THE GOLDEN RULE - THE LAW OF PERMANENT EQUALITY

Because God creates in His own likeness, all creations are of the same nature. What is true of one, is true of another. They are all equal and identical. This establishes "The Golden Rule", God’s law of oneness, that all created things are of one kind. And so what applies to me, applies to you and the whole sonship. Here giving and receiving are one.

The ego is the attempt to deny the Golden Rule and oppose it. It’s an attempt to break Gods law or to live as if the Golden Rule does not apply. The Golden Rule always applies without exception. It is the belief that you and your brother are different. It is disagreement, war, competition, selfishness, isolation, posession, attack and conflict.

In egotism, in separation, you believe the truth of you is not the same as the truth of another. This puts a divide between cause and effect. You now believe giving is separate from receiving. You think you can give without receiving (sacrifice). You think you can receive without giving (getting). It is also a state of separation between cause and effect. In this denial, you believe you can cause effects in another, and yet escape the consequences. By doing so, you get away with murder. ("What is not love is murder.")

Even if you are in denial of the Golden Rule, it still applies. So now you think you can attack or have something be true of someone else, and have no effects in you. But the Golden Rule applies, so you do not escape the effects. You think you can hurt another without hurting yourself, but you do not realize that you still hurt yourself. The plans you make for your brother, you receive the effects of.

This ties directly into the secret of salvation. Any suffering you experience, you chose and made happen. You thought you could make causal choices without be affected, but you can’t. As such, if you use the body for attack, thinking this will hurt another, you will be hurt, and your body will suffer. Condemning a brother will make you sick. Whatever you attempt to make apply to them, applies to you. If they are guilty, so are you. The body, used for attack, is attacked, by you directly. ("sick bodies are accusers.") With enough attack, the body will become so sick it will die. This is all because of misuse of the law.

When you are in denial of the law, it will seem that the law is working to punish you. This shows up as what seems to be karma. Not a score-keeping karma, but an immediate karma that is self imposed. In other words, if you try to make someone suffer, you will hurt yourself. You cannot escape the law. And so because of the law, when you attack, you will be attacked. And it will be you who attacks yourself.

"Those who are sick do not love themselves, for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves". In other words, if you do not love yourself, thinking you hate another, you will hate and attack yourself and make yourself sick. This self attack becomes literal suicide. Any sign of sickness or death in the body symbolizes the attacking attitude of the mind. You will literally force yourself to suffer and be sick in an attempt to accuse your brother of sin. You will even kill yourself to prove your innocence. No one escapes the effects they attempt to cause in another.

The Golden Rule can also work in your favor. When you are teaching only love, you are causing only love, and so the effect is love, and you will receive love. If you do not want to suffer, your only option is to love - yourself and others., equally. Whatever you cause or choose, you absolutely must receive the effects. You cannot get away with thinking you can cause a brother or have something be true of them only, such as that they are sinful and you are not, and expect to escape your own attack. "Those who attempt to send others to hell, must be in hell themselves."

The Golden Rule is not a law of punishment. Nor is it religious dogma. Nor is it a threat. Nor is it an attempt to make anyone guilty. It is purely a law of permanent equality and accountability. Whatever you try to make true of a brother you will have to experience as true of you also. You are free to CHOOSE what it will be that is true for you, but you cannot be free of the consequences. You yourself, per the law of your own mind, will ensure that you receive everything you cause.

This is what it means that "all prayers are answered". This is what it means that "ask and you shall receive". Whatever you ask, ie cause, or believe in, or choose, will become true for you and your brother. It always applies either to both of you, or neither. Either you are both sinners or you are both innocent. You can choose what seems to apply, but you cannot choose WHO it applies to. It always applies to the whole sonship. You are always included in the effects of your causing.

What is true of you is always true of everyone. If you try to attack another, you will attack yourself. You cannot hurt anyone without being hurt. It is delusional to believe you are separate from the effects of what you choose. If anything seems to apply to another and not to yourself, you are in denial. You may not be aware of how it is hurting you, and because of this denial you think you CAN dump sin onto another without you being sinful. This is impossible. If you become more aware of your feelings, reactions, health etc, you will realize every time you attack, you suffer. You can become more sensitive to this and less tolerant of self-inflicted pain.

It is not possible to hate and love at the same time. Hate another and you will hate yourself. It is not possible to be innocent and find someone else guilty at the same time. Either you are both guilty or neither are. It is not possible to maintain peace while attacking. It is not possible to try to hurt another without hurting yourself. It’s not possible to be offended without offending. It is not possible to be a victim without being a victimizer. It is not possible to be sick without attempting to make others sick. And is it not possible to die without attacking the world, accusing everyone else of causing it to happen.

When the body is used to bring the word of God to those who have it not, which means to use it only to love and heal, you are being loving towards yourself. This means you are healing yourself. Your body, which symbolizes your attitude towards yourself and others, will be healed. It cannot be sick, nor can it die. When you and your brother are recognized as healed and holy, the body will also heal. The body can no longer be left through death, because this would violate the law. It is erased from the dream by vanishing, as the gap is closed. The mind then returns to Heaven, one with and equal to the whole sonship.

