Where could be absolutely no sympathy for victims, IF you could clearly see that the victim is 100% choosing everything that happens to them.
If someone is suffering with sickness and disease, you might feel sympathetic toward them, but would you feel this way if you could clearly see that the person was causing this themselves on purpose? If they were deliberately putting the sickness in place and making it happen, would you feel sympathetic as though it were happening against their will?
If someone is afraid, you might feel sympathetic and sorry for them, but would you feel this way if you knew that this person was completely making up every single part of this fear? That they did not really have any need to be afraid and were just pretending to be afraid?
If someone is feeling guilty, you might feel sympathy for them, but would you feel sympathy if you knew they were totally making up all of the guilt, had absolutely no real need to be guilty, were just pretending to be guilty and it was all just a big lie?
If someone were riddled with sinfulness and remorse over some terrible thing they did, would you feel any sympathy for them if you could clearly see that, in fact, and in truth, they had not only not done anything wrong whatsoever, but also you could see clearly that they were just pretending to be sinful, were putting on a big show, and were totally faking it?
See .... we have all these ways in which we support, protect, reinforce, and make real, all of these layers of suffering... all of these experiences, in which it SEEMS like the person is not choosing, does not want it, did not create it, hasn't contributed to it, and therefore they are this sort of innocent victim.
The fact is that the APPEARANCE of someone being an innocent victim is nothing more than an ILLUSION. It's an illusion, because it seems to paint a picture that could be believable ONLY IF you were unaware of the whole picture of what is going on. You only fall for it and have a response of sympathy, based on the fact that YOU were fooled by their trickery, YOU fell for the deception, and YOU failed to have the ability to see through/past/beyond/overlook what APPEARS to be a "real problem".
Your unawareness causes you to react to things that you see as though they are real, ONLY because you do not recognize that it is an illusion, and you do not SEE what is really going on. You don't have all the information. And only when you are lacking information could you believe, for an instant, that someone is ACTUALLY a victim. If you do not see the ways they are choosing, and if you do not recognize their immense power, and if you forget that they can create anything, and if you are unaware of how they've set up the entire event - EVEN IF within the event it looks totally obvious that the world has transpired against the person - against their seeming will - it's STILL an illusion. The person is STILL choosing it.
Nothing happens against your will. Nothing happens to anyone against their will. Absolutely every event in 'life' is planned, orchestrated, chosen on purpose, and set in place, and set in motion, and ENACTED BY, every person that is involved. Cooperatively, deliberately, and on purpose. Because it serves the overall intention of spiritual growth, learning lessons, proceeding in awakening, and the ULTIMATE goal of returning to God.
This goal is so far-reaching and so long-term and so FIXATED on being accomplished, that we even create scripts in which we suffer and die and have disease and are attacked brutally JUST SO THAT there will be something that will happen to our mind, something that MIGHT just trigger us to take steps towards truth, towards God, towards love. These are just lessons. Horrible nasty painful lessons, sometimes, but STILL chosen. Still agreed to.
The days of the innocent victim are numbered. Its game is up.
Last night I was talking with Jesus about letting go, and I was thinking the words "I need to surrender" ....and Jesus interjected and changed the word 'surrender' to "let go" .... so then I repeated the modified words. ... I need to let go, except Jesus again interjected and added on some words.... "trying to be God".
And then I was stunned. The realization that I was trying to be God seemed to 'fit' my ego exactly, not just sending me off on some other ego tangent or train of thought, but actually kind of 'disabling' my entire ego for a moment. I felt like I had absolutely no come-back, and no defense. It was true. I felt in myself not just a kind of mental unmasking of myself, but even right down into my torso, as if I've just been stripped bare of all defenses and could do nothing but be stunned from head to toe.
It seemed brilliant, on Jesus's part, to make this observation. The ego - my ego - our egos - really are trying to be God. Our attempt to separate ourselves off form God and to then have various characteristics that would normally be God's characteristics, but without Him, is TOTALLY us trying to be God.
