We have to be careful when using terms like "real world" and so on. There is a propensity to associate "real" with "ultimate reality", permanence, eternity, heaven etc. As though describing "places". Like you can be "in" reality or outside of it. If something is considered real, you might equate it with Heaven for example.

But this is not really what ACIM means when it refers to things as real. For example it tells you to "make the world real unto yourself", while in the next breath "there is no world".

Real, in these terms, really means "aligned with truth". Or let's say a person is insane, and to that insane person they experience things in an unreal way, a distorted way. When they return to sanity, they return to "reality". In other words, to "what is", or the truth about what is here, rather than the distorted view of it.

So the world we made, Earth, can "become real to you", in the sense that it it can be seen with Christ Vision from a perspective of real love, which lends it the meaning of love. Or moreso, truth. And so now the world is seen in the light of truth and for what it "really is". But this doesn't mean it's real as in ultimate reality. It means you're having what Jesus describes as "accurate perception" of it.

That accuracy, without distortion, is what it means when he refers to "the real world". A world as seen through loving eyes that reveals the "true nature of" the world. The true nature of the world, however, is that it is still an illusion of a world.

So when you make it real unto yourself, that means to love the world regardless of it being an illusion. To see it "with reality" or aligned with truth. Rather than seeing the "unreal world" which is seen through false perception, a distorted, condemned, dark version of the world. A misinterpreted world.

This is why "the real world" is called the real world. It doesn't mean it is reality as in, the location of Heaven. It doesn't mean it is "where ultimate reality is" either. But it does mean this is a state of mind and awareness in which the world is seen through vision, through sane eyes, recognized for what it actually is, rather than having bought into lies, illusions, deceptions or temptations. A clear mind, a right mind, looking with sanity upon simply what it is and nothing more or less.

We reach "the real world" through this process of sorting out perception and aligning with truth. Becoming able to see, without ego distortions and interruptions, what is actually there. What is there, as the world, without our projections of sin and guilt upon it. A forgiven world. A world seen through love's eyes. And in fact a world that God loves. BUT, this does not "make it real" in the sense of it being now some kind of permanent eternal reality. It just means it is now seen in the light, seen with truth, seen with sanity, and recognized. Its "true nature" or "the reality of it" is revealed. But the world's true nature is still that it is an illusion.

This is why "the real world still is but a dream". We move on from the real world.... the forgiven world... the world seen through "realities eyes" so to speak, to go "to reality", where we can now rightfully associate reality and location, or reality and permanence, or reality and eternal life. The Kingdom of God, where everything IS real, is recognized, and ALSO is eternal.

False perception is an illusory world seen in an "unreal way", which makes it seem like hell on earth.

The real world is an illusory world seen in a "real way". This makes it seem like heaven on earth.

Heaven is a real world, the Kingdom, seen in a real way.

The world is difficult to deal with, because it is completely opposite to reality.

"And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

"He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"The world was made that problems could not be escaped.""In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."

It would be challenging enough if this world were just a LITTLE bit unlike reality. You could maybe deal with it better if it at least resembled it in some obvious way. But physical form was designed to COMPLETELY deceive you.

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

So instead what you are faced with, every day that you wake up, is a picture of a world which demonstrates utter impossibilities, complete violation of God's laws, constant threats to the existence of what was previously immortal, visual proof everywhere you look that death is real and attack is possible, and just a constant barrage of problems and things going wrong.

How anyone can deal with this on any level is incredible.

Fortunately sometimes "life" seems to throw you some bones and maybe there is a temporary reprieve in the suffering, or you can hole up in your house to create a false sense of security, or maybe just avoid all the bad stuff as much as possible. But this doesn't really make it go away or stop happening.

Then ACIM is saying to us, that not only is this entire world designed to represent an impossible, blasphemous opposite to God's nature, it is also your job to somehow laugh in the face of it. To overlook all its faults and inherent murderousness. To find a way to look at it such that, outright horrendous attack and evil are actually "not that". That somehow you're supposed to even recognize that your body's senses are lying to you, that there is not even one speck of the world that is doing anything other than tempt you into hell.

To say it's not easy to rise above it, is an understatement. Threats of death are happening all the time. And if it doesn't seem to be going to hell for you, it's going to hell for someone else. And then you're temporarily thankful that you're not the one getting it this time in a world of punishment.

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. "

Can we just, take a moment to acknowledge, how HARD it is for all of us, to try to rise above a world which is so vehemently anti-christ and anti-life? This is no easy feat. The truth may be simple but it is by far not simple at all to fly in the face of everything an entire world tells you is true. We're all doing the best we can and sometimes it can be very difficult.

Somehow there is a light at the end of the tunnel, a hope that we have to keep holding onto, a promise of redemption and salvation. A trust that is developed in the Holy Help. And a victory over death. We keep striving forward because we are so deeply attracted to God and want to be Home. And ultimately that is what will pull us back to heaven's reality, regardless of how much the world tries to pull us down. We who MADE it to pull us down, need merely recognize we no longer want to do that, and we are free.

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.".

If you perceive that you have lost something, then your logical response is despair. You are not grateful because you have not received. Something has been taken away instead, and it inspires ingratitude. You also can feel the same way if you think you are getting something you do not want - you resent it, judge it and reject it instead of being grateful for it.

You will then feel that you do not want what has happened. You will fight with it, resist it, hate it, and wish it was the way it used to be. Whatever has been lost, you want it back. And you feel justified in feeling loss so long as it remains absent.

At the same time, the ego wants what has been lost to stay lost, because it really believes in loss as death. Loss is the gap of spacetime. Loss is the absence of love. Loss is the suggestion that something of God is missing from reality. It is a rejection of life and love and happiness. It is an attempt to die.

Such a state of mind does not inspire gratitude because it feels more like a treachery, a theft, a taking away, a diminishment, in which you now don't have what you should have. And then there will be hate and anger and resentment and a sense of not wanting whatever else someone or some place is offering, because it's not the thing you're missing.

In loss, you will then reject everything, not acknowledge what you have, not appreciate or even recognise what is present, and will just wish that you had the thing that is absent. But wanting what is not there can only produce what we call grief, which is the unhappy despair and sadness and sense of horror that everything of value has gone away.

But what can this be other than a denial of God, a rejection of love, an unwillingness to live, an insistence that death is true, and a failure to recognise what has been given. There is no gratitude because there is no acknowledgement of what you are receiving.

In fact, loss can be a lesson in which you have to learn to become grateful, and to receive. It is a state in which you are are trying to do the opposite of receive, as if you gave and didn't receive in return.

It's based on the ego's breakdown of the golden rule, in which it insists that giving and receiving are not one, and therefore you have not received what you have given. This is a state of sacrifice, as if something has been sacrificed.

But such a state of mind, which is really the rejection of love and God and receiving, can only produce feelings of loss and despair. It can only incite an attachment to what is gone, a wish it be present, and yet a firm belief that it must not be. It is a way of pushing love away, pushing the valued thing away, while at the same time wishing it was here.

