There are some things which ACIM states are not possible in this world, and which is only possible upon leaving this world, leaving the body, and returning to Heaven with God.

1. Creation

2. Your creations

3. Totally freed will

4. Knowledge

5. Eternal Life

6. The peace of God

7. Communion with God

8. Extension of Spirit

9. Oneness with the Sonship and God

10. Being Christ

11. The condition of Holiness

12. Being permanently miraculous

13. Being in your natural environment

14. Nothing unreal exists

15. There is no world

16. No time or space

17. Immortality

18. Being unlimited

e.g.

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."

"Indeed you cannot remain in this world with this knowledge."

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

"For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

"The body cannot create"

"You CANNOT create in this divided state, and you MUST be vigilant AGAINST this divided state because ONLY peace CAN BE extended."

"As long as perception lasts, prayer has a place. Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing.

Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know. God and HIS miracles are inseparable."

"Perception of the truth is not the same as knowing it"

"In this world, it is impossible to create."

"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."

"Gone is perception, false and true alike."

"the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant"

"no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind and body need Atonement."

"Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know."

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

"You CANNOT make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will NEVER be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love's condemnation."

"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the ACTUAL CONDITION of what was but reflected TO them here."

"The body cannot contain you who are love."

"When we are all united in Heaven, you will value NOTHING that you value here."

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on Earth."

"Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere."

"Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception CAN be, is without meaning in Heaven. "

"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."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs."

"In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION."

"great is the joy in Heaven"

"The holiness of your relationship is established in Heaven."

"Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. In Heaven this is so. For what could you need in eternity? In YOUR world you DO need things"

"In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still."

"Learning must lead beyond the body"

"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

"Let your awareness of your brother not be blocked by your perception of his sins, and of his body. "

"For it is only in Heaven that God would have you be. "

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death."

"In the holy instant, where the Great Rays REPLACE the body in awareness, the recognition of relationships WITHOUT limits is given you."

"Love's meaning is your own, and shared by God Himself. For what you are is what He is. There is no love but His, and what He is is everything there is. There is no limit placed upon Himself, and so are you unlimited as well."

"Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is not in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore cannot adapt to it, nor can he adapt it to him. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make.

Consider the Kingdom which you have made, and judge its worth fairly. Is it worthy to be a home for a Child of God? Does it protect his peace, and shine love upon him? Does it keep his heart untouched by fear, and allow him to give always without any sense of loss? Does it teach him that this giving is his joy, and that God Himself thanks him for his giving?

That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, anymore than you can make yourselves."

"The joy of Heaven, which HAS no limit, is INCREASED with each light that returns, to take its rightful place within it. Wait no longer, for the Love of God and YOU."

"Joy is unlimited"

"The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked."

"The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it CREATED all things. By CREATING all things, it made them PART OF ITSELF. You are the Will of God, because this is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you are like Him.

You are part of Him who is all power and glory, and are therefore as unlimited as He is."

"The extension of God's Being is the Soul's only function. ITS fullness cannot be contained any more than can the fullness of its Creator. Fullness IS extension."

"God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time"

"The creative power of both God AND His Creations is limitless"

There is a divine order to your creation.

God is the primary source and creator. Without him nothing exists, not even you.

God created you. Just to be clear, that means everything that you are, everything that you have, everything you are capable of, came solely from God.

You did not receive any attributes from the environment, from food, from upbringing, from self-taught ideas. Nothing.

You have absolutely only what God decided that you have.

Your joy, your love, your life, your power, your creativity, your expression, your freedom, your peace, your unity, your sharing, your relationship, your being, was all given to you by God.

You did not put it there. You did not create it. You did not invent it. You have no ability to change it. You cannot control it. You cannot make it go away. It is rock-solid permanent and utterly beyond you.

Here is the second facet of this interesting scenario.

Since you only have what God wills that you have, and are only what he wills that you be, you have nothing else and can be nothing else.

And this means that you cannot obtain any other qualities, characteristics, abilities, skills, talents, natures, conditions, or anything else that did not come from God.

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while."

You essentially were created with a full plate. Fully complete. Lacking nothing. Completely perfect in all ways. So finished and so fully divine, that you were not created in a position of having to go out and hunt or find or assemble or build or do anything at all to become whole.

You therefore cannot add to yourself. Just as you cannot remove from yourself. What you are is a permanent light in heaven sustained by the thought of God forever. Fixed and absolute. Unchanging, unwavering, eternal.

This means that any belief you have that you have added to yourself, redefined yourself, invented yourself, have something not of God, have something you gave yourself, something you found on your own, something you are capable of that is "new", something you've changed about yourself, etc... these MUST all be illusions.

As you move into the separation idea, into ego, it is these "alterations", "adjustments", that you begin to believe in. It is accompanied by a sense of lack, or being incomplete from the outset. That somehow God did not give you *everything* already, and so there is something to add or find or collect or establish. Some progress to make.

And this will include the belief that you have something of your own, which God did NOT give you, which you think is yours and that you can have. You cannot truly have anything that God did not give you, however. So when you believe that you have something not of God, you have nothing. And when you reject what God has given you, you have nothing.

God gave you all of his love, mind, will, power, joy, peace, beauty, freedom, life, etc. When you believe that you have something that did not come from God, you are rejecting what He gave you, which is your natural inheritance. As host to God, you inherit all of God. If you throw it away, you have nothing. And there is nothing else.

So now if you think you have power, but it's not God's power, you are mistaken. You cannot have any power at all if you do not have God's power. Yet, if you accept what God has given you, you have all power. The power is yours, but it is not sourced by you. The power you have IS God himself, in you, since you host him.

"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power."

What you are, is more like a host or medium or relay-station or conduit or channel or re-expresser of God. You literally have nothing OTHER than what God has given and put into you. It is yours, truly, because it is fully given to you. And yet, at the same time, it is not an exclusive property of yours, nor did you make it, nor can you remove it.

Ego is the idea that you are or have something not of God. Something exclusive, special, unique, isolated, which is not shared with God. And typically not shared with anyone else. It's a possessive, selfish attitude. An attempt to hoard a piece of heaven for yourself alone. And this makes you alone. It's what makes you a "separated one".

If you try to own, grasp, possess, grab or steal away something shared, in an attempt to put a label on it and say it is yours ONLY, you lose it. Attachment is loss. Possession is emptiness. Try to own a piece of God and you lose everything. But share in it, and it is fully yours and fully everyone's.

Jesus says:

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. ***I have nothing that does not come from God.*** The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

The problem then is only that you think you have something OTHER than or in addition to what God gave. And this must entail the belief that you DO NOT have what God gave. And its the belief in lacking what God gave, which causes you to be compelled to replace it with something else. Which will never work. You can only have what God gave you and the rest must be let go.

"I am still as God created me" also means "I am not what I made of myself."

You who are host to God, inherit everything real from God. And this is whole and complete and perfect. All of Him is in you forever. What seems to be "your" anything, is simultaneously HIS. "God is my strength". Your strength, which truly is yours, IS GOD. God, in you, is the sense of strength that you feel. It's literally like it is YOUR strength, to use, but it is ALSO His.

It's a very interesting relationship. God causes you. You are his effect. God being cause forces you to be also a cause. Now you are a co-creator. Not just a creator but a collaborator, because you can only create WITH him, using HIS power, which is shared with you.

It's like God has fully given all of himself to you, in your creation, establishing you as completely "having" everything, as if were fully yours, and yet at the same time, all that you have, is STILL HIS, and is still shared with him. That is your oneness. You are united with Him. You are a team.

You have nothing of your own. Yet you have everything, because God gave it to you. It's kind of like if it were "on loan". You have the use of it, but it's not yours exclusively. It still belongs to God. You're kind of renting it, permanently. And so you enjoy the benefit of it forever, but it's still technically His.

Thus you have the power of God in you. You are strong. You are immortal. Because God is in you. Because you are His extension. And you are free, yet you are joined. You are nothing without Him, but can share everything with Him. Either you share or you have nothing. But never can you have it all just for yourself. Nor do you source anything without Him.

