The world is full of advice. Some of it seems useful, most of it is bullshit.

The son of God does not need any advice. This is because He does not need to 'get' anything from anyone because He is not lacking anything in himself. He has been completed by God's presence in Him.

All he does is extend the truth that is already within Him.

So what happens when someone else comes along and starts telling Him.... you should this... you need to that..... you can live longer if you eat this..... you can live longer if you don't do that.... 5 tips for losing weight..... 10 tips for being a better this and that.... etc... all bullshit. All unneeded.

You do not need anyone's advice. You do not need anyone to tell you what you do, or to give their so-called "opinion". You do not need suggestions for how to live or how to exist or how to behave or what to do to be yourself. You don't need anything.

When I was in the middle of having an experience of God, I felt like I did not need anything. And I mean that literally. I felt like I did not need to eat food. I had to eat a meal but I felt like I was shoving lumps of material into my mouth for absolutely no reason and that it was completely foreign. I also felt a great amount of joy radiating out of me toward others - extending to others - such that it was all give give give give give. It wasn't take take take or get get get or need need need. I had no needs. And yet all these people kept trying to "help" and kept offering advice and suggestions and trying to tell me what I should do or who I should be. And I was like, why are they doing that, I don't need anything.

You don't have any real needs other than God's love. All of the other advice is bullshit. You don't need any "teachers" to come along and tell you what's what. The only teacher you need is the Holy Spirit who speaks for God.

You especially don't need to be inundated by a society that is chronically judgemental and insane, constantly shoving shit down your throat to tell you that you have to be this way or that way, or you're not enough of a person if you're not doing this, or most people do that, or you should be doing this more often. We're addicted to being told what to do. Victims. And people are addicted to telling each other what to do. Look at me... sitting her typing this shit and offering more 'perspective'. Disregard!

You're already you. Stop listening to the ego.

Do you notice when people most likely give advice? It's when you show that you are suffering or upset. It's when they look at you trying to make guilt real and they make it real right along with you and then come across as being a savior and rescuer. And then comes all the advice. If I post something on here and I say, well, I've had a pretty rough time lately or feeling shitty and confused or something like that, people will suddenly chime in and start giving advice. The response SHOULD be to remind me of how I'm mistaken and how I am loved and to offer true correction for my mistaken perceptions, not buying into my bullshit story. But this isn't how people function. They launch into an instant hero role and start telling you what to do. We're addicted to this. And it's just another part of the way we skapegoat - conveniently finding poor broken sheep in the flock and then targeting them either with our fears and guilts or with our judgements and rescue attempts.

Bleh.

What is a miracle? Why would anyone want to heal the sick?

Miracles arise from a state of mind which is truly forgiving, which doesn't mean a mind which "needs to forgive" but a mind which recognizes there is nothing to forgive. Such a mind recognizes that God's truth is true, that illusions are illusions, and is not deceived by appearances of form.

It is only possible to perform a miracle if you are able to get your mind out of the ego's thought system and into the Holy Spirit's thought system. The miracle itself MAY shift perception if the person needs forgiveness still, but the shifting of the perception is not the miracle itself as such. The shifting of perception to Holy Spirit's thought system is what is REQUIRED IN ORDER TO become able to perform a miracle.

If you are shifting perception, i.e. correcting errors in your perception, then you are still in a process of PURIFICATION. As Jesus says in the miracle principles, miracles are everyone's right but "purification is necessary first". What is this purification? It is the PROCESS of what you call forgiveness, which is the weeding out of what is false from what is true, otherwise known as the correction of perception, or shifts in perception. That is required FIRST before you can become miracle minded. When a person first begins the Course and does their first half-baked error-prone forgiveness process, experiencing a slight shift in perception, is that a miracle? No.

Jesus as an example, Jesus was in a very advanced state of mind when he performed miracles. He did not perform these miracles IN ORDER TO shift his perception and to wake up. He had already purified His mind and His mind was now in alignment with Holy Spirit, clear about what is true and false, and not deceived by the illusions of sickness and death. He had already shifted his perception to correct true vision BEFORE becoming able to perform miracles. Accessing the mind of Holy Spirit facilitates the miracle, because the Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles.

He was already there. He performed miracles BECAUSE he had shifted his perception and woken up. As the principles say, miracles acknowledge the Christ in you. You can't truly acknowledge Christ when you are still sleeping and in need of forgiveness, and having a "shift in perception" as a stepping stone along that journey of purification is not going to necessarily be enough to bring about a miracle. It can bring about a correction, or an adjustment of perception, and a partial awakening, but this is in PREPARATION for being miraculous. If this were not the case, new students to the Course would be raising the dead on day 1.

Jesus performed miracles to heal the sick and raise the dead, among other things (multiplying food, walking on water and so on), in spite of the fact that He knew that the world was not real. He was very clear that the body is not real, that sickness is an illusion, and that God's truth was the only truth he depended on. He was not deceived by forms and He knew the miracle principle that there is no order of difficulty in miracles - because miracles recognize that all illusions are equally unreal. He was not deceived by the ego's illusions that one thing is harder than another.

It was BECAUSE Jesus knew illusions were just illusions, that He was miraculous. Being miraculous requires that you are clear about what is true and false - that God's truth is true and the ego's truth (illusions) are not reality. It is that certainty and clarity and sanity which allows the miracle to happen at all. The miracle overlooks form completely (which is complete forgiveness). It denies the illusion any power to prevent healing, and thereby is capable of defying all rules and laws that the illusion would exhibit, such as the laws of physics, biology, chemistry etc.

Jesus's ability to overlook form and to recognize the truth clearly, allowed Him to be miraculous. When He performed a miracle, He was not necessarily in need of having a "shift of perception". If there are only so many shifts in perception that you can have before you are fully awake, you would run out of miracles! And yet miracles are natural, they are supposed to be happening ALL THE TIME, otherwise something has gone wrong. They happen all the time when there are no illusions in the way to block them, rather than the idea that they only happen as removals of those blocks.