This can only produce a kind of "split" in the mind which produces insanity and intensifies the ego. The ego loves to be in this contradictory state of wanting and not wanting at the same time. It wants what it does not have, and it does not want what it has. This is completely backwards, of course.

The remedy requires the recognition and acknowledgement that you are NOT at a loss, and in fact the total opposite is true. It must entail realising that God has given you everything, and therefore you lack nothing at all, loss is impossible, and everything you could ever really want has been given you.

This requires you to be willing to receive. It requites a willingness to want what you have, and to no longer want what you don't have. But the ego will say, it's impossible not to want the thing that's missing because you love it so much. You want it badly. And the idea of not wanting it seems like a betrayal.

Yet badly wanting something is a state of lack and need, and the more you believe in this lack the more you will want it. So you aren't really wanting it based on love, but based on not getting what you want. The loss is therefore selfish, as part of the ego.

It is in fact by wanting what you don't have instead of what you do have, that you produce a rejection of what is here right now, and therefore a denial and unwillingness to be grateful for what has been given you in the present. It is a rejection of the acknowledgement of gain, and a dwelling on absence and death. But in fact, a willingness to want what you have, not what you don't have, is the only sane approach.

In truth, if you move into a space of being willing to receive, acknowledging that everything has been given you, and that you have everything from God, you will suddenly find that in fact that means that you have love. And the only way to really acknowledge that you have the love you thought you lost, is to acknowledge that it is still being given to you right now. In fact, God has eternally given you love, and the only problem in you seeming to "lack it" and being at a loss, is an unwillingness to receive it. You might complain by feeling it is lost, but this is really an attempt NOT to have it.

By moving into a willingness to RECEIVE, you therefore admit that God has GIVEN everything, and fully, and so completely, that in fact you have been gifted, blessed, honoured and completely recognised. In fact you have not been left out at all, you have been utterly showered with everything you could ever really want. And in that recognition that it is coming TO you, and you HAVE it, you immediately move into a natural response of gratitude. Gratitude opens your awareness to RECEIVE and to WANT what you are receiving, instead of wanting what you are not receiving.

Gratitude is therefore the antidote to loss, because it recognises gain and completely ignores the ego's insistence that death is possible. Loss is really ingratitude for what is. In fact, gratitude to God for life is the way to receive life, and is the rejection of death and the belief in death. And without a lack of God, there can be no sense of loss at all. And then suddenly you will find that everything you thought you did not want is suddenly something you can embrace and accept and want. And then you open up to a whole new life that was in front of your face all along, even while you were unwilling to acknowledge it.

And the good part is, that the love you thought you lost, is not only still with you, it is in you, as you, given to you, shared with you, and had never really left. And thank God for that. How could you actually experience that you had the love you thought was lost, if you weren't willing to gratefully receive it?! This is simply a lesson in becoming grateful to God for what he has guaranteed to be yours forever. A simple movement out of loss and despair and disaster and failure, into total happiness and gladness that everything is present and accounted for.

"Love is the way I walk in gratitude."

"And gratitude can only be sincere if it is joined to love."

"Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love."

"Today we learn to think of gratitude in place of anger, malice and revenge. We have been given everything. If we refuse to recognize it, we are now entitled therefore to our bitterness, and to a self-perception which regards us in a place of merciless pursuit, where we are badgered ceaselessly and pushed about without a thought or care for us or for our future."

"Our gratitude will pave the way to Him, and shorten our learning time by more than you could ever dream of."

"For gratitude is but an aspect of the love which is the Source of all creation."

"For love can walk no road except the way of gratitude, and thus we go who walk the way to God."

"A day devoted now to gratitude will add the benefit of some insight into the real extent of all the gains which you have made; the gifts you have received."

"Today in gratitude we lift our hearts above despair, and raise our thankful eyes, no longer looking downward to the dust. We sing the song of thankfulness today in honor of the Self Which God has willed to be our true identity in Him. Today we smile on everyone we see, and walk with lightened footsteps as we go to do what is appointed us to do."

"In gratitude and thankfulness we come, with empty hands and open hearts and minds, asking but what You give."

"My gratitude permits my love to be accepted without fear. And thus am I restored to my Reality at last."

"What IS Heaven, but a song of gratitude and love and praise, by everything created, to the Source of its creation?"

"YOU are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude."

"And with My gratitude will come the gift first of forgiveness, then eternal peace."

"What is your life but gratitude to Him Who loves you with an everlasting Love?"

"The unhealed healer wants gratitude FROM his brothers, but he is NOT grateful to them. This is because he thinks he is giving something TO them, and is NOT receiving something equally desirable in return. His TEACHING is limited because he is LEARNING so little. His HEALING lesson is limited by his own ingratitude, which is a lesson in sickness."

"Your gratitude to each OTHER is the only gift I want."

"Let our gratitude unto our Teacher fill our hearts as we are free to choose our joy instead of pain, our holiness in place of sin, the peace of God instead of conflict, and the light of Heaven for the darkness of the world."

"God's justice warrants gratitude, NOT fear."

"And by this LACK of thanks and gratitude, you make YOURSELVES unable to EXPRESS the holy instant, and thus you lose sight of it." "Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe. Man should thank God for what he really is. The Children of God are very holy. The miracle honors their holiness."

The ego's experience of someone dying is horrible. Ego thinks in transactional, finite terms. As if relationship is some commodity amount that you give and lose, and then you lack, and then you need the other to give it back by losing. This is the sacrifice of specialness.

This is the opposite of the golden rule, where the ego says giving and receiving are not one. That what you give you do not give to yourself. And therefore giving is loss. It sees someone's death in rather physical terms, meaning that the form has gone and therefore there has been a one-sided loss, and now they are not giving you what you gave. The thing that was supposed to give you back, albeit separately, has stopped giving, and so you now are in a state of lack because you depended on them.

From this viewpoint the only thing you can feel is loss, which feels horrendous. It's like saying, the person is dead and thats a true fact and there's nothing you can do about it, so you might as well just be in total despair forever. But this ego perception is rooted in victimhood, ingratitude, not recognising, not appreciating, seeing oneself as deprived, unfairly treated, taken from, stolen from, and diminished. And then the ego cries. A lot.

It can reason that there is no other way, and it will have no insight into the opposite of loss, which is gain. But the Holy Spirit gives another view entirely, a totally opposite view in fact. Because as far as He's concerned, there is no loss possible in the golden rule of God. What is given is received by both. What is given is given to yourself forever. There is no room for loss at all, and there is only gain.

The way forgiveness looks at death, it regards it as a gift and a blessing, rather than a curse. It sees that the event has simply purely given to you, by which you have purely gained. You have not been deprived at all, you have only increased. A great gift has been given, and you have received it, and by recognising that you have received it you can enter into justified gratitude. And this is how gratitude becomes part of forgiveness - the recognition of the truth that there is only gain and increase under God's laws.

Gratitude is the total opposite of loss. It acknowledges that you have not lost, that nothing is missing, and that in fact you have received so much that you are overwhelmed with how much you have been given, so much that not a single trace of loss remains. And how can you then feel loss in such a perspective of having been utterly blessed? Loss is literally a lack of gratitude, an unwillingness to receive, and a denial of God's blessing.

