that one limited identity or scope of awareness, completely glosses over what miracles are or and what Christ's power is. People will then have an awakening up to the level of the maximum scope of their INDIVIDUAL consciousness, i.e. an awareness of being one of many Sons of God, and will refer to that as being Christ or aware of the Christ in others. IT IS NOT. Not in ACIM's definition.

Christ is a mind so vast and powerful that it can dream entire planets, can create a whole universe - or multiple universes. It can put in place an absolutely countless number of particles of matter to form buildings and people and environments which people believe is SO real that it must really be a real world. Seeing the holiness of an individual Son in other individual Sons is not the same as seeing the face of Christ. It is definitely a state of mind of profound unity and oneness, but there is an entire other level to awareness which is vastly beyond this.

To reach this other level of awareness requires a complete transcendence not only of the personal ego self or personality but also moving beyond being a separate Son. It means being THE WHOLE SONSHIP as One. In this, there can no longer be a personality, or a separate mind, or separate thoughts, or reliance on a body. It is a very advanced state.

Such an experience is way beyond the personal body self or what the body self is capable of doing. The Christ Self is vastly powerful, unlimited in the truest sense, and can literally do anything because He is able to dream this entire world. To Him, this world is recognized as not being real at all, being something He Himself is dreaming in its entirety. It does not exist without His dreaming and has no inherent reality of its own. If it were not for Christ dreaming the world, this entire physical universe would disappear instantly.

At this level, which is what forms the second "camp" in the ACIM community, it is recognized that there is an entire level of truth in the Course way bigger and more expanded than the parts which apply to the individual self. At this level, we're talking about a mind and an identity which is truly One, singular, as God's One Son. This mind, this Self, is beyond all Higher Selves and includes them all.

Such a Christ mind is responsible for dreaming this entire physical universe and for therefore putting in place absolutely all of the things, objects, people and events which appear to exist here. Such a mind is so powerful, there is literally nothing it cannot do. Such a mind is transcendent of all bodies and forms, transcendent of all of the laws of the physical universe, and can completely override absolutely anything in an instant. This mind is extremely creative, is totally at-cause, and is not at the effect of ANYTHING in this world whatsoever.

Such a mind is completely invulnerable, literally immortal, unlimited in its power, able to manifest objects - in fact planets and solar systems - out of nothing, and for such a mind miracles of healing and manifestation at a "human level" is practically nothing. THIS is the level of mind which Jesus demonstrated, and it is this level of mind which is responsible for SUPERNATURAL MIRACLES.

You could therefore say, that the level of the personal self-awakening is a level of "natural miracles", and the level of awakening as CHRIST is a level of "super-natural miracles". It is very common that those in the first camp tend not to believe in super-natural miracles because they do not see the parts of the Course relating to or teaching about the Christ-level of mind. Instead they see the watered down, nice tidy little keep-it-in-a-box relating to the individual self interpretation of what miracles are. In other words, miracles are just little changes in perception experienced by an individual. It's not true.

Miracles in A Course in Miracles LITERALLY are super-natural miracles, as evidenced by practically every single thing that the Course ever says about their nature. When correctly understood OUTSIDE of the box of the closed-minded and still "a part of the dream" personal self, everything Jesus teaches about miracles points to their supernatural power, the Power of God, the ability to LITERALLY move mountains, to heal the sick, to undo all forms of disease and suffering, to undo death itself and produce resurrection.

There can be no complete resurrection without this supernatural level of awakening, because death is only fully overcome at the level of the Christ mind, not at the level of the awakened individual Higher Self. There are an increasing number of people waking up IN the dream and staying in the dream who do not exhibit any signs of supernatural miracles whatsoever, because their mind is only just now at the beginning of opening up to the Christ mind.

You will find that all of these people still go through DEATH, because they have not escaped the dream of death and have not fully awoken FROM the dream of death. The absence of miracles, the nature of which Jesus demonstrated, which He has told us in many ways we are perfectly capable of, is the first sign you will see that shows that awakening to the Higher Self or highest individual self is still short of a complete awakening.

The Course will make so much more sense when understood to contain more than one level. This doesn't mean we're dividing up the Course into imaginary levels as such. There ARE different levels because there are stages in separation. Christ, the One Son, is a very different level in terms of scope and power and capability and awareness and identity, compared to the level of one individual "son" in the Sonship. Awakening to the Sonship is profound and an extraordinary experience of waking up from the even littler self - the ego false self. But going from the ego little self to being one of many Sons is not the same thing as being ALL Sons with a single mind, wielding the Power of God to produce real miracles.

A Course in Miracles therefore IS literally teaching us that miracles - supernatural miracles - are not only possible but something that we can become capable of IF we are willing to go all the way to awakening in the dream and then awakening FROM the dream. We might be aware of who the dreamer is, but until we decide to BE that dreamer and realize the sheer power that we have as that dreamer, we will still be subject to all the laws that the dream puts in place, seemingly powerless to stop them or change them. And as such we will not see miracles.

