JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE AWAKE, DOES NOT MEAN OTHER PEOPLE WANT TO SHARE IT WITH YOU

JUST BECAUSE YOU PERCEIVE CORRECTLY, DOES NOT MEAN OTHER PEOPLE STOP PERCEIVING INCORRECTLY

Moving into the LIGHT, does not necessarily bring others with you, until they are WILLING to join you.

God is 100% awake right now. There is no sickness or death or suffering in God. It is "true" that these things do not exist, that separation is impossible, and no-one can die.

HOWEVER

It SEEMS. ... in an illusory way.... that we can SEEM to separate from God, to go off into a nightmare, have a bad dream, IMAGINE it is really happening, confuse it with reality temporarily, and SEEM to suffer and die.

Any such suffering, sickness or dying, is not real, and every single person who has sickness or suffering is not REALLY suffering. They are just having a bad dream.

But let's look at this with some compassion. Those "people", even if those people are not really individuals, no matter who or what they are, even if they are split of bits of the Son's mind, there is still some kind of ILLUSORY EXPERIENCE of terrible things happening.

A nightmare. A bad dream. Stuff that seems horrible, but in truth, is not happening. Yet still SEEMS to be happening to those "to whom" it seems to be happening.

And while these people are having these FALSE EXPERIENCES, God is already 100% awake, 100% healed and whole, 100% knowing that sickness and death are not possible.

WHY DOES GOD NOT UNDO THOSE NIGHTMARES IMMEDIATELY?

WHY DOESN'T GOD's INFINITE POWER AND IMMORTALITY stop people from killing themselves in the dream?

WHY DOESN'T THE FACT THAT GOD's MIND IS TOTALLY AWAKE, "cause" all "people" to NOT BE ABLE To create dreams of suffering?

Putting aside the illusion of linear time for a moment, God does not do that ONLY because those people having the nightmares keep REFUSING TO RECEIVE THE HELP. They use ILLUSIONS of denial, to pretend that they do not want the help, and that they need to suffer.

Even though God is offering 100% eternal life right now, immortal spirit is attempting to PRETEND to be stuck in a mortal body, confused with what can be sick and suffer and die.

And while we're in this illusion, having this nightmare, I think most people would AGREE that these "nightmares" can seem pretty dam real TO the person who is having them. Like if someone was mentally ill, having a terrible distorted vision of a horrible monster trying to eat them, freaking out and running around screaming because they THINK they're being attacked, even if they are NOT.... what is the loving response?

The loving response is TO LOVE.... always... the same.... unconditional love OFFERED at all times, but not being FORCED onto the person. Why not? Why doesn't God just wake us up out of the nightmare right now "against our will". Because we have FREE WILL, or at least love does not do that because it sees no NEED to do that, because it knows nothing real is happening.

Since God is 100% aware right now, and we, here, in this forum, for the most part, ARE NOT 100% AWARE RIGHT NOW, what that means is..... even though it's ultimately not true that we are unaware, it SEEMS like we are. We are having a false nightmare, a dream, a fantasy experience. Which SEEMS real to us.

And some of us here are experiencing what we think is real suffering. Maybe someone had a stroke, or has terrible pains, or anxiety about food, or had a heart attack, or their kidneys aren't working, or they have some "rare disease". Or maybe someone close to them is sick and it keeps them up at night worrying.

These are all false experiences, unreal nightmares, BUT the person having them DOES NOT KNOW THAT at this point. The illusion is so convincing, that we seem to have this twisted sense of "reality"... where we perceive and think these things are "really happening". And that produces ALL of the suffering, fear, and torment in this fictional world.

And none of it is real. And no-one is really sick. And there is no suffering. BUT.. .. that's not what people are SEEMING to experience.

What would love do about this? How would love respond to someone with mental illness, who hallucinates problems, who psychosomatically puts sickness into their body and writhes in torment over the pain they feel? What would love's response be?

TO LOVE THEM. TO OFFER A MIRACLE OF HEALING.

They might not accept the healing. Just as we seem to sleep "against God's will"... something which is really IMPOSSIBLE, yet which we are PRETENDING is possible....the person might refuse to JOIN YOU in being 100% awake. They might keep pretending that denial is real and possible and can block love. They might still manifesting artificial make-believe terrible sickness. They might PERCEIVE differently than you perceive.

Just because you go into true perception, or even go beyond perception to TOTAL AWARENESS of everything real, does NOT MEAN that other people automatically go there as well.

