To prove that your mind is restored to sanity and to its truly immortal nature, you must also be willing to prove physically that you are invulnerable. This demonstration of invulnerability requires great confidence, in that even when others attempt to harm you, the consequences of their attack disappears and is undone. You become "bullet proof" and incapable of being hurt by anyone.
You are literally being asked to show your brother, to prove to him visually, that on ALL levels, you have not been hurt by him. This includes and demands the healing of the body, so that it does not transmit a double contradictory message. The body must not be allowed to testify that HE DID attack you or your body, otherwise it continues to PROVE that he is a sinner.
This requires the use of miracles to override all external sources of attack, undoing all consequences of sin, and maintaining the body in perfect condition. Only by reversing or preventing any effects of attack by another, can you truly demonstrate to him that he HAS NOT attacked you OR your body. And only by showing him the complete ABSENCE of evidence to support his belief that he sinned, can you exonerate him and teach him his innocence.
Your body then becomes a SYMBOL of your own innocence, because it now represents your harmlessness and immortality. And by pointing TO your innocence, it also testifies to HIS. It cannot testify to his innocence if it retains ANY trace of harm or damage, which means that until forgiveness has brought a PHYSICAL healing to your body, it is not real or complete. And until it has transmitted healing TO your brother as well, through physical demonstration, forgiveness is not complete.
When you brother attempts to look upon your body which he believes he DID successfully attack, and does NOT see any proof of attack there, because it has been healed and undone by miracles, it becomes impossible for him to CONFIRM his own sinfulness. And in the demonstrated PHYSICAL PROOF that he did not do anything, the body testifies with a power greater than a thousand tongues, and beyond words or claims, that HE MUST NOT have attacked you. And therefore your body's unharmed condition shows him that he MUST still be innocent, and in its harmlessness induces HEALING in him, because his belief in sin is proven false.
This also extends to you demonstrating that your brother has not hurt you psychologically, and is not responsible for your suffering. Which ties into the secret of salvation that "you can be hurt by nothing but your thoughts" and "you did it to yourself." When someone appears to upset you, you are deceiving yourself and are using him as a scapegoat for your self-attack.
What you're supposed to do is assert that NO ONE CAN HURT YOU. Which is a position is great confidence and assertion. Whereby even if someone tries to hurt you, you act as if they have had NO EFFECT on you. Which means you do not hold anything against them.
To forgive therefore means to hold no sense of sin or guilt against anyone, REGARDLESS of what they do or attempt to do. Even if they accuse you or try to hurt you, you stand in the face of their onslaught unharmed and unwavering, like a rock in the river. You do not USE it to hurt YOURSELF, and so do not demonstrate that you can BE attacked. You show your brother, both mentally and physically, that he HAS NOT done anything to you, and you do not make him responsible for your condition, feelings, or physical state. You act as if you are invulnerable, and in fact are. You show him, "you can't do anything to me, not even physically."
If you think ACIM is not teaching you that you HAVE to heal the body in order NOT to accuse others of sin, then think again. The body MUST reflect the healed mind, and until it does, you HAVE NOT healed the mind. Sickness and pain cannot be kept, if you are to PROVE that you are healed and that you have power OVER it. Death and sickness must be UNDONE in order to demonstrate that you are the resurrection and the life.
This doesn't mean you ARE a body OR that the body is immortal, which it cannot be. But the body DOES symbolize your mind, as an outward picture of an inward condition. Its sickness is part of your effort to PROJECT SIN, and you cannot allow it to show up as a picture of crucifixion or proof of attack, if you are truly forgiving.
The pertinent quotes...
"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."
"To witness sin, and yet forgive it, is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. He holds not the proof of sin, before his brother's eyes. And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own."
"Health is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief. No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."
"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."
"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."
"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. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream."
"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."
"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.
Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."
The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for, it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions which are responsible for the body's condition. Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy. God's Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is. He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him.
"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."
"His dreams are happy and his rest secure; his safety certain and his body healed"
"With THIS as purpose IS the body healed. It is NOT used to witness to the dream of separation and disease."
"Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."
"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT, of what it made."
"That is why the Bible says "There is no death," and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist."
Taking TOTAL responsibility for EVERYTHING you experience is the ONLY way to find salvation! It is the meaning of forgiveness.
Throughout ACIM there is a simple theme. You are doing this to yourself. You are responsible for everything you experience. Whatever you're feeling, you chose to feel it. Nothing in the world is causing anything that you expeirence at all. And this means you have to own up to full responsibility for choosing all your suffering, in order to stop suffering. It means you have the POWER to make yourself suffer, and to stop the suffering.
This also means that it is impossible for you to be in a victim role, its impossible for the world to hurt you or attack you, no-one is EVER doing anything to you, no one is EVER responsible for causing you to feel anything at all, nothing happens without your consent, you can't even die without your own consent, your own thoughts are the only thing that can attack you, and if you would stop hurting yourself you would never be hurt.
This simple fact of your TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY for everything you experience, is the central truth that all forgiveness is based on. It is really owning up to the fact that YOU ARE IMMORTAL. And because you are immortal and eternal, you never change, you cannot change yourself, and nothing can change you. Any seeming changes you experience YOU must have decided to pretend to have, and nothing OTHER than your own mind can cause these to appear.
If you were to say, there are no other people in the world, you are the only person left in existence, and absolutely nothing happens except what YOU decide, you'd be close to the truth. This is not to say people don't exist, but this is the kind of mindset you need. You can't blame anyone for anything. You are THE CAUSE OF EVERYTHING. And this is described as the Holy Spirit's ONE all-inclusive lesson, which would eradicate ALL forms of suffering.
If you want to know about what forgiveness means, here it is. Forgiveness is simply the total ownership of the power of God, in which you are purely causal, and in which you recognize your immortality and that of everyone. Since we are all immortal, no-one can sin or attack or hurt anyone including themselves. And this means that no-one can be blamed, no one is a victimiser or a victim, and nothing is happening to anyone. In this view, there is no sin, and everyone is innocent and forgiven. It is the recognition that there is nothing TO forgive because nothing real can be changed, and therefore you need do nothing.
It's as simple as the fact that, if you are suffering in ANY way, you ARE the one who is choosing to suffer in this way. As an immortal being, NOTHING can happen to you or change you in any way. Which means no-one can be responsible for ANYTHING you experience, and nothing in the world does anything to you at all. It therefore means that if you seem to be experiencing any kind of suffering, YOU must have chosen it and put it in place yourself. And because you have that power, you can also undo it.
This includes all states of unhappiness, all sense of fear and threat, all sicknesses and pain, all bodily conditions, cancer and disease and death, all forms of attack, all grief and loss, all despair and depression, every kind of victimhood, all roles, all states of stress and upset, every offence, every hurt, YOU MUST have put it in place yourself.
Sometimes it is very hard to RECOGNIZE that this is true, and indeed this is all about recognition. Because without recognition you will not see that you are the cause - that the cause is in your mind. And then you will seek somewhere else, outside of you, in someone else, for the cause of your suffering, to explain how it got there, having disowned responsibility.
Without recognizing what you are doing to yourself, you will just keep doing it to yourself. And this lack of recognition will turn into projection and blame and victimhood and more suffering. If you do not take total responsibility, you will require someone or something else to be responsible. And then you will want someone or something else to change in order for you to be better off, which is the ego's "forgiveness to destroy." You would seek to destroy another in order to make yourself feel better.
This is also why anger is never justified because it's always a reaction to a faulty perception that someone ELSE is responsible, someone ELSE is having the guilt, someone ELSE has the power of causation and has caused you against your will. This is a disowning of YOUR power and making yourself a victim of your own power. Through projection your mind splits and dissociates from your power and puts it outside of you, and then subjects yourself to it, and now you are affecting yourself and at war with yourself, but you will believe that someone else is doing it. This all hides the fact that YOU are responsible for it.
All effects you experience, you put there. All forms of sickness, you chose on purpose. All suffering, you wanted. All guilt you intentionally chose. All fear you subjected yourself to by threatening yourself. All shame you piled upon yourself. All sense of unworthiness you deliberately tried to convince yourself of to keep God and thus power and responsibility away from you. All unhappiness and loss and despair you wanted on purpose to justify why you were powerless and not responsible.
The ego exclaims, someone else did this, not me! I'm not the guilty one, they are! Look at what's wrong with them, look at their sins and errors, I can't be the one at fault, this isn't my doing, I am not the criminal here, other people are accusing me falsely, other people are blaming me, they are all doing it to me, they're out to get me, they're so evil and wrong and guilty, how can they think they are better than me when they are just as bad if not worse, it's not me at all, poor me I am suffering as a victim because of other people and the world, they are all responsible for my happiness, they are all choosing wrongly and choosing unhappiness for me, why won't they just love me and worship me and make me happy against my will?!
