Fear is like this little box inside of which there is fear, and the fear keeps trying to get out.

It wants to get out and point fingers at all kinds of things outside of the box, so that it can explain why the fear exists.

If you let it, fear will project outside of the box and you'll believe the fear in the box is put there by things outside of it.

But fear never leaves the box.

And everything fear says and does inside the box, stays in the box (stays in Vegas? lol)

If you can look at the fear and not at what the fear is pointing to, and not at what it is insinuating is the cause of it outside the box, and instead realize the presence of the fear ITSELF is the problem, then you're on your way.

The fear itself is the problem because it's ACTIVELY attempting to attack your invulnerability, destroy your innocence, threaten your immortality and stop you from realizing something very important...

There is no fear outside the box. There is no cause for fear outside the box.

Outside the box, everything is perfectly alright. Everything is God. Everything is safe. Everything is lovely. There's no fear there.

This is what the fear does not want you to see, and it is a defense against seeing this by telling lies about what's outside the box.

It's kind of like this nasty little shitty little liar that tells nothing but lies and it really can't be believed. You have to realize not to listen to it at all because it's entirely false.

Don't buy into the projections that try to justify it, those are NOT the problem. All the 'causes' of the fear, that is NOT the problem.

The problem is merely the presence of the fear itself which acts as a reality filter and tries to destroy what would otherwise be a perfectly excellent situation. A Holy Instant.

Once you recognize fear as a dirty rotten liar that tells no truth and which is always confined to its box, and you don't allow it to project or listen to the projections, then something should occur to you...

There is no OTHER reason outside the box to be afraid, and if the fear is kept in the box and then REMOVED entirely, the situation you're in is actually really really really good. Things are working out. Everything's flowing. God is loving. Everyone is ok. You're totally safe. That's the truth fear tries to mess with.

So then your mind can take a little leap and realize, hey, this fear isn't telling me what's right, it's lying to me, and the situation ISN'T terrible, and people AREN'T threatened, and I AM safe and loved. And in that realization you can now confidently march forward, access the power of God, walk in confidence and reassurance, and wield miracles.

Your ego is the denial of the Self that God created. Its foundation is the belief that you do not have a Self - that you are not the whole. It represents your attack upon your SELF, in an attempt to destroy yourself, which is why the ego wants you dead.

Being rooted in limitation and separation, it is a sense of self that depends on being separate from other selves. It has to reject other selves in order to seem to exist. And so you have to make an ego for yourself AND for others in order to distinguish that you have one.

"Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for everyone he perceives, which is equally variable."

Your ego is obviously in a state of contradiction, because its goal is to be a full self, but it simultaneously hates the full self and denies it. It requires that it lacks something that others have, and has something that others lack, in order to be different and unique and stand out. It is made of relative differences, because it is not absolute. This is why it can never be satisfied or achieve its goal. But that doesn't mean it won't try, so long as "seek and do not find" is its guiding rule.

So the ego is the search for your self, where your mind is trying to find the self that it is denying. It refuses to stop denying self and actually find self, and wants to always be in a state of not knowing what it is. It will search intently to try to increase its awareness of self, to have more and more sense of self, of existing, but without ever questioning the original denial of self.

In order to increase the sense of self, this partial, limited, finite, less than whole, small self, has to constantly build itself up, bolster itself, increase its sense of identity, reinforce itself, validate itself, prove itself, get recognition, and generally increase the attention it gets.

Your ego does not care how it does this, only that it does this. It doesn't care if it means identifying negatively about yourself, being hard on yourself, beating yourself up, being a victim, because these all still have the hidden payoff that it validates the EXISTENCE of the ego. If you are suffering, you must exist.

Your ego will wear any kind of clothing including negative unhappy hurtful senses of identity, if it means you still at least exist in some way. A hurt, damaged, suffering, sick, lonely, unhappy self is still a separate self. Just as much as a separate self that seems happier and more successful and rich and famous.

This is because the ego's fundamental drive is to become more self. To exist more. It doesn't care how it does it. It wants something separate to identify with. It wants to be validated as existing at all. It wants attention, even if it is highly negative attention, or positive attention, so long as it is the attention that it wants to be the centre of.

It wants to be noticed, even if that means being a victim, being abused, being attacked, being threatened. It doesn't care, so long as someone somewhere is validating its existence. And even wanting to AVOID attention is another way to stand apart and be different, to be secretly noticed as avoidant and hiding and ashamed.

As Jesus says in the course the ego also loves the idea of analysing the ego, even if the goal seems to be to try to undo the ego and figure out its functioning so that you can rise above it. Because by thus focusing on the ego and its workings you are STILL validating it and giving it attention. It loves to be talked about regardless of what is said about it.

The overall theme here is that the egos tools can take many different forms, but its fundamental PURPOSE or USE OF those tools is always towards its singular aim of making itself exist more. It could even come up with the thought and emotion, "I'm suffering so badly, it hurts", as though it does not want this. But you might not notice the secret underlying assertion here: *I* am a suffering self that exists, and *I* am having real hurt, therefore I must exist.

It always revolves around a sense of "me". But this sense of me is a limited identity. Since it lacks self and lacks existence, your ego needs to "get more self" from somewhere. It seeks for others to confirm its existence, it seeks to be superior to others so that it can be more right and have more truth, it seeks to be inferior to others so that it can wallow in its real suffering and be a suffering self, and it even seeks to pretend to be indifferent so as to be a neutral self that sits on a fence.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

Always in whatever way the ego expresses, it always is with the PURPOSE of finding a way to bolster the sense of existing. And usually this purpose is hidden and not overtly stated. There is a kind of indirect payoff. While ego is busy putting attack thoughts in your mind, you might not realize that the REASON WHY its putting them there is so that it can get more mind-power to use to reinforce itself, or that it is busy adding to its stockpile of labels and definitions of itself.