It should be clear then, that the only reason we seem unable to change objects, heal the sick, manifest matter out of thin air, feed 5000 people from a few fish and loaves of bread, to walk on water or raise the dead etc, is only because there is a LARGER MIND which is dreaming this world who has FAR more power than our little personal mind, and it is that larger mind which has implemented the physical world and its laws.

It is that larger mind that is sustaining the physical world and its laws. So if you want to be able to override that dream, you need to become aware of and access that larger mind, from which you will be able to demonstrate truly supernatural miracles. This is why in the dream, we seem so powerless, so unable to change hardly anything, to barely even have a shred of telekinesis, to be incapable of stopping aging or death, and to hardly have any power whatsoever over sickness or suffering. It's because the larger mind is very powerfully "holding" all of those things in place.

If we want to be able to gain access to the power to undo death and sickness and so on, we need to wake up ALL the way to the Christ mind, to the DREAMER, to become total causality. In that mind, in that awareness, and with that Identity of Authority over all illusions, we WILL then have the ability to do absolutely literally anything in this world.

Recognize then that Jesus does speak at different "levels" in the Course and not just all at one level. When He speaks of very high-level Christ-level things, these things cannot be properly applied or understood at the level of individual self. Trying to do so will lead to all manner of misunderstandings and disempowerment of your full potential.

Being able to recognize which level Jesus is speaking at - which level of awareness and identity - helps you to know what applies to the scope or context that you're referring to, and also helps you to make much more sense out of what Jesus is teaching. Without that, trying to smash everything into one little box will severely fall short of what A Course in Miracles is teaching, not to mention producing a lot of confusion and conflict.

The Christ mind is projecting the physical universe. It is a dream. It is not real and it does not exist. The single-son mind is within this dream, as an individual character, and that individual has its own dreaming that it projects onto the dream. Dreams within dreams. When that son wakes up and stops projecting onto the dream, He has "awoken" to an awareness of being One among many sons, and at this level it is possible for other Sons to still be sleeping. But THERE IS MORE beyond this.

The single Son in the sonship must now go further to become aware of the collective Single Identity as God's Holy Son - as Christ - an identity which has so much scope and power that it is capable of unlimited miracles. It is at this level that Jesus refers to when He says just about everything He says about miracles. For example, "miracles should be happening all the time". I could go into this much more deeply but that's for another article.

Realize then there are at least 2 stages in awakening, two levels, and that Jesus speaks to each level in the Course at different times. There are actually at least 3 levels because level 1 is the ego false self identity, level 2 is the Higher Self (one son of God in the Sonship) and level 3 is the Christ Self (the whole Sonship/Christ consciousness). There is actually a little more:

Level 5: Heaven/Spirit

Level 4: Christ/christ universe (creates all of the levels below this)

Level 3: Higher Self/higher universe (where most awakened people actually are)

Level 2: Holy Spirit/spiritual universe/astral plane

Level 1: Ego-self/physical world

The first awakening level typically takes people to level 2 then 3. This is a level where miracles aren't happening very much, but the potential is there. Level 4/Christ is where the demonstrations of Jesus correlate - extraordinarily mild-blowing miracles. And then there is Heaven - the home of Spirit. When Jesus speaks of Spirit He always talks of how it is already in a state of grace forever and nothing has happened to it whatsoever. That's the level of pure reality. Home in Heaven.

It should be apparent then that it is very common for ACIM students to try to relate everything the Course says to the level of "my separate self", within the context of being a body separate from others, and within the scope of "my mind" as in their own little separate conscious self, whose perceptions and projections onto a completely separate world make up the entire focus of their grasp of awakening.

They will then believe that once they experience "waking up", they're done. But they're not done. Where are the miracles? Where is the demonstration that you are dreaming the world and have total power over all illusions and forms? Where is the proof that there is no death? Where is the real resurrection and signs that show that you are immortal?

And yet this undoing of distortions of perception at the individual level only brings us to an awakening that reveals the full scope of our SEPARATE self within the Sonship, it doesn't bring us to awareness of being Christ. There is a whole other level of awakening which is vast and extraordinarily powerful, a single shared identity for whom supernatural miracles are effortless and continual.

I will finish with this final quote which I enjoy, and which is speaking of the level of Christ:

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

Wake up! Then wake up some more!

Whatever you see in something, if you think it is inherently offensive, it is not. The offensiveness is in your own mind, and you put it there.

That can be hard to accept because it means that you've been used to this idea of an objective reality outside of yourself all this time. A reality which has its own inherent qualities and which reports them to you as though they are distinct from your perception.

What it implies now is that what you're experiencing as reality, is in fact a hallucination that's part of your own mind's malfunctioning, that you literally are inventing everything that bothers you, that you are doing all that to yourself.