I believe I am God when I am in charge, in control, or having dominion over the world. I believe I'm God by making myself right about things. I believe I'm God by making decisions on my own. I believe I'm God by believing that I know stuff and am informed enough to direct outcomes. I believe I'm God when I think this is 'my own life' and that I am the one who is in charge of it. But it seems more fundamental than this even. It runs to the ego's core.
The ego is literally trying to 'take over' and 'take away from God' everything that God is. It wants to take away God's power, God's fullness, God's mind, God's reality, God's thought system, God's heart, God's eternal life, everything. It wants God not to have it, which means a choice for death, but at the same time, it wants to have all of this for itself without any of the 'conditions' that come with these things - the conditions of Heaven. Or real responsibility.
So I am trying to be God. Holy shit. This doesn't just speak to one portion of 'my life' but to ALL of it. I need to let go of trying to be God. We all do. Can you feel how much of your ego self just 'drops away' when you say this?
I let go of trying to be God.
All the uptight tension and control and fear and attack and manipulation and engagement with stories just falls away when we admit this. And when we do let go of trying to do this... in surrender, and allow God to be God, and allow ourselves to be His creation (not the other way around), the authority problem melts with it.
The authority problem is us attempting to be God, which causes us to be at war with God, and in constant struggles. Letting go of trying to be the one who is God lets go of all of that role-play... it is a heavenly surrender.
I have almost as much trouble figuring out how to forgive something now as I did years ago when I started the Course.
When the ego comes up with some problem, it seems to be just as confusing and just as obscuring and distracting. I still seem to have to 'start out' the forgiveness process in a state of blindness and ego allegiance and in the midst of a learning difficulty.
Each time a new lesson comes along, you can bet it's just as 'new' to me as lessons that I learned a long time ago. As the next layer of the onion pops into my awareness, it's just as confounding and unobvious and difficult to deal with as the last one was to begin with. Its a new challenge. A new deception. And when this is happening, it seems that everything I have supposedly 'learned' about ACIM is thrown out the window and I can't even remember how to do a basic forgiveness.
This can make it seem as though I have made no progress whatsoever, because each time a new lesson pops up its back to square one. I can accumulate an intellectual understanding of the Course and evolve my grasp of the metaphysics over time, but when it really comes down to 'how well can I apply it', not a lot has progressed. I know I have gotten better 'skilled' at it if you will, but each challenge is still challenging.
I guess this is because there is simply a lot of 'work' to do, a lot of correction needed and a lot of stuff to sort out. The sorting out can take a long time, and just because you already sorted out 15 boxes of junk and 3 boxes of 'keepers' doesn't mean the next box of junk is any easier to decipher. Here I am, still shoveling shit.
Its not glamorous. It's not what the ego wants or expects, preferring to 'make a constant upward climb' in really noticeable ways. It's not something the ego can master like, some course you can take where you master a module and move on. You're having to constantly reapply the same learning and find ways, in seemingly very real new situations, how to transfer your learning to this new scenario. It's always difficult. And the ego is always resisting doing it just as much if not more than before. It's an ongoing struggle.
Someday I presume the pile of shit will reach the bottom and there won't be any more shit to shovel. Till then, you gotta keep on digging your way out and finding that extra ounce of willingness and extre desire to open up to Holy Spirit and develop more trust. It does get better over time, but it never fails to amaze me how each new lesson is just as much as hassle as the last. There's a lot of layers to the ego onion.
The ego can be pretty sneaky. Usually it is merely suspicious. And usually it will tell you just seemingly 'small lies', just enough to get you a bit upset. This way the ego gets to hide while you're kept under control by little lies.
But then as you get upset, it's willing to start to tell you slightly bigger lies. It hopes to pry you open like a can-opener, gradually reinforcing the lies and getting you to believe in it more and more.
Over time, gradually, if unchecked, you'll start to build up some major conviction that what it's saying is true, or that what it's saying will happen is true. Before you know it, you've gone down a slippery slope into hell.
