This is a conclusion I've come to over time, and I'll explain why it makes sense to me.
God is whole. Everything God does is whole. When God creates he fully creates. What he creates is fully created and is whole.
"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."
God is a creator and has many thoughts. Each of those many thoughts are also whole thoughts, and thoughts of wholeness. Each of those thoughts contains the other thoughts, because there is one wholeness shared by all of them - that's oneness.
"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."
God has created many children, each of which therefore must be whole, and they all share the whole of God.
Now, in terms of relationship, God can ONLY relate fully. With each of those thoughts or created beings, God must have a full-on complete relationship. It is a whole relationship, in which God shares the whole of Himself. And all of Himself is received by his creations.
If you take a definition of "personal", to mean that you get the fullest most undivided attention, where someone totally commits to you and gives to you without any lack or limitation, ie you're getting "fully personal service", then God IS giving fully personal service. He is giving you ALL of the attention and service possible for anyone to ever receive. The best personal service you ever had.
God gives his full total whole attention and being to one child. That child receives the whole of God. God does not lack or limit or hold back anything he is sharing with that one child. The relationship they have is totally whole. Therefore as far as that child is concerned, God is being fully attentive, fully relating, fully present, fully focused and fully giving to them.
That is the MAXIMUM amount of personal service possible in any scenario. It's not even possible for God to be MORE personal, because he is meeting ALL of the needs of that child. He is giving them absolutely everything. There is no definition of getting fully personal attention from God than this.
The truth also is that EACH of the children of God are being given the FULL attention of God. God is wholly fully giving all of himself to child A, and to child B, and to child C. This is where God's abilities transcend ordinary states of spatial relationship, limitations, compartments and categories.
God is omnipresent. This not only means that God is everywhere but it also means that all of God is in every part of God fully, simultaneously, and without restriction or limit. God is actually capable of giving FULL attention to any given part, while also giving FULL attention to any other part.
All the parts of God, all of his creations, therefore individually experience a full, whole, completely, total, unlimited relationship with their creator. EACH of them experiences God as fully and wholly relating with them personally. Not that God is distracted with other children, or only has a short amount of time to spare.
God is entirely 100% personally attending to each child individually. Every child of God has God's full attention at all times, in a maximally personal relationship. And every child of God is receiving all of God at all times, without there being conflict, because they all share God's omnipresent transcendental nature.
This means that God is fully personal in relationship with each child. But God is also fully giving the same fullness to each child. This means there is no difference between what God is giving to one child, or what God is giving to another child. God is giving the same total wholeness to child A, and child B, and child C. They are all treated equally and fully.
Therefore, this means that God is truly being "impersonal", in the sense that none of his children are receiving SPECIAL FAVOR, and every one of them is receiving the fullness of his attention. Each child has a fully total personal whole relationship with ALL of God. While from God's perspective, he is having this full total relationship with EACH child simultaneously, and fully, without limit.
God therefore is impersonal because every single creation is related to in the SAME way, with the same wholeness and fullness and love. Nothing is given to one which is not given to another. EACH child of God has the WHOLE of God. Every child of God has EVERYTHING. All the children of God share ALL of God, and the same one whole is shared by them all. That is their oneness in holographic relationship with the whole, as whole parts.
This means, in conclusion, that God is fully entirely personal in relationship with EACH of his creations, and yet simultaneously is fully entirely personal in relationship to EVERY creation, and is therefore ALSO fully impersonal. Impersonal does not mean remote and distant and cold. It means not differentiating between any two persons, and not giving something different to one and not another.
Being impersonal is inclusive, but many people think that being personal is exclusive. And this is why many people think God cannot be personal. It is also why many people think God is COMPLETELY impersonal, without ANY "personal" (ie not fully attentive) relationship at all, which portrays God as some kind of remote uncaring generalized abstract blob that has no real personal relationship with ANYONE. That is not what God is like.
Similarly, because in the world of form and ego, people recognize that ego is selfish and exclusive, many of us also think that being personal is an ego thing. That it means exclusive, or something applies to one person and not another, or someone gets special treatment, or that someone is lacking something that another has. That is an earthly definition of "personal", based on separation, and rooted in the ego thought system. It is NOT the proper definition of personal as it applies to God.
