The nature of the mind is completely opposite to the nature of the body.

Mind is inclusive and expansive. It is everywhere and is shared by everyone. Everyone is one in mind. Mind is collective and joined. It reaches out and extends and creates. It knows no limits and isn't confined to any location. It is endless and immortal. Your mind is shared with other people's minds and they're all joined together.

Body is exclusive and restrictive. It is only in one place at a time and is not shared by anyone. One body is separated off from another body and kept apart by space and time. Bodies are singular and not joined, and they never can join. Bodies cannot create or extend themselves. They are limitations and are limited. The body is mortal and finite. The body is not shared with anyone else's body and all bodies are separate.

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA?"

The strange predicament that you have is that you seem to have both a mind and a body. This can go one of two ways. If you narrow your mind, move towards selfishness, believe in separation, exclude or isolate, imprison yourself or others, have an attacking attitude, move away from wholeness, deny your immortality, or in any way reject God, you are attempting to turn your mind INTO a body. To exclude and isolate and separate it off.

You're trying to separate yourself off and achieve the goals of the body. If you are trying not to share, to be selfish, to hoard, to possess or own, to be unlike, to be different and special, then you are forming a sense of self that is no longer infinite and unlimited. It forms a sense of self that is very reduced and isolated, excluded and cut off from others. And that is going to make you picture yourself AS a "body" - a limited self. And this produces the body.

This is body-identification. It's you aligning yourself with the idea of being a prisoner, isolated to a small speck of existence and kept away from everyone else. This happens when your mind is believing in what the body suggests is true, sees itself AS a body, and shares the "truth" of the body. By believing you are body-like, that your mind is physical, you are in a state of level confusion and delusion. The mind is trying to be forced into a tiny little container to limit it and shut out the wholeness of God.

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is."

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

Mind cannot function properly when you do this. Mind's natural state of completely expansive and infinite. It is shared and is everywhere at once. It has no limits and there is nothing it cannot do. But if you try to identify your sense of self as limited and mortal and restricted and partial and taking sides and being cut off from relationship and so on, you are trying to force the mind to be like a body. This is very unnatural for the mind. It does not belong in a little vessel of death.

The problem then is that on the one hand, you seem to have a body temporarily, and live in a world of separation. The physical world is entirely based on separation ideas. Thoughts of "here and not there". Thoughts of "this and not that". Thoughts of distance (space) and the past (time). Where even the presence of bodies can at times be rare and unusual. Where no two things are alike and nothing can really share anything.

So if you live a "life" as a body, in a body-oriented world, thinking in separate terms of "me not you", isolated and alone, not sharing minds or joining beyond the limits of the prison walls, then you are being limited "by" the body. Or rather you are choosing to use the body as a template for limitation so that the mind can see itself as a prisoner of spacetime.

It may then seem that in the world of bodies there is a certain "nature", that it's totally natural and normal for "body people" to live a certain kind of selfish lifestyle, where the body is the hero of the dream and the central figure, where everything revolves around one's own body and not others, where your whole experience is one of loneliness and isolation and wariness of other bodies. But this seems natural and normal and commonplace because "everybody" seems to be experiencing the same problems.

But this is wholly UNNATURAL for the mind. The mind is not designed to function as separate. It is not designed to NOT share. It is not designed for selfishness or limitation, for being locked into one place and not another, to be capable of only doing what the physical body can seem to do, or to have no powers or abilities that transcend the body's limits. Mind is not comfortable when it is limited to the body.

"To be without the body is to be in your natural state."

So you've got mind which is totally infinite and unlimited and shared and whole, trying to be forced to live in a a little tiny body which is finite and limited and unshared and unwhole. It's a very awkward situation. Now you seem to have to drag the body around to do a very limited amount of stuff, as if your mind has no power beyond it.

The challenge then becomes, while you're having a body, how do you transcend the body? How do you let mind return to being its natural expanded state? How do you let mind be free and not "a body", to not identify as a body, or see itself as limited BY the body? How do you get the mind to reach out and join and share with someone, in such a way that it HAS to DEFY the body? That it has to work AGAINST and DENY the body in order to be true to itself? The mind can only be natural when it is not allowing the body to limit it at all.

You can't achieve any kind of spirituality on a physical level. Bodies cannot join. The atoms will not allow it. Atomic forces will keep the two lumps separate. There is no oneness of bodies ever. Bodies do not communicate. Bodies do not share. Bodies testify to the ego's mantra of "I am separate and alone". They are prison-houses designed to separate off.

At best the body can be transcended and its limitations no longer limit the mind. But to do this the mind has to learn that it is NOT a body. It also has to realize therefore that the body is false and has no power OVER it, to cause it to be limited. This essentially means the body has to be recognized as NOTHING, and as MEANINGLESS. Either the mind is real or the body is real, and it cannot be both.

But really it means the mind must stop regarding itself as BODY-LIKE, must dis-identify FROM the body, and must extend outward, join, share, and experience oneness. It must unite with everyone and resume its natural function of equality and sharing and wholeness and love. It can only do this by not regarding itself as having any limitations, by not believing the body at all, and by not being tempted by anything in the world of bodies. To not believe it is finite or limited or mortal or alone.

So your mind has to decide whether to regard itself AS A MIND, or AS A BODY. It has to choose one or the other. Either it is unlimited or limited, either it is immortal or mortal. Either it is locked into a specific space and time or it is endless and eternal and everywhere. Either it shares with everyone or it is alone.

This is why waking up can seem so difficult, because you're living in an entire world of separateness while trying to NOT be separate. Trying to share and join and love, which has to BYPASS the body. Trying to have a vision which does not DEPEND on the body for sight, because the body CAN NEVER see reality. To be identified with spirit and not with flesh. To be in the world but not of it, and not LIKE it. To be opposite to the NATURE of the world, to the nature of the body, and to the nature of space and time. To be under only the laws of God, and not the laws of the physical.