When you are angry at someone for example, hurling guilt and pretending that you're innocent, you may not realize the subtler hidden purpose of WHO it is that is angry. WHO is benefiting from the game - it's the ego. If you are an angry self, you are still a self. If you can increase the sense of separation with another person by dissociating from them and wanting nothing to do with them, wanting them to stop existing, it intensifies the sense of being separate from them, which in turn increases the sense of existing as a separate self.

It's always very helpful to ask yourself, "how is my ego benefiting from this?" With any emotions, any reactions, and projections, any attack thoughts, anything that is not peace and love, you should ask yourself how this is benefiting the existence of your ego. And you will likely see that there is always some kind of payoff, some way that it benefits "you", some way that you get something out of it. If nothing else, that it simply confirms that you as ego exist.

Another of the egos big tools is to be right. When you are trying to be right, it's because you believe you are guilty and wrong, and are trying to project that onto someone else, so that someone else can be wrong and you can pretend to be right. It may seem at first that the benefit here is that someone else gets to be the guilty one. But that's not the real goal. The real goal is to increase the sense of separation between you and others, which splits your mind, intensifies the sense of being "not them", and thereby intensifies the sense of "being me."

Another of its devices is being judgemental. It may seem at first that the payoff in judging is that you're finding something wrong with someone else, perhaps to be superior to them, or to confirm how you are inferior to them. But the real secret payoff is that if you are superior you are "more than", and "more real" and "more true." And this increases the sense of existing. And being inferior to others or less than or insecure, even if unpleasant, still increases the sense of being something - existing. And all the labels you pile on are just more definitions for what you are.

Another big tool is grievances. If you are bearing a grudge it means you are holding onto the past, which means you are pulling your self away from the present. The present is where your real self has presence, and exists, so the ego does not want anything to do with it. It wants to maintain unhealed unresolved ties to the past so that it can be anchored in it. It needs the past in order to have grudges and grievances that it can keep blaming other people for, so that it can keep projecting and separating and reinforcing itself. Without grievances there can be no way to distinguish that you are separate from others, and so can't exist as an ego.

So it's not just about scapegoating, or being a negative or positive victim, or being at the effect of the world, or people attacking you, or you projecting guilt, or disowning of responsibility, or trying to identify with idols, or becoming a body, or whatever else. The CORE motivation of the entire ego thought system, the GOAL, is to keep being a separate self and REPLACE (kill off) the Self that God created. To keep reinforcing ego, building it, armouring it, defending it, intensifying it, having pride in it, decorating it, increasing it through any means possible.

This is all rooted in the core belief that you are not as God created you. And by denying the self God created, you seem to believe you lack self. That you lack love, power, identity, causal will. And it is these beliefs - these blocks to the awareness of love's (Self's) presence - these denials, that you lack all these things, that really needs to be undone.

Undoing these things doesn't directly attack the ego, and trying to get rid of ego by demonising or attacking it will just be more ego attacking itself to make itself exist more. You can't undo it by using ego tactics to fight it. You have to surrender it.

You undo it by basically withdrawing belief from it, not listening to it, noticing how you're adding to it, being willing to be mistaken, but even moreso by looking at the beliefs you have about NOT being a self, about being unwhole or unholy, about how you lack and are in need, how you don't have love, how you've lost something, how you've been diminished, and this general theme of "something is wrong with me." Your "self attack" has to stop.

Without these faults, these lacks, these needs, this wanting, this self denial and self attack, there can be no guilt and no ego. And the way to undo self attack is through the secret of salvation, in which you recognize you're doing it to yourself and you stop doing it because you want a better way. And that is the path of forgiveness - to undo ego by questioning its foundation. By accepting that you are still as God created you, lacking nothing, needing nothing, ending victimhood, reclaiming power and responsibility for what you are, and opening up to your real identity as the Christ self - the whole holy self, which is based on oneness not separation.

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion."

"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will."

"You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves you."

"Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker."

"For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt."

Sometimes when less than happy, I will notice that probably some fear is present. I will look at the "fearing" itself and to some degree this shines a light on it and dispels it. Just even admitting to being afraid is helpful.

But what I recently discovered is that when I am less than happy, it is possible to actually notice that I'm believing not just in fear and guilt, but in sin. If I recognize this and look at the sense or feeling of "its a sin" or "sinfulness" or "I am sinful", which can express itself in any form of guilt or fear or emotional upset, I am quite surprised how rapidly a tremendous weight is lifted. It's like a dark veil is just lifted right up and all of those symptoms just disappear.

If sin isn't real, then everything that came from sin must go with it - all the guilt and all the fear and all of the unhappiness. It's like unplugging the problem at its core.

The ego mind is a mind of separation and conflict.

The ego mind always has two faces - a persona and a shadow.

Within the ego mind itself, one part of itself is against the other part. The ego mind attacks itself, being an idea of self attack.

The persona portion of the ego mind is what most people most often identify with, thinking that this is their entire 'self'.

The shadow portion of the ego mind is the part most people disassociate from, project onto others, and hide unconsciously. This part of the mind we do not identify with, and believe it is not even a part of ourself. Therefore we scapegoat it onto others and accuse other people of being it.

But at all times, both the positive and negative are within the confines of our ego mind. Both the stuff we think is good and the stuff we think is bad are within our mind. And the stuff we think is our 'self' and the stuff we think is 'not self' (i.e. 'others) is still within our own mind.

Both the enemies that we perceive as 'not me', or 'out there', and the innocent victim that we try to position ourselves as 'in here', are both a part of a single mind which is at war with itself.