Yes they might remove blocks to awareness, but they come from a place of love, from a place of NO BLOCKAGE, where love is unlimited and miracles are completely normal and natural all the time. Jesus would've run out of blocks to awareness a long time before being able to perform the countless miracles that He did, if miracles were only shifts in perception. His perception had already shifted TO the miracle minded right mind of the Holy Spirit, and because of that He had UNLIMITED miracles at His disposal.

You might find it odd then that Jesus performed powerful miracles regularly, in spite of the fact that in order to perform miracles you have to recognize the world is an illusion. Why would He attempt to heal sick bodies if He knew sickness was an illusion? Why would He bother raising the dead - literally bodies which were dead - if He knew that the world was just an illusion? Why bother to help illusory bodies in a dream?

Some people use this as an explanation for why healing the sick is not important or something Jesus would do. Yet Jesus did it. What they don't understand is the paradoxical nature of this. Similarly there is a paradox whereby when you are forgiving, truly forgiving, there is nothing to forgive. You fore-give in order to prevent perceptual errors, so that there is nothing to forgive. Forgiveness is a constant state of mind - a forgiving attitude - not a process of purification. It's the permanent state of Holy Spirit's mind.

So the ego would logically deduce that there is no point raising the dead or healing the sick because they are illusions, and Jesus was very very aware that they were illusions. BUT the truth defies the ego's logic. The truth bypasses it. In the truth, miracles are extensions of love which are a service to OTHERS.

Miracles adjust spacetime in order to facilitate a greater closeness to God and an experience of love, as well as being teaching devices that help others to awaken. They correct illusions, not just illusions in the mind but illusions AS the world. Bodies are illusions just as much as thoughts and perceptions, since the body is IN the mind. They are just as correctable as faulty vision. Why would you correct only illusions in the mind and not recognize the body and the world are also in the mind, thus avoiding their correction? This is because most body-identified humans do not realize that the entire body and world is also an illusion and is also IN THEIR MIND.

When you become miracle minded, it is because you recognize that illusions are just illusions. It is that recognition that ALLOWS you to perform miracles, because you can't wield God's power if you don't believe God is real. To believe God is real is to recognize that illusions/world/body/sickness/death is NOT real. That's HOW you make these things disappear, through your not fueling them and not believing in them.

So when you become miraculous, it is in the recognition that miracles are not NEEDED as such, because nothing has gone wrong, everyone is innocent, everyone is immortal and eternal, and there isn't even any real problems to fix. AND YET, the miracle is still present. Jesus still performed them in spite of His advanced awareness of the unreality of the world, and BECAUSE of that awareness. He didn't just sit on his laurels like, oh, I know there's nothing to forgive and no real problems so I'm just going to sit back and let everyone suffer. That would've been cold and intellectual.

Instead Jesus went out to the people with an open heart and mind, knowing sickness and death had no power over Him, and demonstrating left right and center - teaching - that these things were not real by example. He was helping his brothers. He was healing people because He LOVED them and because He had a HEART engaged with the truth, not just an intellectual understanding. And He knew that even though there was no "real" need for healing or miracles because bodies were not real, OTHER PEOPLE believed they were real and were in a state of suffering. He was being loving by alleviating their suffering and simultaneously teaching them through demonstration that the body was not real. He didn't just take away people's suffering, He showed also how THEY could take it away by masterfully showing how it was done.

So to the ego, miracles make no sense. It makes no sense to heal the sick if the body is not real. It makes no sense to raise the dead if people aren't really bodies and they're supposed to be making the body disappear. But all things can be used as teaching devices and miracles are a maximal service to others. It says so in the miracle principles. Jesus could've raised a million people from the dead if he wanted to, but also He recognized that people needed to learn of this capability themselves as well and so was using miracles to teach (demonstrate) what the truth is.

This is why miracles are not just shifts in perception. They are not just corrections in your own mind, which is a process of purification. They are not just forgiveness, which is a process of progressively undoing belief in illusions. And they are not ineffective or unpowerful. And they are not reserved only for the "private" waking up of individuals.

As Jesus teaches, Love must be extended in order to be REAL. It is the nature of God's Kingdom and reality that it has no PRESENCE unless there is extension happening. It has to radiate and be shared. Sharing is the key element, and miracles share love with your brother. They unify your mind with theirs and correct BOTH of you, if there is any correction needed. Jesus didn't need that correction because He was already done with it. But He still corrected others and was TRULY HELPFUL.

The Course states (in its less edited-out versions) that miracles ENTAIL a shift in perception from illusions to truth. This means that you must shift your perception INTO a state of mind which recognizes truth in order to perform a miracle. It does not mean that the miracle shifts your perception, or that the purpose of the miracle is to shift your perception. You HAVE TO shift your perception into Holy Spirit's perception so that you become miracle minded in order to become miraculous.

He asks us now to continue His mission and help the brotherhood to awaken, by sharing and extending and expressing love to everyone, to be "active workers" in His plan, and to perform miracles on a daily basis. He even says in the urtext (later edited out) that we should be asking Him every day what miracles to perform. Note also that He instructed His disciples in the ways of miracles and told them to go out and heal the sick and raise the dead, which they did. Why would he tell them to do that and why did they do that and why were they able to do that? Because it was LOVING and because that love made it possible. So why wouldn't they?!

Miracles also affirm the truth in you, since you share in them, and so by performing them for others it reinforces for you the truth of God's reality, giving you additional faith and conviction and clarity that the body is not real and can be overcome. Death can be overcome. A Course in Miracles is not "armchair spirituality" where you just contemplate it behind closed doors and discuss it on Facebook. We are to be powerful workers of miracles helping Jesus in His plan of atonement for the great awakening - the great crusade.

Jesus performed miracles. I will perform miracles.

In the atonement, it becomes the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.

In the atonement, you gain the authority to forgive the sins of others, and not just your own sins.

This literally means you are able to heal others instantly through your forgiveness, because forgiveness leads to an authority over illusions.

It's not just a technicality, like you accept the atonement and you're done. The atonement puts you in the hot seat. It gives you the power of God. It empowers you with commanding authority. And what you then say, goes.

Claiming the atonement for yourself will grant you the ability to give the atonement to others. And that means the undoing of all signs and symptoms of separation, including the reversal of death.