It is therefore very awkward for us to have bodies, because they function totally opposite to how our mind functions. Their nature is totally unlike the mind's nature. They get in the way. They are obstacles which keep wanting to testify to truths which are completely false, and keep wanting to follow pathways toward death which are contrary to the mind's goal of life. The body's ways HAVE to be denied at some point through the proper use of denial, if mind is to be allowed to relax and be true to itself.

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen." "Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and ****separate minds are seen as bodies****, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN."

"You CANNOT join with anything EXCEPT reality."

"To be of one mind is meaningful, but to be of one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body IS meaningless."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

"For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego's chosen home, which you believe is YOURS. You meet at a mistake; - an error in your self-appraisal. The ego joins with an ILLUSION of yourself you SHARE with it. And yet, illusions cannot join. They ARE the same, and they are nothing."

"Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished ONLY if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. 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."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin. And as he is in Heaven, so MUST he be eternally and everywhere."

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist. The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device FOR you. Again, as always, it re-interprets what the ego uses as an argument FOR separation into an argument AGAINST it."

"Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION. THIS VISION is invisible to the physical eye. The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation."

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all. The mind is its only source."

Ok. Let's take a fresh look at miracles.

Your task is to correct your perception, but this does not take place in isolation. What applies to you, applies to others. The Golden Rule is always in effect.

If you extend love to others and be loving toward them, you will open yourself to receive love and share in love. If you do not extend love to others, you will shut down your extension and block your own receipt of love. You will either love yourself AND your brothers equally, OR you will hate both of you. This is inescapable law with no exceptions.

Your task isn't just to fix yourself. Your task is to REJOIN in Holy Relationship with your brothers and to HEAL BOTH OF YOU, by allowing the love in you to go out to them. Your task is to repair your connection with them and restore communication of love and sharing. You have to learn to love other people so that you will also be loved. And that is an outward expression or extension. It's reaching out with love and embracing others "as yourself".

The Holy Spirit is a gift from God. The Holy Spirit provides accurate perception of the "real world", forgiven and innocent. He is in you and in your brother, regardless of whether your brother is aware of this. In order for you to see your brother correctly with love, you have to look WITH the Holy Spirit. You will see the Holy Spirit IN your brother when you are looking at Him WITH the Holy Spirit in you fully.

Now, you of yourself cannot perform miracles or heal anyone. The light in you is healing, but you did not put the light there. God did. The love that is in you, which extends through you to others, is God's love. You can share in it, but not take possession of it. If you control it or block it or stand in its way, you hurt yourself and others. When you allow it to extend, IT provides healing. "Miracles are the Holy Spirit's gifts."

The Holy Spirit, being the idea of healing, isn't merely a static state of mind. It is a mind of love. It extends, and it HEALS. It can correct perception, dissolve error, shine away darkness, reverse sickness and death, and provide LIFE where it was lacking. When you become a "window" for the Holy Spirit to move THROUGH, this healing POWER goes out to the mind of another and heals them miraculously, which also restores health.

If your brother is lacking in some way, and calling for love, they have blocked their own ability to heal themselves. The light IN you is the same as the light IN them, being of God. This light is capable of healing them if you SUPPLY IT. The Holy Spirit is capable of SUPPLYING LIFE to others through you. You GIVE the Holy Spirit TO your brother, and HE supplies what is lacking, and they are healed. This is how miracles are performed. Miracle working is always about sharing love with others AND with yourself.

Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more, for those who temporarily have less. That means if your brother is weak and you are strong, or he is deluded and you are more sane, the Holy Spirit in you shines on him and brings him up to your level. This is also why Jesus says "forgiveness is not complete unless both of you have been corrected" (paraphrase).

Miracles are not something that you do in isolation. Nor are miracles "just for you", like where your own perception undergoes a shift. They are a means of repairing and restoring your Holy Relationship with others. They undo the separation that keeps you and others apart. They benefit BOTH OF YOU. This is why they are a maximal service you can render another. "I am not healed alone".

Miracles are ENTIRELY about what you SHARE WITH other people. The amount of love you are willing to see in others, also establishes the amount of love you will see in yourself. When you "shine" toward others, heartfelt, loving past their body, and recognizing the holiness in them, you are extending love and "connecting" your mind to theirs. Minds can only be joined in love. When minds connect, separation is erased, illusions vanish, and there is healing. The power of love from the Holy Spirit moves THROUGH you and actively HEALS you AND the other.

Recently when I have been attempting to pray for someone "in isolation", and would ask that God heal them or a certain part of the body etc, I would keep experiencing healing in my own self. I kept thinking this was some crazy mistake, that I wasn't asking correctly or focusing my mind properly. But truth is, miracles heal BOTH you and others equally. So if you are to be a miracle worker, you better be ready to start getting healed.

This is also why you can only give the miracles you have received, which means you are only WILLING to see a certain degree of love in others, corresponding to how much you are wiling to see in yourself. To love others more you MUST love yourself more, which is why you are supposed to accept the atonement for YOURSELF, SO THAT you can GIVE the miracles (perceptual blessings, mind healing) you have received from that acceptance/receiving of truth/love.

"Miracles make minds one in God." "Miracles unite you with your brother". "Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad." All of these speak to miracle working by erasing the separation BETWEEN you and OTHERS. Separation is double-sided, it applies to you AND others. Healing therefore heals BOTH of you. *ALL MIRACLES* unite you with your brother, therefore ALL miracles are devices for undoing the separation BETWEEN YOU and healing your relationship/communion. They are applied to BOTH of you.