This war is taking place between your mind and your mind. It is a war of self-attack. Within the arena of your mind, you have these two sides, comprising the persona judger and the shadow retaliator. Or, the persona victim and the shadow victimizer.

Most of the time the shadow is projected and disassociated from, meaning we see it outside of 'our self' (the persona self) and disconnected from it. We literally believe through disassociation that it is not our own self, we want nothing to do with it, we try to get rid of it, and we use the persona part of our mind to attack it. Even though it's a part of (not apart from) this one mind.

We become so deceived by this 'split' in consciousness, this mental delusion of two selves, that the persona part of us, which we most typically believe is the whole ego, does everything it can to disassociate itself from the projected sin/guilt/fear/wrongness. It wants nothing to do with it, entirely because this attitude increases the sense of *separation*, or the severity of the 'split' within the mind, between the good-favoring and bad-favoring parts.

We need to learn the secret to salvation, according to Jesus, which is that "you are doing this to yourself".

What this means is, our whole mind is a container in which there is both the ego persona and the ego shadow. The stuff we deny, reject, judge, project, and attack is the shadow part, but it's still a part of our own mind. And the persona part which tries to reject that part is also in our own mind. It is not that the good parts are good or that it is being attacked by the bad parts that's the issue. That's not the problem. The problem is the sense of *separation* between these two parts.

The sense that the 'bad stuff in me' is 'someone else', is our major error. The accusation of sin onto someone else, which is really our own sin, is a mistake. The belief that someone is not One with us, is a mistake. The projection of our darkness outward, and our cutting it off from ourselves to create an enemy, is a mistake.

The darkness of the shadow ONLY appears to be dark and unwanted because of how intensely the 'good-seeking' persona part of us, that we retain identification with, tries to increase the 'contrast' between the two. The darkness would not appear AS dark if this separation or rift or split were not as pronounced. But this would also have to mean that the good-focused part of the mind be diminished in its exclusivity, its favor and its judgement.

See it is not just the bad icky shadow stuff that we need to 'get rid of'. In fact it is the ego persona that tries to get rid of that stuff, which means the ego persona is kept, and therefore the ego is kept, making this a trap. The more you try to get rid of stuff the more you manufacture a story about how dark that stuff is, and it will grow stronger as an enemy of the persona. All enemies are pretty much tied into the persona's idea of what it does not want, in order to make itself look better. But if the persona is going to attack the shadow, then the mind is going to become more split, and both parts are still going to stay within the confines of the single mind. So you will suffer.

Enemies are not the problem. Separation between good and bad is the problem. Separation between good-loving persona and good-hating shadow is the problem. And not realizing that both of these parts of your experience are entirely WITHIN your own mind, and has NOTHING to do with anyone else, is the big realization here.

You need to come to a perspective, an awareness, where you are looking at the contents of your mind, and realize that both the persona part of your mind is within you, AND the shadow part - the enemy, the attacker, the things you don't want, the parts you think are 'other people', that is ALSO in your mind. And you need to get to where you can see BOTH at the same time as being part of YOU. It is that awareness, where a sense of Self 'spans' and INCLUDES both parts, that you are in the kind of space where you can see that you are, literally, doing this to yourself. You are the victim and the victimizer. You are the persona and the shadow. You are both parts of this separated ego.

When you see this, and hold this perspective for a moment, where you can see both 'characters' if you will, both parts of you at once, you will see in that light how ridiculous it is that you are against yourself. The awareness that who you thought was an enemy, is YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that you thought you were against some other person but were in fact against YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that the behavior of the enemy, which you thought you had nothing to do with, is actually just another puppet - another part of YOU, that YOU are using against yourself... seeing that will wake you up.

You have to get to where you can see and accept that both sides of the split-mind war are WITHIN your mind and are both parts of what's going on inside yourself. This awareness will show you the utter ridiculousness of the war that you are waging against yourself, the roles that you are playing in your mind which you thought were distinct, the Self that you are - the awareness which encompasses the persona and the shadow, which is your real PERSONALITY. You are the awareness in which you see the war that you are waging, and the fact that you are playing BOTH SIDES, that you are literally against yourself with two artificial personalities.

You have to see that you are BEING both of those fake personalities (persona and shadow, victim and victimizer), and that it makes absolutely no SENSE that you can possibly be truly both at once unless you lose sight of this awareness. And since you are in this awareness, the 'illusion' that you are only one of these two parts cannot be maintained. It's like realizing that two characters in a play - enemies - are both being played by the same actor. And that awareness will set you free from the illusion of a separation.

This awareness is the key to salvation, because in this awareness and in the admitting that you are both the victim and victimizer, you will see how utterly futile and ridiculous that is, as well as owning up to the awareness that you are the one doing this... nobody else is involved, because the 'other person' was actually your own shadow, which is part of your own mind, part of your split identity - one of two parts of you. This UNIFIES your awareness, because you are likely willing to drop this stupid activity as soon as you see it, because it is so obviously insane and self-defeating.

When you see this... just wait to see how long you need to have this awareness before the entire thing just disappears ... it only takes a moment. It only takes for you to glimpse this, and both the persona and the shadow will cancel each other out. As soon as you see that you've been doing this all to yourself, both sides will collapse. The awareness that saw both these parts as parts of itself, is the light which will dispel this darkness. The darkness was the *illusion* of a separation between these two parts - the idea that one of these parts was 'not you'. But it is you. And that undoes the separation, so both sides have to now cease to be separate. They come together, unify, all contrast disappears, and ONENESS is restored. And it will be like nothing even happened.