That is unforgiveness because it is powerlessness and irresponsible. There is no ownership of CAUSATION in that view. It is false perception. Only by OWNING CAUSE and BEING THE CAUSE can you be free from suffering, reclaim your immortality and eternal life, enter a state of forgiveness, re-identify as the pure Christ being that God created you to be, recognize there is no sin, reclaim innocence, and therefore find SALVATION from suffering and death forever.
YOU ARE DOING THIS TO YOURSELF!!!!!!!!! STOP IT!!!!!!! TAKE YOUR POWER BACK!!!!!!!!! OWN UP TO WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!!!!! LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!!!!!! CHOOSE AGAIN!!!!!!!
"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true."
"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."
"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."
"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."
"My Self is ruler of the universe. -- It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."
"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."
"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."
"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."
"YOU CAN BUT HURT YOURSELF."
"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself."
"Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son."
"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise."
"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one."
"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it."
"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."
"There is nothing my holiness cannot do. -- My holiness is unlimited in its power to heal, because it is unlimited in its power to save."
"Say ONLY this, but MEAN it with NO reservations, for here the power of salvation lies: --- I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked. --- Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear."
"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing. Suffer, and YOU decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you GAVE the power of decision to Him Who MUST decide for God for you."
Why do we try to keep bodies from dying? This is a very deep question. ACIM tells us we are immortal beings, incapable of sickness or death. That God has created us to live forever, because nothing real can ever be threatened.
It also tells us that we "play a game of death" by pretending to be something which can seem to die - a body. By believing we are mortal, our mind enters into identification with the body. We believe the body is our self, something vulnerable and limited and capable of being attacked.
"All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you." UrW191L9
Identifying as a body brings immediate fear. The body is fundamentally vulnerable and can be destroyed. If you are a body, you can never be safe. We know this, deep down. It produces a compulsion to then try to preserve and protect the body, believing that if the body dies we will die.
Anything which now seems to threaten the body is a threat to our existence. If the body becomes sick we are terrified that we're going to end. If a body dies, we feel it is the loss of someone real. This "fear of death" now turns into an entire death-worshipping culture in which we are constantly trying to keep bodies from dying. Constantly trying to deny that we believe they WILL die, and us along with them. Fearing whenever sickness strikes.
All our laws are set up to preserve bodies, to protect bodies, to defend them, to keep them going. We see sicknesses as defeat. We see death as total failure. We see all forms of attack as a threat to our existence and our health. We don't even live in a safe environment, surrounded by danger constantly. And yet we constantly try to surround the body with protections and shelter, all of which are guaranteed to fail.
"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus." UrW153L1
If someone becomes sick, we feel afraid for their life, wanting their body ("self") to keep going. If someone is attacked, we rally around them and try to make them better. If someone is in a war, we see it as a tragedy, and how dare so many people be killed. Always essentially exalting the body, preserving the body, keeping the body going, worshipping the body, wanting the body to last forever. Wanting to avoid anything happening to "body-people" ever.
But the whole compulsion to have the body last forever is driven by the fact that bodies CANNOT last forever, the sheer terror this produces when you identify with it, and the NEED that arises to protect it to "save your life". We're not then trying to keep real people alive, we're trying to preserve a fake body person so that an otherwise immortal being can keep pretending to be mortal while denying they are mortal.
This applies not only to bodies but to the entire world and all physical life forms. Every single thing in this universe was made to be mortal, to lack, to lose, to suffer and to die. All the world's roads lead to death eventually, and all bodies and planets will die. That's just how it is, because this world depends on denying eternal life.
"Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die?" UrM28A6
That fact is that we spend our entire lives trying to keep bodies going for as long as possible, avoiding all attacks, avoiding the weather, avoiding sicknesses, trying to end suffering, trying to stop the bodies from dying. But why? It is not necessary to stop bodies dying, because it has NO EFFECT on the immortality of the soul. Maybe we should stop resisting death so much, because resisting death induces it.
From the perspective of the immortal soul, the soul simply USES the world and the body for its higher purposes, as it attempts to awaken from the dream of death. It comes and goes, into one body, out of it, into another, until it learns its lessons. From its perspective, the body's purpose is to SERVE the soul's goal of reunion with God. And the body has no purpose or life of its own.
"Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION." UrT1B40J
As far as the soul is concerned, it knows that certain lifetimes cannot last, and will not be the lifetime in which it awakens from the dream of death. It determines to use a body for a certain amount of time and for a certain purpose, and then puts it aside. It was never necessarily the goal to resurrect the body in that lifetime or to make it healthy. It was not a part of the plan or "useful" for the soul's lessons at that time.
Yet when we are so heavily focused on bodies and believing people are bodies, with "one lifetime and then you die", we constantly and obsessively try to avoid the body's demise at all costs. It is a faulty approach because it identifies the person with their body, trying to keep them in it for as long as possible. And always to avoid the fear of "ending".
You'll do everything you can to fix the body and save the body, thinking that by doing this you will avoid loss and death. But this isn't how the soul uses the body at all. Instead of letting souls be free, we imprison them in bodies for as long as possible, not wanting the body to go because it would mean the loss of a body-person. A body that a person is not.
"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT." URT15H12
"The test of EVERYTHING on earth is simply this: "What is it FOR?" UrT24H6
"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me." UrW219
The big question then is what is the body FOR, and how is it being USED, and WHY it is being used this way, and for what purpose? The body is NOT an end in itself or something to be kept for its own sake. The ultimate goal for the soul is reunion with God and total spiritual awakening to heaven's reality. Its goal IS NOT to keep bodies living for as long as possible. The soul does not care about bodies whatsoever, because it knows they don't even really exist.
Sometimes bodies no longer serve the soul, no longer function well enough, and become unhelpful. When bodies become severely sick and disabled they may no longer prove "useful", and the soul will want to move on to a new one. Sometimes it is simply "time" for a soul to leave a body, even if the body is NOT in a state of health or a symbol of eternal life, because it is no longer realistic or feasible to keep using that same body for awakening. This isn't a failure, bodies just don't last long enough for the soul to fulfill its very long road to awakening.
We need to drop the idea of constantly defending, fixing, saving, trying to cure, and trying to preserve bodies as if they are supposed to be eternal entities. They were never designed to last forever. They are not made of immortal spirit. They are always temporary at best. The mind attacks them and they break down and die, and this does not matter in the big picture. There will be a "second coming" of the soul, and another, and another.
But more importantly, the mindset and belief that people ARE bodies is the whole problem. This leads to an automatic sense of threat to your existence, which leads to automatic fear, which leads to a compulsion to "not die". Thinking of bodies as people, as though when anything "happens to" a body it's an awful tragedy which should never have happened and is real and must be avoided, is not in any way forgiveness. It is being "blinded by perception of form". It is a guilty worshipping of an idol and a mistaken sense of who and what someone is and what's important.
Actual souls CANNOT BE HURT, cannot suffer, and cannot die. All suffering and sickness and death is an illusion. That's the soul's view of bodies. Souls do not care whatsoever for whether bodies carry on or not. They are valueless and meaningless and are nothing. They are not worth anything. They are just tools that we're using temporarily towards an end. The end is not death. The end is transcendence of bodies and a permanent awakening to spiritual reality.
"The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?" UrW135L9
You'll continue to see that the world will remain obsessed with body preservation, worshipping of babies, attempts to avoid death, and the frankly inhumane notion that letting someone die is never in their best interests. People should be allowed to come and go as they will. Sometimes it is better to depart than to stay. And they do anyway, because a death is always consented and planned by the soul. It does not care about keeping bodies going or avoiding death, and death can be a liberation.
Avoiding death isn't really a miraculous viewpoint. Trying to have bodies always be resurrected and healthy isn't really a miraculous viewpoint. Making death real and then trying to rescue a person from it, is not a miracle-minded viewpoint.
These things are okay if they happen as side effects of the mind healing, and indeed we are to demonstrate symbolic bodies representing eternal life. But not because bodies are important whatsoever, and in an attempt to avoid death, or to try to use miracles as a way to DENY that we believe we are going to die. To falsely resurrect bodies in the name of body preservation is anti-miraculous. Resurrecting the MIND, such that bodies may also be healed indirectly is miraculous. Mind's belief in bodies must end.
"Whenever you attempt to reach a goal in which the body's betterment is cast as major beneficiary, you try to bring about your death." UrT29H4
Let the bodies go. Let them die if they're going to die. Someone dying does NOT always mean it's the worst possible outcome or a total tragedy or even something to be upset about. Don't mistake bodies for people or for souls or beings. They are nothing but artificial pictures, empty voids, vehicles and tools, used temporarily by a higher power and worth nothing in themselves. They have no meaning and no life of their own, and nothing worth keeping. They are only useful until they're not.