Now, the Holy Spirit is the only "cause" of miracles, although Jesus is also involved "miracles are corrections introduced into false thinking by ME". He and HS are One. But what makes YOU one of "God's miracle workers", is your willingness to ALLOW God's healing to be in you and through you. "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." Meaning you have to learn to allow love to shine onto your brothers, through you, in order to stop blocking love's extension. Your willingness, which makes you a co-creator, allows you to "do His works".

What about miracles such as moving mountains? The Holy Spirit can do that. You, if you are willing enough "do not limit what I can do through you or you will limit what I can do FOR you", He CAN do extraordinary things. You "work" the miracle by allowing Him to move on God's behalf, which requires that you be a "perceiver of love" in order to make a pure enough request. Prayer is the medium of miracles and we do have to be in a "high" state of mind - a loving mind of miracle readiness - in order for miracles to be performed of this kind.

Just as it's not merely your perception of others that heals, but rather the Holy Spirit IN YOU that moves through you and heals FOR you (you are a medium, not an isolated thing), when you are perceiving correctly there is NO LIMIT to what "you and HE" can do together. It's teamwork. It requires you to have the right perceptual content - "wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles", while also being free enough of ego and fear to let love extend ITSELF. *IT* does the healing. You, plus the power of God, can bring healing to the world.

"You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating." --- "you share His function on Earth" ... " do His works".

So miracle working is entirely to do with upholding the Golden Rule, it applies bi-directionally to you and others at the same time, they heal both of you (unless you are already healed), and they ALWAYS involve OTHERS.

Here is a selection of pertinent quotes....

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient. ... The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide."

-&-

"The Holy Spirit CANNOT fail to undo FOR you everything you have learned" ... "The little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit for which He gives you everything."

"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and healing that is of Him ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary."

"I will heal as I let Him teach me to heal" ... "He will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision if I WILL LET HIM."

-&-

"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS."

"Miracles are ENERGIZERS."

-&-

"Healing is the one ability that everyone CAN develop, and MUST develop, if he is to BE healed. Healing IS the Holy Spirit’s form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows. "

-&-

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."

"Miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it."

"Miracles are not of this world.

-&-

"The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth"

-&-

"The Holy Spirit's temple is not a body, but a relationship."

-&-

"What you acknowledge in your brother, you ARE acknowledging in yourself. What you share you STRENGTHEN."

-&-

"Fear is a symptom of your deep sense of loss. If, when you perceive it in others, you learn to SUPPLY the loss, the basic CAUSE of fear is removed."

-&-

"The aim of the teacher is to give them more of what is temporarily his. This process has all of the miracle conditions we referred to at the beginning. The teacher (or miracle worker) gives more to those who have less, bringing them closer to equality with him, at the same time gaining for himself."

-&-

"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less."

-&-

"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love."

-&-

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously."

-&-

"Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others."

-&-

"Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both."

-&-

"A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."

-&-

"Our brothers ARE forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

-&-

"Would you cut a brother off from the Light that is yours? You could not do so, if you realized that YOU CAN ONLY DARKEN YOUR OWN MIND. As you bring HIM back, so will YOUR mind return. That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son."

-&-

"The present offers you your brothers in the light that would unite you WITH them, and free YOU from the past. Would you, then, hold the past AGAINST them?"

-&-

"And you will know you have forgiven me if you behold your brother in the light of holiness. He cannot be less holy than can I, and you can not be holier than he."

-&-

"The light of joy is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns ... That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself."."

-&-

"Thereby you teach yourself that fear does not exist IN YOU, for you have in YOURSELF, the means for removing it, and have DEMONSTRATED this by GIVING it."

-&-

"But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received."

-&-

"I give the miracles I have received." ... "No-one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession."

-&-

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs.

The light in them shines as brightly, REGARDLESS of the density of the fog that obscures it. If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember.

Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself. 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. And to give a brother what he REALLY wants, is to offer it unto yourself. For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself. Answer HIS call for love, and YOURS is answered. Healing is the love of Christ for His Father, and for HIMSELF."

A brother is an equal sibling, who shares the same parent as you. Right? Yes.

So in order for there to be brothers, there has to be more than two children coming from the same parent, right? Yes.

When the children exist as brothers, does the parent become obliterated? No, of course not.

Does the fact that there are brothers, overthrow and undermine and attack the parent's existence? Not at all, especially given the parent created the brothers.

Who is the ultimate parent? Is it not God? Right? God is the creator parent of all that is.

If God is your parent, and you have brothers, your brothers are God's EQUAL children, right? Yes of course. If there is more than one son, then God's children are brothers.

If the term "brother" is NOT tied to God, then who is the parent of the brothers? Is it the ego? Is the ego your daddy? That would have to be true, because if God is not the parent God's opposite must be. Which is ridiculous.

How about God's supposed "one son". Are you are CHILD OF the one son? If you were, you and your brother would indeed be brothers. The one son is real, therefore so too are the brothers, because a real parent can only create real children. Just as an illusory parent creates illusory children.

How about we say your parent is the ego, and therefore you and your brother must be egos. This makes "brother" into a synonym for "the ego". And that means when the ego is gone, the brothers cease to exist at all. ie they are imaginary brothers. Or their brotherhood is a temporary illusion. And when undone, BOTH DISAPPEAR, leaving no child at all!

If that is true, then we MUST be claiming that, as ego brothers, who exist only due to "the separation", we have the ego as our creator. The ego must be the parent of whatever the brothers are. And brothers can't be brothers without a shared parent.

Nowhere in ACIM does it EVER say, that brothers are the children of the ego. Never. And it would be ridiculous to do so.