The secret to salvation... you are doing this to yourself.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

"That the body cannot heal the mind but the mind can heal the body proves the mind must be stronger than the body. EVERY MIRACLE DEMONSTRATES THIS."

When your mind is sane, you know you are causal. You have no level confusion. The body comes OUT from you.

When your mind is insane, you project causality outside of yourself, which causes you to see yourself as an effect.

The levels are now reversed and perception is backwards.

Seeing yourself as an effect is the idea that you are being CAUSED from outside yourself, and that must mean you believe you are at the effect of those causes.

Seeing yourself as "affected" is an external attack (really self attack) and shows up as ALL forms of sickness in the body, including death. The mind that sees itself under siege cannot help but PICTURE itself as attacked, and this picturing shows up AS THE BODY.

When externalized causes are believed to define what you are, you begin to DEMONSTRATE that you are at the effect of others. And you now start to PROJECT an image of a body that is under attack.

This demonstration is an accusation and an attempt to condemn your brother as the "cause" of sin. If he is a sinner, and you are not, you might be innocent, but you ARE now AFFECTED.

This means you now believe you are BEING attacked by your brother, and you PROVE this by manifesting illness in your body. Then you claim, "brother at your hand I die." "Sick bodies are accusers"!

When this reversal of levels, this belief in magic, this projection of sin, and this displacement of causality, which is ALL THE SAME THING, is corrected, your mind becomes sane again.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

Now that you see yourself as CAUSE and NOT at the effect of anything, you now position yourself as incapable of suffering, incapable of BEING AFFECTED, and incapable of being attacked. This invulnerability shines away the sickness which was held in place by insane level confusion, and THE BODY NOW HEALS.

The mind is responsible for every condition of the body. At all times. When mind has level confusion, it SHOWS UP in the body as illness. When the mind does not have level confusion, it SHOWS UP in the body as physical health.

This is the central teaching of the course, that you cannot be at the effect of others and when you recognize this you will ONLY CAUSE LIFE.

This is a course in life, healing and miracles. It is not a course in being sick or dead.

"The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds. The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be CHANGED."

"The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain, and NO reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence."

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"Healing is the result of using the body solely for communication. Since this IS natural, it heals by making whole, which is also natural. All mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical or NOT MIND is a fragmented (or sick) interpretation. Mind cannot be made physical, but it can be made manifest THROUGH the physical if it uses the body to GO BEYOND itself. By reaching out, the mind EXTENDS itself. It does not stop at the body, for if it does it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has TURNED AGAINST ITSELF.

The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else."

Think of the physical body as having a purpose. It has a purpose, because it has a USE, because it has a USER. It is being used FOR something, other than the body in and of itself - because the body is not an end in itself. It is a tool.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

The ego - ie insanity in your mind - can use the body for a negative purpose. This purpose is attack and destruction. When you are using the body for this purpose, the mind uses the body like it's a weapon.

It actually transforms the form of the body into what looks like "a picture of crucifixion." This is a picture of body which has things like damage, sickness, disease, signs of death, cancers and deformities and so on. Basically various forms of DEATH, to try to GIVE DEATH to others.

These are USED by the ego mind to send a message to those who look upon the body. At the same time the ego is using the body to try to ATTACK others. The sickened states that it invents in the body are themselves attempts to reach out and "infect others" with suffering.

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

Not to induce guilt in anyone who might be doing this or experiencing the difficulties of sickness, but the course is indeed teaching that when the ego USES the body it uses it as a weapon to try to inflict suffering on others.

Its primary method is to put sickness "symptoms" into the body so that the body itself, physically, becomes a way to "spread death" to others. In particularly virile forms the body becomes contagious and capable of causing to others what seems to have happened to itself, thus extending sickness and death.

When the body is sick, it also sends a kind of visual physical message to those who witness it, that says "look what you did to me." It induces guilt, it accuses of sin, it projects an egoic message of the proof of sin, and we hold this suffering up for others to see so that they will be accused of causing it. And thus by our own desire to make our own body sick, we're willing to suffer if it means others are accused of sinning against God and can take on the guilt and the punishment.

In effect, a sick mind uses the body to make the body sick so that the body can make others sick. But the mind can also be healed of its sickness and its attempts to attack or to make guilty. And then the mind is more healed and now the mind is still USING the body but it is now using it for a higher purpose.

A healed mind USES the body not as a weapon or to try to project guilt or to scapegoat or to prove others to be the sinful cause of its symptoms. Instead a healed mind sends healing through the body. This healing love literally heals the body and removes from it the signs and symbols of attack and death.

As the body is healed, it now changes its symbolic message, and instead of now showing a picture of crucifixion to another it instead shows a symbolic image of something "unharmed", something innocent and free from attack. Such a healed healthy body sends a broadcast, visually, symbolically, that other people have not done anything to it, and therefore they cannot have sinned. This "physical message", a literal physical embodiment of the mind's belief in wholeness, exonerates those who look upon it, and in turn CAUSES their minds and bodies to be also healed.

"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. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

In effect, a sick body provides a powerful TEMPTATION to others to believe that they are guilty because of its suffering. While a healed body provides a powerful LIBERATION to others to believe that they are NOT guilty because the body is obviously unharmed.

What actually happens is an interesting repurposing of things. Given that a person with an ego will believe the body is real, and give a great amount of weight to the FORM that the body takes, they will tend to derive MEANING from the form of the body. As such we might say, because the body has the shape of a cancerous growth, "that means" there has been an attack and a sickness.