We need to drop the idea that "staying in a body" is the only valid and sane choice. Or that we need to preserve the body in order to protect the self. Souls leave bodies when the body is no longer useful, and never again do they give the slightest interest in what becomes of the corpse. Souls will use up a bazillion bodies and throw them on a scrapheap, across countless lifetimes, it if means being able to eventually wake up from bodies entirely.
"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation." UrT1B40J
I's very important to realize that when you separated from God, it was completely deliberate. There wasn't any victimhood involved prior to this. It was a very clear choice. And no matter how it was experienced as unwanted after that decision, it was completely deliberate from the start.
Without even beginning to get into what happened after the separation, realize that you had a 'plan', a reason, a goal and a desire, which you were attempting to achieve by separating from God.
You wanted to find out what it would be like to be separate from Him. To put it simply, you wanted to PRETEND that it was possible to be something you are not, to be independent, to have your own self-made identity, and to exist without God. This was not possible to actually do at all, so you were basically pretending to make-believe that it was possible. This was your original purpose for the ENTIRE dream of separation, regardless of its content.
This original purpose, this reason for separating, has absolutely stayed with you the entire time that you've been inside the separation idea. No matter what you may experience or feel or perceive within the dream, you still have your mind basically FIXATED on trying to achieve what you set out to achieve from the beginning. It is why you came into the dream to begin with.
In the biggest possible picture, from beginning to end, the whole purpose for your dream is to try to imagine what it would be like to be completely the opposite of God. And that basically means, you have a death wish. It is only a wish, which cannot really be fulfilled, but nevertheless, underneath every single experience you have 'inside' the dream, there is a constant drive to move towards death. And make no mistake, this drive is very ACTIVE and DELIBERATE and PURPOSEFUL, and it overrides all other wishes and decisions and intentions.
You see death as an appealing doorway, the pinnacle of the dream, its culmination, in which your seemingly new identity will suddenly be born into an entirely separate existence. You see death as an achievement, as the way in which you make it "actually possible and real" to be separate from God. Only by completely obliterating (from your awareness anyway) your Real Identity, and Life, can you finally seem to achieve an identity that God did not create.
So let's put aside absolutely every OBJECTION that you have to dying, because the fact is, right from the start of your journey toward death, you have ABSOLUTELY WANTED IT. It doesn't matter what else comes along to seemingly distract you. It doesn't matter how horribly you might suffer along the way. It doesn't matter how terrified you are of this death, or what seems to happen to bring it about. No matter how much you kick and scream and say you do not want it, your attraction to death is EVEN STRONGER than every other possible 'wish' you can imagine.
You would not sacrifice your ultimate goal - your plan to succeed in completely becoming the opposite of Life. You will allow absolutely anything else to happen if it means you can inch closer to it. You could be absolutely horrified by death and want to get as far away from it as possible, AND YET, at the same time, somewhere in your mind there is still a DEATH WISH, an overruling desire to get as far away from God as possible. This is the ENTIRE PURPOSE of your entire dream - to experiment with what it might be like to completely separate from Him. Everything else is inconsequential and less important to you.
So you see, the Son of God is playing with illusions, imagining outcomes, dreaming of dying, and wants to play with the idea of complete and total separation. It's not really possible for Him to be hurt by this, because it is not real. It's not really possible for Him to REALLY die. All He can do is pretend to die, to make-believe that He has, and to put on a really great SHOW within His dream, that makes it LOOK LIKE he did not choose it.
See, death, and suffering, and fear, and guilt, and sin, all require that you appear to relinquish your power of choice. They are all ways in which you give up responsibility for choosing, or at least, ways to HIDE the fact that YOU ARE DOING THIS TO YOURSELF. The entire purpose of every sin, every guilt, every fear, every punishment, and all death, is to PRETEND that you do not want what is happening. It is all part of 'not wanting' God - you use very intense 'not wanting' as a way to push God away, meaning that very strongly not wanting death is actually your attempt to bring a complete separation into being. Death is you pushing God away, on purpose.
So you use all of these DENIALS in order to make the ILLUSION that everything that you are has been taken away from you, denied, repressed, disowned. The ultimate expression of this denial is death - death is just a denial of Life, and not its actual removal. You are trying to deny that you will live forever. You can deny this quite well, but you cannot make it true.
So even though it seems very upsetting to be terrified, or guilty, or ashamed, or sinful, or to suffer, or to be sick and diseased, and indeed to die, even though all these things seem like something you do not want, underneath them all there is a deliberate decision TO WANT all of these things and TO MAKE THEM HAPPEN to you. Even if that seems insane, which it is, you want to die to fulfill the entire purpose of separation.
So you will feel guilty and it will feel like something you don't want to feel, yet which you've accepted that someone ELSE has decided you are guilty, SO THAT you can disown and hide the fact that you are deliberately choosing to be guilty, in order to help you towards your goal. And every time you are afraid, even though fear seems like you're experiencing something you absolutely do not want to be happening, secretly YOU DO, because so long as you are afraid you get to be a victim and you get to disown your power.
It is easy to feel sorry for anyone who seems to have sinned, or who feels terrible about what they did to God. It is easy to feel sorry for anyone who is experiencing guilt or shame. It is easy to feel sorry for someone who is afraid. It is especially easy to feel sorry for someone who is experiencing punishment, suffering or sickness. And it is ESPECIALLY easy to feel sorry for someone who SEEMS to be dying and who then eventually dies. THIS IS ON PURPOSE.
You are MEANT to feel sorry for all of these roles, because their appearance shows you that these people are NOT CHOOSING THIS, and you especially believe this the most strongly about death. Death is the ultimate `non-choice`, in which the person has so completely given up on life (God) that they sort of 'surrender' to death, becoming completely powerless and passive, absolutely incapable of stopping it, and then death 'happens to them'. And secretly, they are absolutely CELEBRATING that they've finally achieved the most extreme form of separating from God that's possible - short of actually doing it.
So yes, I feel like shit when I feel guilty, BUT, my guilt is secretly serving me by allowing me to justify moving further away from God. And even if I feel like i don't like this guilt and don't want it, I secretly do want it, very much. It allows me to maintain the illusion that *I* did not choose this guilt, and that I am guilty because of someone else. This way, I get to disown and hide and conceal responsibility for the fact that it was actually ME who decided to be guilty, and it was not put upon me by anyone.
See we have this very long STORY that we've told about WHY we have to be away from God... it's all to do with believing that God kicked us out of Heaven, that we sinned, that we really did it, and then we HAD to be guilty, and then we HAD to be punished, and then we HAD to die. We actually believe that God wants us dead, and that it is God's will that we die, and that if we go along with this will then we're somehow atoning for sin. It's bullshit, but deep down we believe in it, BECAUSE it's a story that justifies all of our decisions to go from sin to guilt to fear to punishment to death.
Don't be deceived by the appearance that just because you are afraid, or guilty, or suffering in some way, that you did not choose it. Don't be deceived into thinking that what you want MORE THAN ANYTHING is for this fear and guilt and suffering to end. You don't. It's not what you want the most. What you want the most is to fulfill your mission, your dream, your imagining, or what it's like to be dead. That's all. You want to be dead. And the only thing you REALLY want more than death is God. Death is meant to COVER UP your attraction to God, because without covering it up you wouldn't be able to believe that separation is possible or that God has become separate from you.
So you see this is all really a great big farce... that we ourselves are choosing and putting into place. We keep pretending that God and others are there to choose for us, and to 'make us' go through suffering. We keep claiming that the body does stuff to us on its own, and that we have no power over anything. We keep maintaining this story that death is going to inevitably come and therefore we have to just lay down and take it. But this is ALL OUR OWN MADE UP STORY. We're very conveniently PRETENDING that this is al someone else's doing, because this is the only way that death can seem to be possible. We can't die while we have a choice, and we can't die while we are aware that we're the one who is making ourselves seem to die.
So always keep this in mind. If you want to get really honest and purify and look past the illusion of a guilt that seems horrible, or an unworthiness that you think is genuine, or a sin that you think is true, or some horrible experience that you think you didn't want,... think again. Think again, otherwise you really WILL remain lost in your illusion with no way out. Unless you can admit to yourself that you have chosen this, and that you have done ALL of this to yourself, you will have no power. Or at least, you will keep hiding your power from yourself.