Abide by God’s law and you will enjoy eternal life. Attempt to deny it and you will use it to hurt yourself. This isn’t God’s punishment, it is your own. It is not God’s will that you suffer. God’s will for you is perfect happiness. Heaven is a choice you must make. Teach only love, and you will receive only love. And this will overcome all suffering, sickness and death forever. The secret of salvation is your guide. It’s aim is joyful, willingful compliance with the law. The law is your friend. It guarantees your equality with all of creation and oneness with God. You are free to choose how you apply it, but you are not free to choose how it operates. Choose only life and you will never die. Those who love themselves, do not hurt themselves, and therefore do not choose death.

In the physical world, the ego has cleverly set things up so that cause and effect seem separate.

It is even a "law" of physics that each action has an equal and opposite reaction. Or that if you put some energy in, some energy comes out. Or that if you cause some object to move, it will have to move.

This whole world is set up to show you a picture of causes having effects.

Object A moves and hits object B and therefore object B now gains some energy and moves.

And to your perception, this looks as though some parts of the world are causes and some parts of the world are effects.

And this is pretty malleable because in any given situation something which was causing an effect on something else can, itself, become the effect of something else.

So this world, in how it appears, as physical matter that moves through time and space, is MEANT to show you a picture of cause and effect being separate.

And that means, if cause is separate from effect, YOU can be caused by this world and affected by it.

It also seems to mean that you can do stuff to this world which does not affect you. This is how you get away with murder.

The illusion that something "made something happen" here, shows your mind a very convincing picture which seems to train it to believe e.g. the body is sick because it was attacked by the wrong food, or the body is sick because the weather changed, or the body is sick because someone just cut your leg off.

Well, that's a pretty darn convincing illusion right there, portraying and "proving" that your leg is powerless over a chainsaw and it is now laying on the floor in a bloody mess.

Except that..... ... you, as immortal spirit, and not a body, and not a part of this world, DO have the power to overcome even this convincing illusion.

You could, if you so chose, manifest an entirely new body. You could undo all of the effects of the dismembered leg.

You could make the illusion appear as though nothing happened.

You could even in fact become so invulnerable "in" your body that it is impossible even for your body to be moved or hurt or damaged in any way at all, even if someone lets off a nuclear bomb in your vicinity!

What God creates is permanent. Therefore it is invulnerable. And therefore it cannot be hurt. And therefore it is immortal. And that is what you are. So ....

All of this world with its ILLUSION that there are causes and powers and wills outside of you that can do something to you or make accidents happen or harm you in any way, IT IS NOT REAL and IT CAN BE OVERCOME.

And when you overcome it, this will be thought of as miraculous. Because it is, in a certain context. But miracles are natural. They are everyone's birthright. And when they're not happening something has gone wrong.

You cannot be hurt by a dream that isn't really there.

<3 Let's say that you have totally free will, and I also have totally free will. That means that there you are FREE FROM my will. It literally means I CANNOT do anything to you. There you are, fully causal, fully choosing, and whatever you will happens, and whatever you don't will doesn't happen. So there is no room or scenario in which I can "cause you", in any way. Since we are equal children of God, and God is our only mutual cause, neither of us EVER has the ability to do anything to one another. The only thing that can be shared between us is love.

With this in mind, as the secret of salvation says, if anything is happening to you, YOU must be willing it. You must be doing it to yourself. Which means it is literally impossible for anyone anywhere to do anything to you in any scenario. It also hints at your immortality because obviously if nothing can happen that you personally do not will, if you stop attacking yourself you regain invulnerability.

So by the simple fact that you are TOTALLY FREE, as in, like, independent, a whole being who can choose for themselves, whatever they want, that being true means I cannot will anything against your will. Jesus also says this, that he cannot overthrow your will because your will is as powerful as his. This is why he cannot "take away" from you stuff that you aren't willing to let go of, and it's also why YOU have to be at least a "little willing" in order to move towards God. And also why no-one comes to the atonement except through full willingness to do so, because "God does not coerce".

Not even God overthrows your will, or goes against it, or forces you, or requires you. So that simply means that because your will is TOTALLY free from all other will, and you can choose the direction of your mind's creation, and because there is nothing to OPPOSE your will, whatever you choose is what you will receive, and what you don't choose you will not receive. This is the secret of salvation - the acknowledgement of YOUR freedom and the freedom of all your brothers. "Heaven is a choice I must make."

It's also why your 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. "

It's also why nothing can happen to you other than what YOU will against yourself:

"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."

It's because you are free. Free to choose. Free to elect. Free to decide. And your decision has power. "The power of decision is my own." And nothing can oppose this power.

The world out there, or in which your body-self is located, is a dream. It does not exist. You are dreaming it. It is no different to dreams at night. It is entire symbolic and filled with symbols. To awaken must mean the dream comes to an end. This means the world must disappear completely.

"Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all." (--the physical world is just a dream you're having. You did not wake up this morning!)

"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams." (--see, you're dreaming the entire world)

"Love was never in the world of dreams." (--there is no love inside the dream of death, even if you see it with love - love is incompatible with dreams and would end them)

"They are dreams because they are not true. Their equal lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood that dreams are dreams." (--recognizing the world is a dream is the key to awakening from it)

"Dreams disappear when light has come and you can see." (--dreams disappear when you awaken to the light of truth. In truth dreams do not exist and do not happen. They are unreal. There is no world. You can't be perceiving the world as real and be awake.)

"To mean you want the peace of God is to renounce all dreams." (--can you have the peace of God and be inside the dream? No. This means you are still dreaming and are not at peace.)

"Dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting wishes." (--the split mind has multiple wills conflicting with each other - persona and shadow, and must be chaotic. There is no perfect dream or perfect world)

"The miracle does not select some dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence." (--miracles are applied to the dream world to undo it!)

"Let forgiveness be the substitute for fear. This is the only rule for happy dreams." (--dreams can become happIER, but when the happiest possible dream is perceived, its usefulness is done and it will disappear and dreaming will end)

"Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world." (--the world is a sorry place, a dream of death. Beyond it is God's reality, which is not of this world and demonstrates this world does not exist)

"A miracle has come to heal God's Son, and close the door upon his dreams of weakness, opening the way to his salvation and release." (--all dreams (the world, the body) are dreams of weakness - the world is attempted suicide)

"Give truth its due, and it will give you yours. You were not meant to suffer and to die. Your Father wills these dreams gone. Let truth correct them all." (--you cannot die, it's just a dream of death.)

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love. Forget your dreams of sin and guilt, and come with me instead to share the resurrection of God's Son. And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you." (--enough said - we are to stop dreaming entirely and help others to do the same)

"What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up. The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. Such a rebirth is impossible as long as you continue to project or miscreate." (--the world is a place of sleep, unconsciousness, and unawareness. Its condition or state cannot continue if the state of awareness increases and there is awakening. The dream must end. The world is over. ONLY heaven is real.)

If you as Christ, God's Son, are "one with God", does that mean you do not exist as an individual being/son? Does it mean there is only God and NO son? No. It also does not mean that your "brother" is an "ego idea of separation". Brothers are co-children of the same Father - God.

In not one single one of these statements does "one" mean a count of one.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. ***There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER***. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

"This is because ***God and man are NOT equal***"

"The creative power of both God AND His Creations is limitless, but it ***is NOT in reciprocal relationship.*** You DO communicate fully WITH God, as He does with YOU. This is an ongoing process in which you SHARE, and BECAUSE you share it, you are inspired to create LIKE God. But in Creation ***you are NOT in a reciprocal relation TO God***, because He created YOU, but you did NOT create Him. We have already stated that only in this respect your creative power differs from His."

"I and my Father are one with you, for you are part of Us."

"Your Son is one with You in being and in will, and nothing contradicts the holy truth that I remain as You created me."

"Nothing has power over you except His Will and yours, which but extends His Will. 8 It was for this you were created, and your brother with you and at one with you." (oneness is happening at the same time as you AND your brother existing as creations of God!!!)

"You and your brother are the same as God Himself is One, and not divided in His Will. 2 And you must have one purpose, since He gave the same to both of you. 3 His Will is brought together as you join in will, that you be made complete by offering completion to your brother."

"I trust my brothers, who are one with me." (not "who are egos with me"!)

"His Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness encompasses ours." (two onenesses? WTF, OMG, call the the course police)

"Your role in the redemption LEADS you to it, by re-establishing its oneness in your minds."

"And ONLY as you look upon him as guiltless, can you understand his Oneness."

"Nor do they love the Oneness which created them as One with Him."

"In unity with Him do they abide, and in their Oneness both are kept complete."

"Its truth established you as one with God."

"we stand together as one Son of God."

"every heart throughout the universe forever sings as one"

"As a man and as one of God's creations, my right thinking, which came from the Universal Inspiration which IS the Holy Spirit, taught me first and foremost..."

"In this equality is Christ restored as one Identity, in Which all Sons of God acknowledge that they all are one."

"He loves you both, equally and as one."

"When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made."

In none of these statements do the "two" cease to exist as two. This does not mean separation persists either. Nor does it mean that "two" always indicates "multiplicity of egos". Nor does multiplicities of brothers created by God in reality mean there is separation happening.

Separation does not mean "counting how many", any more than oneness means "a count of one". Separation ONLY means the attempt to be exclusive, selfish and isolated, in among a large group of individuals with whom you were previously sharing everything.

So many myths to dispel.

“The first thing to remember about miracles is that there is no order of difficulty among them. One is not harder or bigger than another. They are all the same.”

