Some important reminders and notes about why you are here and what your true calling is. I use this as a clarifying reminder to myself when I often forget...

Being the light of the world - your true calling - your true mission and purpose - the meaning of your life - what you really want to do in life:

You have been chosen to represent God

Be in the position of having awakened, and therefore are looking down on the world from a wiser higher place, and therefore see all others need help to awaken

The great crusade which Jesus calls us to embark on, as active workers, that awakening is not complete while one soul sleeps, and that lack of love in others is intolerable.

The crusade is the atonement, which is the long-term total plan for the complete awakening of ALL souls

You have a special function to play in the atonement which only you can play, which means not only you can awaken yourself, but also that you will be specifically guided what to do and where to go etc

Choosing to represent the truth and be in truth makes you a spiritual LEADER and not a follower, and therefore your role is to lead others not follow them, unless they are truly your teacher or guide

Teachers attract the students who are ready for their teaching, to impart the greater light they have to those who temporarily have less

Jesus will send you the people that he wants you to perform miracles for and you have the capability to do so, and exercising this ability is the expression of Him

The disciples were instructed to go out and be physicians and heal the sick, as well as healing themselves

Jesus asks us to DO something to correct the error, not just learn about it

Jesus asks us not to be content until the whole world has joined us in our awakened perception

It is an invitation to everyone to wake up and return to God, this is the curriculum - learning the truth, so teachers of the curriculum (teachers of God) teach the truth and help others awaken

Teaching is by example and demonstration and doesn’t just mean ‘passively being a light’ that has no power or effect

We’ve disowned ourselves, disassociated from who we are, given away our power, and projected responsibility for everything outside of ourselves as ego. We need to take that all back and reclaim who we really are. And that means helping everyone else to do so also, because if it applies to us it has to apply to them too since we are all One

Being loving means offering love which heals and sheds light on suffering and undoes ego and restores health and awakens minds and brings God’s sons back to Him, which we are to help in the process of

It is natural to want to help others when you are aware that you are love, when you are not absorbed with your own ego mind’s control, and are therefore free and available to serve - to serve God and our brothers, rather than the ego, because then your hands are empty (come unto God with empty hands) and that means "sign me up God!", I'm available.

Miracles intervene for holiness of ourselves and our brothers and are expressions of love to our brothers meaning we need to extend that love to them and help them.

You are the light of the world. You are its salvation.

Sometimes the ego breaking down can seem like a messy shitty mess. With extra shit in it.

When the ego's thought system is confronted with reality, i.e. the Holy Spirit's thought system, it has absolutely no way to understand it.

This also happens when some tightly held 'ego tool' that you've been using just keeps failing to work. And then you end up feeling like you're totally screwed because nothing works. This is VERY GOOD in terms of you coming to LET GO of that broken tool, which was never really there to help you, SO THAT you can open up to a whole new way of being and seeing.

But in the meantime, while the tools are breaking down and you're seeing just how insane everyone seems to be and how an invitation to eternal life by Holy Spirit is interpreted with the terror of "it means death".... that's not a particularly enjoyable experience.

There is an old analogy actually that springs to mind where someone feels like they are about as far away from God as they could possibly be. They feel like they're heading down a dark tunnel to hell. And that they'll be smashed against the rocks. Nothing works. No hope left (of the ego's solutions working), and presently not seeing a better way. And yet, in that moment, there is an incredibly opportunity to be alleviated of the ego's promises - for them to be brought into question.

Sometimes you just have to really clearly see the ego's system breaking and failing and not working and being utterly shit, in order for you to LET GO OF IT and want something else. Seeing the ego's horrifyingly broken mechanics is NOT PRETTY!

You might not even know what that something else is, but it can't be this. That certainty of 'this tool doesn't work' is a great way to see through it and withdraw all your allegiance from it. And then, guess what surprise is just around the corner? What happens when you surrender and you let go finally of this broken tool? The clouds part and God pops his head out with a smile and says "peekaboo", and suddenly a light dawns on you and you move forward in a whole new way - because it was the ego's strategies that were actually the problem - and you just let them go.