You are a child of God. You are unlimited. You are immortal. You are invulnerable. You are powerful. And you are just PRETENDING to be separate from God, like a child playing with illusions, make-believing a long drawn-out story of the how and why of it all happening. But really deep down underneath it, you know that it is not real and you know it is not really possible. So you keep pretending. Until you are done pretending, and want to own up to the fact that it is you that is doing all this, it's your dream, you're the one making it all happen, and then maybe it will lose its appeal. Just like a toy, you will put it aside and remember to laugh. Because really nothing has happened at all.
The secret to salvation is that "we are doing this only to ourselves". This means taking full responsibility for everything we experience, all of our feelings, all of our reactions. It means owning everything about who and what we really are in truth, being in truth, being whole, surrendering all ego, and stopping all victimhood. This is the goal, the atonement, the awakening. So we're all working on moving towards this.
Now, as you work on realizing that you only do things to yourself, sooner or later this idea will pop into your mind as well - that other people are only doing things to themselves. And this also means, they are not doing anything to you, which helps you with clarifying the fact that you are not a victim either.
But the reason why this is difficult to 'get', is because of the way things appear when someone else 'attacks you'. But as we'll see... even the idea of 'attacks you' is completely false and is a mistake in our own perception of ourselves. It's part of us not admitting that we only do things to ourselves, and therefore we cannot be attacked.
So let's take for example some person you know who appears to be attacking or upset in any way. This person has an ego. Because of the ego, they have separation in their mind. The separation means they have a split mind, or they are "in two minds". When someone goes from having one whole unified mind to having two minds, something very weird happens.
The person retains one part of their own mind and thinks of it as the acceptable part, which they identify with, and think is all of who they are. Even though they have this whole other part to their mind which they deny. The part they keep is what we call the persona. Then, a profound denial and separation and unconsciousness is happening in between this part of their mind and the rest of their mind. They use denial to repress the rest of themselves and to relegate the rest of themselves to unconsciousness, hatred, darkness, and everything that seems to be 'not who they are'. They disassociate from this other part of their mind and think of it as 'not me'. This is what's called the 'shadow'.
Now, where is mind? Mind is supposed to be everywhere, inside and out, and is supposed to be the same everywhere, and it's also supposed to be whole and unified. That means that what is outside of you is also inside of you and is the same in all areas. This is what it means when the Course says "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" i.e. the same experience is out there and in here and its all one joined-together oneness.
So when the ego splits the mind like this, the part it seems to keep becomes our own body and our persona, and the part it rejects (which is still part of that person), becomes the shadow and the projection of that. So everything seemingly 'outside' the person's body houses everything the person believes they are 'not', and everything inside their body houses the part of their mind they think they 'are'. And because of this intense repression of the 'what I am not' part, it *SEEMS* in a very distracting apparent way, that a) only what is inside the person's body is the whole of the person and there are no other parts, and b) everything outside the person has nothing to do with what person.
Of course this is not true at all. But this is how it shows up. People are walking around in two minds, one inside the body and one projected outside and disowned/denied. And, here is a law or rule, which applies all of the time no matter what kind of mind you have: You are always in a relationship with yourself. This is always true, no matter how you see yourself, and it also is part of the truth that you only do things to yourself.
So a person with a whole mind is always in a relationship to themselves as a whole mind and sees wholeness everywhere. A person with a split mind/ego is still always in a relationship to themselves, but it shows up as two parts - the inner/me and the outer/other. People only ever talk to themselves! People only ever relate with themselves! People only ever interact with themselves! People only ever see themselves! This is true at all times no matter how aware the person is.
Now this is where we get lost. We get lost when WE have an ego split mind ourselves. Only when you have a mind that is WHOLE, can you recognize when there is a split mind and can identify that both parts of the split are part of ONE mind. If your mind is not whole, and is split, then you are too unconscious to recognize or see this. And the result of that, is that you will believe in a separation between what is inside the person and what is outside. And that means, when someone comes along expressing 'split mind' in your general direction, you will fall for the appearance that the 'outside parts' of their relationship with themselves are in fact NOT anything to do with that person, and are to do with you. You will take that to be personal, and about you, instead of about them. And so will begin your experience of being a VICTIM.
You will be a victim whenever you do not remember that you can only do things to yourself, and that other people can only do things to themselves. You will be a victim when your own mind is split and therefore you perceive other people's splits as 'real', and take the split-off part of what other people are doing to themselves and believe that it applies to or does something to you. The other person's disassociation from this part of their mind makes it APPEAR that they do not own and are not identified with it, and therefore it really MUST be about you.
So when someone comes along being an asshole to themselves ;-) and they come up to you, and they call you an asshole, here's what's going on.
They are having a relationship with themselves and to their own mind in its entirety, so they are calling themselves an asshole. They are seeing a reflection back in a mirror of their own self attack. They have projected their separation/split mind onto the outside environment, which randomly happens to include you, and now they are attacking their own projected externalized part of their own mind using words. And because they believe that they are NOT this other part of their mind, they will 'frame' the attack in such a way as to believe they are not attacking themselves, but instead that YOU are the one they are attacking. Like, "hey Paul, you asshole". No, the person is not talking to me. They're talking to themselves.
If a person has an ego, they do not see you. If a person has a split mind, they cannot recognize your wholeness. If a person has a split mind, they are having a hallucinatory experience in a private reality that has absolutely nothing to do with you, and are projecting their split outward, and it's getting confused with what's out there, and so the person thinks that YOU have something to do with the hate they SEE, but the hate they SEE is their own hate toward themselves, which they are USING in order to maintain their split mind.
Hate and fear are tools and devices which create the illusion of disassociation and disownership and irresponsibility for the content of guilt in that person's mind. So if someone has an ego, they do not love you and they do not recognize love in you and they literally do not SEE you clearly. They do not recognize you as love, because they do not recognize themselves as love, because their mind is not whole. Love is wholeness. And if they were to have a whole mind, they would see you with wholeness and also recognize not only themselves as love but recognize you as love as well, regardless of your ego, and would see that the two of you are ONE.
So we get lost in this a LOT. I know I do. This is the main issue that keeps us being a victimized. The ego split in our own mind makes us buy into the ego splits in other people's minds. We keep taking personally expressions that other people are making, in a split mind state, toward themselves, which they project outward and make 'other'-oriented. It's still all about that person. It's still them attacking and doing this to themselves. It's still them accusing you of THEIR sins. And so other people never really accuse you of YOUR sins. And so other people are never really talking about YOU when they attack you or call you names. It's not about you.
This is really important to remember and to hone this skill of seeing with wholeness and recognizing the split minds of others and how it manifests as expressions of attack on 'otherness' (i.e. you) when in fact that person is really just at war with themselves. It's NOT about you. It's not you that they are really attacking. You have to learn to overlook the appearance of this. The form it takes, the words they use, the direction they aim it in, it's all part of their delusion.
So if someone is telling you they don't love you in some way, it's not true. They'r not even telling you that they don't love you. They are telling themselves that they don't love themselves. That's all. They're in a private world. They don't know what they're doing. Taking it personally and thinking that it is about you is a major error that YOU are making because YOU have a split mind that needs healing. Your own split is what causes you to be upset and hurt by other people's blind, impersonal attacks. So if there's someone in your life somewhere that seems to not like you or is your enemy... they don't like themselves. They are their own enemy. And no matter how it looks on the surface or how they express it, and no matter how much they seem to make it about 'you', it is NOT ABOUT YOU.
Remember the secret to salvation - you are doing this to yourself, and they are doing this to themselves.
If other people only do stuff to themselves, and if you only do stuff to yourself, and if nobody ever does anything to anyone else, then you are invulnerable, right?
When someone seems to do something to someone else, they are actually going into withdrawal, not attack. What looks like attack to us is a recoil. It's a withdrawal away from oneness. It's taking steps back away from love. It's hiding. Attack is hiding is the dark. Attack does not exist in the light. So nobody actually has any effect on anyone else. This is how God is unaffected by our attempted attacks as well. God doesn't even need to defend Himself because any kind of attack is a RETREAT away from love even if it takes on a form that LOOKS LIKE it's a forward attack. Attack is always a contraction away from love. So if you are love, you know that attack is always a form of avoidance. And that is complete truth, metaphysically and experientially, and it's built into reality.
So quite literally, you ARE invulnerable, and immortal, and cannot be attacked by anyone else, and have never been attacked by anyone else. You can only attack yourself and play with illusions of stories of how you attacked them or how they attacked you. None of that story is true whatsoever. We are all PERMANENTLY INVULNERABLE, and we are all completely, totally, wholly INCAPABLE of actually attacking anyone.
Nothing can assail the Kingdom of God. Nothing real can be threatened.
ACIM: "The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial."
"However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."
It's a very common belief that ACIM teaches "separation is impossible". It's the idea that "the separation did not happen". And this also leads to the belief that "I need do nothing" because nothing's really happened. Which then justifies literally "doing nothing" in the presence of "something happening".