Jesus says all miracles are the same. There is no order among them in terms of difficulty, or size, or adjusting proportions in relation to “what the problem is”. Miracle mindedness is a state of equality and evenness. It is flat.

All expressions of love are maximal, which means EVERY miracle expression is at the same level of maximal love. Not wavering or varying in degrees of application. Almost like there is one “button” that you push and it puts out a miracle and this same miracle has the power to do anything, every time. So there is no need for varying degrees of expression.

Similarly there is a hierarchy of illusions, in which all illusions APPEAR to have a total LACK of sameness. That everything is different, all forms are different, there are different degrees and amounts and importance and severity. Different amounts of hardness. “In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur.”

So the scenario we are presented with is a world which seems to show us “there are varying levels of difficulty”. And this is based on form. The form that something takes, is taken to be what it MEANS. We look at the form, the state, the shape, the texture, the color, the composition, the seeming evidence of what’s happened, the “proof of sin”, and we use that to come up with a JUDGEMENT of what “it is”. And this gives rise to what we think it MEANS, or implies. And that results in an entire hierarchy of degrees of difficulty, not to mention varying levels of reaction.

In LESSON 1 of the workbook, Jesus introduces us to this powerful idea, hitting the ground running. That everything in the world, all things we see, all objects, all FORMS, do not MEAN anything. That the form of things is NOT its meaning. And this is based on the simple yet deep idea of “there is no world”. The world is NOTHING, and therefore the things you see are NOT anything, and therefore do NOT MEAN anything.

“Lesson 1 "Nothing I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place) means anything.”

If you can realize how this is basically saying that NOTHING in the world means anything, it is telling you that the forms, physical states, conditions, amounts of stuff, it does not HAVE any meaning. One thing is not bigger than another. One thing is not harder to deal with than another. Even a certain form of body state, whether the body seems alive and healthy, or on its death bed, it is NO DIFFERENT in its meaning.

“They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful.”

We have INVENTED all the meanings we’ve given to everything in the world, including dead bodies. We have DECIDED that a body in a certain state MEANS death, and a body in another state “is better”. This is totally arbitrary, based loosely on the form of what we see, which is an illusion. A body seemingly in a state of death is NOT more dead than any other body.

So what we have to learn is that the physical state of things, regardless of its form, no matter its severity, even if a person is dead, even if they are severely sick, even if there’s a car crash, it should not MEAN that this is a very big serious terrible thing. It should not MEAN that this is more serious or more important or more severe, OR harder to recover from, OR really in any way a more DIFFICULT thing to deal with. It is all equally NOTHING.

“Yet it is when judgment ceases that healing occurs, because only then it can be understood that there is no order of difficulty in healing.”

Nothing I see means ANYTHING. A person seeming to be severely sick, is a judgement based on believing that their FORM is telling us its meaning. That certain states of the body are proof of certain degrees of death. That some things are worse than others. What we have to learn to be miracle minded is that the FORM that something takes, its appearance, no matter what that appearance is, is NOTHING AT ALL, and therefore it does not MEAN anything at all. One form is NOT different to another.

A serious ”bad situation” IS NOT a serious bad situation. It’s an illusion of one, taking the form of one, while simultaneously being absolutely nothing at all. And because it is nothing, it cannot mean anything. It cannot MEAN that it is a horrible nightmare Of awfulness. Because it is nothing, it cannot REALLY be a sickness. Because it is nothing, it is NOT really death, disaster, terror or hell. We can’t look to the form to tell us what anything means. Form is a lie. All physical states and shapes and conditions mean nothing whatsoever.

So the miracle has to overlook the appearance of the situation, completely disregard the evidence, turn away from what every physicality-believing person says, disregard the opinion of everyone who looks upon bodies and consider their states to be real, and do not GIVE any power to death. To not differentiate BETWEEN illusions. “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. ”

We are to not believe that a certain “state” is any kind of proof of anything. That it MEANS anything, indicates anything, implies anything, will lead to anything, or tells you a prognosis of even the potential of what might be possible. The form of the world cannot TELL YOU what is real or what anything means. You cannot look to IT to tell you what is true. You should ASK the physical to tell you what is spiritual fact.

We are to DEFY the world of illusions by bringing a power and a light from another world, a power which ignores form and completely overlooks the hierarchy of illusions. That flattens the hierarchy and renders all physical things EQUAL. Which sees all situations as THE SAME. And therefore having ONE response of love and power which deals with this ONE state of illusions, this ONE substrate of deception, and does ONE thing to bringing about a change.

Lesson 5 “Applying the same idea to each of them separately is the first step in ultimately recognizing they are all the same.”

lesson 79 “Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted.”

“Accept the holy instant as this year is born, and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. Make this year different, by making it ALL THE SAME.”

When all things in the world are recognized as nothing, they do not MEAN what you thought they meant. You have a clean slate. You have taken away from the world all the meanings it has, which you gave to it, under the belief that IT gave them to you based on its forms.