The ego bargains that if it can keep your awareness from rising up to question it, it can keep pulling you in, deeper and deeper, adding layer upon layer of deceit and lies. It banks on you going along with it, believing it, listening to it, being scared by it etc.
Over time you even start to side with it, because by believing it you begin to develop a false idea of what is true and real. You enter into insanity and everything flips around and you start to really believe that what the ego has said is actually true. You will even start to defend it. And by identifying with it, you'll even feel offended when someone else points out how much it is lying to you.
At that point, it's hard for someone to reach in and show you the truth because you are so 'close' to the ego, in identification, that you think that what it's said about you is who you really are. Seeming to 'attack' the ego then seems to be an attack on YOU, and the ego counts on that, for you to become its defender. It is now your ally.
This can go on for quite some time and in fact can even take you all the way to death. Death can only happen by you giving the ego consent to destroy you, by you just falling into all of its traps and deceptions and coming to side with its conclusions. And the funny thing is, because you're unconscious, you won't even REALIZE that you're falling into a trap, or see it AS a trap, and therefore won't even sense motivation to get out of it. You'll walk right into a death trap thinking it's your salvation.
So as this goes on, the ego is willing to become more vicious and to scream more and to tell you ever increasingly horrifying things, to build up your fear and your allegiance. It counts on you believing it, reacting to it, buying into it, and going along with it, in order for it to tempt you a little bit further into a nightmare of hell. This will continue so long as you keep falling for its tricks.
But this is a risk for the ego, because the more that it exposes its hate and its destruction and its desire to destroy you, it's really risking the possibility of you noticing how ridiculous it is. It will only bring out its 'big guns' when it knows that you are sufficiently cultivated into its deluded ways that you will not be likely to question it - that you don't have enough awareness or discernment left to NOTICE that it's giving you lies.
It will also come out full force when it senses that you are about to abandon it and withdraw your belief in it, because it doesn't want you to undo it.
It needs you to not RECOGNIZE a lie for what it is, but to fail to realize that the ego is even against you. It wants you believing it is your best friend so that it can pull you into unconsciousness.
The risk is great. If the ego turns to viciousness and comes out of hiding and presents its biggest, most vicious attacks, things could go either way. Either you will be so horrified and reactive that you'll just buy right into it, OR, you might suddenly start to notice how utterly ridiculous this all is.
When life goes to SHIT, and things just become really ridiculous, sometimes you'll start to exclaim to yourself, "this can't be happening", "it seems like a dream", "I can't believe it", "this is just so ridiculous" etc... this is you starting to REALIZE that the situation IS ridiculous. The problem is that many of us will continue to side with the seeming reality and seriousness of the situation, instead of realizing that the ABILITY to see the ridiculousness is the WAY OUT, and to focus on that. You're starting to see through the ego's lie, but your belief that 'stuff happening' is real often prevents you TRUSTING your instinct.
If things get so ridiculous that you just can't believe it, you might even start to laugh at how ridiculous it is. This is good. This happens when you've so totally exhausted the purpose of this ego lesson or your use of it, and have run out of a need for it, and now you've come to a place of SURRENDER. Usually, you will only go along with the ego because you think there's a benefit of you getting to control life, or that you need to control life in order to deal with the problem the ego lies about, and it's often not until you SURRENDER that ego position by realizing how FUTILE the separation from God is, that you'll finally WAKE UP to realize that this is all just a ridiculous stupid dream that you can no longer take seriously.
And so the allegiance with the ego then is broken. It exposed itself, it took a risk, it did everything it could to fully and directly confront you with bullshit, and you laughed in its face. Congratulations.
Just about everyone believes in it.
Just about everyone bows down and allows it to happen.
Just about everyone wants it to happen to them.
Just about everyone fears it as a result.
Just about everyone is choosing it.
Just about everyone knows someone who has experienced it.
Just about everyone thinks it is an inevitable, un-questionable truth.