When I think of it, it makes me think of the angels. They operate in service to God. They go where they are directed. They do what he wills them to do, in agreement with Him. They fulfill a function. They are joyfully glad to be what they are. They have no desire to improve themselves, nor do they need to. They give thanks to God for what they are in celebration and worship. And everyone's happy.

It basically works like this. You believe you are not loveable and are separate from the love that you ARE. You experience a sense of lacking love. This creates a false need. The need motivates you to search. You search externally outside of yourself for what you've lost. You deny your own value and lovability so you project this onto others. You set them up to look like they can save you, that they are better than you, that they are above you, and that they will fulfill your need. You put them on a pedestal in order to put yourself down, and you worship them hoping to get some small scrap of love (that you don't deserve).

We do this with our children. We project so much of our own missing value onto them (by sacrificing ourselves), that we turn them into idols. As idols, they are more important than we are, they are more valuable than we are, we would just about kill ourselves to save them, and we worship them. We set them up to look like they can do no wrong. We enter into denial about any flaws that they might possibly have. We see them as 'can do no wrong'. We imagine that they absolutely are supposed to love us back and that they are only loving and completely overlook any faults. We make them seem like they are our savior and that they have something we don't have, capable of doing for us what we refuse to do for ourselves. And ultimately we live vicariously through them because we've made them into 'everything'.

This all can seem extremely noble and humble and prideful and correct. But it is filled with self deprivation, self denial, unworthiness, self sacrifice, martyrdom, loss, exhaustion, having no time for yourself, being less important, and generally all forms of inequality. Inequality also includes of course the flipside of idol worship which is what happens when YOU believe you are the idol and that the child (or other audience) should worship you. This is just another expression of the same egotism and may result in the child becoming the idol-worshipper (of you). If you are the idol, then you believe you are secretly flawed and NEED to have people worship you to prove that you are good enough - except you never believe it, and it never works, and it's never enough. Idol worshippers are the more obvious victims of the world (those who are bullied), and idols are the more obvious victimizers (those who bully). BOTH of them believe they are not loveable.

This dynamic also extends to all other special relationships, because they are all based on you having a LACK of love, and therefore being compelled to find it in another. The other now contains something valuable and special that you want but don't have. You want to get it from them. Except that you don't REALLY want to receive it because doing so would undo your belief that you're not worthy of it. So you would steal it away and destroy it, to deprive yourself. "If I can't have it, nor can anyone else."

Another great example of idol worship takes place in many Christians/Catholics who worship Jesus. They will put Jesus on a pedestal and endow him with all kinds of special value and worth. At the same time, they will claim that they themselves cannot possibly have EQUAL value, so they must be unworthy. Secretly they STARTED by saying they are unworthy, and this is why they see Jesus AS worthier than they are. They may thus 'worship' Jesus AS an idol (even though he doesn't want this), and continually believe that Jesus will save them for them. They will, however, constantly REFUSE to believe or admit that they in any way deserve saving, that they can be saved, that they can be loved to the degree Jesus would offer. That is, unless they believe they have atoned enough to be the 'chosen ones' who are in Jesus' favor and better than those suckers who are even less worthy and who clearly are going to hell (throwing them under a bus).

So with one hand they are trying to reach out to Jesus to say, "hey, please love me for me and save me from my (wretched) self because I can't", while the other hand says "stay the fuck away from me I am not worthy to be your equal." The ego here has conflicting voices - one which sounds like it is filled with adoration and justified worship, but the other which clearly does not REALLY want Jesus to love them fully. If Christians were to fully receive and acknowledge Jesus's love for them, they would have to ADMIT that they too are just as loveable as he is. Otherwise, how could they possibly receive His love? This is what they do not want, because they do not want their own love which God already gave to them.

When you idolize someone you make them more valuable than yourself because you've projected your own value and worth. You then say you want them to save you FOR you, but secretly you hope that they won't. It becomes especially toxic when the person you idolize refuses to be your idol. If they pull away from you or separate from you, they might occasionally throw you a tiny scrap or mosel of attention, which you think is all you deserve. And when that scrap comes, you feel like the entire relationship has been saved - finally you got a blessing from that person on-high and now that means they love you and that they will save you. Your tremendous need/lack of lovability gets a little bit of attention and now it seems like there's hope. And then they withdraw their love again and you feel devastated.

The problem is, you're not really devastated by their lack of loving you, you're devastated by YOUR not loving you. When they withdraw their idol status without you withdrawing your idolizing of them, ie they separate or distance themselves or fail to deliver, you are left with nowhere else to go. You can't get the love from within or from God because you don't believe that is where the love IS, and if your idol ditches you your mind is now reminded of just how empty it is. This is painful and is experienced as loss and grief. The loss of your own self. The grief of your own separation from God.

This is a spiritual lesson, and a hard one. And essentially it is the only lesson. You believe you are separate from love and will never get back to that love, or that it is NOT love, and now you've projected the source outside yourself where it does not exist. To resolve and complete the lesson, you have to UNDO the beliefs you've formed about YOURSELF which tell you that love is not who you are, love is not what you deserve (from within), that you do not love or forgive yourself (and God), that God is not love, that you are not loveable or worthy of love, and that you are not yourself. This belief in separation is what drives the entire projection and idolization of external love. But YOU ARE THE LOVE YOU SEEK.

God knows this. He hasn't forgotten you. Holy Spirit knows it. Jesus knows it. The angels know it. Even you as Christ know it and can't forget it. But somewhere along the lines some part of your mind became convinced by a lie - a LIE - that you are not love itself. This needs correction. And it cannot be corrected by anyone else outside of you because they are not the source of the correction OR of the separation. You might blame them because they seem to be separate from you and they seem to not be fulfilling your 'secret bargain' to love you for you, but it's not really their fault. It's not their fault they fail to love you for you. They're not supposed to. You need to learn to love yourself again so that you no longer NEED to get it from somewhere else, and consequently so that nobody else CAN take it away or deny you.

You are the way, the truth and the light. You are Jesus's equal. You are equal to your children. You are equal to your parents. You are loveable by God and in God and as God's extension of love. And you are absolutely worthy of the joy and happiness of RECLAIMING YOUR VALUE.

In A Course in Miracles, there is a significant theme of allowing the Holy Spirit to fulfill his function, without you interrupting it, and without you attempting to take over his role as healer and therapist. But it may not be obvious how far this goes and what this implies. So let's look at what your role in this world is supposed to be.

As an ego, you stand in the way, you direct everything, you control everything, you make all decisions on your own, you tackle all challenges alone, and you believe you have the power and capabilities to succeed independently and with no reliance on spirit. It's kind of a state of "I don't need you God, leave me alone."

In this mode, we are trying to be God. We have an authority problem. We hold life by a tight grip of attempted control and brace ourselves against difficulties believing we do not want any help.

We're unwilling to acknowledge that we might not be capable, that we are too weak, that we cannot succeed, or that we need anyone. It's an attempt to be "independent" in a separated way, attempting not to depend on God at all. It is actually a form of isolation, imprisonment, desperation and failure.

As we attempt then to become more spiritual, there will at first be a transitionary phase in which we try to keep our selfish egotism while trying to turn it into something more spiritual. This is the ego's "seeking" and not finding, which results in a spiritualized ego. The spiritualized ego is quite capable of regarding itself as a hero, a savior, a fixer, a healer, a rescuer, a saint, and exalts itself to a very high level of what it thinks of as holiness.

"All unhealed healers follow the ego's plan for forgiveness, in one form or another.

In this phase, the person will attempt to be the one who heals others, to be the one who has power, to be the one who can perform miracles, to be the one who still relies on themselves but with a higher demand of achievement and perfectionism. The ego self can still adopt a mode of trying to be like Jesus, but it is the trying part where it all falls down.

You might take on various healing modalities or start to tap into forms of guidance, but these will likely be limited because there is still much ego interfering. The ego still wants to be the center of attention, the doer, the one who causes the results. And in fact the ego will even use aggression, anger, forcefulness, intensity, loudness, as "tools" that it believes will cause miracles to occur. And it's fairly guaranteed that these will not work.