God gives all of himself to every child, in a fully personal relationship, while also giving all of himself to the whole of creation at once, transcending earthly limits and seeming to do the impossible - being wholly in relationship with multiple beings at the same time without the slightest indication of loss or limitation or sacrifice or compromise or being distracted or special.
This is why I firmly believe God to be BOTH impersonal and personal. Fully personal, indeed MORE personal than any kind of ego-based specialness idea of personal, MORE personal than even a single person receiving something exclusively that others lack. MORE personal than the ego's definition of personal, which is a definition of lack and limitation and selfishness and hoarding. God is MORE personal than what most people think would be a maximal amount of "personal".
It is also why God is fully impersonal, in the MOST spiritual way. Impersonal not in a cold detached remote way, but in terms of absolute equality and fairness, totally treating every single person in the same way, relating with the same ONE unconditional love towards EVERYONE at the same time, and giving everything TO everyone simultaneously. This is far beyond the ego's definition of impersonal relationship, and is the guarantee that God fully personally relates to EACH AND EVERY child of God in exactly the same absolute way.
You can see these facts reflected in many statements from A Course in Miracles. For example Jesus speaks about revelations, which are communications FROM GOD, to an INDIVIDUAL soul, in which the soul experiences a HIGHLY PERSONAL relationship with God, which doesn't even entail the inclusion of others. This relationship moment reflects the original form of communication between God and ONE child, which continues to be a reflection of the PERSONAL aspect of God's relationship with EACH child.
God knows YOU personally, and fully. You have a full total whole relationship with God, personally. But at the same time, God has personal full relationships with your brothers. And his treatment of the whole Kingdom as one is his impersonal consistency and honesty with every creation. This is why I believe God to be A PERSON (or, an "impersonal fully-personal person"), why the Holy Spirit is A PERSON, why the children of God are PERSONS, and why being a person/being is completely natural. We all share everything with everyone.
"Revelation is intensely personal"
"He DOES want revelation brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation, because its content cannot be expressed, and it is intensely personal to the mind which receives it."
"Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls"
"God HAS kept your kingdom for you, but He cannot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind."
"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."
"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."
In the separation, you confused the true and the false. You assigned God's properties to the false world, BUT YOU ALSO assigned false properties to God. This turned God into an evil enemy to you in your perception of him. This was necessary in order to believe that the world you made was something you would want instead.
This means you actually framed God as opposite to his nature. As if God is evil, destructive, attacking, sinful, deadly, sick, suffering, weak, powerless, unreal, illusory, vengeful and special. While many people focus on how they are going to forgive the false world, which entails lifting truth from it, you ALSO have to forgive God and lift the FALSE from him.
You may not realize that you have assigned false properties to God. But you have in fact framed God as a special false God. You have tried to make out that God is evil and an enemy. The ego believes this. It wants nothing to do with God because IT believes and perceives God as "everything evil", while seeing itself as holy.
"No-one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore MUST he be afraid of God."
"You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome."
"And being deceived in yourself you ARE deceived in your Father, in Whom no deceit is possible."
This means you do in fact have within you various reasons to avoid God, to fear God, to not want God, and to hate God. Part of you wants God to be dead. You have to therefore actually forgive God of the projections and misperceptions that you have laid upon him, and recognize that he is not those things.
It is your attempt to AVOID looking at your "attack on God" blasphemy that compels you to focus on forgiving the WORLD instead. You do not want to look at this because you actually believe that your attack on God has made you GUILTY. And you do not want to revisit the idea of approaching God because you believe it means admitting to having sinned against him, and you think he's going to kill you for it.
"You do NOT see that EVERY sin and EVERY condemnation which you perceive and justify IS an attack upon your Father."
"Your brothers and your Father have become VERY fearful to you, and you would bargain with them for a few special relationships, in which you think you see some scraps of safety."
"For through guilt, you EXCLUDE your Father and your brothers FROM yourself."
"It is your Father Whom you would defend against."
If you think that God is evil you will not want to go home. If you think the world is NOT evil you will not want to go home. You've turned God into an enemy and do not trust him. That's why there is a whole process of "the development of trust". You have misplaced your trust in the ego world. You have to learn to trust God again.