You thought you were crashing against the rocks, when in fact it was the ego breaking down because it needed to, so that you could be set free of it. And while you thought you couldn't be further from God or further from the truth, because of how the nightmare APPEARED, you were actually just a tiny step away from a revelation that would set you free.

The ego is never comfortable when you try to step out of its thought system. It always seems to have interpreted what that would mean as the 'worst' thing that could happen or precisely what you DO NOT WANT. Of course... because the ego has reversed truth and lies and thinks that truth is a lie. It doesn't want it. And it can't see it for what it is.

You are being loved and supported even when you think you are being condemned and persecuted. Because you are mistaken. And maybe that breakdown where all hell breaks loose is really a healthy expression of stuff that you needed to FINALLY acknowledge, so that you can be free of it.

I've been finding great benefit from this simple idea, based on lesson 67, "Love created me like itself."

This is based on a very simple and clear-cut metaphysical logic.It goes in these steps:

1) God is the source and cause of what you are.

2) God created you by extending his own nature and sharing it with you.

3) You inherited God's nature so are exactly like God in every way.

4) Since God's nature is permanent you are permanently like God.

5) Therefore you MUST be still exactly like God right now.

6) And therefore, because you are ONLY like God, you CAN ONLY extend that which God gave you.

7) You therefore extend ONLY what you have and are and give only that to others.

This is so extremely rock solid and clear logically, metaphysically, spiritually, and truthfully, that it really provides great focus and clarity as to your TRUE FUNCTION In heaven. The relationship you have with God. The truth of your nature. What you are capable of. And what is NATURAL to you.

When I use this and put it into phrases, it somehow VERY quickly moves me into sanity and a deeper inner awareness of my God-given nature.

So we phrase it like:

Love created me loving. I must still be love. So I can only give love.

This puts up "boundaries" logically, which are very straight and firm, which shut OUT any notion that you can be UNLIKE God, or that you could've STOPPED being in accord with God's nature, or that you can be anything OTHER than like Him. And indeed that you ARE ONLY able to extend further straight ahead according to this true nature. It lines up perfectly with the continuity of creation and extension and is absolutely 100% "in tune" with your soul's identity and expression.

"I am still as God created me."

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

"To have all, give all to all."

Then we can go on to pick out some other qualities of God, which we have inherited, and can then extend only those qualities. So we remind ourselves e.g.

Peace created me peaceful. I must still be peaceful. So I can only give peace.

Perfection created me perfect. I must still be perfect. So I can only give perfection.

Eternal Life created me alive forever. I must still be eternal life. So I can only give eternal life.

Truth created me truthful. I must still be true. So I can only give the truth.

You can word it in other ways so long as it stays STRICTLY true to the metaphysical logic of extension. e.g.

God who is love created me lovingly to only love. Therefore I am still just as loving as when God created me, and I only have love to give.

Or combine them.

The perfect peace of God's love created me perfectly peaceful and loving. Therefore I am still perfectly at peace in love. And I give perfect loving peace to everyone always.

For me, I've been repeating this lesson many times because it's one that just cuts really really deep to the core of who and what I really am and helps me to tune into my soul and FEEL the peace and love within.

I was doing this last night and Jesus commented, "beautiful".

In the ego's physical world, the form and the function of something are fixed.

You can use a pair of scissors to cut paper, but you can't use a pair of scissors to alleviate your hunger. You can use a screwdriver to screw in a screw, but you can't use it to water your crops. You can use a toilet to flush some poop, but you can't use the toilet to cook your dinner (hopefully).

Physical objects, forms, have a fixed function. This is because the ego is a fixed device. It is something you made with a single FUNCTION, and that function is fixed. Its purpose is specific and limited and unchanging. It was made as a device to oppose God. It was made to "see" God from a completely opposite vantage point and perceive God as though God is false, and that therefore death is true.

It was designed to fulfill that function, and just like any other "tool" that you use, it is just another tool which has one function and one function only. You can't turn it into something else and you can't make it do things it was not designed to do. Because the ego is "this world", forms in this world are fixed in their function also, and can only be used according to their properties or functions.