This implies also that there is no fixed reality out in the world, and therefore there is no inherent truth based on form. You literally give everything the meaning that it has for you.

ACIM lesson #2, right at the start: "I have given everything I see…all the meaning that it has for me."

This means that you are basically inventing every single justification that you think is truth, or that you think is based on objective facts outside of you. It means that, if you want to, and when it suits you, you MAKE UP everything that you think is true.

If you are in favor of something, you will make up reasons why it is a good idea, to support it and lend weight to your conviction that it is somehow inherently right. And if you are against something, you will make up reasons why it is a bad idea, in order to continue to support your belief that the reality outside of you is fixed and has nothing to do with your experience of it.

It can be perhaps alarming to discover that you are literally making everything up as you go along, and that all the things you thought were factual or true are really just your rationalizations. You decide what stuff means. You lend it credibility and pretend that this credibility comes from outside of you.

You think that other people's opinions, authority, certifications, education, experience, or even physical evidence, are all ways in which the world has an inherent truth. You have come to depend on this notion that you are not experiencing the results of your own made up subjective fantasy, but that everything that's going on is happening "on its own" without your input. And because you do not see the ways that you contribute to it or indeed create it, you do not accept that IT HAS NO TRUTH.

This leaves you in a kind of limbo like state where you're kind of just hanging there with no sense of what the truth outside you is anymore. If you're making up all the meaning, and quite literally the entirety of humanity is totally making up the meaning of everything in society as it goes along, then really there IS no inherent meaning outside of your mind.

This means the world is basically either neutral or insane, and that, based on the ego, it CANNOT make sense. There cannot be truth to it, and since it is a mental hallucination, it is nothing better than a chaotic illusion. Trying to "understand it" is an attempt to discover that it has an inherent meaning of its own, separate from your mind. We are very addicted and conditioned to continually look for meaning outside of ourselves, in the world, in order to disown true meaning (God/Self).

This is what happens when you try to figure things out, diagnose sickness, analyze situations, look for what is really happening, try to find proof, explain the background of something, try to identify causes, look for rational explanations or depend on the opinions of other people's authority. This is you attempting to turn an illusion into a reality, trying to convince yourself that you are NOT the one who has given it all the meaning it has, or that it is not just some blank canvas onto which you've projected an entirely fantastical world.

What this means for your mind and your sense of reality is that you cannot continue to claim that there is an objective world out there, and nor does that world have its own meaning at all. It is in fact a meaningless world, and this meaningless world cannot be understood unless you transcend it.

ACIM lessons 10 through 14:

"10 My thoughts do not mean anything."

"11 My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world."

"12 I am upset because I see a meaningless world.

"13 A meaningless world engenders fear."

"14 God did not create a meaningless world."

If the world is meaningless, and God did not create it (thus it is not objective reality), then this shows you that every meaning you see in it is made up but your thoughts, which are themselves meaningless and contain "pretend meanings". These pretend meanings attempt to give meaning to a world which has none.

What you may be afraid to admit is that it is not possible to find truth in any way shape or form in the world, because the world is not real. And that means your mind, your sense of reality, has been believing that it's had nothing to do with what you perceive all this time. When in fact it is the sole inventor of all the meanings that you think the world has.

Everything supposedly "out there" is neutral and therefore if you think something is good or bad or right or wrong or acceptable or unacceptable it is ONLY because you're making up a truth which you try to turn into reality and try to justify to yourself as being objective. It is not. It is subjective hallucination. So if there's no truth out there, it leaves you sort of hanging as to how to deal with reality.

It is as though you create your own reality, which is a popular new-age concept, which also leads on to manipulating the world. But this really is denying the fact that you do not create reality. You are creating UNREALITY. But it's a step closer to realizing that what you are experiencing is coming from you, and therefore what you perceive is not necessarily objectively real.

You're dreaming, and only God creates reality!

This is why in your awakening journey you then have to go through the process of recognizing the part that your mind plays in inventing meaning, how it distorts perception, how you contribute to what shows up outside of you, how you use it, how completely subjective you're being, and how everything that you thought was objectively real is in fact not real at all.

As you do this you will gradually realize more and more that there IS an objective reality, it's just not "out there" as a physical world, and instead it is within, in your Oneness with God. Formless, timeless, spaceless, ageless. The ONE and only meaning. A meaning that has not been fragmented into a billion conflicts. A meaning which hasn't been artificially attributed to an illusion. A meaning which ACTUALLY IS MEANINGFUL to you - that you can feel in your heart, in your very being.

God is true meaning. God is the one and only meaning. All else is meaningless.

A Course in Miracles - Urtext material - reproduced with permission from the Foundation for Inner Peace (acim.org), and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (facim.org).
▲
MiraculousLiving.com ©2024 Paul West / OmniLogic Arts