Raising of the dead would not be possible if it had to mean that the other person somehow had to do something on their own in order to resurrect. Yet Jesus raised the dead, and others have also. The dead cannot raise themselves.

This demonstrates to you the miraculous power that the atonement offers you. The power to overcome all illusions for yourself AND for others. And if it be God's will, you too can restore your brother to life.

He who shares the authority of God knows no limitations. Unlock the key to salvation and open the door to the atonement, and you will step through Heaven's gates. And from there, the atonement of yourself and of the whole world is complete in your eyes. And now have dominion over all suffering and death.

When I recently started to recognize that the whole world is fundamentally unreal, I started to experience "faith" in God. It seemed to require an UNBELIEF that this world is "true", in order to shift my allegiance and dependence over to the unseen Source.

Jesus talks about faith in the Course, in reference to putting our faith in the ego (faithlessness). We have faith in what we believe is true.

"Your faith lies in the darkness, not the light. How can this be reversed?" - lesson 91. "Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols" - lesson 50

And from Chapter 17 "the call for faith": "Had you not lacked faith that it could be solved, the problem would be gone". "There is no problem in any situation that faith will not solve."

If you believe the world is real and the problems are real and people's sicknesses and suffering is real and sin is real etc, that's a lot of faith being put into the ego. You are siding with it and you are siding with this world. You are convinced by physical appearances and believe this stuff is really happening. There is no faith there.

Now, prior to this shift for me, I've experienced many years of talking to Holy Spirit and Jesus, working with Angels, and having various other interactions with "the other side", and came to depend quite strongly on their guidance each day. And that over time developed trust. But, it didn't develop trust to the level that I'm starting to experience now. It really required me to question whether the ENTIRE WORLD was real and a source of truth.

Some major chunk of belief in the ego world has been withdrawn from it. You have to realize that this world does not contain any truth at all, and notice the ways that you keep trying to find truth in it, and how futile that is. It's like, all this time you were believing in the world and listening to it and trusting it and taking its word for the idea that it was fundamentally real, had factual truth to it, COULD be trusted, and that it was just something wrong with you that was making you incapable of successfully FINDING its secret truth.

And now, suddenly its cover is blown, you have been disappointed by it one too many times, it has lied to you, it has promised that you'll find truth and yet failed every time, and so now you have come to your senses. You withdraw your allegiance from it, withdraw your trust and belief in it, and now are all the wiser. It is NOT to be trusted and cannot be believed, because the truth is not out there. To get this, I think you have really open up to the idea that the whole world is not real in its entirety, including everything in it - people, bodies, planets, space, time, suffering, loss, pain, death, etc. All of it. A big giant lie.

Then you compare this world to God's truth and you start to find out that EITHER God's truth is true or this world is true. Because this world contains so many things that simply cannot fit into God's truth. You must learn and trust that God is unconditional love at all times, which MUST mean, God cannot and does not create suffering, sickness, despair or misery. He would not create death.

"If this were the real world, God would be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation and be loving. Love does not kill to save. If it did, attack would be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's."

As you open up to this, it should dawn on you not just that your mind inside your body has ego in it, but that the body ITSELF is ego, and the physical universe ITSELF is ego. ALL OF IT! This will be somewhat mind blowing. But at the same time you'll discover that it makes incredible sense. And all of a sudden a whole bunch of things that Jesus says in the course suddenly click into place, clear as day. "There is no world", literally, because it is not real. Not just a metaphor, not just an interpretation of your mistaken perception's view of a real world, but literally this whole physical universe is just a DREAM. It really is true.

This is a major turning point in your awareness to realize this. Because now the foundation for all of the ego thought system is exposed. So many mistaken perceptions and beliefs and values are now brought into question in contrast to this new truth, that God's truth is true, God's truth CANNOT create worlds like this, and therefore this world CANNOT be reality. "This world is not my home".

For me, it was at the dawn of STARTING to accept this truth, that I started to find myself experiencing "faith". It was as though I was faithless before. I had now "sided with God". The world seemed much less believable, much less real and trustworthy. I started to notice when I was looking to anything IN IT as a "Source" of truth, or as a solution, or as an answer, or as a way to solve problems. The idea of the "source" of truth had shifted away from this world and began taking root in God. A God, a reality, that is beyond this illusory world entirely.

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

What this means is, your sense of REALITY and TRUTH shifts to an UNSEEN world, the world of Spirit, which is God's realm. Even though you may not see it, and you may not directly experience it yet, you have some amount of BELIEF that it contains the truth - a truth which must be more true than the physical world in its entirety. That trust, that belief, which spans and overlooks and bypasses physicality, produces FAITH.

Faith indicates that you trust something that is REAL, and are shifting to an awareness of its existence. At first it may seem distant and remote but over time that faith is going to increase. It's real faith because it is faith in reality. It also means that you're starting to recognize and depend on a SOURCE which is not of this world. A source which provides not only answers and truth, but a source which has power, which is creative, which can express through you, and which performs miracles. It's a source of abundance, a source of correction, and a source of being SUSTAINED by God.

That means, you are now shifting from a "horizontal" belief system in the ego, a linear belief system, where you look to other locations in physical space as the source and cause of things. Before, you believed the only way to be provided for was to earn money at a job. Or you believed the only way to heal was to identify a linear cause in this world. But now, you're going VERTICAL. And that means, you're looking to a SOURCE which completely transcends this world, whereby you actually have access to a creative, abundant source of everything, which can flow through and to you from an unseen place. A supernatural source of support.

Your faith in that source starts to rewrite all the rules about HOW you are going to be able to accomplish things in this world. How money is going to come to you. How health is going to be restored. How relationships will improve. Where you should go and what you should do. It all starts to be inspired by AND empowered by an unseen Source of supernatural POWER, which is God. And this reliance on this Source means that all the laws and rules of this world will be broken in demonstrating faith in it. Miracles. Spontaneous financial abundance. Spontaneous solutions to "problems" which has no basis in the physical "natural" world. It's not going to "come from" this world, because this world is not a real CAUSE. It's going to come from BEYOND this world, supernaturally!