But it's important to try to do this, and to fail. Because in the failing you may become more willing to give up on the effort to go it alone. You will recognize what does not work. You will give up on this false hope of being a superhero, and begin to seek a deeper surrender to something larger than yourself.

As you go beyond this phase, you begin to surrender to the holy spirit, ask for help, seek guidance, and reach out beyond yourself for love, support, comfort, healing and guidance. This means a willingness to put aside your self-driven ego efforts, your "going it alone", your "being the one who does it". It means getting out of the way, not merely sitting on the sidelines but removing the ego self that would need to sit on the sidelines. It means opening up to the spirit, to the spiritual eye.

This overall entails a deepening of trust, of allowing there to be something not of you, that is there to help you. It means putting aside the idea that you will be powerful in and of yourself, and no longer being the central figure. Instead of being self-reliant, you must become willing to rely on HIM to HELP you, knowing you cannot go it alone. In a way, it's like you turn more into a medium or channel through which something "not of you", something prior to you, operates. And you want it to, and trust it to, because you know you cannot do this alone.

So what does this really mean? What is our proper role in this world? Everything points to a state in which we ourselves become an open window, a portal, a doorway, through which THE HOLY SPIRIT functions. And in this role, WE do not get to be heroes. And as this doorway, "we need do nothing" is very literal in that it applies to our own self. We no longer need to source or cause things, to be the one who does things, we merely need not interfere with WHAT HE does through us. And he WILL act through us if we will let him, which includes allowing Him to heal minds and bodies.

We're told that he will direct us everywhere we go. We're told that we will be told very specifically what to do. We're told that he will heal through us as we allow him to heal us. We're told not to place limits on what Jesus/HS can do through us. We're told that what HE allows "us" to do, ie what he does through us, is not of this world - meaning it is capable of doing things WE have no clue how to do.

We're told that WE do not understand anything, and HE knows how to heal because that is his function. We're told HE is the only therapist, not us. We're told that OF ourselves we have no power, but there is a power in us that works THROUGH us FOR us.

We're told the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of our wrong decision (all effects, symptoms, errors, manifestations, sicknesses, problems) if we will LET HIM (allow him to ACTUALLY DO IT).

We're told not to assume his function. We're told that when he heals he never fails because he knows how to succeed and cannot fail. We're told to not interfere, to not get in the way. We're told to let him literally SPEAK through our mouths to let HIM to talk others, which means literally channeling him. We're told to let HIM use our bodies, to allow our body to be a device for HIS communication and healing.

We're told to adopt His Christ Vision and to see WITH him how HE sees, so that His vision becomes shared with us - that we tune into it, but do not originate it. We're told this vision is GIVEN to us, we did not create it, so we need to accept it. Were told the atonement is GIVEN to us, and needs only our acceptance and allowance, which means we do not MAKE IT or define it.

We're told that we had everything before the separation and we must now re-receive INHERITANCE FROM GOD. What God wills that we have and be, not what we make of ourselves. We're told that we're still as God created us and that because He created us, we do not MAKE ourselves or redefine ourselves, so must stop trying to be the gatekeeper who decides what is true and false but to instead accept HIS definition of us. We're asked to make NO decisions on our own, relying heavily on guidance. The list goes on.

This all requires a laying down and surrendering of our entire ego effort for control and definition of who and what we are, what the truth is, what we have, and what God would have us do. A willingness to ACCEPT as our own, that which GOD HAS DECIDED we should have and be and share in. And to do so willingly and joyfully, knowing and trusting it is for our highest good to take on board HIS provision, decision, mind, will, power and safety. We are to EXTEND creation, we are not to invent things which are not in alignment with what God has already created.

All of this points to a clear picture that in our natural God-given state, we are not in the business of being something "of ourselves". We're not inventing or reinventing. We're not trying to make something as substitute for what God already created. We're not trying to give ourselves a function that God did not give us, some kind of heroic role that makes us look good or that we think is better than the "chore" of doing God's will "against our will".

Our only function in heaven is creation, our only function on earth is healing. We're more or less asked to completely surrender all control and resistance and unwillingness. We're asked to do GOD'S will, rather than our own separate interests. And to settle into returning to being ONLY what God has decided is true of us.

So our proper function, our natural way of being in harmony with Creation, is basically to be what God defines you to be, to act in accord with HIS will, to create WITH him, to extend FROM him, to communicate and share what HE would have us know, to perform the miracles HE directs, and to have complete total trust and dependency on him for EVERYTHING. To be in a kind of symbiotic relationship of happy dependency. "God and his miracles (you) are inseparable."

Learning to adopt this position allows you to become "a miracle worker". But not because you are a powerful independent superhero, but because you have let go and let God, you have surrendered deeply all efforts to BE God, you have given up "trying" in favor of trusting Holy Spirit's supernatural power which never fails, and you have become a conduit through which HIS POWER can move to cure all ills, solve all problems, and correct all suffering. And that means you are now allowing God to operate THROUGH you in the world.

It is humbling. We do not get to be the center of attention. We do not get to be the false savior. Our inflated spiritualized ego needs to be dissolved and replaced with SHARING. And we simply settle into being OF SERVICE to God, trusting Him in all things, doing what He bids willingly, listening to and following his instructions, and being a representative of His Will. Nor does this mean you are some kind of slave, unwilling worker, coerced victim or person who is being forced to do what they do not want to do. You must be WILLING to recognize and trust that His will is for your good.

So the question is, do you want to be on team ego, or do you want to be on the Holy Spirit's team? Are you willing to adopt HIS function, shared with him in trust, or do you want to keep being the hero of the dream? And are you willing to allow a supernatural power to move THROUGH you, in this world, to perofrm miracles which are not OF you, and which are not of this world?

Are you willing to be a FOLLOWER? A disciple? A willing participant in the great crusade and a professor of Christ?

"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 human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."

"ANY attempt you make to correct a brother (which includes attempting to heal him), means that you believe correction by YOU is possible, and this can ONLY be the arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not know of arrogance. The Holy Spirit forgives everything, BECAUSE GOD CREATED EVERYTHING. Do not undertake HIS function, or you will forget YOURS."

"Accept ONLY the function of healing in time, because that is what time is FOR."

"As you awaken other minds TO Him through HIM, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that the laws you ARE obeying WORK. "The good is what works" is a sound though insufficient statement. ONLY the good CAN work. Nothing else works at all. This course is a guide to behavior. Being a very direct and very simple learning situation, it provides the guide who tells you what to do. If you do it, you will SEE that it works. Its RESULTS are more convincing than its words. THEY will convince you that the words are true."

"the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

"All miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life. He will direct you VERY specifically."

"Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan of God, which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone, but signifies that you would define what Salvation is, and what you would be saved FROM. The Holy Spirit KNOWS that ALL Salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other "enemy" and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God, the Holy Spirit is your ONLY friend."

"Today I will make NO decisions by myself."

""Take up thy cross and follow me" should be interpreted to read "Recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following My guidance.""

"I have repeatedly asked MY pupils to follow me. This means that, to be effective teachers, they MUST interpret teaching as I do."

"Only then will your MIND will to follow me. Without your will, you cannot be rehabilitated. MOTIVATION TO BE HEALED is the crucial factor in rehabilitation."

"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."

"I must found His church on you, because you, who accept me as a model, are literally my disciples. Disciples are followers, but if the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all respects, they are probably unwise NOT to follow him."

"RELEASE yourselves to Him Whose function IS release. Do NOT assume His function FOR Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how LITTLE is your part, and how great IS HIS."

"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."

"Yet what makes God's teachers is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body.As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages that are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source.From this understanding will come the recognition, in this new teacher of God, of what the body's purpose really is; the only use there really is for it."

"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. But healing itself IS consistence, because ONLY consistence is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free ARE whole. By accepting exceptions, and acknowledging that he can SOMETIMES heal and SOMETIMES NOT, the healer is OBVIOUSLY accepting INconsistency. He is therefore IN conflict and TEACHING conflict.