This is why Jesus was able to walk around the earth in a MORE HEALED state than other people, and OFFER THEM healing. He was still able to PERCEIVE that these "people" - whatever they are - parts of his mind or whatever - these people were having nightmares. Some split-off part of mind was still twisting "reality" and SEEMING to experience a terrible state of suffering. And to that piece of mind, that person, that suffering seemed VERY REAL and horrible.

Even though love knows that suffering is NOT REALLY THERE and has no real consequence and minds cannot be sick etc.... that none of this even happened.... IT IS STILL LOVING to offer miracles of healing to those "parts" which seem to be in need. This is part of the atonement process. The plan of salvation. That we are BRING LOVE to ALL PARTS OF MIND.

As Jesus says, he offers us salvation and love right now, but if we are not ready to receive it, HE WILL WAIT.

In time, people CAN REFUSE LOVE. Or at least seem to. They can produce forms of sickness in the body EVEN THOUGH God does not contain any real sickness. They can make illusions of being sick, and have horrible nightmares about those sicknesses being real. It is LOVING to alleviate that suffering IF THEY ARE WILLING to RECEIVE IT, through your offering of a miracle.

Just because there is total awareness or total perception, and even if that shows you there is NO DEATH and sickness is an IMPOSSIBLE ILLUSION, in time.. there is STILL a "need" for healing. That's why the Holy Spirit is here. His function here is healing, and we are supposed to share that with him, to OFFER HEALING to everyone who still seems to suffer from self-made nightmares. It is the loving thing to do, to offer a miracle, EVEN IF it is refused, and in spite of the fact that people can CHOOSE NOT TO PERCEIVE AS YOU DO.

Additionally, just because your perception is true and whole and healed, it does not STOP you from seeing what these "other people" or "split off bits of mind" - from the one whole son - are doing to themselves. It's possible to have COMPASSION for them, to recognize they are MISTAKEN and to not believe their sickness is REAL... yet to STILL OFFER HEALING of *THEIR BELIEF* that sickness is justified. And if they continue to spend time refusing to learn the curriculum, which is their free will right, they may well refuse to undo that illusion of sickness and will STILL EXPERIENCE SUFFERING, even if God can never suffer.

So yes, there IS no real sickness. Yes, there ARE no separate people. Yes, there are not even any bodies TO heal. Yes, no-one really needs real healing because healing is an illusion. BUT WHILE WE ARE HERE.... inside this dream illusion, where people DO choose to make illusions of attack and sickness, IT IS our role to offer and bring healing through love, to perform miracles, to heal the sick, to raise the dead, and to HELP "those" who seem to suffer. And they will thank you, because what they were experiencing before, even if it was an illusion, was WORSE to them than what they are experiencing now. How is that not KIND?

This is our function here. To offer love and truth to those who THINK they are really sick and suffering. To undo that suffering if they will ALLOW. To recognize they cannot be sick or suffer or die FOR THEM while they refuse to see it FOR THEMSELVES. Just because you wake up, does NOT mean "their sickness" disappears from THEIR EXPERIENCE. Otherwise, because God is awake NOW, it would be impossible for anyone to experience sickness. And truly they can't because sickness MUST therefore be AN ILLUSION, but people are still TEMPORARILY INSANE believing otherwise.

No-one needs saving, yet they do. In this dream, they do. There is healing to be performed. There are miracles to work. There are people who, if you walked up to them and asked, "would you like me to take away this cancerous growth", would say, "sure"... and you extend God's love in prayer and IT DISAPPEARS, and they are totally over the moon because they were suffering for years and thought they are going to have the NIGHTMARE of dying.

It's all mental illness, but love STILL HEALS IT. There is no real need to heal it, BUT LOVE DOES ANYWAY. Love just loves. While we dream, God wants us to awaken. While we refuse God's will, or try to, pretend to, God wills that we be happy and accept his will.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO SUFFER, even if it is just a made-up dream of made-up suffering. You don't even NEED TO HAVE a nightmare dream. You can have a HAPPIER DREAM. A dream which is gentler and softer and precedes awakening in a smooth and non-jarring way. You do not need to be sick, or tolerate it, or try to transcend it in order to deny it. IT CAN BE REMOVED. No-one has to have dreams of death and suffering and sickness and pain, EVEN IF it is just a dream. This is not God's will.