Your only choice with the ego is whether you pick it up and USE it, or whether you put it down and stop using it. You cannot change it into the truth. You cannot bring it with you into Heaven. You can't transform it to make it more spiritual. You can't convince it that God's truth is true. You can't make it listen or change its ways. It is a fixed-function tool that only does one thing and never will do anything else.

When you are identified with this tool and think it is your SELF, you will attempt to change IT whenever you are attempting to change YOU, and it can't change. It will object and see this as an attack and a threat. It will produce an ego rebound, because it does not want to and cannot wake up, and it cannot see the truth or understand it or accept it. The part of you that is still USING it does not want and cannot accept the truth "through" it, and that part of you will see your attempts to awaken as an attempt to destroy yourself. i.e. to destroy your illusory "function".

The only real choice for "becoming more spiritual" is to drop the ego and stop using it, stop listening to it, stop identifying with it, stop trusting it, stop believing it, stop living through it, stop perceiving with it, and stop trying to make it be real. You cannot keep it. You have to let it go. To surrender everything that it tries to do. And that also means giving up ITS illusory spiritual path which is nothing more than exchanging one set of illusions for another.

To become more aware of the truth about you, you need to bring into question whether the ego you trust is really the truth, discern that it is false, recognize it as false, and decide to accept the real truth as it is without your ego filtering it. The ego plays no part in that, and it's purely your decision to realize that your false identity is not your true self, that you are more than you appear to be, that you are not anything the ego describes or judges, and that your true nature has not been changed by your use of the ego device.

Your awakening then is a shift in IDENTITY, given that who you thought you were is not really who you are, and is not the whole of who you are. You are more than you are aware of. You are more than the ego sees. You are more than your body. You are more than a separate person split off from everyone else and from the universe. And you are more than this universe. You are the Son of God - the singular total full expression of everything God is everywhere.

Lies do not become the truth. Fear does not become reality. Death does not replace life.

There are a number of words Jesus uses in a very different way to how we use them. He literally redefines and teaches us a new meaning of these words. This is because we've taught ourselves incorrectly what something IS, and have mis-identified things. In ACIM His use of terms gives them a whole different meaning.

Some examples:

Life. You think it means bodies that "are alive". He means, that which has eternal life in Heaven and extends forever, which never perishes and cannot die.

Death. You think it means death of the body. He means, anything even slightly less than 100% perfect life. Even a slight grievance. Even a slight sickness. The entire dream world and everything in it.

Murder. You think it means some person in the extreme attacking another. It really means the dynamic of a separation between cause and effect in which you perceive something applies to you that doesn't apply to someone else, allowing you to escape the consequences of what you cause. The entire ego thought system is murderous. "What is not love (100% love) is murder."

Insanity. Any state of mind which is not total wholeness and holiness. A split mind. A mind which believes illusions are real. A mind which sees itself as separated from its creator. All states of dreaming. Happy dreams, unhappy dreams. All states of perception. Seeing yourself as a body. Believing in death.

Sickness. You think it means just body sickness like having a disease. Jesus means a sick mind which produces a sick body, all states of mental unhealth, death, forms of physical sickness, illness, fear, unforgiveness, guilt, body-identification, belief in sin, level confusion, magic, etc.

Fear. You think it's some feeling you have when you are scared and that the rest of the time you are not afraid. Jesus says the entire world is made of fear which is the opposite of love, all states of sickness including death are fear of awakening, and fear includes every state of the ego thought system.

Sin. You think it means something you did. Jesus redefines it as something you think you did which you didn't do in reality. Sin is the authority problem. It's reversal of cause and effect, opposing God's will, which has produced an entire world of sin and death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." In sin, the death wish is formed, making death inevitable, unless you undo sin.

Love. You think of special love, an emotion of love, private love, exclusive love. Parental love. Small amounts of love. Jesus says all expression of real love are maximal - maximum total unconditional whole-minded full-hearted unlimited universe-sized love.

Forgiveness. You think it means pardon. Or you think it is a process. Jesus states it is a constant state of mind in which you recognize there is nothing left to forgive because you have not condemned yourself. All forgiveness is self forgiveness, yet you are one with others. Forgiveness is the atonement.