Its form are deceptions, they do NOT mean what they appear to mean. They ARE not what they seem to be. Do not listen to people telling you that something MEANS something because of its current “state”. This is just feedback from an illusory world where nothing is true.

“Nothing that the world believes is true.” “No one has been sure of anything since.”

ALL illusory forms, all physical objects, all bodies, all states are illusions of differences and appearances of conflicts. As if that means something. As if that’s proof of what is happening. Some things seem terrible and awful while other things seem harmless and nice. But none of this is true. All the things in the world are ONE thing, one equal sameness of nothing. And it is their nothingness that guarantees their healing. Because now if it is nothing, you are not dealing with a “big bad problem”, you’re dealing with an illusion, and illusions recognized as nothing must disappear.

It is the fact that this is all NOTHING, that gives you the power to be free from it, to not fear it, to not endow it with attributes it does not have, to not use it to prove sin is real, and have no effects from it. What is nothing can do nothing and is nothing. There is no world. There is no death. The son of God is free.

“Think how this SEEMS to interfere with the first principle of miracles. For this establishes degrees of TRUTH among illusions, making it appear that some are HARDER to be overcome than others. If it were realized that they are all the same and EQUALLY untrue, it would be easy, then, to understand that miracles apply to ALL of them. Errors of ANY kind can be corrected, BECAUSE they are untrue.”

"For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

“The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear.”

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere."

Since change is death, and changelessness is life, notice how the ego has arranged the world so that when there is a lack of change, death seems to occur. For example if you were to stop breathing and have no change in the breath, there would be death. And yet this is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the truth. Because in truth that which never changes is alive forever, and any change indicates that an END has come.

The ego's idea of death is the idea of life. The ego's idea of life is the idea of death. What appears to be life is not alive. And what appears to be only indicated by death is eternity. The entire dream world portrays this inversion of the truth, and has expressed it in PHYSICAL FORM, as a PICTURE of the TOTAL INVERSION of reality.

Death attempts to steer you away from stillness, while "life" disrupts all stillness with its constant modifications and interruptions. Eternity is a constant state of perfectly sustained perfection forever, in which nothing changes because it is constantly perfect. Nothing happens to it, there is no sickness, decay, suffering or death. It goes on forever, because it DOESN'T change, nor does it need to change to be what it is or to last.

All things which change, from the very beginning, have the mark of death upon them. They are inherently forms of death because of the very fact they are born in a moment of the denial of what came before. The fact that "life begins" with non-existence tells you that it cannot have eternal life, nor last forever. And so from its very inception it is doomed to create illusions of life, through growth and progression and morphic alternatives, but inevitably must fail to succeed indefinitely, because it was conceived in the moment of death which we like to call "birth".

This world is back to front, inside out, and upside down. Its pictures represent an attempt to oppose the truth. Every form testifies to the opposite of what it is and thereby acts as a decoy, distraction and temptation to believe anything other than reality. Life is death, and death is believed to be the doorway to life. Cessation of movement is considered lifelessness, and yet total stillness is the fullness of eternal life.

The dream of death, the illusion of life, couldn't be more of a lie in this respect. Its signposts all point away from the truth, using images of guilt, sin, death and fear to warn you off, that if you would pursue anything beyond them, you might discover their lies and instead uncover eternal reality. Be not deceived by what this world shows to you, it was made to tempt you away from your home, not to be your home. Your home is with God, where changelessness and perfection are forever guaranteed. And where everything lives forever.

"Nothing there but shines and shines forever."

"18. A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

This touches on the essence of A Course in Miracles and the Golden Rule. Jesus is literally telling us that YOU ARE ONE WITH OTHERS. This means you are literally IN THEM. And therefore the way that you treat them is the SAME as the way you treat yourself.

There is no exception to this. You treat BOTH yourself and others the same way at the same time. To recoil for another is to recoil from yourself. To not love another is to not love yourself. To hate another is to hate yourself. There is no escaping this because fundamentally, by the Law of God, you ARE them.

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."

So per the Golden Rule, that means that every person you encounter, you should love them, IF you want to be loved and if you love yourself. You should SEE YOUR SELF in them. Because both you AND them are Christ. And your love of them IS your love of yourself, directly. What you give to them you receive. What you transmit to them, you transmit to the part of you that is in them.

The "part of you" that is "in them" is the target of everything you give to them, so you have a VESTED INTEREST - a shared interest, in treating them well in order for YOU to be treated well. This is not a play on words or an option. This is how minds share and relate. This is how they were created. This is the dynamics of the laws of God which are always applying.

It is always the ego that suggests, the way you treat another is NOT the way you are treating yourself. Or that you can attack without being attacked. Or you can be murderous without experiencing the consequences. Or you can judge without being judged. Or you can hate without being hated. Or you can be right and they can be wrong and there is no equality between you.

These are all LIES because they fly in the face of the inescapable LAW. It can SEEM as if you can treat someone differently to how you treat yourself, but all of that MUST be an illusion. Because the only truth is that ALL of God's children are perfect EQUALS. Making them perfect brothers in the sonship. And this is permanent fact.