It is God's will for you to EXPERIENCE PERMANENT HEALTH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, to no longer have that broken leg, or that missing arm, or that defective lung, or that cancer, or any of it. A broken body proves the mind is not healed, so these breaks MUST BE HEALED if the mind is to be healed. We do not need to find ways to "be at peace with it". We need to UNDO IT, in form, in the body, to prove and demonstrate the truth that we cannot be hurt against our will. No-one needs to be having a dream of limitations.

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.

Here's a fairly easy meditation you can try. I call it 'being quiet'. You can use it to connect with and listen to Holy Spirit or Jesus.

Consider that your thoughts are actually audible, i.e. they are making sounds. If you can hear your thoughts, you are making sounds. And everyone else can hear your thoughts too, like being in a room having a conversation. I don't mean that there is a thought and there is a separate sound, I mean the thought IS the sound. We're so used to believing that all our thoughts are private that we let them run wild and unchecked, as though they impact nobody else. For the sake of this meditation, "there are no private thoughts!" - ACIM

Then imagine that you're in some place where, for whatever reason, you have to be very very quiet and not make any sound. Maybe you pretend you're in a library or a church or something. You don't have to picture anything particularly, you just need to know you need to be quiet - your audible thoughts need to be quietened down.

The main thing is simply 'being quiet' mentally, which basically means, not creating thoughts because they would disturb the peace. Since you know your thoughts are going to make sounds that are heard, and you need to be as quiet as possible, this simply compels you to focus on being quiet.

This isn't the same as thought control. You're not trying to stop thoughts once they've happened. You're just being quiet so that you do not make thoughts in the first place. And since your focus is on 'being quiet', that's enough to stop them arising. IF thoughts start to pop up you can bet you have 'failed' to be quiet because now your mind is chattering, and everyone can hear you! Shhhhhh!

I find this is easier for me than trying to be 'still', because stillness for me is too associated with lack of physical movement or not breathing and it just makes me become tense. I also find this easier than trying to focus on my breathing or breathing in a particular way or 'thought watching' and trying not to get caught up in thoughts. That's hard. Once thoughts are created they kind of have a mind of their own, because they are like little created beings with their own little bit of consciousness going off in random directions. Not making thoughts at all bypasses that. It's much easier to be quiet when there are no thoughts to deal with, than to try to clean up a noisy thought-mess after it's been triggered.

Once you've been doing this for al little while your mind should quieten down. In fact you should be able to 'be quiet' very quickly. I find this works far more effectively than other meditations I've tried.

While you're being quiet, take the opportunity then to calmly have a conversation with Holy Spirit or Jesus. Hearing them entails 'listening' which means not broadcasting your opinions and viewpoints, or your background 'processing' of what's being said. If you want to hear their voice, you need to stop your mental yacking and become receptive.Your thoughts ARE a conversation. And as the course says, the degree you will hear their voice is the degree that you're willing to listen.

Holy Spirit and Jesus are happy to talk to you if you will listen enough. Give it a try.

Forgiveness is a high state of mind, aligned with the Holy Spirit's vision, in which you SEE and RECOGNIZE everything for what it truly is. That which is true is recognised and accepted as true, while that which is false is recognised and rejected as false.

The problem is, when you are lost and confused amidst various mental distortions, delusions, deceptions, convictions, being a victim and seeing yourself as a body and other such things, that high state of accurate truth that would set you free is "inaccessible."

So then you have a paradox. The very state of mind you need to get INTO in order to be free from the delusions of the mind and its suffering, is only a state that you can reach AFTER the delusions have stopped. The very forgiving viewpoint needed for accurate perception and recognition, is hidden behind all the clouds of deception and lies. So how do you navigate out of the ego mess you've made when you can't see straight?

First thing is you should ask the Holy Spirit to help you before you even attempt to forgive, and ACIM tells you you should be doing this every time:

"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."

So you are supposed to ASK FOR HELP first, because you're so lost and confused you don't know the way out of your insanity. Then having asked for help, you RECEIVE help, by being willing and open. Particularly a willingness to be mistaken about what you believe, and willing to move closer to the truth.

Then the Holy Spirit can help you. You should find that as you then begin to try to unravel the tangled mess of your ego victimhood, your mind is going to take a different course - the Holy Spirit can and will influence your thinking and cause you to come to insights and conclusions and realizations and perspectives quite effortlessly.