"You CHOSE to forget your Father, but you did NOT will to do so."
To trust God you have to be willing to accept the possibility that God is not the scary monster that you think he is. That he is not going to hurt or attack or reject you. That he still loves you because he is still love. You have to take away from God the false accusations you've made that he is evil and vicious and not to be trusted. You have hurled abuse at God and have accused him of sin. This has to be undone.
You will only approach God, tentatively, if you can have a little willingness to be mistaken about him. And this requires that you trust and have faith that he isn't out to destroy you. You have to be wrong about God, because you have become mistaken about him and his nature. You cannot conceive of him without a body, or think of him as anything but selfish like your ego. This has to be reversed.
"And either the ego, which you made, IS your father, or its whole thought system will not stand."
"Your gods are nothing, because your Father did not create them." "You who have been unmerciful unto yourselves, do not remember your Father's love."
This aspect of forgiveness doesn't seem to be talked about very much in ACIM circles. A lot of time is spent talking about forgiving the world and its contents and the people that piss you off, but very little about looking at the fact that you rejected God, hate God, do not want God, and are trying to destroy him and his son. This picturing of God as an enemy has to be undone in order for you to feel safe to be intimate with God again.
You have to unlearn your rejection of God and learn to love him again. Perhaps the real reason that many people do NOT focus on forgiving God, or looking at how they have framed God as evil, is because it would suggest tremendous guilt and fear, to admit that you have tried to attack and kill off God himself. Fortunately God has not held any of this against you and dispels it entirely, and is his hands are held open in welcome to receive you as his most loved creation once again.
To want to go towards your brothers in Christ, to want to forgive anything, you have to be willing to forgive God. You have accused him and must correct this. The world was made as an attack on God. You can forgive the world but you also have to forgive the idea that you've attacked God. You have made God into a false God and have redefined what you think God is like. This has to be corrected. You have to learn to love God again, and you can start by admitting that you don't.
"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL Father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him."
"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."
"The "attack on God" made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression."
"Do not look to the god of sickness for healing, but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him."
"The god of the crucifixion demands that he crucify, and his worshippers obey."
"You MADE the god of sickness, and BY making him, you made yourself ABLE to hear him. But you did NOT create him, because he is NOT the Will of the Father. He is therefore not eternal, and will be UNmade for you, the instant you signify your willingness to accept ONLY the eternal."
"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father."
"You have interpreted the separation as a means which you have made for BREAKING your communication with your Father."
"You can give up the god of sickness for your brothers; in fact, you would HAVE to do so, if you give him up for yourself. For if you see him anywhere, YOU are accepting him."
"GOD is not at war with the god of sickness which you made, but YOU are. He is the symbol of willing AGAINST God, and you are afraid of him BECAUSE he cannot be reconciled with God's will. If you ATTACK him, you will make him real to you. But if you refuse to worship him, in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made."
"Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp; all goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come."
"There is either a god of fear or One of Love."
"Or will you make another idol to replace it? For the god of cruelty takes many forms."
"The ego is not a traitor to God to Whom treachery is impossible. But it IS a traitor TO YOU who believe you have been treacherous to your Father." "You who have played that you are lost to hope, abandoned by your Father, left alone in terror in a fearful world made mad by sin and guilt, be happy now. That game is over."
A sense of loss comes from the belief that something you value is lost.
Ultimately the only way you can lose something is if you believe part of WHAT YOU ARE is lost.
Whatever you value you identify with and consider a part of you.
When it goes away, if it is temporary, you will determine that you have lost a part of you. What could you ever lose but a part of yourself?
However, what you value you love, and what you really value IS love.
The belief that you have lost something is the belief that what is valuable is lost.
It is the belief that LOVE ITSELF has been lost.
Love can be confused with physical and temporary things such as when we love people, and when they disappear it can seem like they are gone and take love with them.
Then what you loved - which has to be love itself - the love that you saw in them - you believe the baby is flushed away with the bathwater.
But love can never go away, and the true andidote to a sense of loss is a sense of presence or gain. And that means a recognition that love is still here now.
Where there was loss, recognize there is love, and the love will fill the void of darkness that loss represented when you thought love (God, Self, Brother) was dead.