Of course, recognising this requires dismantling the ego's interpretation of death, which sees nothing except loss and no gain at all. It sees the situation as utterly hopeless and futile, with no possibility of finding any gain in it at all, dwelling entirely on what seems to be absent, what has been stolen away, and what is no longer there. As if loss is real and permanent and total. And this is the idea of "real death".

But of course this depends on form, because the ego only really registers form "as" content, and does not recognise content at all. If a physical body is gone, yes form is gone, but the love that was in and through the body is not gone. In fact it has been given in a blessing through the person's body to you, and you have received it, and now you are it, and you extend it, and it is alive in you, continuing to be given. And that is because miracles mean endless giving - they continually extend love.

To the ego there is no benefit to you that someone has gone away. It sees only the horrifying and seemingly real deprivation, the taking away of the specialness that you loved, the exclusive source that you thought was the love itself. It sees only a dark and deceitful treachery, that has ripped its beloved treasure away and utterly destroyed it beyond all hope of recovery. And it's never coming back - a stark and horrible fact. Such is the proof of sin and death and dissolution. Then it holds this up as the only reality and truth, as if there is nothing else to it. A total fact. And within this truth, you must simply feel like absolute shit because your whole world has been destroyed forever.

But the ego is utterly blind to the truth, it has no acknowledgement of roles played, of higher purposes, of the way that someone gave transcendent of form, that what was given is still with you and still giving, that loss is impossible, and in a forgiving view you can only possibly be blessed by everything. To forgive is to truly recognise that the world is not doing anything to you, death has no power over you, and therefore it cannot cause something to be taken from you. You cannot lose, you can only win. And if you cannot lose, you must be only gaining. You must be purely receiving, and to receive unconditionally with no strings attached is love. Upon receiving such unending love the only logic response in the mind is gratitude. And gratitude is also a part of giving.

It's similar to what happens when you at first seem to be a victim of someone, and you hate them and fight with them and they seem to deprive and hurt you. But then later you forgive, and you come to realise you hired them, and they played a role that you needed for your spiritual growth, and you gained tremendously from your enemies even if they seemed to be the very people you did not want to be around. You benefited. And then as your perspective grows, you come to more fully understand who did what and why, how you consented, how you used it, and what you did to yourself. And out of that comes a recognition of the innocence of the other and yourself, and the realisation that you have only happily gained from the encounter - that it is not a loss or an attack at all. And then you can be grateful to them for helping you to learn this lesson - to move you closer to God.

Another aspect of this is that if you believe someone else has become lost to you, or that love is lost, then by the golden rule you will also believe that you are lost. And then you will become lost as well, lost in despair and grieving and feelings of loss and hopelessness. And that is because you believe it's true that some other person can be completely lost, and if thats true of them it's true of you. This is why when the loss seems to happen, you feel like you have lost part of yourself. As if it was you that died. And then you stop living. But this is the ego's reasoning as well, because nothing real can die or be lost, and certainly nothing is missing from heaven.

The antidote to loss then is the broader and deeper perspective that you have not lost anything, and have in fact only gained. When you can see that you have only gained, then your response can only be gratitude, because you have been truly blessed and given everything. You've been given freedom and life and opportunity and a future. You've been given room to grow and learn and enjoy further relationships. This isn't a fake positivity either. It's not about just trying to put on a brave face and act as if things are great in denial of loss and feelings. It's a total uprooting of the belief in loss, which is really a lack of recognition. When lessons - and death is a lesson - is correctly perceived, it is recognised as being entirely beneficial. Something that happens only for your highest good.

This also leads into why the Holy Spirit's atonement plan is solely functioning for your highest good, and everything he arranges for you to go through - which you consent to - is leading you to eternal life. If you can see it from the perspective of gratitude and blessing, without the egoic interpretation of "its a loss" or "its difficult" or "i've been deprived" etc - which is a denial of the golden rule, then it is recognised as gentle and helpful and only a blessing. If the ego enters into it, it interprets the lessons as cruel and unwanted and a curse. Something that you want to go away and stop, to fear and resist. When you stop resisting you enter acceptance and presence, and then you also find forgiveness and gratitude. God has only given, he has never taken away.

The big picture truth is simply this: everything that happens is leading you home to God. Everything. Even people seeming to die. Only forms and illusions seem to die, anyway. What is true and real and our identity is permanent and eternal. And you literally are those who seem to move on, who must still be you as well. There is no loss in truth, no loss in God, and no loss in you. There is only a complete willingness to receive God's blessing and be fully grateful for it. Really, the only reason we despair is because we think God isn't loving us anymore, and this can only be a lack of recognition of what is actually true, or an unwillingness to see it. Undoing the belief in death as a block to love brings about a revolution into gratitude and happiness.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

"The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His."

"A happy outcome to all things is sure."

I believe I have received. Thank you God.

2000 years ago Jesus said "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours."

Gratitude is an attitude of fully appreciating what is already present, or has been already given.

What you may not realize is, if it appears you do not have what you want, if you be pre-grateful for it ahead of time, believing that you have already received it as if receiving was "in the past", it comes to you!!

There is a law here. The law is, that where there is gratitude, the thing you are grateful for is being appreciated and therefore it must be present. Should you be grateful for the presence of something that the world seems to not contain, it will materialize. It has to, because gratitude extends and believes in what it is grateful for.

In other words, gratitude CREATES. God created through gratitude because gratitude appreciates what already is and God appreciates - is aware of and fully embraces - what He already is, which creates more of the same.

This seems like complete nonsense to the ego, how can gratitude create when the thing to be grateful for doesn’t seem to exist yet? The ego thought system is only grateful for what it "gets" in the future, not for what is HAS. It’s non existence is an illusion because all that God provided is ALREADY GIVEN, merely hidden temporarily. And so lacking it is NOT TRUE.

It operates similarly to the law of forgiveness. Forgiveness is fore-giveness, ie it gives love and truth ahead of time proactively SO THAT nothing goes wrong and therefore there is nothing to forgive. It brings about a state in which it’s own law is extended to ENSURE there is no problem.

Similarly, gratitude to God for what he HAS GIVEN, pro-actively CAUSES it to be present, acknlowdging that it must already be here, and therefore expressing and creating it so that it does not seem to be lacking. Gratitude undoes lack or the illusion of lack, just as forgiveness undoes the need to forgive by removing the illusion of unforgiveness or judgement. And remember that miracles supply a lack and that is why they heal, therefore gratitude is miraculous!

God’s power works in the opposite direction to the ego. The ego says, I presently lack and therefore need something and so I "desire"it and then tries to use its own will power to force it to happen, without God.

This morning I found myself doing this because I was "commanding" that something be healed, it was not working, the problem seemed real and not healed yet and I became quite intense and demanding about it. Then I became frustrated and angry. I had to admit that I was trying to force it myself and was using my own will. This wasn’t working. So in frustration I gave up, which was a good thing.