The fact remains, that there is a "something" body sitting looking at a screen reading these words on the surface of a physical object. And no matter whether separation "happened" or not, something other than total abstract reality IS occurring right now. You ARE reading this. If it were "the whole story" that "separation did not happen", it would not even be possible to read these words, or for you to even have eyeballs. But it is. And denying that is not helpful. Something is happening here. Or at the very least, SEEMING to.
The distinction that needs to be made is this. REAL separation is not possible. Let's be clear, that you cannot in reality change God or His Creation. "What God has has brought together let no man put asunder" basically means what God creates is permanent. So literally, you cannot create a REAL split in Reality. You can't ACTUALLY cut your REAL self off from the REAL Father.
It is in this sense and only in this sense, that separation is impossible and has not happened. You literally cannot and have not separated. It's the same thing as saying you cannot sin because you cannot cause God. Which means there literally is no REAL sin. Nothing real can be threatened. So we can say, you cannot REALLY separate from God. However, this is not the end of the story.
"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."
While on the one hand you can co-create with God freely, in accord with His will, you CAN also DENY creation, because you HAVE that freedom. This is what "mis-creation" means. You use your freedom to create, against itself, to try to create nothingness. And here is the fact. We DID attempt to do this.
We DID have a tiny mad idea, that it was POSSIBLE to deny creation. Not merely to conceive of mis-creating or denying reality, but that by doing so it would have REAL EFFECTS. By mis-creating or attempting not to create, the result in truth is NOTHING HAPPENS. It's more like you become unwilling and stop willing anything at all, so you don't really do anything.
But you BELIEVE that by denying reality you DO something REAL, which you believe has real consequences or effects. You think that somehow "willing nothing" (death) can be real, and can replace reality. That "not creating" can be considered a "happening". It's because you believe in the mad idea, that you "make it real" to you. And whatever you believe in SEEMS like reality.
You cannot produce a REAL separation, and you haven't. BUT, you can deny reality and TRY to believe that an IMAGINED separation is possible. You can dream of separation. You can invent illusions, which is what it looks like when you repress or withhold extension. You can put the brakes on eternal life, by resisting your own creative power. And this is an attempt to STOP creation. ie, to kill it.
This results in what seems to be a state of death, or a dream of death. "Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem." As the mind denies itself, which imprisons its will, this kind of "puts it to sleep". It is resisting its own wakefulness. This resistance against life seems to take on the form of bodies and forms and sickness and death. These are the "slowing down" of unlimited extension, or the contraction of fear which "materializes" as physical matter. Or as the Course says, "the granite block of sin."
You can believe in this dream and make it seem real to you. You can imagine or mistake this dream for "actual" separation. And therefore can believe that a sin has really occurred. You can look to "events" and believe them, as if proving separation IS happening. But it's not REAL sin or REAL separation that we're trying to fight our way out of, it's an IDEA of it. We're believing that an IMPOSSIBLE separation is possible. And this believing is PRODUCING the world.
This is why Jesus says "The separation HAS occurred." Because He isn't referring to an ACTUAL separation. "The separation", also referred to as "the fall of man", isn't a name for a REAL separation from God. ACIM isn't even dealing with a real separation. But it is dealing with the fact that you DID have an idea of the impossible being possible, and you DID believe in it, and you DID mis-create, and you DID resist and deny reality.
While this "state" is not real separation, it IS a "mis-use" of freedom to create against creation. It has resulted in the "illusory" state of what it looks like to seemingly "not create". Or rather, to use creative power to make it seem like there is no creative power. To use life to pretend there is no life. To use the mind to pretend there is no mind. Even in death, a state of "no choice or will", both choice and will are being fully utilized to make it seem to happen.
"The separation" isn't anything to do with "you actually did separate". It's to do with you ACTUALLY DID DENY reality. You DID conceive of using free will against itself. You DID use your mind to deny your mind, putting it into what seem to be states of unconsciousness (death).
This has resulted in "dreaming", which has resulted in the making of entire illusory worlds, complete with seemingly happening bodies. And yet "all events are nowhere" because they are really a DENIAL of happening. The "occurring" or "happening" is actually a NOT occurring or happening, masquerading as an occurring or happening. This is how it deceives. It SEEMS to be real.
This has thus "made up" (fiction) a world which Jesus refers to as "a lower order reality". It is something you made in an attempt to NOT create anything. It is a NOT world. It is made of NOT bodies. It is the dream of pretending you are not creating anything, and not having eternal life. It's what you get when you use freedom to will against will. THIS illusory mis-creative state DID OCCUR. Mind DID go to sleep a while. It HAS dreamed of a universe made of nothing.
This doesn't mean a real separation has happened. But a fictional separation HAS happened. And so long as we believe it is a "something", rather than an attempt "not to do anything", or "not to live", we are in a state of denial. This denial produces all illusions of suffering and death. Thinking UNREAL things are real, that the world is real, is a mistake. It is a DENIAL OF reality.
"The world was made as a place where God (reality) could enter not".
God wills only to create. He does not ever will to use creation against itself. He does not deny himself or go to sleep. However, creation BY His children is not yet perfected, and so we need help to return to "sanity", which means only using creation constructively.
To be in reality means to not use will against itself, and to not believe that doing so does something. All it does is nothing. Mistaking the nothing for a something is "the fall of man", ie "the separation." Deception, denial, confusion, insanity, and the dream of death.
"The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not. God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly. He gave them His peace so they would not be shaken, and would be unable to be deceived. Whenever you are afraid, you ARE deceived. Your mind is NOT serving your Soul. "
"Your creation by God is the only foundation which cannot be shaken, because the light is IN it. "
So we ARE in a situation where we're making an illusory world, made of nothing, which seems like a something. And it's not quite a total nothingness otherwise even this would not seem to happen. It has a little amount of reality left in it. Even the ego depends on God a little. But these dreams of opposition to creation are lesser realities, denials of happiness and blocks to awareness. They also deny permanence and eternal life.
So the fact is, we DO need to "do something", given the context of the denial state we are in. Which is why God created the curriculum and the Holy Spirit. Because we DID choose to believe in unreality (the rejection of reality, using reality against itself). We are trying to hold a fake world in place. We, in time, are still choosing the ego.
"I need do nothing" is an atonement-level truth, only LIVED when fully accepted. It means there are no REAL NEEDS. You don't NEED to accomplish something because all that's happened is the ABSENCE of accomplishment. Darkness is the ABSENCE of light.
Even though in reality there are no real needs, your investment in neediness DOES have to be undone. You do need to UNLEARN everything you taught yourself in error. Until there is no more "need" for time and space. The curriculum therefore is aimed to help you to remember that mis-creating against your will is not what you want, and has no merit, or appeal.
It is futile, because you are merely attempting to NOT CREATE anything. The "creation" of death is not creation of anything. Or in other words, "the separation" does not cause anything to happen, has no real consequences, and is pointless. The "sane" would recognize this, and not bother to entertain the notion that "denying creation" is a worthwhile exercise. And in the total withdrawal from trying to make it achieve something real, the world you made disappears.
"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."
There has been no real separation.
There has been AN ATTEMPT to make the impossible possible.
You have TRIED to separate from God.
You have used creative will against itself, denying your will to will anything at all.
You mistook the "willing of nothingness" for a "something".
You now seem to NEED atonement. To correct the mistaken belief that willing nothing will produce a SECOND KINGDOM.
Once you accept that ONLY the Kingdom of God accepts its own existence and is in accord with willingness, the world that was NOT created does not exist.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."
There is no world. But you think there is.
One of the worst and most generalizing interpretations of ACIM's teaching, is that "there is no separation". This has framed any kind of separateness as wrong. It has associated all separation with duality, and has stripped oneness of any possibility of being many things.
So now we have in our minds this idea that oneness must be the total absence of separation. This even seems to make logical sense. But it's not the truth. How do we even know that reality has to be oneness? Where did we learn that crap? We've also taken it further to mean that, separation equates with duality, and a lack of separation equates with oneness. As if, there literally is "only one thing", a count of one, as reality. And obviously that must be God, so there is only God. God being alone all by himself. But that's not the truth etiher.
For a start, just as a cursory glance, ACIM has all kinds of material talking about God having a son. A what now? How can God have a son if there is no separation? If you are being strict about this it's impossible for God to have a son at all. Surely that implies there are separations in reality? Surely it's not true that reality has separate parts to it? Surely it has to be all one thing?
Who came up with this notion that reality HAS TO be all one thing with no parts? That is a gross preconception. So many of us keep projecting this idea onto what the course is saying, insisting that reality HAS to be one thing. It HAS to be oneness. We all want that lovely shiny oneness, and it absolutely cannot have any separations in it, because separation is ego, right? Well no.