It DOES SAY, many times over, that brothers are children of GOD. And what that has to mean is, that God MUST not only have multiple children, but also that brothers is a term for REAL created beings who are permanent, not children of the ego, and not children of the separation.

So in ACIM, every reference to "your brother", is talking about THE SOULS that God created, who are many in number, necessarily more than ONE, and AT LEAST TWO, so that they can BE brothers, and share the same parent who is God.

And because God is a REAL parent, his children MUST be real as well. Meaning that, ... unless brother means "son of the ego", brother MUST mean REAL CHILDREN in reality, in heaven, with God, many in number. ie God has multiple sons.

This is simple enough accurate reasoning. Either your brother is a child of the devil or he is a child of God along with you. And you'll be very hard pressed to find references in the course to your brother being anything less than holy, innocent, divine, a co-creator with God, and your total equal IN HEAVEN.

"Brother", therefore, in ACIM, refers solely to the SOULS in heaven that have eternal life, ***are many in number***, and who share the same parent - God. And this automatically means God has many sons, not just one in number.

Jesus even states on multiple occasions that your brother is a CO-CREATOR with you and with God. Which is only possible in heaven, therefore making brothers permanent real beings, a heavenly multitude, the sum of which we call "the sonship". Aka. "God's family."

"Will you behold your brother? God is glad to have you look on him."

"Heaven is the home of perfect purity. And God created it for YOU. Look at your holy brother, sinless as yourself, and let him lead you there."

"Perhaps you come in tears, but hear Him say, "My brother, Holy Son of God, behold your idle dream, in which this could occur," and you will leave the holy instant with your laughter and your brother's JOINED with His."

"You could no more know God alone, than He knows YOU without your brother."

"Whenever you heal a brother by recognizing his worth, you are acknowledging his power to create and yours."

"And therein lies your need to see your brother sinless. In him is Heaven."

"It is impossible to over-estimate your brother's value. Only the ego does this."

"The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him."

"For you will realize that the ONLY value that the body has, is to enable you to bring your brothers TO the bridge WITH you. And to be RELEASED TOGETHER there."

"You will not remember that you are co-creator with God, until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with YOU."

"You do not know YOUR creations, because you do not know your brothers who created them with you."

"When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy."

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.

Real Love, is not like anything else in this world. Love, to be experienced, must be shared by all.

Love is a presence that exists everywhere and extends everywhere. It radiates. It flows. It overcomes all separations. It does not and cannot belong to any one individual without simultaneously belonging to everyone. Nobody can put a wall around it and deny it to everyone else.

So if you want to experience love, you can't do it by locking love in a box. You can't do it by being absent of love yourself and expecting someone else to give their portion to you. Love it not limited and finite, or lacking or scarce. It's not like some kind of substance or material or object or commodity that someone exchanges for something else. It's not money used to buy a favor.

The ego believes that if you give something, you will lose it. It thinks that giving produces sacrifice. That you're going to be worse off, and have less, if you give. And especially if you share, there is no way to share with anyone without loss.

To the ego, sharing doesn't exist. It doesn't see how you can share, in any way, without diminishing what you have. And it's enacted this belief in the way that all physical 'forms' appear to behave.

If you want to share your apple, you're going to have to cut it in half and give half away - sacrificing half, and now you will only have half an apple. And you will experience that in the ego as loss, and unworthiness of having the whole. You might think you are sharing the half in kindness or generosity, but to the ego you a secretly jealous and bitter at having 'taken a hit' for the sake of someone else.

And then, to the ego, this form of sacrificing becomes equated with giving. It says, if I give half of this apple, and I do it in spite of the fact that I believe it is a sacrifice, then I am doing some kind of 'good for others'. This then leads to guilt that you are not giving ALL of what you have to others, and that even more sacrifice is called for. Ultimately it would have you give all of your apple to others, and having nothing for yourself.

That is the culmination of its belief system - that you are left with nothing, in total sacrifice and loss. Such is martyrdom. Such is what we commonly think of as 'giving selflessly' when in fact it usually is the ego sacrificing. To the ego, you should just give everything you have to others in order to be 'good' so that you'll meet God's graces, which is bullshit. It is a death wish. If you still have an ego and you are giving in this way without giving equally to yourself (receiving), that's not being a saint, it's being a martyr and an idiot. And it's also not what giving means.

Where in the ego's form of giving is there anything other than sacrifice? How in the ego's world is there anything even remotely similar to real sharing, other than loss? How can the ego give without losing what it has? It can't. Because the ego's idea of what it HAS is an illusion, a false value, and its idea of sharing it is the same thing as NOT sharing it. To the ego, sharing means posession and a transfer of ownership.

Real love is not like this. Real love does not diminish when it is shared or given. Real love doesn't call for sacrifice. Real love doesn't give give give, endlessly from your ego self, in the guise of some kind of 'atoning' or being 'selfless'. Real love cannot be owned by you exclusively, and you cannot give it away without you keeping it. Real love can't exchange hands and be in one place and not in another place at the same time. Real love doesn't leave you empty and lifeless. Real love doesn't ask you to be a martyr or to please everyone else except yourself.

Real love is like a giant vast ocean of love. Love's rule is that you can share in it by opening up to it and allowing it to be in you, but you cannot possess it or own it exclusively. You can participate in it and enjoy it and experience it, but this does NOT prevent others from doing the same. And there is an infinite supply, so there is no way you can have it all to 'yourself' and deny it to others, nor is there a need to get it FROM others because they too have their own access directly from God.

So unlike the ego, where you must 'get' love from others, because you think you lack it, you can't actually experience it even if you could get it, because you're trying to deny it to the other person. You want them to love you, sacrificially, by giving you what they have so that they don't have any left. That bleeds them dry, just as you trying to be an ego saint bleeds you dry. The only way you can experience love, is to get in line with how God has arranged things.