And by thus deriving meaning from the body based on its appearance, the mind of the viewer BELIEVES and gives POWER TO that body, making it real to them. And now it cannot escape being at the EFFECT of that body. The unhealed mind of the viewer now sees that body as confirming their guilt, providing their sinfulness, suggesting they must have attacked it, and they basically AGREE with its condition. Entering into false empathy, they cannot help but feel personally responsible - guilty - that the other "real body" is sick. And this cannot be escaped while the person believes bodies are real.

The result of this is that those with egos view sick bodies as offensive and accusatory and harmful and not to be trusted and as attacking and threatening them. I couldn't find the exact quote wording but the course does say the ego hates sick bodies and feels threatened by them.

"That is really why you recoil from the demands of the dependent, and from the sight of a broken body. Your ego is threatened, and blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the strain of divided will."

What then happens when your mind is more healed, and thus removes the sickness from the body, is that you TAKE ADVANTAGE of the fact that other people are making your body real still. They still have an ego, their minds are still sick, they still need healing.

When they look upon your body with the same mentality of "making it real", and believing that its FORM defines MEANING, it looks there and sees no evidence of attack, no suffering, no pain, no proof of sin. Because your mind has truly forgiven and has PROVED forgiveness by healing the body of any side effects.

When a sick mind looks upon a healed body, the sick mind still believes the body is real and that its form is meaningful, and thus is "giving its power away" to that body to define FOR IT what is true. When you thus show an egoic mind a HEALED BODY, it taps into THEIR belief that they've given power to your body, THEIR belief that your body defines the truth, and because your body is depicting a healed FORM, they now automatically derive a MEANING from its form that "there's nothing wrong with it."

Because of their own giving away of their own power to your body, they can't help now but be AFFECTED BY your healed body, having given it power over them. And thus your healed body now taps into this dynamic in their mind and gives them the message "I have the power to inform you that you have not sinned."

And by this kind of indirect "back door" in a way, a re-purposing of their belief that your body DEFINES their guilt or innocence, your healed body TEACHES THEM, through its repurposed use of symbolic FORM, that they must be innocent because there is no sign of suffering. That they cannot have done anything. The impact of this teaching has massive amounts of POWER to educate them that, because your body is healed, THEY ARE INNOCENT.

And thus by witnessing that their nightmare has turned into a happy dream, your body has turned into a herald of harmlessness, their mind is now ACCEPTING the message - on their own terms - that they must be innocent. And thus, indirectly, their mind will now allow your body to exonerate them and this (by their own causation) causes them to believe they are innocent.

Thus does a healed body become a messenger to the sick, to tell them that they are not sick, because there is no evidence of them having caused sickness. It shows them they are not guilty, and uses their belief in your body's "power" to tell them what's true, to correct their view of themselves. So they think, I cannot have done anything because your body is in great condition and it is literally inspiring me to believe in life and health and wholeness.

As such their mind now accepts healing, becomes itself more whole, is lifted up, resurrected, and it in turn facilitates the side-effect that it also heals their own body. Thus the miracle of healing which was given to YOUR mind to heal YOUR body, extends and transfers to the minds of OTHERS as they witness your miracle. And thus is your brother HEALED ALONG WITH YOU. And now HIS BODY HEALS AS WELL!

"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you."

"Whoever says, "There IS no gap between my mind and yours," has kept GOD's promise, NOT his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. And by his healing IS his brother healed."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

When you perceive that something is 'wrong' with someone else, and that this wrongness does not apply to you, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.

When you perceive that what applies to another person, due to their apparent separate free will and the idea that they are supposed to be responsible for what they do, in isolation, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.

When you think that its possible for you to do something to someone else, or to have an attitude or judgement toward them, which does not apply to you in any way, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.

When you believe that someone else clearly is the guilty party and that you did not do anything whatsoever to ask for mistreatment, and that you have been victimized, and that you are completely innocent and they are completely guilty, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.

When you hate someone or judge them or are disgusted by them or offended by them or they seem to be totally crazy or they are your worst enemy, in which you are none of these things, you are SEVERELY MENTALLY ILL.

In all the ways of perceiving reality, when you perceive that there is a SEPARATION between what applies to you, and what applies to another, that is MENTAL ILLNESS. And this is the foundation of ALL mental illness. A belief in separation, in all its forms and flavors, is mental illness.

When you perceive that something is happening to you which you did not ask for, when you are receiving something you did not choose, or that you are not receiving you what you did attempt to ask for, that is also mental illness.

When you believe that death is inevitable and that it is going to happen to you against your will and that you will be a passive victim of it, that is also mental illness.

You will notice that the above describes THE MAJORITY OF HUMAN KIND. That is because the majority of human kind IS MENTALLY ILL.

To understand WHY this is mental illness, you need to understand how the mind is supposed to function and what is NATURAL for the mind, as opposed to unnatural. All of the attitudes listed above are unnatural and are NOT normal. They are very commonplace, but they are not normal.

The mind, in every person, is not ever in any way supposed to operate in the realm of separation. Your mind is meant to be whole, which means not only that it is whole within itself, but also that it is part of a greater whole in which all minds are joined as ONE MIND.

This means that everyone shares the same mind. This One Mind is the mind of God. When your mind is One with the Mind of God, you are SANE. God is permanently whole and permanently sane and there is no separation of fragmentation in God's mind. You can share God's mind, and that is your NATURAL CONDITION. And it is in sharing God's mind fully that you MUST experience PERFECT HEALTH - perfect divine immortal health.

When your mind is separated off from the whole, and therefore sees itself as separate and limited, it will also see itself as containing limitations and separations. This is what gives birth to EGO. The ego is INSANITY. When there is ego in your mind, i.e. a lack of wholeness, a lack of oneness, a lack of unity with God, you WILL experience insanity - mental illness.