Any kind of inequality is an illusion. And that not only means that you and your brother are SEPARATELY EQUAL as individuals, like two identical twins standing next to each other. It in fact means that you SHARE EVERYTHING, which means you OVERLAP with each other, are ONE with each other, JOINED with each other, IN each other. You literally are in your brother's mind with him. Even if that means part of you seems to be "over there" in another person, from a separated point of view.

This is really the only thing to be learned. How to love yourself AND others equally. How to recognize that you are ONE with all people. To realize that, you cannot GET AWAY WITH anything. You cannot hurt without being hurt. You cannot attack without being attacked. Scapegoating and blame are delusional and denial. When you attack anyone you are hurting yourself, and you have to ask yourself, do you want to keep hurting yourself?

Anger and attack towards "others" drives a RIFT into your mind between the part of your mind which seems to be isolated to "inside your body" and the part of you which seems to be "inside other people's bodies". The more you attack what you THINK is a "separate them", the more you are SPLITTING OFF part of you which is in "you" (as a body identified self) and the part of you which is ONE WITH THEM. Which means you are directly attacking yourself and splitting your mind.

The split mind is divided by bodily boundaries, and as you focus on the ways in which you are NOT ONE, by emphasizing the solidity and reality and restriction of bodily obstacles, it simply SPLITS your mind and causes you to disassociate from yourself. And now you think you are literally two selves, with one part of you trapped in your body and the other part of you trapped in another person's body. You've now made an ego for both of you. And now you want to attack another to steal back from them the part of your SELF that you believe they have kept from you. As discussed in "the laws of chaos", everyone is looking for the self they think they lost.

So this seems to be a catch. The catch is, that if you choose to attack someone, you WILL be attacked, and you will suffer consequences, directly inflicted BY YOURSELF upon yourself. This is the secret of salvation, that you are doing it to yourself. And the only way to alleviate this suffering is to LOVE the other person. If you love them you will be loved. If you hate them you will be hated. By yourself. You cannot escape this "clause". It is the law of God. It is the Golden Rule. It is both a curse if ignored, and a clue to how to be happy if embraced.

The Golden Rule doesn't just mean that if you might treat someone as you would have them treat you, they MIGHT elect to treat you in a similar fashion. If there is any possibility that cause and effect breaks down and they MIGHT NOT treat you how you are treating them, then the law is breakable, and it is not a law, and it has devolved to the level of physical behaviors. The true nature of the Golden Rule is the oneness you always have with everyone in the mind, whereby you LITERALLY are DIRECTLY treating yourself the way you are treating them, because you are IN THEM.

"Do unto others because you ARE doing unto yourself." is what it should say.

If there is a person you hate, you will drive a separation between you. In this separation you will believe that person is completely separate from you, and you want to have as much distance and dis-association between you as possible. You do not want to be associated with them. You want to destroy them and have them not exist. And in this intensity of hatred and rage and attack and anger, you believe THEY ARE NOT YOU. And as such you can hurl as much blame and condemnation upon them as you can muster, and it seems to be 100% about their faults, and 0% about yours. This is a state of insanity.

This is a great way to split your mind, leading to states of personal suffering, unlove, a total lack of peace, and literal self destruction. Those who murder are trying to kill themselves. And those who attack are undermining their own integrity. And those who hate do not love themselves. Just as those who are sick have made themselves sick in an attempt to accuse OTHERS of sin as well as themselves.

"You but accuse your brothers of your own sin."

"Damaged bodies remain accusers."

The only solution, and the only option, and the only law which you HAVE to abide by, and cannot escape, is the law of God, that how you DO treat others IS how you are treating yourself, because YOU ARE ONE WITH THEM. And being literally part of that person, anything you hurl at them you are hurling at yourself. And you WILL experience the consequences. So really, your hands are tied and you do not have any loopholes or ways to get out of it.

Either you love BOTH you and your brother, or you hate both you and your brother. Either you love both you and your brother, or you attack both you and your brother. Either you attempt to make both you and your brother sick, or you HEAL both you and your brother. When you suffer you suffer along with him. The truth that applies to you applies to them equally and to the same degree. And not simply because they are your equal, but because THEY ARE YOU.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."When this is recognized as true, when cause and effect are reunited so that anything you cause you also experience the effects of instantly, and when there is no way to attack without attacking yourself, you now have shared interests and the only option is to love. The only sane choice is to love. If you don't love you will hurt yourself and others. If you do love you will uplift and heal yourself and others. And "when I heal I am not healed alone."

It is by recognizing that you have a vested interest in loving others, because it allows you to be loved, that you will automatically steer clear of attack upon yourself. You will realize that you CANNOT attack another person WITHOUT suffering the consequences. And there is no way to hurt them without being hurt. So your only sane choice is to love unconditionally, so that you will be loved. Otherwise a failure to recognize your oneness leads to it seeming plausible, justifiable and warranted, that you can attack without consequence. And then you are on the slippery slope to hell.