Just about everyone is convinced it cannot be undone.
Just about everyone experiences it eventually even if they spend their entire lives saying they do not believe in it.
Just about everyone from any religion believes in it.
Just about everyone sabotages themselves so that it will happen to them.
Just about everyone has a death wish.
Just about everyone is suicidal.
Just about everyone wants it, loves it, adores it and worships it.
When all else is over, and all other thoughts and opinions and religions and ways of life come and go, it all ends at death's door with a worship of the idea that you must be sacrificed to please death.
Isn't it about time we started to defect from this death worship super-cult and started to believe in the reality of immortality?
If you're going through a loss, it can be hard to deal with the feelings.
At first I felt that the feelings were just overpowering and I was a victim of them, unable to control or stop them, albeit that I tried.
Gradually over time and after a lot of crying, I've somehow become more honest about it and more acknowledging of the feelings.
Or I should reword that, I've been pushed by the feelings so much to have to feel them no matter whether I want to or not, that I've had to surrender to it and go with it.
More recently that seems to be turning more into a kind of willingness to grieve. I think I had a lot of spiritual bypass crap from ACIM that was getting in the way of just being human about it.
I've been starting to see that there are places in me where I simply, ego or not, "want" something. At the core of loss there is always a sense of love or identification or some kind of valuing.
Within me, there is a place, it's even in the heart, that simply says, "I want to be with my wife." And there is another part that says "I want to go home".
This is because I lived in America and have let there now to live in the UK and have a lot of loss around the end of that entire chapter of life.
What I've been seeing lately is that although it sounds like some kind of backwards step, or going in the wrong direction, I have to be willing to acknowledge much more fully that I DO WANT these things.
It's as though up till now everything was sort of circling around it like a cloud of emotion and I just couldn't see clearly. As I home in on the "core" of this "suffering", its like it's coming into focus more, and revealing that at the centre there is this human bonding and love and caring and so on, which drives the loss.
It's not in my opinion "worse" or a regression to just own and admit and feel the "I want". Even if it's ego. Even if it's bullshit or not in line with God's truth. The wanting is there. Nor can I try to force myself to just "not want it", because that's brutal and not healing.
I'm making it okay to acknowledge how I feel and okay to feel it and to even throw myself into feeling it. Being more open and honest with the feeling rather than avoiding it, judging it, trying to get rid of it.
What I am finding is that, when I am willing to admit that I just want to be with her, or that I want to go home, it doesn't entail any denial. And this reveals something, it sheds a light on it.
Only by admitting that I want it and letting myself feel the wanting, does it make room for some "reality" to come in. The reality says, well.... even though you want this, the truth is, in practical terms, you can't actually have this. This thing that you want, isn't available any more.
It's a bit of a harsh truth, but if there FIRST isn't the willingness to admit to having the wanting - the yearning, the expectation - you can't get to the point where you can face reality.
You have to face the suffering head-on first before any light can be shed on it. And that means absolutely no spiritual bypasses, no denial, no avoidance, no judging, no defences, no making it wrong.
Upon looking more squarely and being "in" the wanting, it has made me realize that all the clouds of loss and confusion were disguising a rather simple AND limited thing - that this is about one person, and about a home that is gone.
It's not about the whole world, or my whole life. By bringing it into focus it's narrowed it down and now it seems perhaps more manageable. It's not the end of the whole world. It's just specifically about these two areas, two things that I want to be with. Regardless of whether that seems popular with other people or socially normal or anything else.
Once it's admitted that I really want these things, the situational truth starts to enter - it's not possible to have these things. This fact, this truth, starts to shed a light on the wanting, and reframes it. That, yes, I want something I can't have, but perhaps I should let go of that wanting because it's not a possibility. The reality of the "it's not possible" starts to come in, and in a way that starts to counteract and act upon the wanting.
Ultimately it's a sort of recognition or realisation, that I might as well let go, because what I want just isn't realistic or feasible. It's not like a defeat or some kind of horrible disappointment, it's just sort of facing facts, and as the course says "no one can argue with a fact." And "the truth shall set you free."