Can ANYTHING of God NOT be for all and always? Love is incapable of ANY exceptions."

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

I've recently come to appreciate what these two terms mean. When I am taking over control, doing everything myself, identifying what things are and what they mean, assigning labels and projecting judgements, I am actually "narrowing down".

I narrow because I am actually tying to narrow what things are. To put them in boxes. Interestingly I can't just freely use my mind to narrow things down without making my mind narrow down as well. Any attempt to label the specific forces my mind to exclude.

When doing this a lot, I couldn't help but notice that my intellectual pursuits felt like they were keeping me stuck in a box. I kept feeling small and childish and afraid. The more I seemed to become close to finding out what the truth was about something specific, the narrower my outlook became and the more I felt hemmed in.

When I confine something to being something specific, focusing on its form and so on, I become blinded by that perception of form. I might think I'm being objective or open but it's not possible to focus on the specific without making your mind become specific.

You might have thought for a long time that you can just use your mind and your thinking however you please, as if the way you think about stuff has no effect on you. But it totally does.

When you're in the business of trying to give meaning to everything and to interpret and judge everything "alone", that aloneness is isolating and actually inhibits your awareness. It closes you down.

Also interestingly the more you "home in on" what you think something is or means, isolating it into a nice tidy definition, you'll think you are "opening up" to the truth, when in fact you are closing yourself off from the truth.

You'll also find that the more you obsess over trying to find the perfect explanation or cause for something highly specific, the more it will slip through your fingers. And you'll be driven mad with the exasperating endless search for answers that can never be satisfies - as you seek and do not find.

Things in the world become true in your mind only when you start splitting the world into separate pieces and putting labels on them. Trying to categorize them into various boxes. This obsession with dividing things up to try to make sense of them or to get a better understanding of them, masquerades as becoming open to what they are. But it's doing exactly the opposite.

If to "narrow down" or pin down what something is, or means, causes your mind to actually close, then doing the opposite opens your mind. To become open-minded doesn't just mean you're not very attached to some things and willing to entertain alternatives, it means you are not in the business of being closed.

To be open minded is to stop narrowing everything down on your own. To be open minded is to be willing to receive the Holy Spirit and allow him to see and decide and judge for you. You're open to his judgement because you're refusing to confine yourself within narrow separating judgements.

The very walls you put around the things you see become blocks to awareness in your perception. As you label and section things off your mind goes into those boxes along with the things you put in them. As you imprison, as you isolate things to form and physicality, your mind shuts down and becomes small, just like those objects.

To become open minded we have to be actually willing to let go of judging and let go of labeling and let go of giving meaning to things. What the Holy Spirit wants for us is to share his perception of wholeness. "The perceptual contents of miracles is wholeness."

This also requires transcending separations between objects by not focusing so much on their differences and exclusive qualities. This is what the ACIM workbook has you doing, overlooking and being non-specific in your selection of objects to consider around you, so that you move towards a more abstract or generalized viewpoint.

That means seeing from a whole perspective, looking with wholeness (holiness), seeing wholeness, and giving a single meaning to everything. It is far more abstract and open rather than being narrow and specific. You have to be "open to everything" (to the single whole) in order to be open minded.

The Holy Spirit doesn't attempt to "understand" the world, in terms of breaking it up into specific things in an attempt to analyze and judge its parts. To figure out the inner workings or relationships between separate objects. He knows that such an analysis leads to separating, partial, blind perspectives, which cannot grasp the whole.

The more you narrow things down in the search for explaining what is true of it, the more out of touch you become with the big picture. The big picture, the real truth, is not narrow at all. It is expansive and abstract and unlimited.

You have to be in an unlimited state in order to really see from a perspective of wholeness, to be able to discern what anything really is. Unless you can see everything at once, you cannot really be in a position to judge correctly.

Open mindedness is a willingness to surrender the position of trying to be God, or trying to fulfill the Holy Spirit's function. It's a willingness to recognize you cannot judge or accurately discern the meaning of anything on your own, and your own exclusive learning has mislead you down dark paths that have only made you suffer.

To be closed-minded has in fact shut you off from happiness and from health. It has caused you to draw conclusions which are narrow and limiting and which take sides. Partitioning off aspects of your awareness and labeling and judging them as right or wrong, and pitting them against each other. Dividing up your "world" into a fragmented experience, erecting walls and inducing darkness.

Openness is really the absence of walls, and it is this absence of obstructions or "obstacles to peace" that allows light to shine and extend. To be enlightened is to be open minded, in which the mind becomes aware of the whole of reality at once. It can't do that if it's constantly focusing on trying to split everything apart and give it a name.

To "not know" what things are, or more to the point to not understand what the world is, is to recognize that on the whole it is fundamentally insane and does not make sense. Trying to make sense of an illusion is like trying to keep its illusory nature and study it. Or to study the ego. It is better to let it be what it is and move into a space of awareness, of not needing to know because the Holy Spirit can know for you.

The Holy Spirit is more than just a guide in this sense. We could say that he is the gate of heaven. That which connects your mind to both worlds, while two seem to persist, until you can accept oneness and singularity again. From his perspective, the entire world has a single meaning. "In this shared purpose is one meaning shared by everyone and everything you see. You do not have to judge, for you have learned one meaning has been GIVEN everything, and you are GLAD to see it everywhere."

"Learning is useless in the Presence of your Creator, Whose ACKNOWLEDGMENT of you, AND YOURS OF HIM, so FAR transcends ALL learning, that EVERYTHING you learned is meaningless, replaced forever by the knowledge of love and its One meaning."

"There is NO confusion in the Kingdom, because there IS only one meaning."

"This is the light which shows no opposites, and vision, being healed, has power to heal. This is the light which brings your peace of mind to other minds, to share it and be glad that they are one with you and with themselves. This is the light which heals because it brings single perception, based upon one frame of reference from which one meaning comes."

"You cannot see alone. Sharing perception with Him Whom God has given you, teaches you how to RECOGNIZE what you see. It is the recognition that NOTHING you see means ANYTHING alone. Seeing WITH Him will SHOW you that all meaning, INCLUDING YOURS, comes not from double vision, but from the gentle fusing of everything into one meaning, one emotion and one purpose."

There are people who live in fear all the time. They are so afraid and see themselves as such vulnerable victims, that they are very unaware of the fact that they are doing this to themselves.

In "victim consciousness", part of the mind sees itself as very threatened and weakened. This is the persona. The persona is an attempt to get rid of parts of the Self, keeping certain select parts and chopping out the rest. It seems to do this in an attempt to make itself special, or to give special value or meaning to what it keeps. You will find that victims are somewhat self absorbed, thinking of themselves as superior.

But the act of getting rid of parts of yourself and stripping yourself away simply weakens you, is a form of self mutilation, diminishes you and therefore you can't help but experience yourself as having become weaker. Then you will be much more likely to experience fear and threat and danger, because you see yourself as "little". This littleness, cowering in a corner, is a natural result of trying to be good, trying to be perfect, trying to deny and reject things about yourself that you cannot accept or love. It also the result of not being able to grant the same acceptability to others.

Simultaneously, as you make yourself small and even more prone to danger, where do all of the parts of you go that you have disapproved of? They go into an unconscious part of the mind called the shadow. You relegate them there through means of denial, suppression, avoidance, attack, labelling as wrong or bad, judgement as inferior or unworthy, making guilty, being angry, etc. So the victim will be doing all of these things to themselves. And as such they will have portioned off a significant part of themselves and have made it unconscious - outside of awareness.

However, this unconscious stuff, is still in your mind. And it is now a part of the mind/Self which has been additionally attacked. It's been judged, hated, relegated, rejected, abandoned and so on. You've piled all of your guilt into it. And this has actually turned it into a kind of monster. A dark twisted vicious-seeming monster which is hurt and angry and wants revenge, and which threatens to attack the perfection-seeking persona part of the mind.