Ego. You think ego is just some little bit of egotism or selfishness. Jesus redefines ego as the separation idea and an entire thought system which has manifested as a physical universe, complete with dream bodies and war and death.

Perception. You think perception is you being inside your body peering out through your eyes seeing stuff in a certain way. Yet Jesus says the world is perception, physical objects are mental images, the whole world is your perception within your universe-sized mind, and it's not so much to do with how you see something that's out there. Perception is a result, not a cause. Projection makes what you see.

There's many more things which we do not recognize as being what they are. And so it may be easy to mis-read what Jesus means by certain words. We have to unlearn all of our previous definitions for things and broaden the scope of them. Jesus is accurate and truthful in HIS understanding of what things ARE, he knows what is fear and what is death and what is life, in the most accurate of ways. Our definitions are limited and basic and incorrect. Dictionary definitions are also flawed. This is part of what makes learning ACIM challenging, he's using familiar words in unfamiliar ways.

Attack actually means withdrawal. The Kingdom of God cannot be attacked. When you try to attack, you withdraw away from what you are attacking.

It's funny how all of the ego's illusions always look like one thing but are actually totally the opposite.

In the ego, free will looks like being tremendously independent and having great breadth of choice, but in truth the ego's free will is actually an imprisoned will and all its choices are attempts to isolate and be limited. The ego is the imprisoner of will.

When you attempt to attack a brother, you withdraw away from him and isolate. Therefore your attack cannot access the reality of what He is. Only in sharing of love can you actually "connect" with your brother's real self, because his real self is made of love and can only be accessed through love.

It's the same with God. If you try to attack God or oppose His will, instead of actually being ABLE to cause some kind of change in him, you instead withdraw away from him. It seems to be experienced by you as if it's a positive outward expression of attack away from yourself, but in truth it is a withdrawal away from the perceived enemy and a failure to attack at all.

Attack cannot have any real effects. You cannot really sin. You cannot attack anything real. Nothing real can be threatened. This is why God and His Kingdom are totally beyond the reach of the ego.

Similarly with power, when you are empowered you automatically must be aligned with love because love is strength and only by being aligned with love can you access the Power of God. If you try to use God's power to attack, you automatically lose that power and become weak.

In the ego, whenever there is an attack trying to be perpetrated, it is in fact a lack of attack. It is a failure to cause. It is an attempt to stop causing. It is the opposite of causal power. It's like a fearful dog barking its head off in hopes that the threat will go away, making it look like it is attacking when in fact it is terrified and will run away at the slightest advance.

This means literally you literally CANNOT ATTACK ANYTHING REAL. You cannot attack your brother, you cannot attack God, and you cannot attack yourself. This is why your innocence is guaranteed. Any time you try to attack you automatically place yourself under arrest. When you try to attack, you arrest the extension of your mind, which produces sickness. When you attack, you create illusions of being hurt.

When you try to attack your brother, you arrest your mind and attack yourself. This causes you to withdraw away from your brother into your body. It makes you isolate yourself and identify yourself with a physical form in a specific location in space. You are supposed to be everywhere in your omnipresence but attack puts you in prison. You imprison yourself by not loving yourself and others.

Joining minds with others through expressions of love (miracles) heals the separation, releases you from prison, ceases attack and allows you to gain access to sharing with others again and with God. Only through love can you connect with loving brothers. Attack is a breakdown in communication and it attacks communication itself, causing the attacking effort itself to be attacked. This is because all ego efforts to attack are self attack.

God is absolutely protected from the ego and all its ways. It cannot even approach God because its attempts to approach are actually running away. Every time it lurches forward with a spear, it recoils in terror. Nothing real can be threatened because the ego can only attack the ego and reality does not attack reality. Nothing unreal can threaten anything real, and nothing unreal exists.

A sense of separation from God is the ONLY problem you need correct.

This is far reaching. Every sickness, every war, every grievance, every negative thought, all death, every illusion, all fear and doubt, every body, is a SYMPTOM of what it is like to experience a LACK of love. It’s how the appearance of the absence of love shows up.