I'm still sort of. . squirming a bit about this insight, and with trying to acknowledge this "fact" of the impossibility of what I want, and thus the need to let it go due to it being "pointless". But as a step forward at least it's providing some sense of an ending being in sight, or a sort of "solution" to the problem.
I want to be with my wife, but I can't. It's okay to acknowledge that. I want to go home to America and be with what's been familiar for 25 years, but I can't. My ego cries out with "it's all gone" and "I want it" but that will change. Somehow at least admitting to the wanting of it is bringing it into the light to see it clearly, and to thus shed light upon it, and it is that light which perhaps is the source of liberation.
The world can't really offer you a choice, because it really has no choice.
It didn't choose, by itself, what its nature would be.
When we believed the tiny mad idea and believed in being separate from God, we believed in an opposite to God.
An opposite to God HAS TO function in a certain way. It has to be based on separation, relativity, exclusion, lack, imperfection, mortality, etc.
It has no say in this. God's system is one of immortality, perfection, omnipresence, eternal life etc. If you want something opposite to that it really can only take on one specific form.
The premise of God produces heaven. The premise of separation produces hell.
"The Kingdom is the result of premises, as much as this world is."
The premise of oneness gives rise to the perfect system of heaven.
The premise of separation gives rise to the imperfect system of spacetime, including Earth and bodies.
The nature and laws and functioning of Earth have NO SAY in this. They HAVE TO function the way they do in order to be God's opposite.
The real choice was made in the moment where we tried to deny God's will and produce an opposite kingdom.
That's the only moment where choice was involved. It didn't give choice or the freedom to choose TO the world that was made.
Therefore the world itself has no choice in this, it cannot choose to sometimes work and sometimes not work. It cannot choose to sometimes be perfect and sometimes not.
It has no ability to decide whether to function like heaven or like hell. It is literally locked in to a single kind of system.
As such, the world ITSELF did not choose to be the way that it is. It isn't sitting there deciding whether to be heavenly today or not. It just always has to be like hell - the projection of the ego thought system.
This means that you can't expect it to suddenly flip around and work differently. You can't expect its laws to suddenly change, or its nature to suddenly be different.
It was made and designed for a specific purpose, to oppose God, and that is what is does very well. It stays faithful to that design and cannot deviate from it.
If you therefore think that the world is offering YOU a choice, you are very mistaken. All its roads lead to death. All its outcomes are the same. Its entire purpose is the same. It cannot end up any other way.
There IS no real choice in the world, therefore, because the world ITSELF has no choice, and is not a thing of "choosing". It's a thing that was CHOSEN. The choice is locked in.
The only way there would be a choice is if you choose heaven instead, and indeed you only ever choose between the two SYSTEMS - spacetime or God, heaven or hell.
The world itself cannot offer you ANY real choice, because it has none. It has no choice. It has no say. It just be's how it was supposed to be. It does what it was supposed to do.
What that means though is that, since the world itself did not choose its own nature, and is the result of something ELSE choosing its nature for it - in the mad idea - the world IS NOT RESPONSIBLE for being the way that it is.
This mean the world is not trying on purpose to be sinful - as if it had a choice and could just as easily be not sinful. It is not deliberately choosing to make your life difficult, it can't be help it.
It's just like a piece of machinery which was designed with a certain function and that's the only way it can work. You can't fix it up and you can't change its function and you can't make it work better.
You have to let Earth be Earth, and let heaven be heaven. Let God be God, and let hell be hell. There's no point resisting the world or expecting it to be not the way it is.
If you can recognize that it IS NOT CHOOSING, then you can also recognize that it is not "to blame" for the way it is. It is just the product of a mad idea some of us had. It's not its fault.
In that view, you can forgive the whole world, because it's just following orders and has no mind or freedom of its own with which to choose something else.