When you go to do things, you will start finding yourself placing an otherworly level of trust in something you don't even see. If it says to go do something, your trust that it is true allows you to trust it and go do it, EVEN IF there are "natural" egoic reasons why not. And as you go do it, with FAITH IN that supernatural power, you go forth miraculously and with light and an empowerment that defies the laws of the ego world. It would seem crazy to depend on a Source of strength that you don't even see yet, but your faith in it will bring forth "witnesses", ie demonstrations and PROOF, that you were right to trust it, and this will only further amplify your reliance upon it.

Now you are no longer alone, you are no longer fighting through life with little power, you are no longer scraping to survive. You have all of Heaven behind you! And not just remotely, but like, working through you, orchestrating events, causing healing miracles, giving you strength that you could not have had if the ego were your source. Bypassing all illusions and all physical laws completely.

God really is a "supernatural God", a miraculous God. This is what we are to come to learn to trust and depend on. Removing our faith in the ego's world and the ego's laws and the ego's version of reality, we are able to shift allegiance to trusting and depending on God for everthing. For me I feel like I am only just getting started in this, and experimenting with it, but I can only see an exciting trend in future towards INCREASE in this faith, INCREASE in miraculous living, INCREASE in abundance from God, INCREASE in joy and happiness, and INCREASE in trust.

Later, as Jesus promises, that which you had ego-defying faith in, beyond the world, which was unseen, will become more and more seen, and more and more demonstrated, to the point where it is no longer unseen. It is all around you and through you. And you will become more directly in the experience of God, finally FULLY believing that only His truth is true, and that there has never been another truth to replace it. YES!!

Let's say you're in a regular situation, maybe you're around someone you know. And there's something this person is doing that you 'describe' or 'label' as something. You think you're just making a basic observation, like it's obvious.

So maybe you 'see' that the person has a sickness, or they're angry, or scared, or whatever. So to you, you think you're just observing this like..... my friend Jane seems to be sick right now.

In this situation, I bet you believe that you're not actually 'doing' anything to Jane right? And you believe that you're just seeing her neutrally, right? And that there is not really anything to forgive here, because Jane really is sick, right?

Well... even in what seems like an 'ordinary' everyday perception of a 'normal' condition that someone is experiencing, there is unforgiveness. But you may not realize this especially because, IF you are seeing this and believing it's real or true, you have forgotten to forgive, and have lost sight of the REAL person - therefore yourself.

When this happens for me, I at first feel as though this isn't really 'my' problem. It's not 'me' that's got the issue. Whatever the other person is experiencing, it seems to be 'theirs' and is 'actually happening'. And here I am, in my ego, believing that I can perceive this so-called 'reality' without actually contributing to it at all, like I'm a completely neutral party. But this is of course the ego's deception.

The ego is not capable of seeing neutrally. "I have no neutral thoughts". "My meaningless (skewed) thoughts are showing me a meaningless world." etc. The ego believes it can do something to others and NOT be in any way associated with the outcome or the consequences. It thinks something can apply to someone else that does not apply to yourself. It thinks it can observe neutrally someone else in pain or any other suffering, and not suffer, and be having nothing to do with its presence.

But the ego is always actively involved. It's always attacking with attack thoughts and distorted perceptions. It's always judging. It's always projecting something onto someone.

So even though the situation seems to have no issues in it that have anything to do with 'me', separate me, is that really true? If we are all one and all laws apply equally to all people, then if the other person is seemingly in pain - or at least, if my perception has 'stopped' at "sight of form" or has made it real or believes it's true or agrees with it at all, then my ego IS active in this situation and IS using it. Instead of healing my brother, I must be condemning him or her by not overlooking 'their issue'. So what I'm seeing in them, or what they seem to be experiencing, SOMEHOW, it is MY issue.

What I did in a situation like this recently, even though it didn't SEEM like "I" had anything to forgive, as though there wasn't anything 'wrong' with me, but the other person was upset or sick, and I was accepting that they were actually sick, was to step back and do a forgiveness.

The basic fact of a need to forgive is that I'm seeing something that I think is separate from me (in another person, its their problem or fault, their sickness, etc), DISASSOCIATED from it.

Another basic fact of a need to forgive is that I see something in someone else that I don't believe is in me. That HAS to mean, that what I see in them IS my own stuff that I've projected onto them. Even if the other person seems to be the one with the sickness or the anger or whatever issue, I have to realize - it's really MY issue. If I am perceiving that anything applies to anyone that doesn't apply to myself, that we are not one or equal in every way, I have waking up to do.

Even if that sounds ridiculous. And it does sound ridiculous. To the ego it is ridiculous to suggest that something 'clearly' nothing to do with me, is actually somehow something about or in me that I need to forgive. You could boil it down to, ... if I'm seeing it, it's me. If I am seeing Christ, I am being Christ. If I am not seeing Christ, I am not being Christ. Right? Even if it seems like someone else's problem, if I see it and think it's really there, *I* (the One Son of God/Christ) have a problem.

So I did a forgiveness. I took back ownership of the sickness or anger that I saw in the other person, as though it were my own. I took back the guilt I thought the person had for believing they were sick. I took back ownership of the fear and anger. I even claimed it to be 'mine'. I took all of these labels, judgements, perceptions, impressions, evaluations, analyses, etc off of the person, to where I could moreso see THEY are innocent. THEY don't have any of these issues really. THEY are none of this. This whole 'perception' of them even having an issue, is MY error. Sounds ridiculous. Sounds like taking the world on your shoulders. Sounds like some kind of martyrdom. Sounds like taking possession of 'other people's problems' and making them your own on purpose. But is it REALLY not your problem?

I took it back. Then I went to Holy Spirit with it. I unconditionally surrendered the need to be right or wrong about any of these issues. I surrendered unconditionally any desire to decide FOR MYSELF whether any of these things were true or not. Thus I opened up to accepting whatever Holy Spirit would decide. I asked for His decision, and he reported instantly that NO, I am not guilty of any of these things, none of them are true.

Then, instantly, there began a healing process within me, Holy Spirit came in, body parts vibrated, 'energy' whirled around, things shook, and several seconds later all of the sensation or experience of those 'things' was gone.