Simply, as ACIM says, "to have all, give all to all". Which means, to experience love fully, fully GIVE LOVE to everyone unconditionally, by EXTENDING what God has given you (unlimited love). In this you receive love from God in unlimited supply, and you extend it to others. But notice this key point:

If you do not extend the love to others, YOU cannot have it either. If you do not radiate the love to others, YOU cannot feel its radiance. If you do not SHARE love with others, YOU cannot share IN it either. Love has to be shared to be experienced, otherwise it is stationary. It needs to be extended and amplified to be what it is, like a radiant shining light. It has to shine outward. So you need to shine it outward, not from a limited supply of your own, but from God. Extend God's love. Extend God's healing miracles.

Simply...

God... help me to love [person's name]. Help me to extend your love to them and see them as lovable.

You will then feel love in your heart, for the other person, and you will feel the love and share in the love. It is the privilege of the loved to be loving.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself."

1. God is permanent. Earth is not. Earth will end.

2. God is eternal. Earth is not. Earth does not last forever.

3. God can only create by extending himself, and so whatever He creates has to be LIKE Himself in EVERY way, having extended from His own nature. For God to create Earth, God has to be a planet.

4. God, being eternal, never changes. He is changeless. And everything He creates CANNOT change. Earth changes all the time and at NO TIME has a permanent identity.

5. God is eternity, in which there is no time, because there is no beginning or end. He is everywhere at once. In God, there is no space or time. Earth 100% relies on the seeming existence of space and time without which it cannot show up as a 3D planet. And spacetime is just a belief.

6. Nothing God creates can ever be sick or decay or die. Nothing real can be threatened. Everything real last forever. On Earth, everything is sick, decaying and dying.

7. God can only create ONE Kingdom or world. That world has to mirror His nature. Earth, is opposite to Heaven in every way, and God would have to have a contradictory split mind in order to produce TWO DIFFERENT worlds. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

8. In God's perfect extension, He can only create like Himself, and so creates CREATORS, who in turn have the ability to create like God. Everything on Earth CANNOT CREATE, cannot pass down all of its own qualities and abilities, and everything on Earth is a dead end.

9. Knowledge is only possible in God, where there is no perception, and nothing to perceive. Earth requires perception in order to see it, and without a body it cannot be experienced. "To sense is not to know", and the body is a sensor. Knowledge is not possible in a body. "You cannot remain in this world with this knowledge." It requires the end of perception, and the end of the body.

10. Immortality is God's nature. Nothing real can be threatened, attacked, changed or hurt. Everything about Earth can be threatened, attacked, changed and hurt. It cannot be real.

11. Because God creates/extends only Himself, in His likeness, everything He creates is equal and identical. There is no difference between any Son of God. On Earth, everything is different, unequal, there is no harmony and therefore inherent war.

12. Life means eternal life, that which is sustained forever. God sustains it forever by His permanent will that there be eternal life. Real life never ends. On Earth, all life has a non-existence, followed by an illusion of a beginning, followed by illusory suffering, followed by an illusory death, followed by a non-existence. That is not eternal life.

13. God, being forever, is always the same. Eternity is always the same. It never changes. Time, is the idea that nothing is EVER the same, and everything always changes. It is totally opposite to eternity. Earth, governed by time, is never the same and always changing. Earth is not eternal.

14. God creates only the perfect, being perfect, and creates them perfectly. This perfection is flawless, has no damage, no imperfections, no lack, nothing missing, no corruption or limitation. Everything on Earth is flawed, damaged, imperfect, lacking, missing something, and severely limited.

15. Holiness is a quality and condition possible only in the Kingdom. Holiness comes from wholeness. In God, who is whole, He creates wholes, who create wholes. Wholeness only begets wholeness. On Earth, nothing is whole, because everything lacks what everything else has. This is what makes all thing unique and different. The world cannot be holy.

16. Only the truth of God is true. And God is everywhere. This is why love has no opposite. There is nowhere for an opposite to exist. That which is false is unreal and nothing unreal exists. Earth is opposite to truth, being an illusion which attempts to oppose reality. Everything about it is false. This is why it doesn't exist.

17. In God, there is only love. The extension of God's likeness produces the Golden Rule. What is true of one Son is true of all others. What applies to one, applies to both. Earth is an attempt to break this law, by making it seem possible that what applies to one thing does not apply to another. That you can cause, and escape the effects. That something can be true of another and not you. This is the idea of getting away with murder. Earth is the idea of the crucifixion of God's Son. "The world was made as a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." The planet is murderous.

18. Life in God is eternal. It is real. Life means eternal life, life without end. Everything in the Kingdom has eternal life. That which does not last forever is the idea of death. That which can be attacked is the idea of death. "The world was made as an attack on God." "Without the idea of death there is no world." Earth is the idea of death, a dream of death, and is not life. "An illusion of life at best, at worst, death." Earth is not alive or dead, it is nothing.

19. The world God "projected" ie extended or created, is the Sonship. God's ONE SON, is God's ONE CREATION. The Son, is God's world. "You are the Kingdom of Heaven." "We are creation, WE, the sons of God". When the son sleeps, God creates the Holy Spirit. This forms the TRINITY. God never creates ANYTHING ELSE. Father, Sonship an Holy Spirit are all that exist. There is no Earth in this equation.