YOU have a freedom to choose something else because you are the maker of the world, or the chooser of whether to be in heaven or on Earth.
You can choose between systems, but you cannot choose what those systems would be like. The systems and their nature and functioning ENTIRELY depend on the premise on which they are based.
From the absolute you get a heavenly system. From the relative you get a dysfunctional codependent impossible system of frustration and nonsense and murder.
You can choose between those systems but you CANNOT change the nature of those systems.
So you should let the world be the way it is, and just acknowledge that you made it by mistake, and it was a good effort, but it's not a completely constructive creation. It is an mis-creation, an 'oops' that you made when you were not in your right mind. Like something you came up with when you were drunk.
Allow and accept that the world is the way it is, and then by realising it CAN'T HELP IT, you can forgive it. You can realize you should not hold anything against it, because in this sense it is innocent - it isn't CHOOSING to be this way. It isn't doing it on purpose - it's just fulfilling its original purpose.
You can repurpose it by using it differently and seeing it differently and forgiving it for its shortcomings. But don't expect the ice cream to stop melting, or the tigers to stop eating living creatures, or the seasons to stop producing death, or for bodies to last forever.
The world is a system of imperfection. Let it be.
"The eyes of Christ look on a world forgiven. In His sight are all its sins forgiven, for He sees no sin in anything He looks upon."
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."
Another ego trap with forgiveness is believing that you need to be at peace regardless of what's going on in life. While this might ultimately be the goal, meanwhile the things that happen in life are there because they are lessons.
They're not just happening at random. Each of us has a curriculum. That means, whatever point you are at right now in your spiritual path, which is extremely unique to you, and whatever you are experiencing now, there are certain things you are going to have to learn or discover in order to move forward.
And the way that you learn those things is that you have learning experiences, ie lessons. And usually these lessons are things that you seem to NOT WANT. And so a great big steaming SHIT comes along in your life and dumps itself on your foot and you just go about trying to shake it off, but it's really trying to help you wake up.
There is something involved in your interaction with the shit and how you deal with it and look at it and experience it, which is going to bring stuff up for you, trigger you, and cause you to have certain kinds of perceptions and thoughts and ideas. And you might not have had those if it were not for this stimuli. But before you just try to get rid of the shit for coming along to disturb you, realize that this is actually an opportunity to grow and heal and become more awake spiritually.
So you don't necessarily want to be in the business of making life SEEM to be like it doesn't have anything upsetting happening, or that it's just one big smooth ride, because that can be a form of denial, avoidance, and disassociation. And it can keep you stuck. Not saying you have to suffer willingly, but willingly is better than unwillingly, lol
Anyway... so ... forgiveness isn't about avoiding bad stuff. And it isn't just about transcending it and being at peace about it. The bad stuff is there FOR A REASON, because its a lesson in the curriculum, and you not only need it but have asked for it. And that's why it's come. Because you are ready for it. And now you need to learn a lesson from it. And if you don't learn it this time, it will come back again. You don't have a choice in that.
Be aware that the ego, especially the persona part of the ego, wants to get rid of all bad stuff and create an ILLUSION OF BLISS, which really plays into the idea that "ignorance is bliss", because in ignorance ie unconsciousness, you think you don't have any issues because you're in incredible denial. You don't want that. You don't really want a life of total ease and an easy ride, at least not until you genuinely have woken up all the way and don't have any curriculum left. Then it's truly plain sailing.
So 'doing forgiveness' should not be about making bad stuff go away, even though that's what most of us use it for most of the time. It's really to help you learn lessons and to undo what you have taught yourself already, which is mistaken. It is unlearning, which is how lessons are completed - the question is unlearned to reveal the answer. There was no problem until the answer became obscured by the separation, see.
Denial is a funny thing. It makes it SEEM like the thing has totally gone away, yet all that's happened is its been covered up.