Like your mind just starts to open up and flow on a kind of slipstream of inspiration, on a path that leads quickly upwards. This is the Holy Spirit enlightening your mind, and it works in realtime AS you proceed to work through your dilemma. As you have willingness and receptivity to find a way to the truth, He helps you along and lifts you up.

Eventually you'll want to get to the place where you can see clearly that the beliefs you had were mistaken, the guilt was unfounded, there has been no sin, and therefore there's no need to keep supporting the victimhood and suffering that you were choosing. Then in that atonement-view you can let it go.

"Ask then His help, and ask Him how to learn forgiveness as His vision lets it be. You are in need of what He gives, and your salvation rests on learning this of Him."

"To keep it for yourself to solve WITHOUT His help is to decide it should remain UNsettled, UNresolved, and lasting in its power of injustice and attack."

"Prepare for this each morning, remember God when you can throughout the day, ask the Holy Spirit's help when it is feasible to do so, and thank Him for His guidance at night. And your confidence will be well founded indeed."

A Course in Miracles might seem like a self-study where you do certain prescribed steps and have your own willingness and wake up all by yourself.

But, Holy Spirit has other ideas.

He is not only willing to help you, but is capable of helping you, in ways that are beyond what you can do for yourself. Including supernatural ways, ways of healing your mind, emotions and your body. Things which all by yourself you are not equipped to accomplish or even understand, but which are still possible in spite of your inability to comprehend it.

I think that as you become more willing and open and surrender more ego, instead of it being all bout what your ego does to become spiritual, it becomes more about what you're willing to accept and receive and allow, and this opens the flood gates for Holy Spirit/God to come in and help you.

Your development of trust in God allows you to become willing to operate in God's gifts, to extend those gifts, and to receive them for yourself and others.

Holy Spirit isn't a Holy Bystander, although His perception is uninvolved with the ego. He recognizes our beliefs and illusions and overlooks them and leads us into the light with True Empathy. But this also means, besides Him lifting you up into the light, that He can reach into your illusions and work on them with you. He can heal them, and all forms of separation, including death. Let's also remember that Jesus was raised from the dead BY the Holy Spirit.

Welcome Holy Spirit into you. Invite Him in. Encourage Him to enter by being willing to surrender, relax, let go, and trust to receive His helpful support and healing power.

I was having, or was going to have, a big release as part of a healing that I wanted to "get over with". However, upon being willing to start to release it, Holy Spirit came in and said "you don't have to suffer" and started to heal me, draining and disappearing those feelings as they were coming up.

Often I also now find that if I am upset and need to cry, at the instant that I become willing to cry and let it out, Holy Spirit steps in and suddenly starts to clear it for me. No tears come out, but the issue goes away. Holy Spirit asked, when I was wondering why the heck He kept doing this, "would you rather cry?"

You don't have to do this all yourself, and you don't have to suffer, and you don't have to put up with symptoms, and you don't have to even go through all of your unhealed pain all by yourself. What a relief!

"Holy Spirit will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him."

This is very powerful and important. The consequences of your wrong decision, whatever it may be, is whatever came from your belief in separation. Self attack, denial, emotional pain, physical sickness, disability, mental illness, whatever. Holy Spirit CAN and WILL undo all of those 'symptoms of separation' - the alleged consequences of sin - the "real effects" which your belief in sin produced. IF you will let Him, and to let Him, you have to develop trust in Him and in allowing Him to operate in and through you.

You have help! Use it.

The world is the denial of God. The body is the denial of God. If you side with the world and body you give them power to affect you. It's a way of saying that your own dream is dreaming you. You give your power away to them to establish them as having power over you, then cower from the self-induced threat. You have to take your power back from the world.

You should use denial to deny that the world and body exist."The world you see must be denied"

This doesn't mean PRETENDING that you don't have a body, when you still believe that you do. Nor does it mean pretending that the world doesn't exist while you're still believing in it. That would be an IMPROPER use of denial beacuse it DOUBLES the denial. The proper use of denial means RECOGNIZING that in truth, the world and the body ARE themselves a state of denial, then truly denying that they REALLY ARE that.

"this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him"

Since the world is made OF denial, it DENIES. Its inherent nature is to deny everything, even itself. Your task is to deny the denial of the truth.

"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH"

By recognizing that the world IS denial, and that it denies God, the remedy is to DENY THE DENIAL, by asserting God. The assertion of God is the assertion of life, which is resurrection, and opposes the world of death.