How about, it would be okay for there to be a kind of separation, where even though there is a separation, it isn't a complete severance? How about if a single environment can contain two things, which are indeed two fully distinctly and wholly created things, but those two things ALSO are unified and share everything with each other? Is it still separation or ego if they are completely open to sharing everything without any selfishness?
The kind of separation that exists in reality is not the same kind of separation that exists in the ego world. The thing that you really need to get your head around is this. One thing can also be many things while still being one thing. Does that sound too radical or difficult to understand? Is such a thing impossible, and why does it have to be "not the truth"?
Wouldn't such a scenario where something is one thing, but is also two things, and the two things are still two things, but are also one thing, be somewhat transcendental? It would have to warp and transcend every notion we have about how everything is supposed to be in a nice tidy box of its own, wouldn't it. It would be some kind of weird thing where something can be one thing and two things at the same time. It might even have to be described as miraculous.
If God cannot create, God cannot live. If God cannot share, God cannot give. If God is devoid of any kind of separation, God can never create a son. Not even one. Not a single son of God can exist in God if God is this very vague idea of "oneness". Some people seem to not be comfortable with the idea of God having TWO sons, but they seem to be okay with him having ONE son, even though that's still a logical contradiction. Why is ONE SEPARATION okay?
Just on the general jist of it, ACIM is saying a whole lot of stuff about God having a son. Now, I don't know about you but if it were to be meaning that he DOES NOT have any sons AT ALL, then I would say Jesus is a terribly misleading author. Just on the basis of how often and how much "the son of God" is referenced, either Jesus is full of shit, or Jesus is deceptive, or the ENTIRE course is metaphorical.
Now, sometimes people actually do opt to believe that the whole thing is metaphorical, because that seems to put a nice bandaid on it and COVER UP the truth. It sort of ties up some loose ends. Those nasty little loose ends that keep saying God has a son. It would be great to just say, well it's all a metaphor, there isn't really a son of God, and to then go onto say that Jesus is just placating your little pretend ego self because it can't handle the truth. Where have you heard that before?
It would be quite convenient IF Jesus actually were only talking in riddles, and the entire course was a lie, and the whole thing was just playing to your ego's need for specialness, and if only "the special advanced students" will get and accept the fact that there really is NO SON AT ALL.
This is the kind of of mad thinking that some people have adopted to try to justify and explain away the very intensely radical truths in the course, to make themselves feel better and to try to understand what the heck it's saying. But it's simply wrong.
God absolutely does have a son. You're going to have to deal with that. If you think he does not have a son, then there is only God. What are the implications of this idea? If there is only God, then you are God entirely, God is dreaming of exile from God, God is insane and believes in death, God has special relationships, God creates poop, and God kills people. Hmm... Is that going to jive with your spiritual goals? It doesn't exactly sound very loving, but it is perfectly logical.
For God NOT to have participated in this madness of a hellhole we're in, he MUST be distinct from you in SOME way. There has to be some kind of freedom that you have "from him" that allows YOUR insanity to not affect him. Otherwise any madness you go into would instantly infect him, and then we'd all be lost forever. God did NOT enter "the separation", did not buy into the mad idea, and did not dream of hell. So who did? And the obvious answer is of course that you - as the Son of God - or at least ONE OF the sons of God did.
The kind of warped bandaids that a person has to come up with to try to mangle the course's meaning to make certain untruths "fit" is quite incredible. We've got people saying that God has no son at all, people saying that one separation is acceptable but not two, and we've got people saying that God can't have many sons because that mean separation. It doesn't, but that's what they think.
And mainly it's because people just cannot seem to conceive of something that TRANSCENDS "either this or that". They just can't seem to envision what a reality is like where one thing is also two things, or even many things, while still being one thing. There is NO parallel to that in the physical world. There are NO examples in your environment that you've ever encountered where one thing is also two things, or two things are one thing, or two things entirely overlap and share the same space. It seems impossible. But THIS world is impossible, so don't you think that means "one as two" is entirely possible?
What some people then don't like is the seeming SIMILARITY between this idea of God being "one and many", and their idea of duality. Oooh... it's a little bit too much like duality isn't it, that must be an ego thing, that must be a bad thing, let's get rid of it. But duality is NOT the same thing as the transcendental multiplicities of reality.
Duality really means, things are separate, AND they do not share anything. The lack of sharing is a vital part of it. It's not just that there's a separation, it's that the two things are kept apart and do not join or connect. So then you might ask what is the opposite of that? Is it oneness? NOT NECESSARILY. How about the opposite of duality, is a reality in which there are STILL many things, BUT at the same time, they SHARE EVERYTHING? What would that be like? Because that's what reality IS like.
That's exactly what Jesus describes over and over again in ACIM. A reality in which there are many parts, and where each part is the whole, and each part shares everything with all the other parts, yet is STILL a part. You being one with God, while STILL being yourself. You having your own soul, while ALSO sharing the soul of others. You being christ, while OTHERS are also christ. You having many brothers, yet each brother BEING the other brothers. That's all over the course in hundreds of ways and that's what you have to come to realize about reality.
"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."
Reality IS NOT ONENESS. It is not the kind of "opposite of separation" that you think it is. It IS oneness, but it's not ONLY that. It is a oneness which has expressed infinite power to CREATE additional ones. It is a wholeness which has FULLY created additional WHOLE beings. It's an entire constellation of creations, where each INDIVIDUAL creation is also so joined to the others that they are ALSO one. Oh my God, did he just say that we have an INDIVIDUAL SELF IN REALITY? How can that be?!!!
"We share our life because we have one Source, a Source from Which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect."
"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."
Now I can hear the thoughts in your mind trying to whirl around to visualize this. And you're probably thinking well, how do these many separate things be joined, to the extent that they are one, without DISAPPEARING? Because in spacetime we only have analogies where, as two things become one thing, the separation vanishes and you can't tell them apart any more. But that's NOT the case in reality. The two things are FULLY two things, AND fully one thing, at the same time. That's what you have to come to accept. The dynamics of heaven's reality is NOT the same as the laws of physics.
God is one, and has many children, who are one, who have many creations of their own, which are one. And every one creates with every other one. And the whole sonship, which is a collection of ones, creates as one, to create many additional ones, with God, who is one with them all. Oneness extends itself, to produce more onenesses, which are each oneness, and each gives oneness, creating more onenesses, which are in turn still the same oneness. One thing, creating separate things, which are one thing still.
This cannot be understood by separating things into separate boxes. It cannot be understood by insisting that reality be a count of one. It cannot be understand by projecting ego ideas of the "lack of separations" onto it. It cannot be understood by trying to get rid of all the sons of God and all your brothers and turning the world into a solo-gameshow of you vs yourself. There ARE other people here, there are other dreamers here, there are other free willed beings here, and you DO have relationships.
The course has been smushed, crushed, distorted, twisted, mangled, bent, upheaved and shattered, by well-meaning but mistaken individuals who THINK they know that heaven has to be a singularity of God. ACIM if you read it carefully does not support this idea. Even when it says "God is". Even when it says "God has but one son". Even then it STILL ALSO SAYS that God has many sons and a family and even grandchildren. Your creations are his grandchildren. That's all in A Course in Miracles, whether a person likes it or not, or whether it makes sense or not.
Can we just let the course be what it is and say what it does and try to FIND A WAY TO ACCEPT IT, instead of keep trying to CONVERT IT INTO the models and concepts and theories and theologies that WE think it has to be? Because it is not like them. ACIM is not non-duality, it is not adviata vedanta, it is not about oneness in the traditional sense, and it doesn't teach that there is only God.
Let it be itself and let it tell you what the whole truth is. Take ALL of what Jesus says and recognize that he does NOT contradict himself, and if he says two things which SOUND contradictory, it does not mean they are. What it means is YOUR THOUGHT SYSTEM contradicts itself when it is exposed to a truth that trancends it. It isn't the course that's confused, it's you. Jesus knows what he's talking about. "We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."
"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone."
"Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself."
"God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you" "God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him."
"It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it YOURS. Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."
God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it.
"He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive."
A Course in Miracles tells us that as soon as we cease to be forgiving, we enter into an unforgiving state where judgement is automatic. Judgement is attack. It is condemnation. It is required and necessary in order to implement separation, to come between You and God.
Typically we think of judgement as something you believe about others. But this is always an illusion. Judgement is always from you, towards yourself, happening within your own mind.
Judgement also does not judge something which is separate from you and outside of you, but it seems to make a part of yourself separate from the rest of you and outside of what remains of you. It establishes part of yourself as "other" and "not me", and attacks it.