We think that death is an actual end, that someone's life actually has been stopped. But death is not an end of life. Death is only a DENIAL of life - the denial that life is eternal and cannot ever end. You would have to be in denial of eternal life in order to die because otherwise you'll have to admit that it is absolutely impossible to be dead. So even if you 'are dead', you're still just in denial, because you can't BE dead, because life is eternal. You can deny it to HIDE it, but you can't get rid of it. You can STAGE your death and make it LOOK LIKE you died, but you didn't. Hah. Cover's blown.
The same happens with your sense of unworthiness, your unlovability. You think that you are unloveable and that your unlovability has REMOVED lovability from you. But it hasn't. You're just in denial of the fact that God still loves you. You're pretending to be unloveable, because you CAN'T be unloveable. God's love can't be stopped or removed, so all you can do is PRETEND to be worthless. You can't ACTUALLY be worthless. But while you're busy pretending, you really think that your worthlessness has actually removed all of the love and love's ability to love you. It hasn't. It's still there. Your worthy self is still there, hidden behind your unworthiness. They apparently exist at the same time because you are just in denial. You can't make yourself not be love even if you try.
This is also why when you feel like you are separate from God or you are ashamed or guilty or afraid or whatever, you PERCEIVE that your true self has been LOST, and that you have been CHANGED INTO some other self, and that now you're going to have a hard time getting back to being yourself as though you ACTUALLY have stopped being you... but you haven't. All you've done is be in DENIAL of who you are, which does nothing but simply cover it over with a blanket.
This is ALSO why we only need to remove the obstacles to our AWARENESS of love's presence. It is NOT because love is not present. LOVE IS PRESENT FOREVER. We are just not aware because we are DENYING it left, right and center. We're swearing up and down, there is no love, God is dead. And yet God is loving and alive. We have blocks to the AWARENESS of this fact, and that doesn't mean it is not a fact until we become aware of it. It is already a fact. God is already love. God already loves you even if you don't believe it. This is why we do not need to be taught how to BE LOVE, because we STILL are love, we just need to stop denying it all the time.
You are still Christ. You are still 100% innocent. You are still loved by God. When you let go of all of the story and drama and game-playing of pretending otherwise, you will ACCEPT and ADMIT to it, instead of hiding from it.
I see you.
Here are some of the miracle principles with particularly speak to the idea that a miracle is something that you receive from God, and GIVE TO another person. Remember giving and receiving are ONE.
3 - Miracles occur naturally as EXPRESSIONS of love.
8 - Miracles are healing because they SUPPLY a lack. (remember he who temporarily has more gives to he who temporarily has less)
16 - Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to GIVE as to receive.
18 - A miracle is a SERVICE. It is the maximal service you can render to ANOTHER.
19 - Miracles make MINDS (plural) one in God.
21 - Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by EXTENDING IT TO OTHERS.
24 - Miracles enable you to HEAL THE SICK and RAISE THE DEAD because you made sickness and death. (the dead aren't going to be raising themselves, they need YOU, the un-dead, to perform the miracle!)
27 - A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me TO ALL MY BROTHERS.
35 - Miracles are EXPRESSIONS of love, but they may not always have observable effects.
40 - The miracle acknowledges EVERYONE AS YOUR BROTHER and mine.
45 - A miracle is never lost. It may TOUCH MANY PEOPLE you have not even met.
AS you can see, if you study the miracle principles it is CLEAR that a miracle is NOT just a shift in your own perception, OR just a healing in your own mind. It is something SHARED and EXPRESSED to others to help them. It's not all about your spiritual ego.
Now, you could loosely interpret most of these in a mindset of, well, this is only speaking of my 'perception' and 'seeking not to change the world' and all that... you could read into that if you want. You could say that your forgiveness just blesses people in a kind of passive way. But miracles are much more than this. This is what we have to wake up to. It's much more than just dealing with your own separate identity. It is about sharing God with others!
What is the title of the book?
"A Course in MIRACLES".
You'd think anyone who knows of Jesus would want to know how he performs miracles, right? He already demonstrated them and now he has given us a manual to learn how to do the same. Hello!