So then as you go around the world perceiving that a given person is "not you", and another person is also "not you", and that there is not something IN them that is exactly the same as what is in YOU, you are in mental illness. You have entered into a private hallucinatory world of separation and division and SELF ATTACK. As soon as you believe in separation in any way, your whole mind must attack itself in an attempt to set one part of itself against the other part. This self attack produces ALL SICKNESS, and all sickness is a form of MENTAL ILLNESS.

Once you are in mental illness, you will perceive that other people are separate from you, that there are separate rules that apply to them which don't apply to you, that what they will is different from what you will, that something can apply to them that does not apply to you, you are in mental illness. Once you start to treat them in a different way than you treat other people, or react to them differently based on their behavior, or have a different attitude of specialness based on who they are or what they exclusively do for you, you've moved away from the UNCONDITIONAL LOVE which is the condition of the WHOLE mind, and have entered into conditionality. Conditionality is insanity.

So then when you are hating the political candidate for the opposition, or when you are against that other sports team, or when you hate that person who seemed to do something to someone against their will, or when you judge someone for the form that they appear to take, or when you can only love a special person and nobody else, or when you believe that you are right and someone is wrong, or that you are good and someone else is bad, THAT IS MENTAL ILLNESS.

It is not natural. It is not normal. It is extremely common and almost everyone on this planet IS mentally ill. This IS a crazy world, but it doesn't have to be.

So when we talk about mental illness, let's be clear about what sanity really means (One shared mind of wholeness and peace and unconditional love), and that anything other than this is mental illness in one form or another. Everyday people rising up 'against' some other group of people, is mental illness. Everyday people attacking some other group righteously because of how that other group is 'less spiritual' or 'less honest' or 'less good' or whatever, that is mental illness. And its YOUR mental illness, not theirs.

All forms of separation are mental illness. All perceptions of separation are mental illness. And all other commonly recognized types of "mental illness", which people would normally call mental illness, such as paranoia or schizophrenia or psychosis or whatever, those are just the more noticeable EXTREMES of mental illness. That doesn't mean that all the other people are SANE. Almost every psychiatrist on the planet is insane. Almost every doctor or nurse on the planet is insane. Almost every pastor of churches or preacher in religions is insane.

The only sanity is in God, with God, joined with God, one with God, as God's Holy Son who is permanently sane and whole and complete, devoid of separation and lies. Only in TRUTH is there sanity. So before we judge other people for being insane or 'not right', let's remember that WE are just as insane and we need to work on our own mental health instead.

So long as you remain in a position of causation, you are all-powerful. And that means the truth comes out of you, it is given and shared, and reinforces itself. You see it in everything you project it onto, and in your harmlessness you are safe.

Being all-powerful, you are invulnerable. Nothing can happen to you against your will because you are the one doing the happening. Being purely causal and creative, you have tremendous strength and ability. There is nothing your holiness cannot do.

Centered in your power, which you share with God, you know that you are safe and protected. So long as you do not hurt yourself, you cannot be hurt. So long as you do not cause something to happen to you, nothing can happen to you. Your will is as powerful as God's will, and nothing can prevail against it or intrude upon it.

""My Self is ruler of the universe."

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

(Urtext W253L to W253L1)

"There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. "

(Urtext W190L5)

It is only when you deny that you are all powerful that you enter into what we call fear. Fear is a seeming absence of love, so if you've denied yourself you've denied love. Seeming to lack power, to be weakened, to see yourself as not the cause, you now see cause and power and strength as separate from you - because you believe you are separate from them.

Cause and will and power and mind are now projected outward and are seen as outside of you, beyond your will, outside the limits of your mind and of your control. They seem therefore to be able to act without your consent, to will on their own. ACIM calls this an "alien will".

Once you see cause or power as outside of you, separate from you, you HAVE to also believe that you are no longer powerful or causal. And this begins the slippery slope toward seeing yourself as being able to be affected. If you are not all powerful, something else has more power. If you are not causal, something else could cause you.

As soon as your mind believes that power and causation are external or separate or disowned, it also sees itself as an EFFECT of that causation. It believes it can BE affected, because it is no longer strong, or safe, or protected by the love of God. Being in uncertainty about its own causation, the mind goes into doubt and fear.

If there is an alien will out there, and if it is separate from your own, then it must be against you without your permission. This is the root of all fear. The belief and perception that the word is transpiring against you, choosing without consulting you, determining your future, deciding whether you will live or die, and generally "happening to you" beyond your ability to stop it.

You can't seem to stop the world attacking, threatening, troubling, upsetting you etc, once you're on this slippery slope into hell. And the only response to that is fear. If you do indeed see power and causation as outside your scope of control, beyond your reach to manage, then stuff can happen to you at any time, without your seeming to choose it. And who wouldn't be afraid of that? It is disturbing to think something can happen that you cannot prevent.

You're afraid because you see yourself as a victim. A victim is a role where somehow, in some way, you seem not to be the one causing or choosing, and you seem to lack the power to stop it, simply because you believe something has power over you. A power that is not yours, a power you do not share in, a power that you cannot wield, and a power that you have lost.

Ultimately then it is in fact YOUR OWN POWER that you have dissociated from and projected. It is YOUR OWN CAUSATION that you have put outside of you, pretending it does not belong to you. It is YOUR OWN MIND that is giving this power away and is trying to associate it with things that do NOT have it. And it is YOUR OWN MIND that positions itself as being "at the effect of" that very same power.

This means of course that you are doing it to yourself. All fear is you attacking yourself from the outside in. All fear is you believing that you are at the effect of a cause that's separate from you. Yet ideas do not leave their source. Your mind houses the idea that cause is separate from you. Your mind houses the causation that it visualizes as outside of it. And your mind houses the effects that it puts into itself to demonstrate what the cause is doing to you.