If you could just remember this one thing, that you should always deny anything NOT OF GOD any POWER, and not GIVE it any power, then you would assert that you are immortal and cannot die. That you cannot be affected, upset, caused by, offended by, threatened by or in any way changed by the world.

"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."

You must deny that the world or the body, which is NOT of God, and does not exist in heaven, has ANY POWER AT ALL. It has no power over you, no power to affect or change you, and is not responsible for anything you experience.

This means that even if the world seems to be doing something most would consider "a threat" to you, you should stand firm in your strength and truth and NOT be threatened. Because ultimately it is NOT the world that threatens you, it is YOUR BELIEF about it and USE of it to threaten you, that threatens you.

As per the secret of salvation, ONLY YOUR MIND causes itself to suffer. "It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain." "It can be but myself I crucify." You should deny that anything in the world is even CAPABLE of causing you in any way. No matter what it "does", you should actually remain calm, peaceful, undisturbed, and completely powerful. It should not ruffle your feathers, induce fear, or cause you to be alarmed.

Knowing yourself, being true to yourself, ACCEPTING what is OF GOD, and denying what IS NOT, is a very powerful protective device. Not merely something you MIGHT use, but something you eventually HAVE to use all the time. Because only by asserting your God-given perfection and DENYING anything of spacetime, can you live in a mental state of complete invulnerability.

This is the PROPER use of denial." ... "True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it."

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

Nothing real can be threatened. It should not possible to threaten anything, anywhere. Yet here there is seemingly a world, which is filled with things which can seemingly be threatened. Somehow it has been arranged that there are objects which can collide, obstacles to hit, explosions to damage things, and all manner of weapons to attack with.

But how can there be one single ounce of attack if nothing real can be threatened? What can this world be made of that it can seem to be attackable? Surely it must be that the attack is not really attack, and nothing actually is hurt, and it's all just a big illusion made to look like such things are happening? How can any of it be a real attack if attack is not possible?

Jesus says in the course that there is no safety in the world. He also says bodies can clearly attack bodies. He also says problems were made to not be escaped. He also says you are immortal and cannot die but you can confuse yourself with things that do. He also says the world has no safety to offer, everything visible will perish, and everything you built has the mark of death upon it.

So what is this world, where there is no safety, riddled with problems, everything can be attacked, and the seeming impossibility of "attack ability" seems to be rampant?

If you look you'll notice that everything physical in this world seems to be attackable. Nothing is truly protected from anything. Anything can attack anything. The myth of safety on the level of form is everywhere, the desire to avoid physical attack, injury, harm, death, sickness etc. Yet none of these things should even be possible.

If reality cannot be attacked at all, and there is nothing else, if there appears to be something else that is attackable it cannot be real attack ability. It has to be some kind of deception, formed from the very same fabric as the rest of reality, in which strange shapes, appearances, images, concentrations of thoughts, temptations and so on, are made to look "as if" attack is possible.

So one person kicks another person in the leg. Has there been an attack? Not in reality, for sure. So whatever this is, it must be some kind of strange twisting of make-believe images, hallucinations, warped to make it "appear" that not only does something attackable seem to exist, but it has indeed attacked and been attacked. But no matter how it appears, it cannot be true that attack is real, has happened, or that anything is truly harmed.

Any sign of harm MUST be some kind of extraordinary smoke and mirrors deception. Any hint of damage to anything must be an illusion of death pretending to exist. We don't have anything to make the world from other than our thoughts. The same thoughts that we create eternal life with. The same mind. What do we make the world with except our mental processes?

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts"

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts"

Therefore you use thought to attack thought, in the form of a giant thought in the shape of a planet. Or a body.

The laws of spacetime, the made-up physics, largely governs the "workings" of this illusory world, what makes it possible for it to seem as if materials can attack materials. It's all set up fundamentally to make it seem as if attack is possible. The world was made to try to prove sin is real. And it was made as an ATTEMPTED (and failed, impossible) attack on God. "It is the world you see that is impossible."

Real attack must be impossible. It simply cannot actually be attack. It must be a lie, a deception, an unreality. It cannot really be there. Nor can it have real consequences. Nor can it be irreversible in its effects. Nothing about it can be permanent. All attack is an illusion in a dream of death. The world is nothing but a disguise over the truth, and nothing about it is true at all.