From a human perspective we might think of life as starting and birth and ending in death. This is typical ego self-interest of course.

The world itself is more of a cyclic, regurgitating, constant transformation and change, transitioning from birth to death and back to birth again.

There are things in this world which seem to be new, to be born, new babies, new leaves, new offspring, new mornings, etc. It's not all about endings.

There are foods which are technically dead foods, which are fed to babies. What do baby tigers eat other than the carcasses of dead animals?

The rotting corpses of humans become food for worms and bacterias and flies, which use it to manufacture newborn worms and bacterias and flies. And so death becomes life again.

Cells divide and produce what seems to be new life forms. And yet the very same division ensures their eventual breakdown and dysfunction. They are born in separation and end in separation.

Technically when a human body dies, the materials the body is made of do not vanish. They just change form and redistribute. If buried they become the soil from which flowers grow. The chemical compounds become fertiliser and the building blocks for new growths.

Even as the tree leaves die off, the leaves settle to the ground and rot, but thus turn into rich soil, which in turn becomes the fertile ground for the emergence of new trees.

Around and around it goes, cycling from starts to endings and back to starts again. Birth and death are just two sides of the same coin. We seem to prefer one over the other, celebrating births and hating deaths, but they're really part of the same system.

As science would say, nothing here can really be destroyed, it can only change form. It's all energy, moving around and turning into one thing then another. This is the world's way. It's not really just a world of what we'd call death, it's also a world of what we'd call life. Life from corpses.

"It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction."

Illusions back and forth, sometimes it seems alive, sometimes dead. A world of opposites. A world of contrasts. A world of changes. Where even death is not a final end, because the materials of the dead become the materials of the living.

The whole system is one of every possible form of change, every appearance, every shift and change and transformation. Every way possible that there is no permanence and no absolutes. Not even physical death is absolute. It's all relativity.

A birth is just as much an illusion as a death. A newborn flower is just as much dead as a wilted one. And so the world mixes life and death together without really differentiating them, and thus producing confusion. It's only us humans who keep segmenting it out and labelling some parts as one thing or another.

"This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life. The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path"

Yes ultimately all physical things lead to what we call death, but so too are the new things just as much a part of dreaming. Sunrises and sunsets. Births and deaths. A phoenix rising from the ashes. Ashes becoming bodies again. It's all a big soup of uncertainty and untruth.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."

At all times you perceive ONLY what you believe is true. This can be a trap when you're not ACTUALLY believing the Real Truth.

What it does, is it makes you think that you are seeing everything there is to see, when in fact you are only seeing a 'version' of reality that has your idea of truth/reality projected onto it.

So then you get stuck, because you think, well, today I feel afraid because the world is scary. Or, today I am happy and everyone seems happy too. Or, today I am terrorized and the world is full of terrorists, etc.

What I've noticed is, that the kind of world I see totally depends on what is going on inside of me. And I'll be convinced that I'm seeing OBJECTIVELY, as though I'm not having anything to do with why the world appears to me the way it does. And so then I don't see any way out of it - my only choice is to try to 'cope' with it.

So if you think of the world as being like a mirror, in which you see reflected your own mind's content, you'll be basically looking at yourself everywhere you go. And by yourself I mean, your belief in whatever you think is true. Because whatever is 'true' for you, you take that as your identity and as your reality, regardless of whether it is actually true.

So your perception of the world is usually SUBJECTIVE, and limited, BUT you do not realize that you are being subjective and limiting in the way you're looking at what's there. You don't realize you're filtering OUT stuff because of the way that your idea of truth filters IN stuff. You select some attitudes or beliefs as 'correct' and others as 'incorrect' and all of that incorrect stuff ends up outside of your awareness - you make it unconscious through rejection and denial.

For example, if I choose to be loving, it is extraordinary that, all of a sudden, it seems like there aren't any reasons to be afraid. People seem less threatening. Life seems more fun. But if I don't be loving, I feel more afraid, and more threatened, and it really seems like other people are the cause of the threat - like they 'really are' being threatening. But them seeming to be that way and me experiencing fear go hand in hand... they go together.

What you experience in your perception is ALWAYS matched up to/aligned with what kind of a world you will see. If you are in fear, you can ONLY see a fear-inducing world. If you are in love, you can ONLY see a love-inducing world. And so if the world seems to suck, it's because you believe that you suck. Or rather, you believe in some things which suck but you think they don't suck.

And that's part of the trap. You can get lost in your narrow filtered perception, thinking you're really seeing everything there is to see, and that you're seeing correctly and clearly, when in fact you are majorly distorting and blocking out many parts of 'what is out there', because you're blocking it in your mind. When there are no blocks, you'll see 'the forgiven world', because you will have forgiven yourself. But when you haven't forgiven yourself, you will see a condemned world, because you have condemned yourself.