20. God's world is reality. The Kingdom is real. Because it is permanent and never changes. Anything as an alternative to reality must be unreality, or illusion. Another word for illusion is dream, and all dreams are dreams of opposition to life. "Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem." Even "the real world" is an illusion of death. Illusions are not eternal life. Every part of the dream, does not exist in reality. No part of the dream is created by God. God is not a dreamer. When the dreamer (sons) wakes up, the entire dream content vanishes, having never existed. Earth is a dream world. There is no Earth in Reality, and Earth will vanish BECAUSE it is not really there. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came." "There is no world."

1. Everything in reality is miraculous. Miraculousness is the nature of God's thought system. Everything real is permanently miraculous. The omnipresent and holographic nature of God's thought system is literally miraculous, in that it does not adhere to limitations, fears, blocks, constructs, physics, ego laws, space or time. It's a holographic system where the whole is in every part which defies all ego systems of thought.

"You are a miracle"

"Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life"

"Miracles are a universal blessing from God"

"The miraculous nature of the soul"

"Miracles are natural to God, and to the One Who speaks for Him." (holy spirit)

These kind of statements are all aimed at "level 1". Everything in reality/heaven is miraculous, creation is a miraculous act, your "children of your will" are miraculously created by your will alone, and Heaven's laws break all the laws of the ego world. Everything real is ALWAYS miraculous and returning to being ALWAYS miraculous is the goal of the course.

"That is what we meant when we once said that miracles are NATURAL, and when they do NOT occur, something has gone wrong."

"I KNOW that miracles are natural, because they are expressions of love."

2. "The miracle" (singular) refers to God's answer to the separation. It is represented by the Holy Spirit who is the medium of miracles. This is a singular whole miracle which encompasses and includes all the miracles of type 3. In a similar way to how Christ encompasses all the Sons of God in the Sonship. The miracle is the state of atonement, true perception, salvation, right mindedness, forgiveness. THE miracle is hidden underneath all blocks to awareness and egotism. It's how Heaven touches on this world very lightly. Being miracle MINDED allows you to access your miraculous nature, FROM which you can perform miracles (type 3).

"The miracle forgives; the ego damns"

"This terrible mistake about yourself the miracle corrects as gently as a loving mother sings her child to rest."

"The Children of God are very holy. The miracle honors their holiness."

"The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle is the one thing you can do that TRANSCENDS order, being based, NOT on differences, but on equality "

"The miracle offers EXACTLY the same response to EVERY call for help."

"The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise."

"The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you."

"The miracle extends WITHOUT your help, but you ARE needed that it can begin."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone."

"There is ONE miracle, as there is ONE reality. And every miracle you do (see #3) contains them all, as every aspect of reality you see blends quietly into the One Reality of God. The only miracle that ever was (on level 1), is God's most holy Son, created in the One Reality that is his Father."

3. "Miracles" (plural) refers to individual expressions of the one miracle, whereby the holographic wholeness of The Miracle EXPRESSES in this world, through the Holy Spirit, as an act of giving and receiving the miraculous nature of love. Miracles break all the laws of the world because they're coming from another world whose laws are totally different. They can override the laws of physics. They can reverse death and restore life. They can heal the body. They can move mountains. They can allow you to walk on water and do everything Jesus did. They are interpersonal acts in which another person benefits from what you give. They fulfill your function of healing in this world and eventually lead to revelation and atonement for yourself and others. Miracles happen mainly on level 2, but you are still miraculous on level 1.

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

"Miracles are a part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. "

"Miracles make minds one in God."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God."

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another."

"Miracles are NOT in competition, and the number that you can do is LIMITLESS. They can be simultaneous and legion."

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind."

" Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less. "

"Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating that it is more blessed to give than to receive. They simultaneously increase the reserve strength of the giver, and supply the lack of strength in the receiver."

"Like all expressions of love, which are ALWAYS miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws "

"Miracles make time and tide wait for all men. They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes, and can abolish both."

"Miracles are a form of healing."

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

"Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed."

"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT of what it made "

And sometimes Jesus speaks on all these levels at once. e.g.

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. "

"Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."

Being miraculous is normal and natural and permanent. It's your NATURE to be miraculous. You are miraculous in heaven, where you create miraculously. On Earth, it is your function to rediscover your miraculous nature, by uncovering and restoring a state of miracle mindedness by removing blocks to awareness and becoming forgiving. As denial is removed, your miraculous ability is made accessible and you become MORE miraculous. You continue becoming MORE miraculous until you are unlimited in what you can do. And you will NEVER lose this miracle-working ability.

Jesus asks that we PRACTICE working miracles. "Doing them brings conviction in the ability". Without attempting to TRY to do them, we remain in fear. Miracles can only be performed in love, which is a state of truer perception. ("Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles.")

Purification must be done first to remove ego blocks so that the light can shine. Once the clouds are parted, love can come through to express miraculous power. It is by EXPRESSING FROM a state of love, that you perform miracles.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

"The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of his Atonement."

"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me. "

There are some basic facts in the course. These facts are completely clear cut, black and white. They do not have any exceptions. There is no "maybe" to them. They are so perfectly defined and clear that all you can do is either accept them or deny them. Such is the truth.

e.g. The fact is, God is eternal.

So if you can start by accepting this fact, we can move on to another fact. But if you cannot accept this fact, or think there are exceptions to it, or don’t understand what eternal means, we can’t make any other sensible conclusions.

Eternal - lasting forever, always the same, permanent, unwavering, lacking all change or difference, never ending or beginning, constant and unfaltering. Yes?

If you can accept this, you can accept this is God’s nature. And under NO circumstances is this ever opposed, or untrue. If God is eternal, the truth about God must also be eternal. It is fixed. It’s a fact.

Upon accepting this premise, we can move on to say, clearly, if God is a creator, and because God is eternal, God creates in an eternal way. What he creates MUST BE eternal also, as an EXTENSION of His own nature.