God works in the opposite direction. He does not focus on the lack of what you want, because absence is the idea that God is absent. He does not focus on the answer being in the future because that reinforces the idea that God is not here right now, and that He has been here already this whole time. He does not complain because complaint is the opposite of gratitude and complaint is a failure to appreciate what is present.

Complaint attacks what is here now, gratitude loves what is here now. However, this does NOT MEAN that you should love and be great full for what is currently showing up in form! Form is an illusion! Be grateful for the shit the ego gave you and you will keep it! You have to ignore form because God did not create it. You have to love and be grateful only for what God has given, what may seem invisible to you at first.

So to bring forth a miracle healing or manifestation from God, we must ACT LIKE God’s truth and in line with God’s nature. It’s no use attacking what is, or complaining, or trying to make it go away with intensity or will power, or to desire what you want as if you do not have it. Those are not forms of asking, or forms of receiving. They focus on lack and make it real.

The ego’s attempts to "get"are guaranteed to fail because they do everything other than be like God, everything other than receiving His will, and everything which actually pushes away what you are trying to bring about. As usual, the ego makes it appear like it is asking and desiring and wanting, when in fact it is doing the opposite. Seek and do not find. To desire something on the basis that God did not already supply it, and therefore it is not here now, and only exists in the separated state of the future, is a GUARANTEE that you will continue to lack and suffer!

If God’s nature is the truth and we are asking for God‘s help, then we first need to get rid of the idea of "needing help." Instead, let us acknowledge what is TRUE ALREADY. You have already received God’s healing. God already established your perfection when He created you, which you can think of as in the past. So the perfection, restoration, healing, what you want, is not in the future. It must be already present because God alreaday established it in the past, and so it’s is already here, now.

This seems somehow impossible to ego thinking. Is it even possible to get your mind to believe that it has already received what is already given by God, even if it *appears* that it isn’t showing up yet? Yes, it is possible! Is it possible to appreciate and be grateful for, what currently appears to not even exist yet? Yes!

That your perfection appears to not be showing up right now is an illusion. It is merely blocked. Any current appearance of you not being or having what God has already given, only means that your perfection IS here already but it is hididen. The notion that it is not here, showing up as illusions of "my healed self must be in the future", is an ego lie. Your healed self IS already here. Forms that are currently showing up can be blinding. They are not really there.

You must just bring about the recognition of, gratitude for, appreciation of and belief in the truth, that God has ALREADY GIVEN what you seem to lack, literally "in the past". Gratitude receives, by focusing on the acknowledgement of it being here now, of the healing having already occurred, and truly believing that this is so because it is in accord with God’s nature.

Eventually once you have let go of all of the egoic ways you are trying to bring about a result, you need to get purely into the mindset and belief that you HAVE received from God already, regardless of what is showing up, and regardless of whether it’s absence seems to continue to show up for a while. You have to ignore all ego signals, what form looks like, what conditions seem to persist, or any fearful doubting ego thoughts about it having not worked.

If you can get your mind into this seemingly "backwards" way of thinking, which boils down to "I believe I have already been given this, I have already received it, and I am grateful to God", or even more simply, "thank you", and hold onto that belief, God will answer. Believing it is important. It has to be true for you that you feel that you HAVE received it, even if it has not materialized in form yet, and you develop that conviction by thanking God.

If you are thanking God for having already supplied your lack, then it implies you HAVE, therefore it is true, and therefore you believe it. This helps you to see through any illusion that you lack or continue to be sick. It gives you a feeling of certainty and joy in spite of any illusory conditions, and you will stay true to that belief in spite of lingering forms or circumstances. And that’s means, you are now HAVING FAITH.

Faith is a state of genuine trust and knowing, not wishful thinking or hope. It is rooted firmly in the believing that God has already provided and therefore it is a DONE DEAL. It is belief that God’s way or truth is TRUE. This belief will ignore and pay no attention to what anyone says or any doubts or anything showing up in form. It bypasses illusions and all ego signals. It transcends what appears to be showing up, knowing that God’s HAS provided.

If you are completely certain that you have received, it will give you strong faith ie strong belief, which will make it impossible for you to be swayed by external illusions or claims to the contrary. It will also give you a sense that you know the days of your sickness are now limited because you believe God more than you believe the ego illusions.

This takes you beyond the ego’s nature. Now you are playing by God’s rules, according to His will for you that you be divinely happy and healthy. That you ARE that already, and merely need manifest it by focusing on it and believing in its presence. Jesus says to be vigilant only for the Kingdom of God. This is what it means. To believe only God’s nature and to align yourself with it and receive it as God already gave it. I am still as God created me says the same thing.

You are still as God created you, therefore the perfect Self that God created before time began is still here now, it has been fully given, it is true of you, it is present already, you are grateful for it, you believe in it and know it to be true, you trust it, you allow and accept it (atonement principle), and it is therefore your reality.

Believing this way, having this faith in a God, makes you supernatural.

I think this runs somewhat against the expectations of many ACIM students, but at the physical and personality level we are all considerably different. No two bodies are identical. There are many many sub-types of human bodies, brains, nervous systems, outlooks, orientations, races, gender identities, etc. We are not all the same in terms of human bodies, never were, and never will be. Everything physical is, at best, similar, but not equal.

When there comes to be a social "norm" where we think there's a normal way to be, a normal type of person, a normal interaction style, a normal behaviour, a normal way to process information etc, it becomes a way to create a "closet". People start to feel ashamed for being different, ashamed for having difficulties matching up to the expected behaviour.

An obvious example is in the case of gay/queer people whereby, quite literally their bodies and brains are different. A gay person does not have the "wiring" to produce experiences of excitation and attraction to members of the opposite sex, or at least this "ability" is altered and in a different ratio. A trans-sexual person may have a wildly different sense of gender identity compared to their physical biology. There is science to confirm that gay people have different pheromones, different brain structures, different chemistry.

Another example is in terms of the differences between extroverted and introverted people, or those who are highly sensitive compared to those who are not. The extroverted people find release and stress-processing through social connection and external ways to work through things. This totally does not work for an introverted person who needs to go within, withdraw, process deeply and reflect. When either of these become an expected "norm" the other group becomes ashamed and repressed.

It's far better that we realize that on the physical and personality level, the human level, and to a degree in the mind as well since it is influenced by the brain wiring, that we are a collection of highly discordant, highly differentiated "persons". There is not a norm, there is not a standard, there is not a one-size-fits all, there is not a "we are all one" on this level. There is no such thing as physical oneness or physical equality. The idea of making the human race have a "physical oneness" must be completely destroyed. Oneness only works in the mind, not the body, and trying to make it work for bodies is insane and backwards.

I've been working with ACIM for over 20 years now and have gone through a lot of healing and transformation. But in spite of this, my body is still largely wired the same way it was years ago. It is still highly sensitive and introverted, my nervous system is still wired to process deeply rather than broadly, I still need down time to catch up with the processing, I still at times am shy and finding it harder to push out expressions and open up emotionally. These are physical traits rooted in how my brain is structured, regardless of my spiritual aspirations at the mind level. I work in abstracts and symbols and metaphors and subtle nuances, which is not true of most people.