Now, what was the result of this?

Next day, around this person, *I* was noticeably much happier, clearer, much less engaged with taking their situation seriously, much more detached, lighter, smilier, stronger. I accessed a 'light' and a sense of security and certainty that I did not know was available. I also believe that by my being in a higher state of awareness, this 'helped' the other person in some way. Not saying it was a miracle as such, or that it had observable effects, but for sure *I* was transformed.

How would I have been transformed if this wasn't all about me to begin with, or issues within me that needed healing? How would I have experienced greater light if I hadn't had any need to forgive? Even though it didn't seem like the issue outside of me had anything to do with me, *I* was the one perceiving it, *I* was the one believing it. *I* needed healing.

What if you lived in a world, where everyone was permanently dressed in costume. So much so that you had never actually looked at a person, but had only ever seen their disguise. You hadn't EVER seen a real face, or even real eyes. An entire world filled with make-believe characters, and no-one had ever set eyes on the actors that played them. All of it was hidden behind a thick wall of masks and covers.

That's the world we are living in here. The body is exactly this. It is a disguise and a physical wall surrounding a person's mind, so that you DO NOT SEE the person. When you look at a body you are not looking at a person. You're looking at a costume designed to completely disguise and HIDE from sight the real person within it.

As we learn that we are not our costumes, ie are not our bodies, we have to actually separate out the body from the person. As you look at a person you have to remind yourself you are not really looking at a person. You're looking at a body costume. A kind of vehicle, which is being piloted by an unseen person. By a spirit-mind. And the flesh you see doesn't even look like them.

I am constantly being reminded, corrected, by Jesus, each time I'm looking upon bodies and thinking of them as people, and forgetting that I am just looking at bodies. He tells me, "body", in place of whatever I was thinking about "person". Because I have to learn that flesh and bones are not really people. Bodies with faces and eyeballs are not really people. They are all disguises.

So we live in a VERY strange world, where in fact no-one is really seen by the human senses, and every body you look upon is a costume disgusing and hiding someone from sight. And even as you stare at their face and look them deep in the eye and think someone is peering back at you, even then you are looking at an illusion made to hide the person.

You have in fact likely NEVER looked upon a real person in your whole life here on Earth, because to see real beings requires a radically different kind of spiritual vision. It's VERY strange when you think about it, that the world is populated by costumes and vehicles and not by direct sight of beings. It's all a giant pantomime. An act like on the stage of a play. And you haven't ever feasted your eyes upon any of the actors.

It's so strange simply because this IS a VERY strange world. We have to learn that we ourselves are not bodies AT ALL, and other people are NOT bodies at all. And sight of bodies is not sight of people. And there are no people in the world of bodies, because they are all behind the scenes. Practice recognizing that the bodies you look at are JUST bodies, disguises, HIDING what lies unseen, trapped within.

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured." "The REAL beauty of the Temple cannot be seen with the physical eye. The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity. This is because the spiritual eye has perfect vision."

"How can man "come close" to others through the parts of him which are really invisible? The word "invisible" means "cannot be seen or perceived."What cannot be perceived is hardly the right means for improving perception."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys."

"In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God HAS sinned. How could you SEE him, then? "

"LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

Recently I was in the car driving home from getting food, and felt this kind of tension or frustration with people. I was in a certain mood and decided to suddenly start telling everyone that I love them. Of course.. from inside the car, traveling at speed, with the windows shut ;-)

I felt like there had been just years and years of people passing by without being loving, people turning their faces away, people avoiding each other in guilt, a lack of connection, a lack of expression. That it had boiled up to a certain point where it just seemed like I wanted to grab ahold of everyone and shake them and tell them I loved them.

So I someone broke the mold and started shouting at everyone I saw, passers by on the street, people driving cars, people in store windows, that I loved them. Of course, inside the car, with the windows shut ;-)

It felt like a relief, to at last have a normal, love-based expression come out toward people in spite of their refusal to be loved or their own lack of love expression. It was like, someone has to say something. I couldn't tolerate any more the cold shoulder and the spiritual poverty. So I forced some love out. And it felt really good.

In fact it felt so good, such a relief, it was like taking years of rejection off my shoulders. And it made me laugh so much for a long time. It seemed so funny and freeing.

I think in a way this was one of the recent steps I've been going through in "breaking through" the barriers of conditional love, and ego hierarchy, and moving towards unconditional love. Loving when it doesn't seem called for, or even wanted. And loving just because... it's natural and healthy and everyone is supposed to be doing it all the time.

This world is really constipated. It's needs love but rejects love. We can't keep ourselves bound by these chains. We have to break free.

Miracles are everyone's right. Both their receipt and their expression.

God is not in a state of choosing whether to perform a healing. God is not waiting to make a healing occur. God is not considering whether it's right or wrong to heal. God is not delaying healing for some special reason.

God is always the same. God has already fully given all of Himself, to the maximum extent possible.

Prior to the separation, all of God was already given and received fully! You already had perfection.

The idea of the separation was an attempt to PUSH AWAY that which you ALREADY HAD and to deny that God has given it.

Every effort in the ego to make the separation real, tries to deny the reality of God's abundance.

If it seems rare or inconsistent that miracles occur, or that minds are joined at all, that's because the ego's separation has been so "severe" that what was once whole and full and freely abundant has been reduced to barely a trickle.

Such is the ego's resistance, the use of the physical form to repress and counteract the receipt of God's abundance, that when a rare miracle seems to happen everyone's like, oh my God, that's so fantastic. And when anyone shares a little bit of mind, it's like, wow, that's a special ability.

No. Miracles are everyone's right. They are natural expressions of love. When they are not happening, something has gone wrong. And in the ego's world, something has MAJORLY gone wrong, resulting in what appears to be miracles that are few and far between. Those willing to even entertain the possibility of miracles, yet alone becoming able to perform them, is even more uncommon.

A miracle, as an expression of God, and all miracles combined, are merely the abundance of God being shared. All of God's abundance was ALREADY shared. You already had it prior to the illusion of separation. You already had immortality, eternal life, divine health, and absolute invulnerability.