Really this means that all fear is self-threat, you can only be afraid if you threaten yourself, it is only YOUR OWN POWER that you are afraid of, fear is an attempt to hide from your own power, and being a victim is an attempt to pretend that you are powerless. All sense of fear then comes from the belief that you have no power over "that power" which seems not to be yours, and is an attempt to PRETEND to be powerless. Yet you USE your power to do this.

If in any way you believe that anything in the world has the power to do anything to you at all, you have for a start associated YOUR power with external things. You've GIVEN your power away to things that don't own it. You WANT those things to have your power. Now you see and perceive external things as being powerful over you, causing you, sinning against you, justifying your anger, and making you afraid and upset.

But notice that YOUR MIND also manufacturers all of the sense of "I am at the effect", it visualizes an appropriate "reaction" to the threat, it PUTS THE EFFECTS IN YOU, and literally materializes all the symptoms and consequences that it imagines must come from such a cause. If it for example believes that some other person has power over it, it will not only give that power TO the person, it will also visualize itself as affected BY the person, AND put symptoms into itself to correspond to the "amount of threat" that it has invented.

This is where the hierarchy of illusions comes in, along with orders of difficulty. You may have noticed that when you believe something external is big and serious, important and powerful, authoritative and trusted, or has some sense of capability or truth, you have MORE reaction than when it's something mild, weak, insignificant, unimportant, or that you don't believe in.

If some educated doctor suddenly tells you you have a terminal illness, you will very likely go into into much bigger fear than if someone tells you their opinion about the weather. If there seems to be an external threat to your "life", ie the body seems to be being caused against your will, and you think it is your self, then you will have a huge amount of terror.

But in every case, in every scenario, no matter how it looks, or who seems to have the power over you, or who is doing what to you, or what role they play, it is ALWAYS YOU, always your own mind which is DECIDING to believe in a) the disowning of your own power, b) the projecting of it onto another, c) associating it with another, d) seeing yourself as caused BY that power, and e) therefore changed against your will by that power. And your mind itself will invent AND PUT IN PLACE, all of your symptoms, effects, altered feelings, consequences and results of what you believe that power can do to you.

This is also precisely how the symptoms of sickness come about. And it is also what happens when you project your sin onto others, through the body, which uses the body to accuse another of sin. Your mind sees itself as under attack by an external power - its own power that it has disowned - and to try to prove it, it manifests changes in the body to symbolize the various ways that you are under attack. The body is then held up as a picture of crucifixion to show to another that THEY caused this effect in your body, even though YOU put the effect there.

It's all part of your attempt to FORCE them to have power over you. It's your wish that you would even crucify yourself and make yourself seem to die, to attack the body with terrible afflictions, IF only it can mean that, at the same time, your brother is assigned all your causing, thus all your "doing", is framed for your murder, and can be accused of causing YOU to change.

"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

This all simply happens through false perception which is the reversal of cause and effect. Whenever you see cause in the world in any way, you are projecting YOUR power to cause. And you must see yourself as a victim or effect of that. Perception is now backwards because you perceive the world is happening to you instead of you dreaming the world. To see the world causing you is false perception. To see YOU causing the world, is true perception.

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

(urtext T28C11)

What this all means is really the secret of salvation, that "you are doing this to yourself". No matter how it looks or who plays the role of victim or victimizer, still this is the truth. Your mind disowns its own power, your mind frames others and the world for having this power, your mind decides to position itself as affectable, your mind puts the effects in place, and your mind uses the effects to accuse others and the world of what YOU did, so that you can keep disowning your power.

Effectively, using the body as a scapegoating mechanism to get rid of your sin. Because sin is very closely aligned with causation. You think that you used your power to cause the death of God, to attack reality, and to change the truth. And now you try to keep projecting your power in order to avoid admitting to this, even though it's not true. If you maintain yourself as powerless, you can claim that you have no power, and therefore cannot have been the one who caused God to change.

But wielding your own power also means therefore that you cannot be hurt, or attacked, or had power over, or caused, or affected, or made vulnerable, or weakened, or made sick, OR CAUSED TO DIE, without your consent, and without YOU making it happen TO yourself. If you so choose to stop attacking yourself WITH YOUR OWN POWER, nothing in the world can have any power over you. If you choose to stop hurting yourself, you cannot be hurt. If you choose to stop making yourself sick, you cannot be sick. And if you choose to stop dying, you cannot die.

You cannot be afraid of anything but your own self-attack. Nothing in the world causes you. Nothing in the world has power over you. No-one has the power to make you anything. You are not affected by anything but your own mind.

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

(urtext W281L)

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

(urtext W26L)

"It can be but myself I crucify."

(urtext W196L)

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details"

(urtext W152L1)

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

(urtext W190L5)

To summarize simply, only you can make yourself afraid, you can only be afraid of your own power, only you give yourself the symptoms and effects which you think that power would produce, and only you can stop doing that to yourself. Only you threaten yourself, only you choose to be in fear, only you make yourself a victim, and you have the power to NEVER be victimized ever again.

You have the power to live forever, and that makes you utterly invulernerable and incapable of being sick or dying. You have this power because God has shared his with you. And if it be your will, no-one and nothing has any power over you to frighten you. You cannot be afraid unless you choose to do so, any more than you can have any effects of any kind without electing to choose that they be there. You are the one who is scaring yourself, and you can stop.

"I am not weak, but strong."

"I am not helpless, but all powerful."

(urtext W91L8)

All of spacetime, and everything within the realm of relativity, is contradictory, impossible, insane, self-defeating, lacking and unwhole.