You'll notice that as people work on spiritual awakening their body stays much the same. It may heal, it may seem more alive, it may seem healthier or younger, but it still has its accent, it still moves with similar mannerisms, there's still the same collection of language, there's the same eyes and mouth, the same height, the same weight, the same muscles and sense of motion. These things aren't really going to change because they're part of the body. Waking up more doesn't suddenly turn your body into a spiritual thing because it can't be that. It's a body, not a spirit.

Trying to expect bodies to be more spiritual is a spiritualisation of the physical, which is a form of level confusion. The physical can't be spiritual because it is not spirit. Trying to expect human physical persons to shed the wiring and uniqueness and differences that are hardwired into their physical makeup is highly unrealistic. Trying to act spiritual or look spiritual or trying to get the body to stop having its quirks is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible.

I would say that to some degree I have become more understanding of, at peace with, and perhaps a bit more masterful of working WITH the limitations of my physicality, but I wouldn't say that the physical has stopped being the way it always was. My mind has changed and that perhaps means that I now operate the body differently, but it still largely looks similar, moves similar, processes information similarly as before. I still have high sensitivity and am easily overwhelmed with too much input. I still fart and pee and shit and sleep and all that.

I see sometimes that people expect that they're going to turn into a butterfly or something as they work on their spiritual path. Doing workbook lessons for example doing meditations, starts to seem like it's going to cause a persons perception to change so much that they become non-physical. And in other words, that they won't be able to function on the physical level anymore. And yet, there they are, using the same physical body and the same eyes and the same brain to physically perceive the same book which still looks exactly the same with the same physical pages as before. The physical stuff barely changes at all.

So I think it would be healthy for us to acknowledge that we each are working with a distinct, specific, limited, quirky, and DIFFERENT type of physical body to everyone else. And this physical body brings with it unique challenges, unique wiring, unique preferences, unique pros and cons, unique talents and limitations. We're NOT all the same on this level. And it's okay to sort of embrace the way that you are different, the kind of body device you are having to work with, and it's okay to treat "your self" with kindness and acknowledgement even if it does not work for other people.

If your body has needs, if your brain has needs, if certain types of interactions or relationships or environments or people or whatever don't work for you, that's fine. It's likely to do with how your body is wired. Yes you can change some things psychologically but the body itself cannot actually ever be whole, cannot be spiritual, cannot be like as swiss army knife, cannot do all things in all ways with all people and all situations, and does not have every ability that everyone else has.

Letting "yourself" off the hook for it to be okay to be NOT like other people, to have your own path, to go your own way, to do things in your own style, to have your own needs and boundaries, to dislike some things that other people like, to not want to participate in certain things that other people tout as ideal, is totally fine. Most of these "preferences" are totally rooted in how the physical body is made up and how the brain is connected, how the personality is structured and what that makes you feel comfortable with (or not).

We're all working on transcending these limits and things but we shouldn't be in denial that the body has its own very unique persuasion which is not very likely to completely match anyone else on the planet. I like most spiritual people want to 'become' or remember being the perfect soul that God created, my true self, my real self, but I highly highly doubt that this is going to change the nature, shape, color, style, orientation, workings, mannerisms, cycles, or character of my physical body in any significant way.

The body is an encounter suit. It's not you, but it IS a major limit and it does have major differences to other bodies. We can't pretend that's not true at this level. We're trying to rise above it and not identify with it and not use that to keep us from God, but at the same time we also don't want to get into people-pleasing and trying to fit into something that we are not comfortable with. It's okay to be different while you're working on trying to become "all the same" and "one" with everyone in spirit.

I've yet to see a single awakening person whose speaking voice suddenly sounds like it's a whole other person. Same accent, same intonations, same pacing, same emphasis, everything. That's not going to change anytime soon. We are not bodies, but bodies ARE bodies.

For me I am going to just be DIFFERENT, and NOT the same, until I can find a way to transcend the LEVEL of differences and be truly equal in mind and spirit. And I do not expect my body will ever suddenly turn into a rainbow, will not tolerate expectations to fit in with any body-oriented category, and will stick out like a sore thumb until the soreness is healed in my mind.

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct" UrM5A1

"There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently, Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them as you were before." UrW155L1

"The tendency to invest the physical with non-physical properties. This is essentially magic, and tends more toward anxiety-proneness." UrT1C12

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. " UrM9A6

"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN." UrT28D2

"For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize. The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you." UrT18I1

"The union of bodies thus becomes the way in which you would KEEP MINDS APART. For bodies cannot forgive. They can do only as the mind directs." UrT15H12

It was only about a year ago that I finally 'came out' as a bisexual person and owned it after 49 years in a dark closet. Since then I've been exploring and expressing and working on more deeply coming to terms with this and living it more - being more visible.

But one aspect that has been nagging in the background is a fear that I will be attacked and judged and hurt by others about this. Largely this is based on an awareness of what people can be like, especially the bigoted angry people, and what's happened to others in brutal attacks and judgement.

I didn't realize for a while that I was taking this position, or playing at being a victim, or that it was even something I needed to do some forgiveness about. But then I became aware of it. So how does one forgive such a thing, where we're at the mercy of the world and afraid of what it might do to us? Safety is a primary concern of everyone and all of us can relate to feeling afraid of being hurt in some way.

I first had to recognize that I was even in a state of "not peace" about it, that I was having worries and thoughts about it, and this was not normal. It's quite easy to just "have" those thoughts and feelings and not even have the awareness to step outside of it or notice that it's a problem or something to even work on. In that mindset, even the idea that there's something wrong can be out of awareness and we just go through the motions of suffering.

Having recognised something is bothering me, I then start to look at it. What's going on here, who is doing what, what is this based on, and am I willing to explore more honestly what's really happening?

As I looked at this I remembered that if I'm immortal I can't really be attacked, so if I believe I'm attackable that's a mistake on my part. That cuts through a lot of crap. Nothing real can be threatened, so I must be believing something faulty if I think people can attack me. That gives some quick relief.

Then I started to notice that I believe other people are going to do something to me, have power over me, hurt me, judge me, attack me, maybe even violence. But then I had to notice, who am I in that scenario, what role am I playing? It becomes clear that I'm seeing myself as a victim, being victimised by others. They're doing something to me, and I'm afraid of it, afraid of being attacked and judged.

When I stayed in the viewpoint that people are going to do something threatening, I couldn't see an option other than to fantasise about how I might try to stand up to them, become angry at them, give them a speech, have to get into a fight, or otherwise keep the belief in being victimised while trying to fend them off. But that was like a closed loop of suffering and the cracks were starting to show.

It's always valuable to remember that nothing in the world is doing anything to me, no-one out there is the cause of me, other people don't cause me or have power over me, and I cannot be affected or changed by anything because I am immortal. So where does that leave the victim role?

I saw that I am positioning myself as a victim for some reason, and setting people up in my mind as attackers to play a role, so that I can get some kind of payoff. And what's that? To have a reason to find them guilty of something. To justify anger on my part or to reinforce defenses. If they were to do anything to me, I would be justified in revenge, and blame, and scapegoating.