That we now claw and grasp at tiny morsels of miracles is a profoundly opposite state of being, where the idea of accessing even a PART of any of these God given promises is considered "miraculous" and applause-worthy. Miracles are supposed to be happening ALL THE TIME, for EVERYONE!

Recognize then that when attempting to perform a miracle, the doing so should NOT entail in any way notions that God has not yet given all that He is. You need to erase from your mind all beliefs that God has not given, will not give, is waiting to give, etc. You must stop looking and WAITING for God to do the miraculous. This means, you have a ROLE to fulfill to facilitate and support the miraculous expression of God, and you need to TAKE ACTION!

It MUST be true that God has ALREADY done his part! It's not God's FAULT that miracles aren't happening. It's not His responsibility that miracles aren't happening. God is not in error, God has not failed, God is not broken, and God did not decide to stop sharing eternal life with you or anyone.

It is US who have fucked up. Or more to the point, it is our choice to produce "ego" - resistances to sharing God - which are defenses against God's will being fully expressed and extended. We are trying to stick our thumb in the tap to stop the flow. We've become spiritually constipated. We are constantly trying to STOP miracles from happening. Like, all the time. Our state of denial and defense is so profound that we're actually convinced God is no longer GIVING eternal life. Our unwillingness to RECEIVE eternal life is a choice for death.

To perform miracles again, we must OVERCOME the separation, OVERCOME the ego, and TAKE BACK what is rightfully ours. We're not really taking it back from someone who has taken it from us, and we're not really victims of theft, but it SEEMS like we are. In order to take back our miracles, therefore, our divine right, we need to be willing to SURRENDER and own up to our natural role as Christ.

All that we have GIVEN AWAY, needs to be reclaimed. All that we have blocked, needs to be set free. All that we have chosen to live without, needs to be accepted once again.

So performing a miracle must entail you're not sitting there waiting for God to do something. Your role is not to go to God asking Him to do something. He's already done his part! Your role is not to look at the ego and keep checking it to see if it is changing "on its own", as though some other will is deciding to manifest the miraculous effects. These are all ways that we are still blaming God for our disowning of power and abundance. These are ways of disowning the miracles.

If God has done His part fully, and if we have rejected our part, and if it's us who have given away God's gifts, then performing a miracle is simply RE-RECEIVING what God has already given. Miracles are natural. It's taking it back, by ceasing to disown it. It's ceasing to believe that "someone else" or "some cause else" is the reason why we don't have eternal life. We need to take it back from our own imaginary thieves, who are really scapegoats for our own choice to NOT receive God's love.

The Christian miracle workers focus quite a lot on taking back what the devil has stolen from you. This doesn't recognize that you did it to yourself. Yet, in the ego's universe, it can seem as though there are "bad spirits" or other negativity which causes sickness etc. Really, though, we should be careful not to battle against "forces" that we ourselves have put in place, otherwise we're really trying to wage a spiritual "war" against our own decision to believe in the ego. Evil is not reality. There is no need for a spiritual war against an imaginary enemy, but there IS need for us to responsibly reclaim what is naturally ours - that we have given away.

Really, there is no enemy, such as sickness or death, it's just us pretending to disown and disallow God. When we own up to that and recognizing that we're doing this to ourselves, we will be supremely confident in working "miracles" because we will know with clarity that NOTHING CAN STOP US other than ourselves. So fear has absolutely no foundation and cannot stop the truth from manifesting.

Let's stop blaming God for sickness or trying to turn to Him to do something about it. He's already done everything that's real and everything that's true. He hasn't stopped loving. He hasn't stopped sustaining PERFECT HEALTH. He hasn't stopped infusing Eternal Life into us forever and ever. It's us who have chosen to resist and fail to claim it.

Therefore, recognize miracles are already FULLY GIVEN. The work we have to do now is to stop blocking them and learn to RECEIVE them. And this happens through SURRENDER, relaxation, openness to Holy Spirit, and ALLOWING Him to flow and rebuild by God's Will.

Holy Spirit said to me, simply, "Surrender, and let God do the rest". This is key to performing miracles. They are not effort. They require surrender of the ego, a calmness, an openness, and an allowing of God's Will to be done. You are a conduit for the extension of LOVE to flow THROUGH you. You just need to stop blocking it. When you allow God, miracles will be effortless, normal, abundant, and constant!

I was asking God sincerely last night, that He heal a specific person. I explained that this person had been limited for a long time with suffering and needed help. I went to quite some lengths to detail the things they were experiencing and why it was all so unnecessary. I finished with a definitive question, can you please just heal them? What do you think God's answer was?

No.

I wasn't very happy about this. I confessed that I'd been trying to get healing for this person for a long time and just wanted to be helpful, so how was it possible to be helpful?

I was then told that when someone is ready, they will receive it.

Then Jesus popped in, and what I was shown was that everyone is choosing* everything* that happens. Even down to the suffering they experience or the things they seem not to want. It's all chosen, deliberate, intentional.

This then revealed the question, is it then possible to help anyone if they don't choose something themselves? How can anyone get any kind of help when they are not able to choose their own healing?

Jesus then spoke to me about how there were several villages which He had to pass by where He could not perform any healing whatsoever. He said the people were so adamant in rejecting Him that they did not want anything He had to offer. He had to respect their decision and move on.

He then told me, clarifying, that love isn't forceful. That you can't force someone to heal against their will. You can offer love and love has tremendous power to heal, IF there is some amount of willingness to receive it.

There is a correlation between how 'open' someone is to receive, and how much they may receive. Not because there are orders of difficulty in miracles, but because to truly RECEIVE the benefits, the person has to be WILLING, otherwise love cannot enter where it is not welcome.

Jesus reminds me now of the saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

I also was then reminded of a couple of parts in the Course where Jesus says, that if you are ready and willing Jesus will help you, but if you are not, he will wait until you are. I also was then reminded that God has infinite patience and while He is willing to welcome us immediately, we may not yet be willing to allow it, putting up defenses against it.