It's "pride month" which is a sort of pro-queer celebration and revenge-quest rolled into one. People should be happy to be who they really are, without the need for any validation from anyone. It's not necessary to have other people treat us in a certain way or agree with us or even respect us. Insecure people depend on others for making themselves okay. Immortal beings laugh in the face of all judgements and opinions. The world doesn't do anything to us and other people do not define who or what we are.

Often I hear things along the lines of - the straight heteronormative people have told us this, done that to us, treated us this way, and so now we're going to be extremely "loud and proud" as a kind of counter-protest. That isn't really pride, it's an ego thing pretending to be pride. If people were really proud of who they are they wouldn't feel a need to go to war over it because they'd know that no-one and nothing can take it away from them. The pride must be pretty fragile and NOT pride if it depends on other people to reinforce it.

So as usual like most things in the world there's a whole lot of special-relationship bullshit and ego dynamics around this. Many of the pride posts I've seen are nothing short of seeking revenge against perceived persecutors. People trying to insist on their 'right to exist' as a special kind of person. People 'fighting' for something. Nothing natural has to be fought for, it's given by God with no strings attached.

If we get into any kind of need to have other people change to see us, accept us, recognize us, validate us, respect us, treat us well, stop abusing us, etc... anything at all, we're saying that we do not want to be fully ourselves, do not not accept ourselves, and are shifting responsibility for that onto someone else. We don't want that, it's not an improvement. We should all be happy and proud of who and what we are on the basis that we are perfect in God and have no need to get love and appreciation from anything outside of us.

I know there has been a lot of history and conflict surrounding this, and yes still a lot of people are horrendous and murderous in their attitudes about queer people. But ultimately we have to be responsible for our own choice of whether to be happy or not. If we give anyone the power to determine that for us then we give power away and are asking to be victimized. And then going on a sassy middle-finger quest to try to pretend not to care, isn't exactly a solid foundation.

We should not be wanting or needing other people to 'treat us well' in order for us to be happy and who we really are. This is the problem with the world, everyone's expecting everyone else to "do to them" what they want, to "make them happy", to "cause them" to be this way or that way, which is "positive victimhood". It's a way of giving away power and hoping that the world will treat you nice. If you need the world to treat you a certain way your entire mental health is pretty fragile.

You are an immortal being, you do not NEED anyone to treat you nice. You are invulnerable, you do not NEED people to validate you or be respectful toward you. Let them be as vicious as they want, it's not supposed to affect you in any way if you are owning who you are. There is no strength in surrounding yourself with only the people that treat you well. You are not 'treated' well or not well. You are the one who chooses everything you experience.

"Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"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."

You are either innocent or guilty. These are the only options. If sin is real, you are guilty, and guilt is real. If sin is not real, you are innocent, and guilt is not real. You can also say that if you are guilty, you must be sinful. And if you are not guilty, you cannot have sinned.

When sin is recognized as an illusion or dream, without giving it any reality or truth, it is nothing. When you start to give it reality and truth it begins to seem like a cause with power, leading to consequences or effects. The effect of sin is guilt. If you did in truth sin, then you should indeed be guilty of having done so. It is simply cause and effect.

But if there is no guilt, there cannot have been sin, and you are in a state of forgiveness. Forgiveness therefore is the recognition that there is no sin, which produces the effect of guilt's absence. Either way, when guilt is absent, sin is cancelled.

If the belief in sin being real is mental illness ie insanity, since "sin is insanity", and given that "the ego" is another name for this insane thought system, then depriving sin of its effects undoes the ego. The insanity goes away when there is no guilt there. Sin without its effects has no causal power or reality or truth, and so insanity is gone.

If you refuse to go into guilt, you are denying that sin is real. If you deprive sin of its consequences, you are working a miracle. A miracle undoes the seeming consequences of sin. Sin, if it were real, is the idea of irreversible permanent truth, mixed with something impossible. Any consequence that comes from sin can be undone by recognizing that sin has no validity.

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

If sin is merely a mistaken idea that's false, and if you give it no truth or reality, then nothing can come from it. Guilt cannot arise, ego cannot manifest, and sickness and suffering cannot happen. Without the presence of the guilt, derived from the premise of real sin, there cannot be any ego or any suffering. In effect, the ego IS the guilt, and the more you reinforce and increase guilt the more you are buying into the insanity.

Without guilt you must be sane. To be without guilt IS sanity because it deprives sin of any reality. To be without sin is forgiveness. You are either guilty or guiltless, unforgiven or forgiven.

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body."

"Release from guilt is the ego's whole undoing."