Would it make sense to say that an eternal creator would create anything less than something eternal? Think about what that would entail. It means God has a VARIETY of kinds of creations which are different and contradict each other, and so is confused. It means God does not always think eternal thoughts, and so thinks of death. It means God changes his mind. It means therefore that sometimes God is not God. In fact, it means sometimes God stops being eternal also, and dies. Do we really want THAT to be the truth?? Does that make ANY sense? Not at all. Do not accept this nonsense.

So to make sense here, we have to accept, admit, the fact is, when God EXTENDS HIMSELF, when God expresses eternity, when God GIVES HIMSELF to His creations, He MUST produce ONLY eternal life. He can only give what he has. He cannot create UNLIKE Himself. This should make perfect sense because it is impeccably logical. Creation is the extension of God’s own eternal nature. And this simply leads to the fact that God CANNOT create anything that lacks eternal life.

So now you might be thinking about things you know of in this world, wondering if or HOW they might have eternal life. You might now enter into wishful thinking, even strong resistance, or unwillingness to realize that they may not HAVE eternal life. You might want to blur the definition of what eternal means. You may not want this "cold hard fact" to be true. It might imply some things you do not want, or incite ego reactions and upset. And these are poor quality ego thoughts. The mind is slipping out of impeccable logic and reason and going into denial.

Facts can be accepted or denied, but they cannot be changed. You have to have a CLEAR grasp of what ETERNAL means. And you can’t be wishywashy about it. It is black and white. Something lives forever or it does not. Something is permanent and unchanging OR it is temporary and changes. Which is it? You have to be honest here. Denial does not bring the truth.

There is no OPINON involved here. There are no "multiple possible interpretations". The facts are rock solid. Impeccable. Clear. Perfect. So true that they are not OPEN to interpretation. You either accept them as a result of RECOGNIZING the sense they make, or reject them. The great thing about dealing with impeccably logical facts is that the ego cannot have a say, opinions do not matter, and there is no way to be incorrect UNLESS you fail to reason correctly. Your role of "decider of what is true" goes bye bye. Facts are the end of the ego. The truth sets you free.

Fact is, a world that changes is not eternal. How could it be, when eternal means NEVER ENDS and NEVER CHANGES? If God is eternal, he CANNOT create a changing world. This is a raw fact. Beginnings and ends are not of Him. This is why the world - Earth - which ONLY changes, and has no permanent identity, cannot have come from Him. And therefore, it cannot be eternal reality, or His creation. This is why ACIM refers to it as the world YOU made. And it OPPOSES His because it opposes eternal life.

It is an impeccable fact that this world is not God’s Kingdom. It is not real. And it does not really exist. This is why there is no world. This can be accepted, or denied, but the fact cannot be changed. Your only freedom is in whether you are WILLING to ACCEPT that it is a fact, or deny it. And denial of facts brings illusions of suffering. If you want the truth, you have to be WILLING to let go of anything which goes against the facts.

A Course in Miracles is BASED ON these facts. It’s metaphysics lines up with it perfectly. And it is these facts which lay the foundation for the Holy Spirit’s thought system. Accepting there is no world is accepting the facts. And accepting the facts results in accepting eternal life. The truth of God is not yours to define. And only His eternal truth is true.

"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit."

"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death."

"follow the simple logic, by which the Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for truth, and ONLY truth."

The ego's thought system resulted in this physical universe including the Earth. It is all based on separation and exclusion and difference. The ego's way of THINKING and reasoning logically, is completely consistent, yet based on "separating out" everything and comparing the parts to each other.

To make forms of matter or objects, the ego has separated things out, claimed that one thing is different to another, has given certain illusory properties to one object which another object does not share, and thus establishes that they are not only "different" from each other, but that because of these differences they must be SEPARATE. Not just a little separate, but COMPLETELY separate.

So for example because an apple looks very different and has different taste and structure and color to a banana, the ego reasons that the apple is different to the banana, not sharing the same qualities or characteristics, and therefore they cannot be ONE THING, and therefore must be TWO THINGS.

This is not merely a way of thinking ABOUT the world we made. It actually is the thinking BEHIND the world, the thought system which PRODUCED the world, and every part of physical matter in this universe proceeds according to these same rules.

Every atom is unlike the others, no two objects can share the same location, everything is different and changes, no two things are allowed to be seen as exactly identical, and because all things are different to each other this gives them a fragmented "identity". This is why regarding someone as a human body "identifies" the person AS being that body, because that body clearly does not overlap or share anyone else's body, and looks different and has different form, therefore is not the SAME, and therefore is SEPARATE.

So separation is BUILT IN to this entire universe's fundamental fabric. It's built into all matter. In fact, because differences mean that something applies to one thing and not another, another word for that is MURDER. From it has come the ego's laws of cause and effect which state that one object can affect another object WITHOUT receiving any consequences, which is exactly the same thing as "getting away with murder". This is because the ego's thought system is murderous, and all forms of INEQUALITY and competition or "not being identical" are forms of murder.

Sacrifice is also completely built into this universe. Because the ego has separated everything out into discrete separate parts, which are each different, its reasoning extends from this. And so it SEEMS logical to say, because oranges are orange and this banana is yellow, it can't be an orange. That seems to make perfect logical sense, except it is insane. It is insane because the banana and the orange are being KEPT APART by the separation idea, they are being made to look DIFFERENT to each other on purpose, and they are a PICTURE OF DEATH.

That means that for example if I eat the banana, there is only an orange left. And that means, the banana has now been sacrificed, because there is now a LACK of banana. Lack is fundamentally built into this universe. It's part of the laws of this world, the ego's laws of chaos. In this world, to give "matter" to someone means to LOSE IT, and therefore to decrease what you have. It's not merely your thoughts about the world that produce this kind of conclusion, it's literally BUILT INTO the way that this world's "reality" is set up. Therefore this universe is fundamentally DRIVEN by scarcity and LACK and ATTACK.