God's love is powerful and it is unconditionally given, and it can heal miraculously. But people can choose whether they want to accept it or deny and reject it. Being on planet Earth we've for the most part rejected it, which is why we're asleep. It's not that a tremendous miraculous power isn't being given, it is given all the time. It's that we don't want it.

I felt sad about this, because it means that certain people are choosing not to want to be helped. And that meant, I was going to have to let go and "allow them" to suffer for longer, due to their own unwillingness to receive help.

But then Jesus commented that their situation was a lesson, meaning that it wasn't a loss or necessarily an unfair suffering as such, it was actually an educational tool which was being used to help the person learn the truth, no matter how it looks. In that sense, it is helping them, but also in that sense, they "need" the lesson in order to learn to be open to receive healing.

Our desire to take away people's lessons, given the ultimate truth that no-one needs to suffer for any reason, can compel us to want to fix and heal and help and to stop people's suffering. But there is some lack of wisdom there. Time is needed. The person may simply not be ready or willing yet to be able to accept the help.

It's not that you help can't help, or that it can't do something for the person that they must do themselves. A person with serious disease could approach Jesus and have some faith and ask Jesus to help, and He could remove the disease - something which they didn't seem to be "able" to do. Miracles are gifts from those who temporarily have more given to those who temporarily have less.

This means that a person doesn't have to necessarily "choose" the entirety of the healed state all on their own. If they have enough willingness or a little faith, or even just a little willingness, the "open door" can be used to bring in much more help and healing than the person could muster on their own.

We can get help from outside, which really brings us to the point that the Holy Spirit is here as our Divine Helper. He can help in powerful, "supernatural" ways, IF we are willing and ready to receive that help. And that actually often entails surrender, more than a 'doing', in order to be open to receive the help.

Help is available, love loves to love, and love heals. But if we reject it and don't want it, it will not "hurt us" by doing something to us that we don't want, and even healing and help can be experienced as unwanted.

This is a difficult lesson for me and probably for many. We want to take away the suffering of the world. People are dying. Bad things are happening. But these are our own illusions and our own issues and reactions to perceptual errors that we need to correct.

There is a plan in place, the plan of the Atonement, which Jesus is in charge of. He knows who is ready to receive miracles and He can direct us to those people at the right time.

The idea that we can use our EGO to go around healing people "against their will" left right and center is really the ego's attempt to use the Power of God for its own entertainment. I'm not in ANY way saying not to perform miracles for people, just that they need to be properly framed in service to God and respecting "free will."

This does mean realizing that you might not be able to help a whole group of people if they are not really willing enough to be helped. Which means that miracles aren't imposed upon people against their will, they must be receptive to them, and if they're not then.... you don't get to work miracles for them.

I was also then told by Jesus that something I needed more of in order to be more miraculous, is to trust God, and the key point that God must be involved for miracles to happen. Holy spirit - God's Voice/expression - is the mechanism of miracles. He must be a part of it. And that means, miracles don't come from ourselves as some special power that we gain, although it is an "ability" which we can develop.

To accept the Atonement is to accept that God's truth is the truth. It also means accepting that nothing else is true.

Jesus demonstrates this when He speaks of His own state of Atonement:

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you."

We would be perfectly willing to accept God's truth, IF we did not believe that something else is true. We have been listening to another "voice", the voice of the ego (untruth) rather than the Voice of God (truth).

If we believe the ego has some truth to it, it means we agree with it. We will defend it, protect it, want to keep it, and will shield it from God. We'll use it as justification for "why" we believe we cannot accept God's truth as true. This literally makes us perceive that God's truth is NOT true.

This is the meaning of "He who would not forgive MUST judge to justify his failure to forgive." We are busy justifying WHY we cannot accept atonement/forgiveness, in order to keep and protect the ego that we believe is sacred and true and worthy of us.

No-one in their right mind would want to accept something they believe is not the truth. No-one would want anything to do with something they regard as "false". The ego attributes all qualities of falseness to God, including perceiving Him as evil, as a threat, as an attacker, and as willing that we be dead. That's quite a lot of false belief to "reverse" - thought reversal - if we are to become genuinely WILLING to want to be with God.

An unwillingness to accept God's truth comes solely from a willingness to accept the ego's truth. Another way the Course puts this is in terms of faith. We have "faith" in the ego, we have come to TRUST it, we think it is helping us, protecting us, defending us, acting in our best interests, and is "working" for us. We think we WANT what it is offering. This is because we do not RECOGNIZE the ways that the ego is deceptive, a lie, a form of attack, self defeating, suicidal and fixated on death.

When we believe the ego is the truth, we literally become "blind" to the truth, and incapable of discerning that God's truth is true. We see falseness IN it, because there is falseness in our perception. We see reflected in God our own "evil" content, thinking it is his.

For example, whenever we misperceive the truth through the ego, we see it as attacking us, we put up a defense, which implements blocks to life, which produces sickness and death. This production of sickness is an attempt to "save our life" by protecting us from life. This is obviously insane. The ego's efforts to "help" us is actually an attempt to deceive us, to trick us into hurting ourselves "in the name of" helping ourselves. In other words, the ego's advice produces the opposite result from what it promises.

While we believe the ego has truth to it, we will not be WILLING to accept the atonement. In fact we'll not be able. We can't ACCEPT it, to really deeply abide in it and feel it and welcome it and want it and admit its truth and ALLOW IT to love us. That's because we have allegiance to the ego and "want" what it is offering instead. AND YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH! You have to choose. This valuing of the ego's offering produces DOUBT. Being in two minds, or even entirely in ego, will make us very uncertain about whether the truth even IS true, and whether we even DO want it.

Failure to discern what IS true, and what IS false, forms the basis of this confusion, which makes us unwilling and unable to accept it. No-one wants to accept what they think will destroy them. It's just that, believing the ego we will believe GOD is the one who is going to destroy us, and the ego is our savior. It simply "makes sense" to us not to accept God's version of events, because His truth does not "make sense" when the ego perceives it.

If we believe there is really death, really punishment, really fear, really victimhood, really guilt, really sin, really separation, really sickness, really suffering, we will not be WILLING to accept the atonement. The atonement says the exact opposite is true. This means we WILL have to become willing to RECOGNIZE all of these illusions for what they ARE, how we are using them to support the ego, and how they are not TRUE or real.