Judgement is sin. It is an attempt to attack the Truth and split the mind. It also possesses two parts, one being the vantage point of "the judger" and the other being the vantage point of "the judged". It is not possible for a mind to be only a judger and not the judged. It must be both, because that same mind must believe that being judged is possible and real to it.
The mind entering into judgement is entering into separation. The mind becomes separated within itself. It forms a victimizer and a victim simultaneously. It engenders an attitude of superiority and inferiority simultaneously. It is not possible to therefore hold an "inferiority complex" without also possessing a "superiority complex".
To believe you are inferior can only come about by part of the mind skewing itself away from what appears to be superiority or worthiness or innocence, which is required in order for the other part of the mind to skew towards judgement.
Thus the mind splits into two simultaneous attitudes, victimization and victimhood, or judgementalism and being judged. You cannot judge without being judged, and all judgement is a judgement of yourself, not another. The mind thus simultaneously manufactures an experience of being judged, and an experience of judging, and then pretends not to be doing so.
It becomes easy for a judging mind to enter into denial that it is playing both roles, because it will either side with the position of judger or judged and deny that the other role exists within the same mind, in order TO judge or be judged. A sense of separation is needed between these two "false identities" to establish that one is what it is and the other is different.
The conscious part of the mind will likely see itself either as judged or as judging. When it sees itself as judged, it will see its judger as separate from itself and likely projected outward. It will be afraid of judgement coming from "other" than itself, which is thought to be other people. It will literally use other people to judge itself, even if they are not actively judging, trying to explain how "not myself" is the cause of this.
Alternatively, the mind can focus conscious awareness on the active role of judger, in which the role of being judged is more unconscious. It sees itself as judging only, and that which is judged is separate from itself and "other". It therefore sees judgement as being against others outside of itself, such as other people, even if other people are innocent. It believes it is not judging a part of itself, having split off the target of its judgements from awareness, through disassociation.
Both of these roles coexist within the same mind, as a split personality with two identities. There is an identity of a judger, superior and righteous and condemning. This is more clearly aligned with the act of sin, whereby to judge is to affirm that sin is real, that judgement is justified because of sin, and that it is someone else who has sinned.
Yet this condemnation is itself sin occurring in the mind, because sin is an attack just as is judgment. The attacking, judging part of the mind believes it is free from the effects of its own attack, having projected them onto another part of the mind.
Then there is the second identity of the judged, the victim who has been attacked from without, and the part of mind that sees itself as powerless, unjustified, weak, vulnerable and open to attack.
It sees itself being attacked against its will and having no power to judge at all. Seeing itself as unworthy, it disclaims having its own opinion or any sense of passing judgement upon others, and acts like a helpless victim. It is the receiver of judgement, open to feeling hurt and embarrassed and ashamed by the accusations which seem to come from beyond itself, typically projected onto other people as the cause because it doesn't recognize that the cause is within the same mind it exists within.
Both of these identities are happening within your own mind, and the interplay between them is happening entirely within you. The judging "you" and the judged "you" are both fictional, illusory identities. Neither of them are true of who you really are - a whole mind with no separation. Neither of them are your real identity, given that who you really are is wholeness and innocence and is completely free from attack, given or received.
You which are the HOST MIND to these two artificial portions of ego mind must gain enough awareness to recognize that you are judging yourself AND being judged by yourself, you are the one who stands in condemnation over yourself, it is you who is the source of your victimization, and "others" have absolutely nothing to do with this.
The only reason you believe that others i.e. other people are judging you, or are the target of your judgement, is because both the judger and the judged parts of your ego mind are unaware that they exist within a larger mind which hosts both of them. Both believe they are all of your "self" and that there is nothing more to your identity than the limits or confines of each false idea of identity.
Being incapable of seeing beyond themselves, both the judger and the judged thus see the "other" which is playing a part in causing or receiving judgement, as being "not myself" and therefore must seem to be "other people". It's easy to conclude this given that other people showing up separate bodies are readily available to "project" this onto, or to see them as sharing the same location as the "otherness" which is believed to be the problem. But this all has nothing to do with other people at all.
Whether it be others in the form of distinctly separate external people, or others in the form of the other part of your own mind, it is only the separation between these identities and the fictional story about how they see each other which is maintaining the split and projecting of the cause.
Your whole mind needs to recognize that it is bigger than and containing these two false selves, that neither self is the whole truth because its story is limited and partial, that YOU as the whole mind are choosing and playing these two identities against each other, and own up to the fact that since they are both WITHIN you, they must both BE a part of your one identity.
In order to return to a single identity, their separateness and distinctness must be dissolved and seen as an illusion. For both of these illusory selves to be a part of you, neither of them can be the whole truth. And in this light, the distinctiveness between them is overlooked and dissolved. Thus do they disappear and judgement and suffering ends. You must admit that you have been playing both roles, and therefore YOU are the one identity behind the ILLUSION of two selves.
Similarly, you must realize that all of your victimization, all of the ways that you believe others are doing things to you, all of the ways that you seem so suffer because of causes separate from you etc.. these must all be recognized as being because of another part of YOU, which is perhaps hidden behind denial and unconsciousness, attacking this second part of you. You've come to identify with this one split-off part of your mind, and are in denial of the rest of you.
It is you who has judged yourself, because it is you who have believed in sin and used sin to split your mind into multiple personalities. You are both the judger and the judged, and yet you are neither because they are both ego illusions.
It is no more true that you actually are being victimized by anyone else, than it is true that you are a victimizer of someone not yourself. You must realize that BOTH of these roles are not your true self, your real identity, or the whole of who you are. They are but an illusion of a separated, split ego mind, pretending to be an identities which you made up.
You are the one who has attacked you. You are the one who is attacking you. You are attacker and attacked, victim and victimizer. And yet you are neither of these, ultimately, because they are both fictional. The ego is always attacking itself and nothing else. The ego IS your self-attack, the scene in which a victimizer and a victim both play roles and cooperate to build a fictional story of interaction.
This is all taking place within you and has nothing to do with other people. It's only because of the split in your mind and your sense of there being a self that is "other" than your self, that you then become confused and accidentally project that sense of otherness onto other separate bodies. Really the otherness your are relating to as your enemy is just a part of your own mind, and your judgement of "them" is directly an attack on yourself, appearing to be indirect, or not at all.
To judge is to attack yourself. To believe you judge another not yourself is the very denial which makes judgement seem possible. You will judge yourself if you judge, and you will never judge another person. And if you are judged, rest assured you are not judged by another, nor should you fear the judgement of other than yourself. It is really your OWN "other self" which you are afraid of judging you, because YOU are the one who is judging you from within.
Surrender both of these positions, therefore, and return to wholeness, which is a mind of forgiveness. In wholeness you will not see an other to judge or to be judged by. Forgiveness cancels judgementalism and the belief in victims and victimizers. You have but done this all to yourself and have experienced all sides of your self conflict. Self conflict always contains two selves, who believe they each are all of your self and yet is limited in its self concept.
You cannot judge without being judged. You cannot be judged without judging. Both make up the state of sin, which is a belief that you should be condemned, or are being condemned. All of it is your own doing.
Judgment of another is a position of causality, in which you are squarely within the identity of the one who is doing something to another. Being judged then is a state of being at the effect of the judgement of another. Yet by entering into the drama of judgement, you become both the cause and the effect of it. And yet, you are not really the cause because none of it has been real. There are no real consequences from separation.
Following from the judging causality of sin, there is the result of guilt, which sees itself as the effect of sin. Yet from the perspective of guilt, as the victim of sin, the mind sees itself as separate from the sinner, and therefore sin is made unconscious and the guilty mind now sees itself as causal. It then proceeds to stand in the role of cause, continuing judgement against the self, determining that because it is guilty, it must be punished, and punishment is just another step on the road of judgement.
Judgement leads all the way to death in this manner, since condemnation calls for death to atone for what you claim you did. You will both suffer and want to suffer, will die and want to die, and will be victimized and want to be victimized. This is what comes from judgement - the entire ego thought system of sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death.
Learning not to judge is only important in terms of learning not to believe in real sin, and to place your mind back into a state of forgiveness. Of yourself. Wholeness, which is the end of judgement, cancels its illusory effects and they are undone.
It is not helpful to simply stop projecting judgements onto other people, if you are not recognizing that it was you that you were judging all along. That would only mean you continue to judge yourself but now are constipated with a censorship of the judgement that continues internally, trying not to shift it onto others but still believing you deserve it. Ceasing to project onto others is only the first step.
You must realize that you've been attacking yourself, judging yourself, being judged by yourself, and that you need to stop doing this. That you are willing to stop doing this. Generally speaking, an awareness that you have been doing this at all may be enough to shine enough light into your mind to make sense of what you have been experiencing, and to dismantle the ego's construct of self attack completely.