So now the persona part of the mind has good seeming "reasons" and explanations for why it should be terrified, because the other part of the mind has become an enemy. And since the other part of the mind is WITHIN the single mind, it's like being locked in a room with a monster. It has access to 'you' - or at least the persona you, and so you will feel exposed to it, able to be affected by it, and will try to escape. And as you try to escape by rejecting it more and more and hating it more and more, it becomes ever more empowered and aggressive and even more of a threat, chasing you down and terrifying you.

All of this inner drama will project outward onto the world and will play out in all manner of ways. It will recruit people to seem to come along and attack you. It will create scenarios where you seem to be terribly threatened. It will orchestrate events through the power of the mind to make stuff happen to fulfill what you think should be happening to you. Whatever is happening on the inside, will happen on the outside. And this will give weight and justification to continuing to believe that this monster is 'out there', everywhere, and not within you.

What the victim does not realize is that it needs to make peace with the victimizer, and that the Self - who you are - your identity, is NOT the victim OR the victimizer. They both are WITHIN what is you - the wholeness of your mind. They are both artificial characters that you have invented and which you've made to be at war with each other. You invented them. And the only reason that you allow it to continue and don't realize you're doing it to yourself, is because you don't realize they are both inside you, are both a part of your ONE SELF, and therefore continue to see them as separate.

If they are separate, and if there is something about the victimizer part that the victim part 'claims' is not themselves, and if there is something about the victim part which the victimizer part 'claims' is not part of themselves, an ILLUSION is maintained - requiring a certain amount of unawareness - that they are SEPARATE IDENTITIES. So long as the victim therefore sees themselves as 'not the victimizer', the mind which houses both parts won't be able to realize that it is both of them.

You must realize that you are both parts, and that both parts are within the whole of what you are. And therefore, any ILLUSIONS relating to how they are not each other, MUST be illusions. You therefore recognize the illusion as just that, see through it, and can no longer believe it. This will instantaneously collapse the persona and the shadow, because they are now seen as artificial constructs in the one mind.

They can't both be true. You have to recognize that within you, you've created a victim-self, AND a victimizer-self, and that YOU are the one who is choosing, animating, giving life to, orchestrating, controlling and USING both of them against each other. And therefore both of them are puppets that you are using, to wage war. The victimizer puppet is attacking the victim puppet, but the victim puppet is also attacking the victimizer puppet. The victim puppet came into being when the mind decided to also create the victimizer. You MUST recognize therefore that you are your own enemy, that you have been the one who has been threatening yourself, and that you are BOTH the victim and the victimizer.

Then you can see that since you are BOTH of them, and since they APPEAR to be different, those differences MUST be illusions. You can then no longer believe in the illusion that they are separate or that either of their sob-stories are valid. If you are the one who is pulling all the strings to perform this self-against-self drama, then these puppets are nothing more than puppets, and they are NOT WHO YOU ARE. And you are the whole. This shift in identity from being either victim or victimizer, to being both, to being neither, is AWAKENING. And only in awakening to a more whole self can you be FREE from this self-attacking, fear-producing, self-destructive state of no peace. It's all been happening inside yourself, and has nothing to do with the world or other people.

And so as the victim walks around the world suffering and feeling exposed and vulnerable all the time, thinking that there is nowhere safe to go and nowhere to be that isn't open to attack, they simply are NOT AWARE of who they are, they are heavily identified with the persona victim self, they are heavily PROJECTING their shadow onto the world and see themselves as very threatened by it. In other words, there is a lot of perceived difference and separation between the two warring parts of their mind. There are many illusions that the person is falling for, because they do not have enough AWARENESS of the fact that they are doing this all to themselves.

And so they think that they have enemies and the world is not safe and they can't go anywhere or do any thing or even move an inch because absolutely everyone seems to be against them. But they are ONLY against themselves. And if they could see this and realize this, they would learn to stop attacking themselves, to stop seeing themselves as the persona self, stop seeing themselves as victims, stop trying to be only good and only special, and embrace the WHOLENESS of who they are. Which is actually unconditional love. And they will experience safety, invulnerability, and immortality. And that is a state in which there is NO REASON TO BE AFRAID. Yes

The world can't really be held responsible for its nature. It was given its nature by those who made it. It was made for a purpose to serve them. And it functions exactly as they wanted it to.

Its makers wanted the world to be a place opposite to heaven in every possible way. Whatever was true of heaven, the world we made had to be unlike it in the most extreme ways possible.

Whereas heaven was light and strong and eternal and perfect, the world we made HAD to be dark and weak and temporary and imperfect. There was no real choice in this. Certainly the world itself had no choice in this, because it didn't make itself.

We wanted an opposite to God, an opposite to heaven, an opposite to eternal life. So we made an unreal dream of death and unhappiness. A dream of mortality and impermanence in which all things are infiltrated by death and destruction. A world opposite to creation where creation is impossible.

"Creation is impossible in this world."

The world cannot help this. It was made to be like this. Its nature is the only nature that is even possible as an opposite to heaven. It HAD to be this way in order to be different to the Kingdom.

It's not like the world can actually choose to be heaven, or have a nature that is exactly the same as heaven. Nor is it possible that the world is actually electing which nature to have. It cannot make this choice. It is something we made, and isn't the creator of itself.

This is also why the ego - something else we made, is forgivable. It is just as forgivable as the world because it did not make itself. It has the nature it has simply because it could have no other nature. A device spawned from an idea of separateness COULD ONLY lead a state of selfishness and isolation, exclusion and limitation.

The ego itself had no say in this. In fact it has no say in its own nature. In this sense it too is not responsible for being the way that it is. It was forced to be this way by its makers. And now it is true to its nature and follows the laws assigned to it.

The ego cannot really be accused of therefore doing bad things on purpose as though it could actually ever choose not to. It isn't a device for truth and salvation, nor is it a mind that can make a decision. It certainly isn't its own author, even though it has invented a story about a false God that it thinks made it.

The ego HAD to be the way it is because this is the natural outcome of an idea of separateness. Separateness never looks any other way or functions any other way. The world and the ego and the body simply CANNOT function any other way. They were given a function when they were made and they cannot deviate from it. The reason being that this function derives from a premise which has never been altered.

So in a sense we can't really hold the deeds of the ego, or of bodies, or people, or the world, against them. They are being faithful to their nature. They are just ticking over like a machine which was designed to function a certain way. They cannot do anything about it.

"The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real."

The world cannot suddenly decide to be nice to you. The ego cannot suddenly tell you what the truth is. The body cannot suddenly be immortal. Objects cannot suddenly transcend spacetime. They are all locked into a system. It's a system-wide state of laws and rules by which they were made, they always abide, and they can never escape.

They cannot escape themselves, nor can they offer salvation from themselves. They are not going to change their minds. They are not going to take on a different nature. They are always going to keep running and operating on the same dysfunctional basis because that's the nature that was given to them, and they know nothing else. Nor are they capable of anything else, just as a tool or device can only do what it was designed to do.

So while the world and the ego and bodies attack and murder and destroy, in a sense they cannot help it. It's what they do. It's all that they do. They don't know how to do anything else, nor can they be taught to. Nor can they be kept while they are transformed into something better. They can only ever keep on being the way they were always going to be from the start.

Because they do not know what they do, they are forgivable. Because they did not create themselves, they are forgivable. Because they can only function in fault and failure because they were supposed to, they are forgivable. Because they can't help but break and disrupt and distort and skew and deceive and destroy, they must be forgivable. They aren't doing it "on purpose" out of optional spite, nor are they doing it on a basis of being free to do anything else.

The world can only destroy, and it can only deny, and it can only lose, and it can only fail. That is its nature. It can only disappoint and it can only fall short and it can only hurt. That is its nature. It can only be at war, it can only decay, and it can only die. That is its nature. It was born to die, and never to live except for death.

We cannot hold its nature against itself when it doesn't even have the slightest say in its nature or behavior. We cannot redeem the ego. We cannot redeem the world. The world cannot be saved in this sense because it cannot stop functioning the way it does even if "it wanted to". It is helpless. It is powerless. It has no causal choice. It can make no decisions. It is weak and vulnerable and fearful and nothing. So it can't really do anything of its own volition.