So then again this recognition that I'm actually scapegoating comes in. I'm using these people and actually want them to be attacking me, am framing them as attackers, so that I can take the opportunity to have them look like they're the ones sinning, so that I can take advantage of their guilt and shove some of my own guilt in there with it. If they do something to me I can happily project my own guilt onto them, mix it in with their guiltiness, and get rid of it.

In other words, being a victim boils down to wanting to be attacked in order to get a payoff of being able to take advantage of the attacker and project my own guilt onto them. In effect, by becoming the face of innocence, the innocent victim, I can get away with saying "brother at your hand I die", and am willing to suffer and be hurt and die for it, seemingly a small price to pay if it means I can use these attackers to get rid of my guilt.

"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die."

So then this reveals the basic dynamic of projecting and blaming. I first attack myself, I make myself guilty for some reason, I then find someone willing to play the role of attacker/sinner, I bait them and want them to attack me through fantasies of suffering, I hope they'll do it while pretending to be afraid of them doing it, and if they go through with it I'll have a great opportunity to blame them and shove my self-inflicted guilt onto them. Yay.

So there's that. And that has to be unraveled and taken back. Once you see what you're doing it becomes obvious. I fear being attacked for "seeming to be gay" in any way, based on seeming "proof of sin" that this does happen in society, reinforcing a victim role, so that I can hopefully be attacked and get rid of some guilt in the process. So I'm really using these people as scapegoats so that I can benefit.

What I then have to look at or ask is, why am I projecting guilt, and how or why am I making myself guilty in the first place? Are these people really the ones who are denying me, attacking me, judging me, not accepting me, OR ... could it be that I am the one who is attacking me, judging me, not accepting me? Maybe it really is that I am the one who is "not okay with" me being the way that I am, and the fantasies of other people attacking me for it are really the way that I'm using my own mind to attack myself.

The insight from this is that, I really need to more fully own who and what I am (as God created me, transcendent of body/sex roles), allow myself the guiltless freedom, and accept myself, and if I were to do this I would be completely unconcerned with what anyone else might try to do to me.

If I am centered and solid in knowing myself, and fully owning being myself, not only will other people's attempted attacks be correctly viewed as "calls for love" on their part - a way that they attack themselves, but also I'll not take it personally because it won't resonate with an unhealed guilt within myself.

And probably, if I own and am at peace with myself, I will give off peace-vibes, and other people will not feel drawn to attack me for it anyway. Because really an attitude of "I should be punished for this, please attack me" is an energetic and psychological invitation broadcast to everyone if I'm not okay with myself. A temptation asking others to fulfil the role I expect of them.

In effect then, the real issue I/we have is that we are not being entirely true to ourselves, are not fully accepting ourselves, are not granting ourselves absolute freedom, are guilting ourselves and accusing ourselves of sins and shames and guilts, and this puts us into an insecure position. We then seek to problem-solve this in a faulty way by projecting the insecurities onto others, asking them to play roles in which they do to us what we are already doing to ourselves, so that we can pretend not to be doing it to ourselves.

I find and have found then, that my real challenge is the forgiveness of myself, the undoing of my own self-inflicted guilts and shames, and the need for taking full responsibility for who and what I am. If I become fully aligned with and on-the-side-of myself in terms of acceptance and allowing, I won't need to play the victim role or imagine how people would do things to me. And thus I will take away the self-threatening mental activities that were causing fear. When you have no guilt about yourself, nothing anyone does can target you.

Because ultimately we really just are using our own disowned power against ourselves, which turns into a projected indirect form of self-threat, which produces a fear reaction. I was doing this all to myself, and that's what the "secret of salvation" reveals.

Coming to recognize full responsibility for "I have done this to myself" leads to the miracle of healing and to freedom. If you are free to be as you are, then you don't invent or interpret people attacking you for it, and can walk in peace. Personally I still have to work on this some more, it's a work in progress, but at least I can now see the way out by recognising what was the way in. Know Thyself is what 'pride' should be about, and not a victimy disowning and projecting of guilt onto fictional attackers.

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

"Only the self-accused condemn."

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

"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. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

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

In the Kingdom of God, His creations and all of their creations are fully open to each other and share everything lovingly. Each of these beings is made of love and it is through love the they have full access to each other, to join and commune intimately.

In this way, communication is sharing and joining and oneness or kinship, whereby you can merge with others, overlap with them, share space with them, and directly connect with what they are. To communicate soul-to-soul or mind-to-mind is full communication.

Love is required in order to accomplish this communication or communion, because only in love is there a full openness to communicate fully. Only by communicating lovingly can you communicate at all.

When love is lacking, which occurs through an attempt to attack rather than love, communication breaks down. What would appear to be an outward attack is actually a withdrawal away from others and away from God and from yourself. This is what happens when you become "selfish".

Jesus says this of your soul, in contrast to your ego:

"Selfishness is of the ego but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how He created it."

God therefore created souls/sons to be FULL of Self, meaning expressing fully as a being in an unlimited way, and therefore able to be open to and gain access to the rest of Creation, to connect with it and intimately share with it.

Therefore when you are not being fully loving, you actually are attempting to withdraw yourself from creation, to isolate yourself from Heaven, to contract yourself down in fear to a single point in space, to put a wall between you and everyone else (the body), and to confine yourself to the body. This is how you become body-identified instead of spirit-identified.

Attack and withdrawal are the same thing. As soon as you have an attack thought you are having a "withdrawal thought". It's a thought of no longer sharing everything openly with everyone. It's an attempt to shut yourself off and be excluded. The ego is all about being exclusive and therefore special. It focuses on SELFISHNESS, which means prioritizing your own self OVER or in a different way to other selves.

Ego is an emphasizing of how you seem to be not equal to others and how you therefore have something that they do not have. And by emphasizing that you have something they do not, you also simultaneously emphasize that they have something that YOU do not, and therefore you are automatically lacking. Moving into exclusivity you move into isolation, lack, limitation, partiality, and not having everything. The promise that an exclusive PART of existence is more desirable than ALL of it, is the ego's game, through which it robs you of all joy.

So basically this is an automatic law that the only way you can actually communicate with anyone or anything else, is to be fully open in a loving way. Since other beings ARE love, you can only communicate with them through the LANGUAGE of love, at their level. If love is absent, communication breaks down, you arrest the extension of your mind through the arresting of love, and therefore hold yourself back. This holding back isolates you to a point in space and binds you to the body. This is withdrawal away from wholeness, and is you not allowing yourself to express.

Therefore when you isolate into the egotism of selfishness or specialness, you are taking yourself away from life and from others. You are trying to steal yourself from God. This withdrawal guarantees that no matter how attacking you think you are, your attack IS withdrawal and therefore you have NOT advanced TOWARDS God in your attacking efforts, it is caused you to go AWAY from God and away from your brothers.

Either you communicate with other beings through openness and love, or you will withdraw away into a breakdown in communication, a failure to express, a giving up of life, a cessation of extension, and basically you become paralyzed. That IS mental illness because in order to withdraw from others, given that your SELF is IN them sharing with them, you must split yourself off from the part of you that is in them and now you have a split mind.