So we are going to have to systematically let go of all belief that there is such a thing as real sickness, real death, real sin, real guilt, real fear, real suffering, real victims, etc. To do this, we will have to be a LITTLE WILLING to believe that the ego beliefs do NOT contain truth, they in fact are FALSE, and something else is MORE TRUE. If any of this ego stuff - illusions appearing to be real - is within our perception, i.e. within our attitude or beliefs about ourselves, it has to GO, BEFORE we will genuinely, deeply, feel WILLING and READY to accept the truth of God.

Each time that we are attempting to perform a "forgiveness", i.e. we're upset and suffering in some way and we want to get back to the truth, to apply the Course principles and heal ourselves, it's going to have to entail the UNDOING OF FALSE BELIEFS. i.e. the undoing of listening to the ego's interpretation, stopping listening to its voice, stopping believing its bullshit is true, discerning HOW and WHY it is not true, and RECOGNIZING the illusions - i.e. the lies - that you are perpetuating. This can take tremendous radical HONESTY. Honesty admits the truth - allows the truth to enter.

Applying forgiveness SHOULD also therefore mean, that you start with wherever you're at, with whatever you are experiencing now, and you need to transition from there ALL THE WAY TO THE ATONEMENT. If you do not go all the way, if you stop short and keep some beliefs, you will not "complete" the forgiveness because you're not getting to the point where you FULLY ACCEPT the truth and FULLY LET GO of the ego.

While over time you generally will move gradually towards truth, on the whole, you actually can take yourself ALL the way to the atonement at any time, on a SPECIFIC topic. For example if you have issues with a parent or a coworker or something, some belief that is getting triggered... to FULLY forgive that issue, or at least a big chunk of it, you need to look at the beliefs involved and undo them, ALL the way until you get to "sin did not happen in reality, there is no sin at all, therefore I'm still innocent".

Taking back a projection, for example, is only a FIRST STEP in forgiving. It only means then that you recognize some measure of responsibility, that it's actually "about you" and not "about" another person. That's a vital step, and taking of responsibility is essential to any application of forgiveness. But that's not the end of the story.

The problem is, even if you can recognize it's not about other people, you may still believe you are afraid, you are guilty, and you are sinful. These beliefs have to be uncovered as well. Part of the problem is, there are various stages of separation: sin > guilt > fear > punishment > death and each stage entails a shitload of DENIAL. That denial makes content in your mind UNCONSCIOUS. That means you don't even REALIZE that you have this stuff in your mind somewhere, buried, behind a wall of illusions.

So if all you do is take back a projection and then sit with it and don't really realize how you have unconscious guilt lurking in your mind, which your state of victimhood was made to cover up and distract away from, you may not even get to the stage of becoming AWARE of that guilt, to undo it. And even if you get to where you are undoing the guilt, you may not even be aware - there is such a things as UNCONSCIOUS SIN. That has to be undone as well. Only when all of these layers of DENIAL in the mind are undone, ONLY then will you find yourself actually WILLING and able and ready to wholeheartedly ACCEPT that the Atonement is true. That is the point where forgiveness is COMPLETE.

You can do this on any given topic. It doesn't have to just be the overall whole issue of separation. Every time you forgive all the way to the atonement you receive a miracle, and then can offer it. Every time you make a genuine effort to becoming WILLING to accept the truth - your innocence, that literally nothing happened in reality - your mind gets healed one more giant leap towards God. As much as you can accept at the time. This will have PROFOUND healing effects on your perception.

There was a woman that I couldn't stand, a social worker, who had poor sense of boundaries and was always overstepping her role. I had fear about seeing her, anger about her behavior and various other upsets. I thought she was the problem. Later I became willing to see how I was actually seeing some unhealed stuff about ANOTHER person, in this person. I applied forgiveness through various steps and went all the way to atonement on this issue about that person. This was a strong healing.

Later, when I saw this woman again, my entire perception of her was so different. She seemed like a completely different person, as though I'd never seen her before. I had no reaction to her and saw no "sin" in her. She didn't seem to bother me and I knew that I'd been accusing her of something that I thought someone else was guilty of, but which *I* was guilty of. The interesting thing is, when you lift off of other people your own sin, it doesn't necessarily make that person disappear. Instead, you see them more clearly for what is there, and what is theirs. It's interesting then how their OWN call for love suddenly becomes obvious, distinct from anything going on in yourself.

Anyway. I have many other examples where when I've gone all the way to really thoroughly undoing false beliefs and accepting God's truth, it's healed my mind in a major way and really cleared up my perception. It has allowed me to see "truth" where once I saw a distortion. Or rather, to see correctly and accurately where I once only saw what I wanted to see.

If you have been forgiving in some way but not going ALL the way to atonement, I recommend giving it a try. Even if it's on just one small topic. Forgiveness is only complete when you recognize there literally has not been a "real sin" in reality, that whatever it was only took place in a dream, and therefore has had no real effects.

Atonement DOES cure everything. There was an accident that happened years ago where I hurt someone. It produced tremendous guilt. A lot of things happened because of it including a major depression, ostracision from society and various other nightmares. I healed a lot of it over the years and rationalized in various ways why it was ok or not ok or whatever. But I could never QUITE really let go of it. That is, until I went to the atonement with it.

Going to the atonement on this, I FINALLY got to the point of realizing that what I thought happened DID NOT HAPPEN in reality. It only happened as part of a dream. All of my other healing efforts had been to somehow justify "what happened" or to explain "why" it was ok. That never healed me fully. I had to undo the belief it happened AT ALL. When I finally could accept and SEE and RECOGNIZE that it is TRUE, and makes sense, that I REALLY DID NOT DO ANYTHING, and nothing real can be threatened, I could actually willingly ACCEPT that God's truth is true. I could ACCEPT how God sees me. I could ACCEPT that I must still be innocent. And then there were tears of joy at FINALLY being able to LET GO of this "sin" and RECEIVE GOD's LOVE!

Only atonement can be said to cure. Miracles express from the atonement.