The reason is that it was made entirely by denying God, denying the absolute, denying wholeness, and trying to bring about something completely impossible - an opposite to God.

But as soon as you lack wholeness, you have things like separation, specialness, scarcity, contradictions, differences and lies.

The problem with such a system is that it contradicts itself. For example, anything separate seeks to destroy other things and to be different from that, so that it can stand out more and be distinct and exist.

It's the same with the ego, the ego wants to separate off and exclude and isolate, because the more contrast there is the more it has a seeming identity. Its identity is then made from the walls of separation.

The problem then is that even though the ego and the world define themselves based on what they lack about other things - what they do not have, and through the attempt to attack everything, they simultaneuosly need those things to exist in order to have any contast.

You can see this with ecosystems for example, where you depend on plants to create oxygen so you can breathe and yet you also eat the plants, thus depriving yourself. If you were have a population explosion that eats all available food, suddenly you would have mass extinction. So now "total life" contains "total death."

The reason is that a relative world is a denial of God's law of the golden rule - that giving and receiving are one. In relativity, this is denied and the rule is now that what you give you lose.

So each time you go to do anything at all in spacetime, you simultaneously get the opposite. Any gain is a loss, any advancement is a retreat from something else, anything you try to destroy you need for your own survival, if you don't share you end up with nothing, when you give what you have you don't get to keep it, etc.

Ultimately the binding rule in spacetime is that every single thing you do is thwarted by the fact that its opposite is also included. You literally cannot have wholeness. You have to choose what you stand to gain, and what you stand to lose, at the same time.

It's an extremely frustrating system because it means there is no whole truth, you can't win without losing, you can't gain without loss, you can't choose one thing without sacrificing the other things, you can't even breathe without reducing the oxygen that you depend on to live.

It's a totally self-defeating, self-destructive, contradictory, frustrating, impossible, nonsense, bullshit system in which nothing can really work and nothing is as it seems.

This is encapsulated by the idea of yin-and-yang, in which there are seeming opposites or polarities, but also you'll find some trace of the other opposite with each. As one increases the other decreases. As one is gained, the other is lost.

Basically, it means that no matter what you do in a relative system you can only partially win, and you must also partially lose, because every gain contains some loss, and every loss contains some win. Nothing is just one thing, nothing is just itself, and nothing is whole. It's all a mixture.

And that means on a physical level everything is a compromise, and a sacrifice, and a limitation. It means you can't have your cake and eat it. It means you can only ever partially succeed at anything, all the options available to you are lacking in some way, there is no way to pick one thing and be totally satisfied with it, and everything is broken in some way.

The ego depends on separating off from and attacking others in order to reinforce its sense of being special and different and unique, of existing at all. Its whole identity is increased by contrast. But at the same time, the very thing it attacks it needs to exist, and if it were to destroy it there would be no contrast and the ego would have no definition. So it cannot fulfill its own goal and must be frustrated in its entire functioning.

This is also why making choices in this world is utterly ridiculous, because no matter what you choose there will always be something lacking and missing, because nothing is perfect. You can't get the whole of anything ever. You pick one thing and you get that sinking feeling that you should've picked the other, because the other has some valid parts and yet not all the parts. And yet the other thing if chosen lacks these parts as well, and so you can't decide. Because every single choice the world offers you is between partial success and partial success, and never does it offer you a choice of completion, totality, wholeness or satisfaction.

How frustrating and stupid is such a system, founded on a belief in the impossible, an attempt to bring about the contradictory, and a state which totally denies itself in every way. While yin-yang is supposed to be a symbol of balance, it's really a symbol of complete dis-satisfaction and impossible inequality. All it really means is that every single thing is equally unwhole, not itself, contradictory and against itself.

"God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

The ego thrives on two sides of a coin: desire and fear.

Desire is its attempt to "get", which really means to steal from another and deprive them of it.

Fear is its attempt to "not get" or to "get rid of", which means to be stolen from and deprived.

These are the two sides of the same horizontal axis in which some finite amount of something is transferred to or from another, to or from the separate self.

Fear is actually a form of attack which is an attempt to murder, and an attempt to "make it go away", or a rejection of something - typically to get rid of "only what is negative".

Greed, shall we say, is more a form of selfishness and an attempt to be given "only what is positive".

So the ego is always trying to get rid of/kill what it perceives as negative, through fear, and to get more of what it regards as positive through possession or attachment.

Everyone always tries to get rid of what they consider "false", while trying to get more of what they consider "true", whether it be on the level of spirit/reality or in illusions. The ego and the soul both want what they consider to be true, and what is true is always valuable.

However, attachment through getting, also leads to the potential for loss, because you can only seem to lose what you seem to have stolen. Believing it can be stolen from another is to believe it can be stolen from you.

And similarly fear can attract to you what you do not what, in the same vein as "what you resist persists". Fearing makes it real and, while saying you do not want it, is a choice to have more of it.

So in effect the ego attacks itself by making itself be threatened by the very things it says it does not want, so that they haunt it and pursue it relentlessly. Which is why fear also entails a sort of running away and being chased (especially in dreams).

And then on the flipside the ego causes itself to lose the very things it cherishes by trying to stop them leaving, which is a kind of push/pull energy that forces them away.

In other words, attraction and repulsion are the same thing. Since the ego also fears what it thinks it wants, this prevents it from gaining it, and so deprives itself.

What you try gain you lose. What you fear comes to you. Success is failure. Failure is success. Attachment becomes loss. Gain becomes the fear of loss. Loss becomes deprivation which inspires lack and wanting, which leads to trying to get, etc. The metaphysics/dynamics/logic here is quite interesting.

And on it goes, feeding upon its own madness.

"Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss." UrW41L1