You'll notice then that whatever experience you're having of the world 'out there', it seems to 'call for' or directly map to certain 'reactions' of a given amount of severity. And when the world 'out there' seems to be intense and serious, you seem compelled to also have an intense serious reaction, because you always connect what you perceive out there with what's going on inside of you.

If the world out there seems to 'make a move' and do something to 'make' situations worse, your ego self is pulled right along with the story and down into the story, where YOU become the mirror of what's happened. And you have a severe reaction. Whereas when YOU decide to make a move, realizing that you are NOT seeing everything there is to see, that you are only seeing the past, and that everything that's happening right now is because of PAST decisions and the future DOES NOT have to be the same, now you are starting to step outside of your own 'reality bubble'. You can deliberately choose to accept more love into yourself, within, and therefore REVEAL to yourself more love without - which, by the way, was always there, just hidden.

The way that the out-there maps to the in-here is what sets up the "hierarchy of illusions". ie, varying kinds of inner and outer statements of truth cause reactions of equivalent amounts. It's almost like in the law of physics where each action has an equal and opposite reaction. Each external-seeming event produces an equal response in the ego within - because secretly, that's where it CAME FROM.

So be careful not to get stuck in thinking that you are being objective. The only objectivity is PURE LOVE. If you are not in pure total love, you are filtering reality and have blocked yourself from being aware that LOVE IS PRESENT. You do not see God because you think he is not there, and you think this is an objective fact, but the only reason you don't see God is because you do not believe God is in your mind. Your mental blocks to love cause the world outside of you to seem like a blocked, insane place.

It is extremely easy to get stuck in this, for example if you are afraid, you will perceive that the whole world 'really is' a fearful place, and that fear is JUSTIFIED because of the kind of world you see. But you don't realize that the fearful world you see is fearful BECAUSE you are being afraid. It did not cause the fear, it is a PROJECTION of the fear. A mirror. A reflection. So while you're having your insane nightmare, and really believe that bad stuff is happening outside you, it's because bad stuff is happening inside you. They go together hand in hand.

So you have to be willing to make a kind of leap of faith. The leap of faith says, maybe there is a greater reality, a greater truth, outside of what I currently believe, outside of my self-imposed prison, and outside of the condition of the world as I currently see it. Maybe there is are hidden parts to what's out there, that I don't currently see, because I am blocking it. And maybe, maybe God is out there, and maybe God is love, and maybe I am just not seeing and experiencing God's presence because I'm blocking it. Maybe BEHIND and BEYOND my blocks, love is still there, with me.

This is what faith is about... hurdling over the obstacles to peace and trusting that God is still love and you are still love regardless of how your perception CURRENTLY looks. It isn't about staying IN your current subjective perception and believing that it is objective reality or that you have to stay there, because in order to BECOME aware of God's love you must actually GO past those blocks and OPEN UP to the awareness that God really is present. And for that, you have to remove those blocks and filters from your mind, otherwise you simply cannot see Him right in front of your face.

God is right with you right now, smiling and happy. If you're not experiencing that, you've got some healing to do. The forgiven world is right in front of your face right now, filled with love and light, and if you're not seeing that, you've got some forgiving to do. Ultimately, you are still with God right now and the separation hasn't happened, and if you're not seeing that, you've got some undoing to do.

Be willing to be mistaken about how the world looks to you. You're not seeing it clearly unless you're seeing love.

So ultimately, when you are afraid, or you're struggling with the world in the way that the world 'is' (seems to be). .pause a moment and ask yourself, is it possible I am not seeing all of reality? Is it possible that my justification for being afraid or upset is actually CAUSING myself to see the world incorrectly and PRODUCING the justification? What if ... what if I choose instead to be more loving or truthful or authentic, and maybe keep my mind open to the possibility that WHEN I CHOOSE LOVE, I WILL SEE LOVE.

And when you do choose love, that love in you will shine away all of the fear and all of the seeming 'reasons' to be afraid. And all problems will melt. And you'll have no way to justify the ego, because all of its justifications only seem true from WITHIN it. Once you step outside of your private reality bubble, the ego is gone and there is NO REASON to be afraid or upset, because all that's left is God's love. When there is only love, and that is true for you, there is no reason to be afraid. Literally. There only seems to be reasons to be afraid when you are afraid. If you CHOOSE not to be afraid and to be love instead, all of the 'reasons' for fear will completely disappear from your awareness. They were just illusions.

So it takes a willingness to go beyond yourself, beyond your blocks and self-made limits, and to realize YOU ARE NOT STUCK because you have a CHOICE and if you exercise that choice and stop believing your own HALLUCINATIONS, and your own filtered version of reality, and realize that all your reactions TO it are PART OF you MAKING IT seem to be the way it is, you can make a LEAP into a more truthful, loving experience, in which you are absolutely safe because there is only love there.

There is no fear or danger or death in reality. There is no cause for alarm. There is only safety and love and peace. How else can God be constantly at peace if there were ever reasons to threaten that? God is the peace that God experiences. Herein lies the peace of God.