You can't lose a part of yourself because you are the whole of love and are eternal. Nor can you lose a part of God. Nor can you lose another being that God created.
It is a mistake to believe that you can lose what is permanently love, or that love itself can be separated from you.
Love itself WILL JOIN YOU TO that which you love, and it is through love that you continue to share everything with that which is love.
Love is the only thing that really fulfils you and is ultimately the only thing you really can genuinely value and want.
Associating love with things that die makes you believe that love dies, but this is the mistake. What you love isn't the body or the place or the thing. It's the love-being that expressed through it and that you related with.
The love-being is permanent and immortal and never lacks and never wavers, because love is ever-present and unlimited in its unconditionality.
Death has no power to make love go away. Love is pure life. Love is forever.
"Perceived through the ego's eyes, it is loss of identity and a descent into hell."
"What loss can I anticipate except the loss of fear, and the return of Love into my mind?"
"The ONLY remedy for lack of love is perfect love."
"But ALL loss comes only from your own misunderstanding. Loss of ANY kind is impossible. When you look upon a brother as a physical entity, HIS power and glory are lost to you and SO ARE YOURS. You HAVE attacked him, and you MUST have attacked yourself first. Do not see him this way for your OWN salvation, which MUST bring him his. Do not ALLOW him to belittle himself in YOUR mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and escape from YOURS. As part of YOU, HE is holy. As part of ME, YOU are. To communicate with part of God Himself is to reach beyond the Kingdom to its Creator, through His Voice which He has established as part of YOU."
"You will identify with what you think will make you safe. Whatever it may be, you will believe that it is one with you. Your safety lies in truth and not in lies. Love is your safety. Fear does not exist. Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self."
What our minds really need is a paradigm shift. That means a really radical sweeping upgrade in terms of premise, context and outlook. Some kind of system-wide "shift" out of an entire field of form into some radically greater perspective.
It's not enough to be dwelling in the realm of problems and trying to solve them. We have to get our minds out of the entire belief in problems. That's a paradigm shift, a refusal to engage with the level of suffering and a desire to completely transcend it.
This is why Jesus tells us for example to not to try to find freedom in the body, or in the world. It doesn't exist there. Or to not seek for love outside yourself, but within.
We've been looking to solve problems and suffering at the level of the problems and the suffering, which at best makes illusions of solutions but doesn't stop it happening. If you want it to all stop completely you have to stop the entire system, to not play the game.
The same applies with death and sickness. Questioning whether such things even exist at all, instead of dwelling on how to solve them. It's the withdrawal of power from illusions that undoes them, just as forgiveness is an entire perspective above the battlefield that renders the whole system obsolete.
The ego for example counsels that a war is real, and that you should play the game of war, and that if you take a side you will win, or alternatively you will lose. What it doesn't tell you is that both sides of the war is a loss, because to exterminate anyone is to lose yourself, because you are one. It is not interested in oneness only in separation. If you play the game, you lose, regardless of the outcome. The only way to shift the entire paradigm is not to play at all.
All reactions to a suffering world that you've made real, which compel you to change it so that you don't seem to suffer, are faulty. They might seem to produce some changes and make the illusion more palatable, but it doesn't really wake you up. What wakes you up is questioning the entire premise of the thing and whether or not it's even possible.
Shifting from a premise that this world is real, to a premise that it is just an unreal dream with no real consequences, is a total paradigm shift. It's always about adopting a much broader and higher context which completely reframes everything. A whole new paradigm, a new thought system, a new perception, a new truth, which is so far reaching and deep that it completely redefines the meaning of everything, and puts everything in its proper perspective.
"Freud was more clear-sighted about this, because he knew a BAD thing when he perceived it, but he failed to recognize that a bad thing cannot exist. It is therefore wholly unnecessary to try to get out of it. As you very rightly observed yourself, the thing to do with a desert is to LEAVE."
"Yet freedom of the body HAS no meaning. And so the mind is DEDICATED to serve illusions."
"Fear not to cross to the abode of peace and perfect holiness. Only there is the completion of God and of His Son established forever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain, and where everything fails to satisfy. And, in the Name of God, be wholly willing to abandon ALL illusion."
"Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination. But vision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven's laws."
Ego is the idea of being a completely separated off, isolated, alone, totally self-reliant, exclusive special unique self, which has no relationships with anyone and relies on no-one. Completely autonomous as though it is totally cut off from everything.
"The ego's goal is quite explicitly EGO AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power EXCEPT ITS OWN. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation."
"The ego ALWAYS attacks on behalf of separation. Believing it HAS the power to do this, it does nothing else, because its goal of autonomy IS nothing else."
"the ego attacks everything it perceives, by breaking it up into small and disconnected parts, without meaningful relationships, and thus without meaning"
"The core of the separation delusion lies simply in the fantasy DESTRUCTION of love's meaning."
"Separation is only the decision NOT to know yourself. Its whole thought-system is a carefully-contrived learning experience, designed to lead AWAY from truth, and into fantasy."
"Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it can not surmount."
"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it."
"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation."
"The Separation is merely another term for a split mind. It was not an act, but a thought."
"To fragment IS TO EXCLUDE, and substitution is the strongest defense the ego has for separation."
"For the IDEA of guilt brings a belief of condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity."
"the separation was a descent from magnitude to littleness"
"You who were prisoners in separation are now made free in Paradise."
"Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss."
"The ego arose from the Separation, and its continued existence depends on your continuing belief in the Separation."
"All it CAN offer is a sense of temporary existence, which begins with its own beginning and ends with its own ending."
"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."
"Fear has made everything you think you see. All separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. They are not there. Love's enemy has made them up."
"BY their separation are their selves maintained. The little that the body fences off BECOMES the self, preserved through sacrifice of all the rest. And all the rest must LOSE this little part, remaining incomplete to keep its own identity intact."
"ALL sickness comes from separation. When the separation is denied, it goes."
"Guilt is ALWAYS disruptive. Anything that engenders fear is divisive, because it obeys the law of division. If the ego is the symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt. Guilt is more than merely not of God. It is the symbol of the ATTACK on God."
"SEPARATION therefore remains the ego's chosen condition."
"In separation from your brother was the first attack upon yourself begun."
"The separated mind cannot maintain the separation EXCEPT by dissociating."
"The separation IS the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, YOU still believe it."
Time and eternity are opposites. The eternal is always existing, always is here and now, and is forever. There is no beginning or end. There is never a possibility of change, or of what has always existed ceasing to exist. There is no death, and only eternal life is real.
Time is an attack on eternity. It is the idea that what has always existed no longer exists, what is here now is not eternal, and what is here now will end. It is the idea of change, and of the idea of loss and therefore death. It is an attempt to insert a delay in eternity and to crease a distance from the here and now. It is avoidance of presence and avoidance of God.
Spacetime is a completely artificial construct and is completely false and unreal. It is nothing like eternity and has no permanent reality. It had a seeming beginning and it absolutely will have a seeming end. Endless time is an impossibility. Infinite time is an impossibility. Time is not real, and neither is space. Delay or distance from the ever-present unceasing and forever permanence of God is nothing more than denial.
Space is an attack on the ever-present existence of God. It suggests that God who is everywhere always, is nowhere ever. That nothing is ever whole, or wholly existing. That what is here is not there, and what is there is not here. That everything is limited and nothing is unlimited. That everything is separate and nothing shares anything.
Given that God is everywhere always, space attacks God by suggesting that there is nowhere that everything exists. And nothing exists everywhere. Meaning the everything exists nowhere, and God therefore does not exist. This is why in spacetime it appears that God has no existence whatsoever. It is false and untrue and completely opposite to reality. Both space and time are nothing but a false belief, believed by insane minds, dreaming of exile from the eternity of truth.
"Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary." UrT1B41AR
"Together, we can laugh them BOTH away, and understand that time can NOT intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time. A timelessness in which is time made real; a Part of God Which can attack Itself; a separate brother as an enemy; a mind WITHIN a body; all are forms of circularity, whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at its cause." UrT27I6
"Today the light has come. And you will see the world that has been promised you since time began, and in which is the end of time ensured." UrW75L7
"So do the parts of God's Son gradually join in time, and with each joining is the end of time brought nearer." UrT2F1 "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." UrU5A5
"the Holy Spirit KNOWS it is not true. He stands at the end of time, where YOU must be, because He is WITH you." UrT11J8 "And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever." UrU5A7
As you become more aware that you are doing everything to yourself, and you gradually learn to take responsibility for everything you are experiencing, at some point you'll start noticing more and more that you keep attacking yourself.