There is no problem love cannot solve.

Sickness for example, arises from a block the awareness of love’s presence. When love is blocked, the block itself shows up as an illusion of unlove - a seeming absence of love and therefore health. As Jesus says:

"Those who are sick do not love themselves, for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves."

I love how Jesus is so extremely logically clear with no exceptions. All sicknes arises from a lack of love. Therefore, increasing the level of love HEALS and restores health.

This also MUST mean that when there IS love, there CANNOT be sickness. Or death!

Love is God. When we attempt to be separate from LOVE in any way, we enter into ego, darkness, suffering and problems. Those problems are symptoms of love’s absence. Human bodies, planets, weather, wars, fear, suffering, birth and death are ALL symptoms of the seeming absence of LOVE.

So it is very very simple. If you increase the love, ALL of the problems disappear. Love shines away darkness. Love removes ALL false needs and lacks. Love heals all sickness on every level. Love has miraculous power over all the ego’s laws. Love can raise the dead. Love can make death impossible.

Have you ever noticed, when you are riddled with fears and questions, trying to find answers, and believing you have needs, IF YOU GO TO GOD, commune with Him and receive some love, EVERYTHING GETS BETTER?! It all just vanishes. You forget what you were going to ask. Questions dissolve because the lack of love is met. Questions are doubts arising from fear, which is love’s absence. If you put aside what you think you need, and jump straight to getting some LOVE, it accelerates your return to peace.

You don’t really want your questions answered. You don’t really want your problems solved. You don’t really want someone to meet your fake needs. What you really want is LOVE. And love will ERASE all of these things instantly. All these other needs, wants, lacks, demands, fears and problems are only there because of love’s absence. Love’s lack is what they are MADE FROM.

When love is present, there can be no suffering. Love is powerful, miraculous, and there is NOTHING it cannot do. Love, quite literally, has miraculous supernatural power. It can heal the sick, raise the dead, repair bodies, heal the world, move mountains, overcome all the egos laws, and do everything that Jesus demonstrated as possible.

Love is the central core glue that joins ALL parts of A Course in Miracles into one seamless unified essence. It is very, very simple. All our undoing of grievances, all our forgiving, all our healing, all our practice of miracles, any acceptance of atonement, reversal of cause-effect, removing blocks to love, it is all ultimately aimed toward an increasing awareness of love’s presence, AND an increasing EXTENSION of and expression of love.

"Teach only love, for that is what you are".

Jesus was VERY loving. That is why he had miraculous power to do anything. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do." Love is not just love, it is UNLIMITED CAPABILITY. All of ACIM is geared toward returning to a more loving presence. To healing the separation from love. To put us back in touch with LOVE itself, so that all problems are solved.

In love is salvation. In love is healing. In love is peace. And in love is eternal life with God.

The body is supposed to be used as a communication device. This is much misundestood. What it means is that the body is to be used in a way that reflects our function of extension in heaven. We (mind/soul) are a MEDIUM or "communication channel" of extension, through which God is hosted and extends. We are to pass on what we receive. And this produces a continuous outward expansion and increase of creation. This is also communication - the outward expression of love.

"Creation and communication are synonymous. God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will." That means, the body is supposed to, from a higher repurposing perspective, be used solely to extend and join and communicate, like a medium that you express THROUGH and BEYOND. Whereby you use it solely like a tool to give to others, placing no focus ON the body itself, or on the bodies of others. Because bodies become a LIMIT on communication if you make them real. They turn into brick walls.

The entire problem comes when you begin to focus ON the body, making it an idol, worshipping it, mistaking it for a THING in its own right, considering it an entity, dwelling on its form and function, and identifying with it as if it is your self. This converts the "channel" from being a channel, to being a roadblock in the channel. It turns the body into a blockage of separation instead of extension.

All of the minds attention is put ON the MEDIUM ITSELF, as if the medium itself is important. This separates the mind off because it now stops at the body's limits and does not go past it to join with other minds beyond their bodies. This increases the rift in the mind and induces all forms of sickness including death. It's a mis-use of the body - trying to use what's supposed to be a PIPE, as though it's a brick wall.