The world and the ego are nothing but puppets on a string being dangled by sons of God playing with sharp-edged toys. The world and the ego won't stop trying to kill you off either. Nor will they suddenly turn perfect or operate with holiness and happiness. The world is a pointless depressing hopeless place because all its roads lead to death. It doesn't know how to live, it only knows how to die. You can have pity for it in that sense. You can even have compassion for it.

"Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys? How soon will you be ready to come home?"

The world will never be other than what it has to be in order to fulfill the function of separation. And the ego will never have a loving truthful nature. They are lost because they are loss. They are faulty because they were not made with love. They are broken because they were not given immortality. And they can only but disappear.

I forgive the world for being true to its maker. I forgive it for being incapable of real change. I forgive it for not knowing how to function better. I forgive it for being only capable of disappointment. I forgive it for attacking and destroying mindlessly and without consideration. I forgive its determined mercilessness, driven solely by its inherent function and its blindness to anything else. I forgive its evil which does not know what it does. And I forgive it for ever seeming to be needed, for a purpose of attack, from which it cannot deviate.

There is no spiritual ego. There is no sacred planet. They don't exist and never will. How can you hold a dream against ITSELF when YOU are the one who dreamed it into existence? It is what you want it to be, and it does what you wanted it to do. And until you stop dreaming it will continue to be a dream of death.

"It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life."

"Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real."

"The world goes AGAINST your nature, because it is out of accord with God's laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable."

"The ego cannot make this choice because of the nature of its origin."

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. "

"You see the world which you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image-maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause."

"The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever BE unbelievable."

"the world will never give a gift that is not made of fear"

"Everything the world can offer promises some joy that it will never give." "Your ego and your Soul will never be co-creators" "the body may become his chosen home, but it will never be his home in truth."

"The body's eyes will never see except through differences."

"These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see."

"The body's serial adventures, from the time of birth to dying is the theme of every dream the world has ever had. The "hero" of this dream will never change, nor will its purpose."

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

"For the ILLUSION of love will NEVER satisfy you. But its REALITY, which awaits you on the other side, WILL give you everything." "It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind."

"There IS no meaning in the form, AND THERE WILL NEVER BE."

I had a stream of realizations and insights and healing this morning, into how I used someone else abusing me as a way to deny God's love. It has to do with the "key to salvation" - which is that I "did this to myself". I'm skipping way ahead to the conclusion so I'll explain how I got there.

Years ago I was abused by someone close to me on more than one occasion and it hurt a lot. Emotionally I felt hurt, rejected, abandoned, unloved. I was angry at them and could not forgive them, nor did I want to. I thought it was all about them and what they did to me.

The past week or so I've been having intensified emotional releases (cries) really tapping into the core of these feelings. I wasn't in any way ready to forgive this. Sometimes you just have to feel the feelings fully first because the intense 'energy' really pulls your awareness away from any kind of clarity or willingness. And especially resisting releasing hurt feelings blocks any kind of desire to have insights. So I felt.

This then gave way to some readiness to take a closer looks so I invited Holy Spirit to help me to look at it. I looked at what the person did and how that made me feel. I saw that it made me feel unloved and unworthy, just feeling bad about myself like I wasn't good enough to be loved. Guilty. Sinful. But I knew that somehow I must've had a hand in these beliefs - that I must've gone along with them somehow. I was willing to admit that I believed and agreed to these views of myself. Since the other person was withholding love, it must've meant to me that they didn't believe I was loveable so I went along with that and saw myself that way.

But what I then saw was that this belief in unworthiness/unloveability wasn't just some kind of description of myself, but that it had BECOME myself. I believed it was WHAT I was - as though I was somehow made from unlove. I still at this point couldn't see how the other person being abusive could in any way be helpful to me spiritually, but I was willing to let Holy Spirit continue to guide me toward that awareness.

As I saw myself agreeing to the suggestion that I was unworthy - the 'proof' that I was unworthy - I began to realize this couldn't be true because, at least in theory, I am worthy of God's love. So I started to then go over some of the things I believed, but in a context of it being not true. So for example, it's not true that I don't deserve love, it's not true that I am made from unworthiness, it's not true that I am abandoned or rejected, it's not true that I don't deserve to be happy. A few things came out of this including the belief that I didn't deserve happiness, didn't deserve to express myself, wasn't allowed to be myself, should be afraid of expressing myself or being free in case it happens again, being afraid of punishment, etc. So I added these to the list of what is not true.

It was then that it started to dawn on me. I knew that in theory God wasn't the one who rejected me, and that it was me who had been denying God. Suddenly it was clear - this supposed belief in unworthiness, and the supposed scenario of it being put in place by someone else's abuse, was in fact a COVER UP. I actually wanted to believe I was unworthy. I wanted to believe I was not loveable. I somehow did not WANT God to love me. I saw that I'd chosen to believe I was not 'made of' loveable material so that I could demonstrate that what I was wasn't loveable by God. I was trying to prove that God couldn't love 'this' by portraying myself AS unworthiness, AS unloveable-ness.

And with this it became clear also, that I HIRED and USED the abusive person to not just do stuff 'to me' but to do it to me FOR ME - on my behalf. At some point I organized events so that this person would come along and be abusive because I wanted to have a way to JUSTIFY and explain and rationalize WHY I am not loveable. I hired them to act the part and play the role. And I had been blaming THEM for being the perpetrator when, all along, it was me that had ASKED them to do this. This was the key to unlocking the illusion that I'd been *unfairly* treated, victimized, or attacked against my will. Clearly if I wanted this person to be an attacker and to reject and hurt me, it would ALLOW me to position myself as not worth the love of God - so that I could fulfill my hidden agenda of denying God's will and being separate. Jeez.

So now it was possible to simply acknowledge/recognize the innocence of that person - to overlook seeing them as sinful or guilty (forgiveness) - that they had not done this to me against my will. And this is where the next thing came to me. If the attacking person is not guilty because I hired them to do this on purpose, because I wanted to be able to justify why I should be separate from God, and if God also was not involved because He remains unconditionally loving at all times... then... who is there left to pin this on? Who is responsible for this? I AM. When there is nobody to blame and I can see the choice I made... it was ME. I did it.

I saw myself as 100% totally responsible for having chosen this, having organized it, produced it, made it happen - in effect, as having requested it, WANTED it, and chose it. I did it to myself on purpose! I wanted to be unloveable so that I could be what God does not want so that I could have an ego life. The whole purpose of my conspiracy was to scapegoat the attacker so that I could cover up the fact that I 100% chose this. I can't very well keep blaming anyone else when I can see clearly that I asked for it, literally. So what did this leave me with?

If I'm 100% responsible for trying to deny God on purpose, and for arranging attackers to give me reasons to PROVE why I am separate from God, so that I can JUSTIFY my failure to forgive, then that means... I'm the one left holding the baby. I'm the one who made the choice. I'm the one who DID THIS TO MYSELF. And with nowhere else to go, and nobody else to scapegoat, and no way to blame it on God, being able to see I did this to myself made it immediately obvious what the next step would be. It was ridiculous to keep doing this. It was stupid to have done this in the first place. I simply had no choice but to ADMIT I made a mistaken choice, to STOP making this painful fruitless choice that I no longer wanted, and to LET IT GO. I could not let it go if I still wanted it, and nobody was forcing me to do so for any reason - I had to be willing to choose again, to decide, to surrender this choice I'd made on my own and let Holy Spirit choose for me.

The truth was I had been trying to deny and reject God with my secret plan and that I did not want to be worthy of love. I had always thought I had umpteen reasons why I wasn't worthy enough because of other people or wasn't able to be myself freely in case someone abuses me or whatever... And all along it was really secretly me making EXCUSES for why *I* didn't want to be loved anyway. It was all because of what I was doing to myself. It was all a smokescreen to cover up my decision to not be loveable. So. .. To let that go.... FREES ME, not because I'm somehow freed from other people's tyranny, and not because God suddenly changed his mind, but because there really WAS no one else making me be unloveable other than my DECISION to be that way.