You need but a little awareness that it is you who has been both attacker and attacked, and that if you are both of these, then you must have a single identity, and therefore the illusion of separateness between them must be false and unreal. And thus, as an illusion recognized as an illusion of separateness, it will disappear. The mind is thus healed and restored to wholeness, awareness of wholeness returned, and along with it your FULL identity is restored to awareness.
Ok. Let's take a fresh look at miracles.
Your task is to correct your perception, but this does not take place in isolation. What applies to you, applies to others. The Golden Rule is always in effect.
If you extend love to others and be loving toward them, you will open yourself to receive love and share in love. If you do not extend love to others, you will shut down your extension and block your own receipt of love. You will either love yourself AND your brothers equally, OR you will hate both of you. This is inescapable law with no exceptions.
Your task isn't just to fix yourself. Your task is to REJOIN in Holy Relationship with your brothers and to HEAL BOTH OF YOU, by allowing the love in you to go out to them. Your task is to repair your connection with them and restore communication of love and sharing. You have to learn to love other people so that you will also be loved. And that is an outward expression or extension. It's reaching out with love and embracing others "as yourself".
The Holy Spirit is a gift from God. The Holy Spirit provides accurate perception of the "real world", forgiven and innocent. He is in you and in your brother, regardless of whether your brother is aware of this. In order for you to see your brother correctly with love, you have to look WITH the Holy Spirit. You will see the Holy Spirit IN your brother when you are looking at Him WITH the Holy Spirit in you fully.
Now, you of yourself cannot perform miracles or heal anyone. The light in you is healing, but you did not put the light there. God did. The love that is in you, which extends through you to others, is God's love. You can share in it, but not take possession of it. If you control it or block it or stand in its way, you hurt yourself and others. When you allow it to extend, IT provides healing. "Miracles are the Holy Spirit's gifts."
The Holy Spirit, being the idea of healing, isn't merely a static state of mind. It is a mind of love. It extends, and it HEALS. It can correct perception, dissolve error, shine away darkness, reverse sickness and death, and provide LIFE where it was lacking. When you become a "window" for the Holy Spirit to move THROUGH, this healing POWER goes out to the mind of another and heals them miraculously, which also restores health.
If your brother is lacking in some way, and calling for love, they have blocked their own ability to heal themselves. The light IN you is the same as the light IN them, being of God. This light is capable of healing them if you SUPPLY IT. The Holy Spirit is capable of SUPPLYING LIFE to others through you. You GIVE the Holy Spirit TO your brother, and HE supplies what is lacking, and they are healed. This is how miracles are performed. Miracle working is always about sharing love with others AND with yourself.
Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more, for those who temporarily have less. That means if your brother is weak and you are strong, or he is deluded and you are more sane, the Holy Spirit in you shines on him and brings him up to your level. This is also why Jesus says "forgiveness is not complete unless both of you have been corrected" (paraphrase).
Miracles are not something that you do in isolation. Nor are miracles "just for you", like where your own perception undergoes a shift. They are a means of repairing and restoring your Holy Relationship with others. They undo the separation that keeps you and others apart. They benefit BOTH OF YOU. This is why they are a maximal service you can render another. "I am not healed alone".
Miracles are ENTIRELY about what you SHARE WITH other people. The amount of love you are willing to see in others, also establishes the amount of love you will see in yourself. When you "shine" toward others, heartfelt, loving past their body, and recognizing the holiness in them, you are extending love and "connecting" your mind to theirs. Minds can only be joined in love. When minds connect, separation is erased, illusions vanish, and there is healing. The power of love from the Holy Spirit moves THROUGH you and actively HEALS you AND the other.
Recently when I have been attempting to pray for someone "in isolation", and would ask that God heal them or a certain part of the body etc, I would keep experiencing healing in my own self. I kept thinking this was some crazy mistake, that I wasn't asking correctly or focusing my mind properly. But truth is, miracles heal BOTH you and others equally. So if you are to be a miracle worker, you better be ready to start getting healed.
This is also why you can only give the miracles you have received, which means you are only WILLING to see a certain degree of love in others, corresponding to how much you are wiling to see in yourself. To love others more you MUST love yourself more, which is why you are supposed to accept the atonement for YOURSELF, SO THAT you can GIVE the miracles (perceptual blessings, mind healing) you have received from that acceptance/receiving of truth/love.
"Miracles make minds one in God." "Miracles unite you with your brother". "Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad." All of these speak to miracle working by erasing the separation BETWEEN you and OTHERS. Separation is double-sided, it applies to you AND others. Healing therefore heals BOTH of you. *ALL MIRACLES* unite you with your brother, therefore ALL miracles are devices for undoing the separation BETWEEN YOU and healing your relationship/communion. They are applied to BOTH of you.
Now, the Holy Spirit is the only "cause" of miracles, although Jesus is also involved "miracles are corrections introduced into false thinking by ME". He and HS are One. But what makes YOU one of "God's miracle workers", is your willingness to ALLOW God's healing to be in you and through you. "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." Meaning you have to learn to allow love to shine onto your brothers, through you, in order to stop blocking love's extension. Your willingness, which makes you a co-creator, allows you to "do His works".
What about miracles such as moving mountains? The Holy Spirit can do that. You, if you are willing enough "do not limit what I can do through you or you will limit what I can do FOR you", He CAN do extraordinary things. You "work" the miracle by allowing Him to move on God's behalf, which requires that you be a "perceiver of love" in order to make a pure enough request. Prayer is the medium of miracles and we do have to be in a "high" state of mind - a loving mind of miracle readiness - in order for miracles to be performed of this kind.
Just as it's not merely your perception of others that heals, but rather the Holy Spirit IN YOU that moves through you and heals FOR you (you are a medium, not an isolated thing), when you are perceiving correctly there is NO LIMIT to what "you and HE" can do together. It's teamwork. It requires you to have the right perceptual content - "wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles", while also being free enough of ego and fear to let love extend ITSELF. *IT* does the healing. You, plus the power of God, can bring healing to the world.
"You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating." --- "you share His function on Earth" ... " do His works".
So miracle working is entirely to do with upholding the Golden Rule, it applies bi-directionally to you and others at the same time, they heal both of you (unless you are already healed), and they ALWAYS involve OTHERS.
Here is a selection of pertinent quotes....
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient. ... The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the Guide."
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"The Holy Spirit CANNOT fail to undo FOR you everything you have learned" ... "The little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit for which He gives you everything."
"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and healing that is of Him ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary."
"I will heal as I let Him teach me to heal" ... "He will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision if I WILL LET HIM."
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"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS."
"Miracles are ENERGIZERS."
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"Healing is the one ability that everyone CAN develop, and MUST develop, if he is to BE healed. Healing IS the Holy Spirit’s form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows. "
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"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."
"Miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it."
"Miracles are not of this world.
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"The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth"
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"The Holy Spirit's temple is not a body, but a relationship."
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"What you acknowledge in your brother, you ARE acknowledging in yourself. What you share you STRENGTHEN."
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"Fear is a symptom of your deep sense of loss. If, when you perceive it in others, you learn to SUPPLY the loss, the basic CAUSE of fear is removed."
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"The aim of the teacher is to give them more of what is temporarily his. This process has all of the miracle conditions we referred to at the beginning. The teacher (or miracle worker) gives more to those who have less, bringing them closer to equality with him, at the same time gaining for himself."
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"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less."
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"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love."
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"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously."
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"Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others."
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"Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death yourself, and can therefore abolish both."
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"A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."
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"Our brothers ARE forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."
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"Would you cut a brother off from the Light that is yours? You could not do so, if you realized that YOU CAN ONLY DARKEN YOUR OWN MIND. As you bring HIM back, so will YOUR mind return. That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son."
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"The present offers you your brothers in the light that would unite you WITH them, and free YOU from the past. Would you, then, hold the past AGAINST them?"
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"And you will know you have forgiven me if you behold your brother in the light of holiness. He cannot be less holy than can I, and you can not be holier than he."
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"The light of joy is so strong that it radiates throughout the Sonship and returns ... That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself."."
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"Thereby you teach yourself that fear does not exist IN YOU, for you have in YOURSELF, the means for removing it, and have DEMONSTRATED this by GIVING it."
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"But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received."
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"I give the miracles I have received." ... "No-one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession."
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"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs.
The light in them shines as brightly, REGARDLESS of the density of the fog that obscures it. If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember.
Perceive in sickness but another call for love, and offer your brother what he believes he cannot offer himself. Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health, is to recognize in hatred the call for love. And to give a brother what he REALLY wants, is to offer it unto yourself. For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself. Answer HIS call for love, and YOURS is answered. Healing is the love of Christ for His Father, and for HIMSELF."