Whereas before you noticed perhaps when you were attacking other people, and were thinking that this had no effect on you, and somewhat learned to forgive them and see their innocence, now the focus shifts a bit more directly to yourself.
"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability" takes on a more obvious meaning. You literally keep attacking your own self.
The way these attacks happen is through moments of fear and guilt.
I'll be in the middle of some form of questioning, or self doubt, or worrying about something, and Jesus will poke me... ."Paul".... and then I know that means, I'm making some mistake here. So then I stop and just look at what I'm doing.... and usually it'll be sort of obvious that I'm either in fear, or I'm in guilt. Those are the two main ones.
Often though it's not so obvious what mistake I'm making. Sometimes I have to open up and try to figure it out, especially if I'm far into it. It can be quite confusing and obscure. Fear is not always obvious in its many many forms.
In general, I undermine myself all the time. So what I've become aware of is that, just as the Course says, I keep doing stuff to myself. I keep having attack thoughts and mistaken perceptions which *directly* work against myself.
So its kind of weird when you realize this, that you actually are at war with yourself. You keep on believing, thinking, perceiving, feeling and doing stuff that undermines you, thwarts you, detracts from your confidence, makes you feel unworthy, doesn't give yourself credit, diminishes your value and all kinds of other stuff.
So now it's sort of a cleanup job. You have to realize all the ways that you keep being AGAINST YOURSELF. At the very least, you have to realize you are against yourself, at all.
This being against yourself was completely covered up in a state of denial, when you were more involved with projecting onto others. And that projection really strongly distracted you from *recognizing* that you were attacking yourself. It convinced you that it was always other people who you needed to attack, who were receiving the effects of your attacks, and who this was all about. Once enough of that projecting is undone and you learn to do it less, it suddenly becomes apparent that it's actually not them that you've been attacking, its YOU.
So now you have to deal with yourself. But this is kind of interesting now, because it means that you now know you're really dealing with YOURSELF, not other enemies. You are your ONLY enemy. And there is a lot of hope in that, because it means that you are more aware that you have an opportunity. Since your enemy is yourself, you recognize that if you simply stop attacking yourself, and learn to recognize the ways that you do attack yourself, then there is basically NOTHING STOPPING YOU from becoming a far more capable, empowered, aware, happy person. There is nobody else and nothing else to influence you to stop you once you're on this fast-track to your true self.
So now the challenge for me and you, is recognizing more often and more clearly, when we are attacking ourselves, and learning what that attack comprises - is it fear, is it guilt, is it unlove - and CHOOSING AGAIN and learning not to do that to ourselves. As we do this we will grow in confidence and certainty and love and happiness, on our way home to God.
It's not that God isn't sending, giving or sharing. God is automatically doing that all the time.
But are you receiving it?
In order to receive it you need to get yourself to where you deeply BELIEVE that you HAVE RECEIVED. Right now.
It's not enough to believe that you 'will' receive at some point in the future, or that you haven't quite received it 'yet', or to be in a state where you're watching for it to come.
You need to put a 'timestamp' on the MOMENT when you believe that you have fully received, so that any time after that you will continue to believe that receiving has already occurred.
God doesn't work based on maybe's and sort-of-did's. God works in the absolute, in a mode of completion and wholeness.
Now, this may not necessarily mean that what you believe you've received, ie the healing, that it will 'show up' in form yet. And your body may not yet show you that you have received. It may still demonstrate symptoms of not receiving, or or sickness. But you are meant to ignore that.
See, the ego, the body, the world, will try to tell you one truth - that it's 'true' that you are sick and unhealed. And even while it's telling you this, YOU need to get into the belief instead that this is NOT the truth and that it's TRUE that God HAS given and that you HAVE received. You must defy all of the signs and signals coming from anywhere other than God. You must believe God MORE than you believe the body.
So this takes an act of faith. An act of believing God's truth IN SPITE OF what anything else says or does.