A split mind is an insane mind at war with itself, and now it is attacking itself. And in this SELF-ATTACK, it will harm only itself. It is not POSSIBLE to attack another because another person is LOVE. Love can only be accessed THROUGH love. Lack of love stops communication and denies access. Indeed, denial of your brother's love DENIES YOU your own abilities, and thus shuts down any ability for you to join or connect TO them, preventing your unloving attacks to REACH them in any way.

This is why you cannot sin. It is literally 100% impossible to hurt anyone. It is literally impossible to hurt God. Any attempts to do so result in a self-imposed imprisonment and isolation away from the thing you are trying to attack. THEY do not suffer as a result, YOU do. You have hurt your own self, and it is then ONLY YOU who needs to forgive yourself.

Nothing real can be threatened. God and His Sons cannot be threatened. They are perfectly safe because they are wholeness and love, and anything that is not wholeness or love CANNOT COMMUNICATE with them, and therefore cannot ACCESS them, and therefore cannot transfer anything TO them, and therefore CANNOT ATTACK THEM.

The idea of there being an ABILITY TO ATTACK LOVE, is the notion that communication channels can remain OPEN, while transferring a message of BEING CLOSED through the channel. This is an obvious contradiction and impossibility. You cannot communicate "lack of communication". You cannot transfer attack to another, because attack causes the communication channel ITSELF to become closed off. Either you express love to your brother which He CAN receive, OR you isolate yourself and are fighting your way out of paper bag. YOU CANNOT ATTACK.

The kingdom of God is PERFECTLY PROTECTED and does not even NEED a defense. If you try to defend yourself you are attacking yourself, proving you are vulnerable and in need of the defense, and therefore affirming that you are under attack. Defenses do what they would defend against. God's Kingdom - you in reality - do not need to be defended at all. Love is automatically invulnerable! No illusion can do anything to reality.

No part of the ego can wage war against God in any real way. You need ONLY to be real, to be love, and you are immediately off-limits to the ego. The ego can only attack itself. This is evident in all wars where one side seems different to another and they attack each other. This is the ego on BOTH sides, attacking itself, as evidence of a split mind. The ego is NOT attacking God. The ego is attacking the ego.

The ego cannot leave its own domain. It cannot leave the state of mind that is lives in. It HAS to remain in darkness otherwise it will disappear. If it were to try to step into the light to reach where the light IS, in order to attack the light, it would disappear instantly because light dispels darkness. Light shines darkness away. Light thus is perfectly protected FROM darkness because it has power OVER darkness and cannot be "made dark" by it.

The belief that darkness can hide is an ego belief that darkness can cause light to be blocked, and therefore can conceal the light. This is the ego's belief. This is how we try to hide from the light of God by pretending we CAN be in darkness and therefore that darkness has power over light to stop it from reaching us. In the ego, darkness can attack light and only through darkness can there be communication. In truth this is completely backwards. Only in light is there communication of any kind and darkness will NEVER be able to approach light or do anything to it at all.

Therefore you do not need defenses because, as love, you simply cannot be appraoched by darknesss or attack. This may seem counter-intuitive at first but each time you defend yourself or resist another or try to make something go away or use withdrawal to attack, you WILL notice that you become worse off and it doesn't help - in fact it makes you sicker.

Only by ALLOWING in the face of what appears to be attack, can you have the strength that comes from UN-ARRESTED EXTENSION, because only through extending love does it confirm you HAVE love and are therefore invulnerable. It is in your innocence that you are invulerable and strong, not weak. The ego says innocence is vulnerability and proves it with every bodily child. But this is 100% fiction. Innocence is powerful and cannot be hurt. It needs no defenses to keep it safe. What does it need to be kept safe from? An illusion of darkness?

You cannot be threatened. Only if you identify yourself with the ego, meaning you HAVE attacked yourself, and have withdrawn from your brother, does it indicate that you are trying to USE separation as a defense. Separation will always hurt you, it cannot defend you. It is the lack of defenses that makes you invulnerable. Standing in the strength of light and truth in the face of "danger" dispells the danger and makes you impervious.

Defenses lead to death. Death is nothing other than an attempt to withdraw from life and imprison yourself in darkness. It is the ultimate sacrifice of yourself. It arises from a complete breakdown in communication, using the body for attack instead of for communication and joining. Without withdrawing from life there can be no death. Death becomes IMPOSSIBLE when you are fully open to love and have identified with SPIRIT - with the fullness of sharing, the openness to all brothers, the lack of attack and the presence of love.

In love, there is no death. In love, death does not exist. In love, death is impossible. It must be, otherwise God would die. Life does not die. Life has eternal life. Only through the illusion of being able to sin, or the attempt to sin, which is really a failure to sin, can you produce a state of what seems like death. And yet as Jesus says, swear not to die, because you have made a bargain you cannot keep. The bargain is that you WILL be able to die because of having been able to sin. This is actually literally impossible. Even in dying it is only denial and illusion, and your spirit is utterly unaffected.

You cannot die, any more than you can sin. Sin and death are IMPOSSIBLE AT ALL TIMES. Even those who seem to sin and die ARE NOT DOING SO. No-one can die because it is not God's will. You can only have eternal life. Attack and death are only attempts to DENY that you have eternal life, and denial can only HIDE the truth, not change it.

You cannot be attacked any more than you have attacked God. Nothing real can be threatened. You are safe forever in God's love. "Spirit is in a state of grace forever."

The soul, which is your self, your real identity, and your true nature, can be thought of like a piece of machinery in the engine of heaven - in the mind of God.

Given that the soul is WHAT YOU ARE, it's useful to know the operating perameters of yourself. What are you? What are you capable of? What can and can't you do? What are your limits? What are your design specifications?

God is the DESIGNER of the soul. He is the manufacturer. HE ALONE determines the design of your self, gives your self its function, assigns it its abilities, specifies what it can and cannot do, and guarantees that it will always function as HE WILLS IT.

"The only function of spirit is to extend God's being."

Your soul is like a machine. It serves a function. It plays a role. It is used by God for a purpose. It operates according to HIS RULES ONLY. "I am under no laws but God's."

This means that in the overall picture of heaven, YOU are designed by God for a specific FUNCTION. Your functionality includes certain FREEDOMS or abilities.

These freedoms are inherited or BASED ON God's abilities. God can only design what He can conceive of, and He can only use Himself as a reference. He designs you to be LIKE HIM, and to operate WITHIN the confines of HIS abilities.

Your functionality includes the ability to extend God, to create, to know, to love, to experience joy and happiness, to co-create further creations, and to increase the Kingdom.

There are also some things which YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO DO. And thankfully these things are not things you'd WANT to be able to do. You cannot attack anything real. You cannot sin. You cannot hurt or be hurt. You cannot damage or be damaged. You cannot cause or experience any kind of sickness or suffering. And you cannot die.

God DID NOT GIVE YOU the ABILITY to sin, attack, suffer or die. You CANNOT DO THESE THINGS. You HAVE NEVER done these things. You WILL NEVER do these things.