I can choose again. I can choose to stop doing this to myself, this silly game, since it is FUTILE, and I DO NOT LIKE IT, so I can just drop it like a hot potato. And what's the result of that.... Accepting and admitting that I AM LOVEABLE and WORTHWHILE and perfectly accepted already by love. It was never about me not being actually loveable, it was always about ME DENYING the love. Denying God. Pretending there was a reason to not be loved. It's bullshit. I admit it.

So freeing - to set yourself free - to realize you were free all along. To reclaim love and be free to be who you really are. Game over.

This also interestingly parallels the discussion about the fact that we choose death - that all death is suicide. The truth was that my unloveability was MY DELIBERATE CHOICE because I WANTED to deny God. Everything else was a coverup job. This is the death wish. The decision to be beyond love's reach - beyond life's reach. And the reversal of this wish for death is a choice to BE ALIVE. This is a reclaiming of and a step towards accepting immortality. Immortality is already the truth, it's just a matter now of removing all of the denial and deliberate choices made against it.

To truly be a student, you have to be willing to recognize and admit that you DO NOT KNOW.

If you do not know, then you are in a position of NEEDING TO LEARN.

Because you do not know, YOU CANNOT teach yourself what you do not know, so MUST resign as your own teacher.

Therefore you need a teacher who DOES KNOW, other than yourself, and you must turn to them, listen to and trust them.

If you can accept that you do not know, then you will be willing to turn to the Holy Spirit and ask for his Help. He is there to help and to guide, to comfort and to heal. He is there to provide therapy and to teach you what you do NOT know.

But here is the problem. Everyone who does not know, does not recognize that they do not know, and believes that they do know.

Similarly everyone who does not know, believes that they DO know, and thinks that they are CAPABLE of telling themselves what they need to know.

So now you have a person who is blind to knowledge, who does NOT know what anything really is, who is turning to themselves and whispering IN THEIR OWN EAR, TELLING THEMSELVES what things are.

How can a person tell themselves what anything is, if they do not know what anything is? But this is what we are all doing all of the time.

It's like saying, I have no clue what anything really is, so I'm going to tell myself what it is anyway. This is obviously insane and a mistake. But we keep doing it over and over, telling ourselves what everything is.

We judge on our own, we decide on our own, we depend on our own strength and experience, we tell ourselves what we think is true, we make it all up as we go along, and we convince ourselves that we're experts.

We then develop a kind of pride in believing that we are in a position of authority, that we are educated and knowledgeable, with all the facts and trivia and information that we need, along with greatly developed "judgement", allegedly autonomous and capable of discerning anything and everything.

But we're totally clueless. We're lost in the dark, we're completely out of touch with real knowledge - which is an aspect of heaven only, we have no real clue what anything is or means, we're making up all these meanings as we go along, and we're trying to constantly talk ourselves into things.

It's obvious therefore that we all "start out" doing this course in a position of believing that we are the ones who are going to get ourselves to the goal. It is even a widespread teaching that we OURSELVES need to "do a forgiveness". That WE ourselves are going to figure out what's wrong with us, how we are insane, and what we need to do to fix it.

But ACIM is quite clear that we are in fact supposed to surrender and admit that we do not know, recognize that we are in a position of NEEDING HELP, and then TURN TO the Holy Spirit to join with him FIRST, BEFORE we even attempt to overlook sins.

We are not going to do that if we are not being true students. We are so busy being teachers. So in fact we start off believing we know, with fake authority and made-up knowledge, and ponce around as if authoritative teachers. And it isn't usually until much LATER in our progress that we start to relinquish the role of "fake teacher" and adopt a greater role of being a true STUDENT.

To be a true student, or happy learner, we have to have enough humility and humbleness to drop the ROLE of trying to do everything on our own. We have to be willing to admit that we cannot judge anything correctly, we are rather stupid, we have no knowledge or true certainty about anything, have no clue what anything really means, and have failed at teaching ourselves.

This then gives way for opening up to LISTEN and to hear the Voice for God, to direct us, to decide everything for us, to tell us what everything means, to direct us what to do, where to go, what to say. To even step aside enough to allow him to use our body, to speak through it, to manipulate our hands, to heal through us. Such that we become more like a medium for God and Christ.

All of this takes the removal of the egotism, the arrogance, the pretentiousness, the righteousness, the self importance, the pride, the holier-than-thou, and all of the sense of self-reliance and not needing God for anything. We are here to do God's will, not our own separate will. We are here to serve, not to dictate from our own sources.

We are not our own source. Anything and everything we have is part of God and has been LOANED to us through sharing and inheritance. Our strength is the strength of God in us. Our power is the power of God is us. Our light and love are God's light and love. We are symbiotic and dependent on God. We should not be taking a position of standalone agents, thinking we have something exclusively of our own, something special, that others lack.

To be a student is to drop the role of being an exclusive teacher. Then only as a student can you truly become a teacher of God. A teacher of God is a student of the Holy Spirit and not their own ego.

"Resign NOW as your own teachers. THIS resignation will NOT lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourselves, and of the learning outcomes which have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, which you can neither provide nor understand, you will become excellent learners AND teachers." UrT11F11

"EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you." UrT14G1

"The lessons you have taught yourselves have been so overlearned and fixed they rise like heavy curtains, to obscure the simple and the obvious." UrT31A3

"You taught YOURSELVES the most unnatural habit of NOT communicating with your Creator. Yet you remain in close communication with Him, and with everything that is within Him, as it is within YOURSELF. UNlearn isolation through His loving guidance, and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away, but could NOT lose." UrT13H16

"Do not attempt to teach YOURSELVES what you do not understand, and do not try to set up curriculum goals, where yours have clearly failed. For YOUR learning goal has been NOT TO LEARN, and this CANNOT lead to successful learning." UrT11F6

"The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world's learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible. This is not an opinion but a fact. In order to judge anything rightly, one would have to be fully aware of an inconceivably wide range of things; past, present and to come. One would have to recognize in advance all the effects of his judgments on everyone and everything involved in them in any way. And one would have to be certain there is no distortion in his perception, so that his judgment would be wholly fair to everyone on whom it rests now and in the future. Who is in a position to do this? Who except in grandiose fantasies would claim this for himself?" UrM11A3

"When your peace is threatened, or disturbed in ANY way, say to yourself, "I do not know what anything, INCLUDING THIS, means. And so I do NOT know HOW TO RESPOND TO IT. And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now." By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom God has given you, will speak to you. HE will take His rightful place in your awareness, the instant YOU abandon it, and offer it to Him." UrT14G7

"Never approach the holy instant AFTER you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is ITS function. Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven. On your little faith, joined with HIS understanding, HE will build your part in the Atonement, and MAKE SURE that you fulfill it easily. And WITH Him, YOU will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith, and rising even to Heaven. Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone." UrT18F2

This may not be popular.

True relationship is between one person and everyone, simultaneously. The human body was constructed in order to disrupt this relationship, and to focus on isolation, so that rather than being in relationship with everyone, you are in relationship with typically only one other person.

By becoming closer to their body, and attempting to unite with the body, there is actually an attempt to move AWAY from everyone else. Far more is excluded than included. By attempting to join with "only one", 99.99% of the rest of existence is left out. One winner and billions of losers, as is always the result of competition. And so the sex act is a total opposite of true joining.

Bodies cannot join, they cannot even share the same space. One part protrudes, another caves in, there seems to be a surface friction but there is never a true merging. The ritual of the sexual act is really a ritual to death and sin, whereby the body is emphasized over spirit in order to move towards the body, towards sin, towards hell, and towards death.

Intercourse is movement towards death because it emphasizes that the body is real, it highlights sensations over knowledge, it shuts spirit out of awareness, focuses on the body's sensors, eyes, touch and so on, and makes you "lose your mind." It produces and increases body identification, believing you are the body and that you are interacting with a person who is a body. This closes the spiritual eye, shuts out life, and proceeds towards death.