When you do this, and you take the leap to God's truth over all other truths, being "under no laws but God's", and you stay firm in that belief that you have received because God has given and God never fails to give, it shouldn't be long before the healing shows up in form.
It's like placing an order for a product on the internet. You find what you want (healing from God), you place an order for it, and you 'pay' for it. This payment means choosing to believe that what you've bought is YOURS. It's yours because you paid for it, but you do not necessarily have it in your possession yet. But you have now a 'legal right' to it because you paid for it. It just happens to be somewhere else temporarily.
You wouldn't suddenly believe that it's no longer yours, or that you will not receive it, just because it hasn't been DELIVERED yet. You would have certainty and faith and knowing that it WILL be delivered because you've done what was needed in order to ensure that. Believing that God HAS given healing and that you HAVE received from God, now, is you placing your order. It won't then be long before your 'package' of healing will show up.
So it's okay to believe, yes, I've received from God, but I am not seeing it yet. But don't let the 'not seeing results yet' disuade from the conviction that you have received God's gift and that it WILL show up. Expect it to show up. Expectation is important in divine healing because it defies fear. Fear inter-fears with "deliverance".
So decide,right now, you believe God has given, God never fails to give, and therefore you need to receive. Believe right now you have received. Get that really settled in good and solid. Feel it. Believe it. You have received God's blessing. Now ignore everything that says otherwise and don't waver and don't let illusions or ego interfere with that 'faith' that this is true. And it will come.
I went to God and opened myself up on the topic of unconditional love. I wanted to find out how to be unconditionally loving, and I started to inquire whether God loved me unconditionally.
Then I started to regurgitate all of the things I did during the day which could've been considered guilty or judgmental or fearful. I seemed to be confessing these things, thinking perhaps that God would only love me unconditionally IF I hadn't done these things or IF I was willing to admit them.
For some reason it seemed difficult to simply accept that God loves me unconditionally. In my mind I kept thinking there had to be 'reasons' why God would love me, like, certain conditions that I had to be meeting, certain ways I had to be behaving. So I seemed to keep offering up these things that I'd 'done', believing that at least exposing them to His light was some kind of 'offering' or that He needs to forgive me for them, or something.
But what happened was, I think Holy Spirit chimed in that none of these things were important. I felt the presence of God, which was just 'there', while off to one side it seemed Holy Spirit spoke for Him. I still struggled to understand how God could be loving me unconditionally if I'd done certain things or made certain mistakes or whatever... there was just this ... expectation, of 'only being loved IF', a love that's based on conditions and requirements, that I found hard to push past mentally.
What I couldn't 'get', but what was being very simply offered, was that... all God wants to do is love me. Not me in exclusion, but, ... He had no other agenda. No other interests. He wasn't asking me to do certain mental somersaults. He wasn't even remotely interested in all the things I'd 'done'. He didn't seem at all concerned about any of the stuff I felt guilty about. It was really like He was oblivious to all this. And all that He WAS doing... was loving.
Holy Spirit chimed in... that all God wants to do is love. The impression I got was of like a 'being' that just loves, only loves, doesn't do anything else, has no other interests or motives, isn't even remotely excited or upset about other stuff I've done, isn't even remotely concerned with punishment or judgement, and JUST WANTS TO LOVE THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF ME.
And nothing else.
Just love. Just loving. Just being in love and wanting to share that love with me. Just embracing me with love and surrounding me with love, like love was its ONLY function, love was its only capability, and it couldn't DO anything else but love. It was almost like a handicapped child with severe limitations, as an analogy, which just runs up to you and hugs you spontaneously for no reason, and doesn't really do much else. It just loves. God just loves.
It blew me away that this was all God was interested in. Just to love me. Nothing else was important to Him in that moment. There were no distractions. Just this totally single-minded perfectly pure absolutely overwhelmingly unbridled passionate, embracing love, for me, for no reason whatsoever other than its own self-evident love.
I felt that, some. But parts of me still couldn't understand how this was possible. My ego mind kept reaching to "but what about ...."... and none of that was important.
God just loves us, 100%, all the time. We are in that love with Him, 100%, all the time. Just love everywhere. That's all there is.