In your design, you also have an INPUT and an OUTPUT. The INPUT to you is God Himself. You host Him. He plugs you into His power source and his light, and extends Himself to you. He POWERS your soul. He GIVES it life. It SUSTAINS it in His mind. AND, he also MAINTAINS YOUR FUNCTIONING AT ALL TIMES.

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind."

God Inc's equipment therefore comes with a GUARANTEE. It is a lifetime guarantee. And in fact God creates such excellent quality equipment that it is guaranteed to FUNCTION CORRECTLY FOREVER. He Himself makes sure of this by designing the soul PERFECTLY, ensuring it never needs maintenance and cannot go wrong. God PROTECTS his equipment permanently and really get's behind his product.

Everything the soul machinery is able to do, is determined solely by God. He is THE ONLY designer. He is the cause of you. Anything you can or cannot do, any function you do or do not have, is by HIS WILL alone. You cannot add to yourself or take anything away. No-one else can add to take away either.

This means that your soul is FIXED in its functionality. It cannot change itself. It cannot redefine what it is. It cannot modify itself. It can only operate WITHIN the parameters it was given. So let's say that the soul is given certain FREEDOMS, such as the free will to create. It IS possible that the soul can potentailly MIS-USE its power to create, to mis-create, but it CANNOT give itself the power to CREATE REAL damage. It cannot cause REAL sin. It can ONLY create constructively.

The other thing about this is, that the soul should generally ACCEPT its design, its functioning, its place in the Kingdom, and its overall abilities. It is in its best interests to do so. But sometimes souls decide to rebel against their creator. They want to be something they can never be. They deny their inherent nature. They imagine they are something they are not, and that they can do things which they CANNOT ever do.

When this happens, the soul isn't going OUTSIDE of its limitations, but it is PRETENDING that it is. Because it DOES have the power to FREELY CHOOSE, and so can freely PRETEND through denial that it is NOT what it is. This produces a "shut-down" mode, aka spiritual sleep. In this mode, by denying itself, the soul is shutting itself down. And when it is asleep, it dreams of impossibilities that CANNOT be really happening.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

The soul IS FREE to do this, because it can use its freedom against its freedom, which is a mis-use of its own abilities. It can try to use free will to NOT WILL ANYTHING, which is an obvious contradiction in terms. When the soul tries to CAUSE something it was NOT DESIGNED TO OUTPUT, it merely causes nothing real to output. And instead dreams of imaginary outputs that don't exist.

The soul has been set up to have OUTPUT parameters as well as INPUT parameters. It can PRODUCE certain "products". It can generate living beings. It can CREATE LIFE. It can radiate love. And it can share joy and peace. It can experience relationship with other similar soul machinery (brothers), made by the same manfacturer. And it can enjoy perfection forever.

When the soul believes it is able to output something which God DID NOT MAKE POSSIBLE, it imagines it is producing things which it cannot possibly produce. These would include the making of bodies, planets, worlds, space and time, illusions of sickness, all forms of suffering, and death. None of these are REAL outputs, they are wishful thinking.

"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."

When the soul does this, it is akin to a toaster oven believing it can wash your car, or a tv set believing it can cook dinner. It still remains IMPOSSIBLE, but the soul is free to use its freedom against itself to DENY its inherent functioning, and to PRETEND that other things are possible.

Since God did not give you THE EQUIPMENT FOR SIN... because your "soul 2000 model" did not COME WITH "the ability to sin" built in, it literally CANNOT DO IT. It can pretend to do it, but it cannot really do it. It can only dream of sinning, and never really attack any thing real. Just as your vacuum cleaner cannot bake cookies."Nothing real can be threatened."

God did not give you the ABILITY to threaten anything real. He did not BUILD IN a FUNCTIONALITY that can in any way CAUSE suffering. He did not provide you the equipment or parts to PRODUCE death. You cannot undermine your perfect functioning. You cannot make yourself malfunction. You cannot interfere with your inner workings. YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARE AND NOTHING ELSE.

"I am still as God created me."

For the sake of what we'll call your SANITY, or operating in your soul in the WAY IT WAS INTENDED, without running amok and going haywire with UNPRODUCTIVE distorted outputs, it is in your best interests to ACCEPT YOUR FUNCTION. This means not having grandiose ideas of BEING SOME OTHER EQUIPMENT. It means not being jealous of the GOD MACHINE. It means not wanting to REJECT YOUR NATURE. And it means therefore the end of the authority problem.

You can't experience the EFFORTLESSNESS that God gave you, while you are trying to DISTORT your function. You cannot BE YOURSELF, while you are denying what you are. And you cannot be CONTENT or AT PEACE, while you are trying to turn yourself into something YOU WERE NOT DESIGNED TO BE. This means a willingness to ACCEPT your design specifications, without question, as GOOD ENOUGH. And this isn't some kind of second-best or booby prize either, because God creates perfect machinery!

The willingness to BE ONLY AS GOD CREATED YOU, to accept only the function THAT WAS GIVEN YOU, to fulfill the ROLE that God assigned to you, and to ONLY BE, HAVE, AND DO, that which God WILLED for you to do IN YOUR CREATION, is what re-aligns you with God's will and enables you to FUNCTION correctly. Or rather, to not disguise your true function with artificial functions.

This means having a willingness to accept FROM GOD, the specifications of WHAT YOU ARE. To allow ONLY HIM to define the TRUTH about you. To let him be YOUR FATHER. To let him be the one that decides WHAT YOU CAN AND CANNOT DO. And to acknowledge that you ARE EXACTLY HOW HE WANTS YOU TO BE. When you line up with this, and be ONLY this, and have ONLY what God gave you, and DO only what God willed for you, without objection, only then will you be happy and at peace and free from illusions.

To accept "the atonement" is merely to RECEIVE the ORIGINAL BLUEPRINT from the manufacturer. To be willing to ACCEPT that you ARE ONLY what God has designed you to be, and to function optimally within his parameters. To WANT nothing else, and to cease the MIS-USE of your function. You thus RESUME your function of creation and merely carry on as if nothing had happened.

Nothing can change what you are. You cannot change yourself. You cannot change other people's souls. You have NEVER DONE ANYTHING AGAINST GOD'S WILL. You have not exceeded your operating parameters. You have not BROKEN, gone downhill, degraded, corrupted, caused unnatural side effects or damaged anything. YOU CANNOT SIN OR ATTACK OR DIE. You have NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG.

You therefore are still exactly the innocent, perfect, holy, acceptable, worthy, beautiful, loving, harmless, immaculate, immortal, eternal, happy, joyful, powerful, free, flawless and completely divine piece of machinery that GOD CAUSED YOU TO BE. Just by being TRUE TO YOURSELF, knowing yourself, and BEING YOUR SOUL, you need do nothing else.

All that God wants for you is to be true to yourself and fulfill the NATURAL INHERENT FUNCTION he gave you. And since that function includes happiness and joy, it is a function you WILL approve of.

"All true pleasure comes from doing God's will."