You could say that by a man and woman copulating, they are performing a death ritual, in which they are attempting to manufacture a separate self, born from death, born in pain, and produced as a result of an illusion of joining made to actually prevent joining. The separation then increases, there is a fragmentation, and another "entity" shows up as the result.

This is very much no different to the illusion of cell division, in which separation is used to split cells in order to multiply them. This is called reproduction, but it is the opposite of creation of life. Bodies come together and do not join and some matter is transferred and some illusory biological processes occur and another body appears, increasing bodies. But what has actually occurred is separation has been used to testify to the end of God and a symbol of the separation has emerged. It's called birth, but it's an eruption of death.

All sexual acts involving a person attempt to utilize the person's body to get something, to meet a perceived need, or to mutually take from each other. Since the body is a picture of selfishness, resulting from specialness, sin and isolation, both body identified persons see themselves as lacking and limited, and want to fulfill themselves by getting something out of the activity. Of course, we then imagine that if we "only give and don't receive" this is somehow more loving, but giving without receiving is sacrifice, and you can be sure the ego is right there to emphasize it.

More or less, everyone with a body is interested in self gratification, a kind of masturbation, in which ultimately they seek through the body to experience something external, to sense something, to have something happen to them which they find to be preferable. For some the "happens to me" might be painful, sadistic and twisted, while for others they might seek what appears to be an illusion of "love making". But rest assured, sex is murderous and cannot in any way create love.

"What is not love is murder" is based on the Golden Rule, that what applies to one applies to another equally. When this law is broken by our egos, we move into a state of imbalance where something is more for one and less for another, there is finite limitation, there is "give and take", and attempts to believe something is true of one person not the other. "It's my turn" is selfish. Two people copulating is an attempt on both parts, typically, to gain something which the other is perceived to give them, both taking from each other, usually under the guise of giving.

Bodies cannot create. They do not create life. Life forms are not alive, they are death forms. Illusions of life. Babies bodies are just as much illusory as adult bodies. Bodies reproducing is a testament to the ego's attempt to produce alternative, different, unique, separated off identities. Little walking prison cells for the mind to inhabit. There is no particular glory in the production of an allegedly "god given" (ego given) baby any more than there is glory in those children becoming adults and trying to merge back together. You'd think it should be obvious that the bodies should not have been produced through separation in the first place if later a "re-joining" is the supposed goal.

Bodies cannot join. Just so you know, no two atoms of matter can ever touch each other. They are repelled by nuclear forces. The sensation of someone touching you is not really them touching you, it's the force fields repelling your force fields and causing there to seem to be a sensation of collision. No two bodies have ever touched and lived to talk about it, because this would result in a nuclear explosion. And the earth does not "move" this way.

For the most part, most of us body identified people are rather self absorbed with our bodies. Men and women alike preen and prune as if attempting to allegedly attract a mate, but quite honestly, almost all of it is self adoration. Because it is the body that we are in love with, not people. Bodies are idols to worship and we worship no bodies more than our own.

Most of what we allegedly do to prepare ourselves for a partner (an excluder) is of no interest to them and they probably can't relate to it. We bolster ourselves up in our vanity and egotism so that if we approve of our own condition, we're satisfied. We're all a bunch of egomaniac vain self-obsessed fools, falling over ourselves to manipulate someone into doing something to us that we prefer so that we can get our own rocks off - a form of positive victimhood.

Having become body identified, we have identified with being separate. The bodies are literally separate. There is space between them and the bodies will never touch. There is even a line in the course that says God is the only one who has ever touched his creations. Going into body mode, we then go through this process of trying to hump the brains out of all the other body identified people, in an attempt to overcome the very separation that we bought into in the first place, without doing so.

And there really is no real attempt TO do so, the whole purpose of it is to STAY SEPARATE. The whole dynamic of bodies joining is an attempt to KEEP the separation going, to reproduce the separation, and to produce more separate things. "Babies" come from this, as an increase in the population of ego flesh suits, ready for the next mind to be trapped in a brain and ready to suffer.

You could say, that the more an intimate couple focuses on the body, the less connected they are. The more they focus attention on sex, the more love is shut out. The more they make the body real, the more disconneced they become and have no real relationship. Then it becomes just about the physical sex, which is not love. They come together, almost literally, to separate from each other. Only love joins people together, not the body. And by starting out by going into body identification, they have already moved away from love, away from relationship and away from true joining. You could even say that this is a form of sickness.

In holy relationship there is no interest in the body for its own merits or purposes. It is recognized that the body is not inherently pleasurable, and anything related to it is not the cause of joy. In fact, the body would diminish true pleasure (which comes from doing God's will), by shutting God out of the equation in order to "sin together." Is it any wonder that a vast majority of sexual practice occurs in the dark, under the sheets, behind closed doors, in guilt and shame and fear, perhaps even with eyes closed? What is there to hide? Or rather, what are we hiding from? God?

The sins of the flesh, so to speak, include temptation. The temptation to believe that a son of God is a body. To then relate to their body as if it is the person, which is really an attack on the person and an attempt to imprison them. And to even ignore their body and focus on your own, for what it is getting from them. What you think you're getting from them is the rest of your self, which they stole, and housed in their body, which you hate them for and want to destroy them for, and you plug yourself into them in an attempt to regain what you think you do not have.

Being tempted by physical form is also another example of the rejection of Christ Vision and a willingness to be blinded by perception of form. As we oogle the nude pictures or watch the naughty porn movies or get all excited upon seeing a physical specimen we like, we are quite strongly falling for illusions, entering into body vision, losing sight of the truth, losing our minds, losing sanity, losing sight of the light beyond the body, and preferring bodies to God.

Of course, all of this is enough to induce guilt and make everyone feel like dirty little sinners. Which the ego is perfectly happy to label you with. Let's say that there is nothing at all wrong or sinful about any such activities because they are not real. And you can bet that millions of people are still "doing it" right now and will continue to do so for a long time to come. Course students included. But it is what it is.

Sex is something we invented, for a purpose. The only HOLY use of the body is for extending love and perhaps, if conception happens in such a way as that the persons are in christ vision and barely even noticing the body at all, you could call this the ultimate use of the body for procreational purposes only. But we have to also realize that the entire functional mechanism of what causes a man to inseminate a woman for example, is entirely based on sensations, body senses, chemistry, physical interaction, and usually hormonally driven, testosterone powered desire. And that's all at the level of ego body stuff. And it's selfish.

In essence, in truth, there were never supposed to be bodies in the first place. Yet alone to use them for separation, to make bodies real, to mistake subtle pain for pleasure, or to mistake copulation for love. There isn't anything love related about a sexual act. Unconditional love has nothing to do with it. It's purely a physical, biological, sensory process. Producing feedback, perceptions and justifying certain behaviors. You can do the same exact procedures with or without love being present.

Of course, someone who is loving, truly, unconditionally, may well enjoy the sexual performance with less guilt, more joy, greater fearlessness and confidence, but the point will come eventaully where what the body "offers" is so pale in comparison to what the spirit offers, that all desire for intercourse will end. Spiritual marriage, mind-to-mind joining, oneness with God, are orders of magnitude more meaningful and enjoyable than anything the body has to offer with its parody of love. "A teacher of God is willing to give up all the pleasures of the world." Knowing that you are gaining far more than you are giving up.

This is not to say, you have to give up sex right now. I'm not going to and nor is most of the planet. But we ARE in a process of learning what it really IS, and what it is not, as part of our journey home towards true union with God. And we can use this information to help move our special, sexual relationships, with others or self, towards a more innocent, holy experience, as we transition onwards its eventual total relinquishment.

At some point we will come to recognize it is not possible to do ANYTHING REAL with the body, and so will stop using the body entirely. Until then, boink your brains out if you so choose, or not. It's up to you - free will. But keep in mind, your MIND is more important than your body, and if body identification is increasing as a result of how you look at what you're doing, you're heading in the wrong direction.

In heaven there is no sex. In heaven, there is the constant bliss of needing nothing and being permanently fulfilled. Surely this is better than an occasional splurt at the end of a long road of effort. And certainly better than the frustrations and failures of sexual attempts to separate from God.