"The holy spirit knows that all salvation is the escape from guilt."

"Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt."

"WITHOUT guilt, attack is impossible."

"Without guilt there is no scarcity."

"When you have accepted the Atonement for yourselves, you will realize that THERE IS NO GUILT IN GOD'S SON."

"Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed."

"Where can guilt be, when the belief in sin is gone? And where is death, when its great advocate is heard no more?" "As long as you believe the Son of God is guilty, you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death." "For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"From the ego came sin and guilt and death, in OPPOSITION to life and innocence, and to the Will of God Himself." "Wish not to make yourself a living symbol of his guilt, for you will NOT escape the death you make for him, and in HIS innocence you find your own."

"The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are BROUGHT TOGETHER, the truth of one MUST make the falsity of its OPPOSITE perfectly clear."

"The veil across the Face of Christ, the fear of God and of salvation, and the love of guilt and death, - they all are different names for just ONE error; that there is a space between you and your brother, kept apart by an illusion of yourself which holds him off from you, and you away from him."

Our mind in its natural state is joined with our Soul and with God. In this state, it receives the causal expression and extends it. In a sense, the mind does not have its own content, it just extends what it receives.

After separating from God and ourselves, the mind is cut off from its "owner". This is due to a separation introduced between cause and effect. That which at the effect, the mind, starts to see itself as causeless, and so begins to make up its own ideas about what it is and what is true.

This turns the mind from being an extender of truth, to being a solo broadcaster of imagination.

The problem then is that anyone with an ego tends to broadcast a lot, and tends to receive very little. Being alone or isolated or trying to live without God makes us weak, vulnerable, afraid and helpless. Yet it also makes us spew out "noise", the noisy broadcasts of the ego, which basically is an attempt to be recognized as the cause of oneself, rather than being caused by God or Soul.

In a world where so many people are broadcasting themselves, there isn’t much listening. Consequently, even though people are broadcasting loudly, 24/7, everyone is talking over everyone else. People then are not really being present, available, un-distracted with themselves, or able to pay full attention. That means that those who are broadcasting, paradoxically end up not being heard.

This is because the rest of the broadcasters are not willing to receive. So no matter how loud you shout, if everyone else is also shouting your expressions will be stunted and stifled and you won’t feel like anyone really listens to you. In fact, the more that you shout louder in an attempt to be heard more, you will be heard less.

Many people in this world are expressing the ego. Few are expressing silence or stillness or presence or quietness or a willingness to receive. If you yourself become willing to receive from Spirit, your own mind will become quiet and you will subsequently become willing to receive ie listen to and pay attention to, what other people are expressing. Without distraction from your own thoughts or memories or judgements or attempts to process or reflect on what someone said.

Learning to listen is part of waking up, because it entails your own willingness to listen to Spirit. That means instead of running your own show, you turn your mind and your life over to the care of God. You become willing to receive input from Spirit. You become willing to trust Spirit. You become willing to let Spirit guide your every action, to even speak for you and through you.

The willingness to receive is what has become blocked by the ego. Separations and blocks to awareness are attempts to not listen to God, to hide from God, to replace God’s Word with your own, and to make up your own truth. Becoming willing to accept Atonement entails becoming willing to receive from God, to be guided by God, to allow yourself to accept love, and to let miracles be performed through you.

Therefore as you tune into Spirit, handing over your stolen life to its rightful owner, and giving back control of the mind to Love, you automatically become a better receiver and listener. You become better at being present. You become more available. And you start to allow others to fully express, willing that you receive everything they are offering. This simultaneously creates space for them to fully express themselves, to be heard, and to know that their expressions are not being met by deaf ears or a wall of selfishness. This holding space alone can be very healing.

You simply need to put all of your ego distractions aside, pay full undivided attention to the person, let them express absolutely anything they want to without interrupting or interfering or offering advice or any kind of transmission, without your secret mental judgements or attempts to chew on what they expressed, free of your reactions and defenses, just totally being fully present for them.

Do this for someone and you’ll be offering a tremendous healing service just by listening attentively without judgement. Afterwards, even if their ego erupts in a free-flow of expression, they will feel so peaceful and relieved that finally they could express themselves fully without someone being self-absorbed with their own ego reactions.

Give the gift of unconditional receiving and listening to someone this year. Let them have the microphone 100%, not 50%. Let them tell you whatever they want to tell you and just receive it.

Giving and receiving are one.