Then, whenever we think in terms of how we usually "reason out" something to do with this world, we actually have MAPPED our logical reasoning onto the way this world functions (or is an extension of it). So now it SEEMS to make sense to say, if Paul's body is not the same as Susan's body, then Paul is not Susan. This makes SENSE, but it is INSANE, because Paul and Susan are NOT SEPARATED by their bodies and the Holy Spirit recognizes that they SHARE MINDS and therefore they are IDENTICAL and NOT DIFFERENT and are NOT ENEMIES and therefore there IS NO SEPARATION between them as such.

So the Holy Spirit's thought system is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to how the ego thinks, God's world is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to how this universe functions and is structured, God's MIND thinks totally opposite to how this world thinks, and all of the logical conclusions that "make sense" to the ego are UTTER NONSENSE in God's eyes.

Yet we use and trust and rely on the ego's way of thinking to "learn the course" and to try to understand what Jesus means and what the nature of Heaven is and whether or not God has created many sons or minds, etc.... all producing FALSE conclusions that make SENSE to the ego. And because we TRUST that the ego's "sense" is actually sanity, or a sane conclusion, we are too quick to ACCEPT that these conclusions are the truth about God's creation, not realizing that we're totally overlooking and distorting His nature USING the ego as our guide to God.

In God's world, everything is essentially IDENTICAL In its nature, nothing is in competition, there aren't any "differences", one thing is not "separated from" another in the traditional ego sense of total isolation, and yet there are many individual beings which the EGO reasons cannot be possible. The ego sees separations where there are none, and sees singularity where there are distinctions. It cannot see how God could have "parts" or "creations" or "sons" without FALSELY concluding that this indicates isolation.

God and the ego do NOT communicate, so for the ego to think it can look at God "sanely" and make correct evaluations, is also insane. But we CAN learn to think like God and to share His mind and see what He sees, learning WHY it is possible for Him to Create the way He does, in violation of what makes sense to the ego.

Whatever you believe is the cause of you, you believe is your creator. God is the cause of you, being your creator. When you displace causality and project it outside of yourself, onto the dream world that you are causing, you believe that the world is the cause of you. This now means that you think the world is your creator.

Idol worship now becomes worship of your false externalized creator. The dream now seems to create you (physical birth), determine what you are, defines you, changes you, affects you, and chooses for you when you will live or die.

Believing you are being caused by any aspect of the world in any way, is a belief that your creator is separate from and outside of you. The dream world was made in an effort imagine that you are outside of or separate from God, producing a world which seems to be outside and separate from you. The dream world is now believed to be your Father.

Believing in external causes is a complete reversal of cause and effect. The dream is believed to be dreaming you. Every time you believe it has power over you, is attacking you, upsetting you, making stuff happen against your will, you are believing that the dream you are dreaming is dreaming you.

Anything it seems to do to you, you see as your inheritance. Anything that happens to you, you interpret as receiving. The world, as an externalized God, is seen to be willing against your will, choosing against your will and forcing you. It's seen as an enemy, because this externalized God is like your opponent.

When the dream is the cause of you, the dream is seen as against you. And this makes you an effect of the dream. Effects show up as physical symptoms of sickness, emotional symptoms of guilt and fear, and dictates your state of awareness.

If the dream is dreaming you, and you are not dreaming the dream, you are not aware that the dream is coming from you. This means to believe the dream is dreaming you, you have to be unconscious. That the dream can make you unconscious is nothing less than the belief that the dream can cause your death.

In orded to believe the dream is the cause of you, and you are its effect, cause and effect must be reversed. This reversal is literally false perception. False perception is backwards perception, in which that which is outside is taken in as if happening to you. Signals and messages come into you, at you, from the outside in. The body's eyes and senses pick up on what the dream world is telling you is there, and the body itself is part of the dream.

In true perception, mind sees and extends outward from the inside out, looking first within to love and peace, and then shining it outward in ignorance of what is in the dream. The dream is ignored, recognized as nothing but an effect of you and not a cause. No power or causality or will is seen in it. Its "alien will" no longer exists.

Nothing stands between you and the face of Christ, beyond the dream, and the dream is no longer an obstacle to peace. It is seen through as a thin veil of illusions which you have power over. You are now aware of dreaming, aware of being causal, and are aware that nothing in the world causes you. This is a correction of level confusion because the world you made did not make you. Recognizing you made the world gives you power - ie causality, over it.

When God is no longer thought to be the dream, no longer seen to be separate or externalized, He is now found within you, and being within you you will see him outside of you. Initially God is in everything you see, and then everything you see gives way to only God. God is all that you see and then perception ends, ending the dream and awakening you to ultimate reality.

"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."

"And to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause, and with no power to accomplish anything."

"Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness."

"Fear cannot be real without a cause, and GOD is the only Cause."

"There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. "

"It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect."

"For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what it wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source. "

"And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect it cannot make effects. As an illusion it is what you will. "

"Place cause and effect in their true sequence in one respect, and the learning will generalize and transform the world. "

"YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless?"

"The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, WITH NO EFFECT AT ALL."

"It is emphasized here that these differences have no effect at all on the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease."

"It is your wish that MAKES it what it is in its effect on you. "

"It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way. This is the PROPER use of denial."

"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?"

"They will not fade when dreaming ends. They end the dream instead; and last forever for they come from God to His dear Son, whose other name is you."

"He must be Savior FROM the dream he made, that he be free of it."

"His light is ALWAYS the call to awake, WHATEVER you may have been dreaming."

"You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it."