This is also why holy relationship is important because you're supposed to USE the body to relate BEYOND the body. It's only supposed to be used temporarily as a device for this purpose, and is not supposed to be used to exalt itself or to act as a prison or barrier. When you become body focused, you literally "lose sight" of your brother and yourself. It means we're turning a device for learning into the FOCUS of learning, as if trying to make the body BE something in its own right, which it isn't. The body is used for communication when the body ITSELF becomes NOTHING and invisible in the equasion.

"Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not IN it. If the mind believes the body is its GOAL, it WILL distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot BUT foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else."

"To confuse a learning device with a curriculum GOAL is a fundamental confusion. Learning can hardly be meaningfully arrested at its own aids, and hope to understand them OR its real purpose. Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished ONLY if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND's FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND's JOY."

"The Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your RELATIONSHIP, and NOT your bodies. You have ESCAPED the body. Where you are now, the BODY cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set HIS temple there."

"You CANNOT make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will NEVER be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love's CONDEMNATION. For here is love made fearful, and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded deep in mystery, and kept APART from those who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships, and no return."

"The Holy Spirit's temple is NOT a body, but a RELATIONSHIP. The body is an isolated speck of darkness; a hidden secret room, a tiny spot of senseless mystery, a meaningless enclosure carefully protected, yet hiding nothing. Here, the unholy relationship escapes reality, and seeks for crumbs to keep itself alive. Here it would drag its brothers, holding them here in its idolatry. Here it is "safe," for here love CANNOT enter. The Holy Spirit does not build His temples where love can never be. Would He Who SEES the face of Christ choose as His home the only place in all the universe where it can NOT be seen?"

The world we made - Earth etc - seems like a world we cannot control. When you look at it, almost no-one has any ability to DIRECTLY move objects with their mind. To change one thing into another. The amount of limitation of the seeming ability to "will that something happens, is EXTREME.

"he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach."

This is because when we made this world, we were willing AGAINST God's will, and against will itself. We thus imposed a sense of imprisonment ON our will and shut ourselves off from our power. In willing a world based on unwillingness, we made a world that is NOT a world "of will", and this has effectively cut our minds off from being able to "will" that the world change.

"You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it."

This doesn't mean we don't have this power, or cannot access it. But for most people it means they live in such a way that the body limits their entire expression and confines them inside of it. Mind seems unable to reach past it to influence anything. You can't even seem to move a single speck of dust no matter how hard you try.

By making a world of "not will" or unwillingness, or against will, we made a world that seems out of control. A world where things just seem to happen haphazardly and chaotically. Where objects just tumble to the ground, where things just fall and land wherever the wind takes them, and where all manner of stuff just happens seemingly accidentally. As if no-one willed it. As if it just was following some basic laws of physics, which are really the absence of laws.

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father. But He would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

So now we're confronted with a world that we seem unable to control. However, through forgiveness and re-acquiring access to the power of the mind, we can GAIN control over it. And our miracles can demonstrate that this is so. By undoing imprisonment, which involves de-identifying from the prison - the body - we can regain access to the power of the mind.

"Yet this world is ONLY in the mind of its maker, along with his REAL salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing WHERE it is, will you gain control over it. For you DO have control over your mind, for the mind is the mechanism of decision."

"Yet all that stands between you, and the power of God in you, is but your learning of the false, and your attempts to UNDO THE TRUE. Be willing, then, for ALL of it to be undone, and be glad that you are not bound to it forever. For you have taught yourselves HOW TO IMPRISON THE SON OF GOD, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even DREAM of it."

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you."

"Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished ONLY if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension."

"I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power of the mind, by uniting MY will with that of my Creator, which naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose."

"Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind."

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains."

"Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power."

"Your mind is capable of creating worlds"

What appears to be the physical world is not actually "direct reality". It is in fact once removed. It is an effect of an entirely other layer of causality which seems hidden. Just as in the holographic model, the underlying "source" of the appearances you see, is obscured by "sight of form" and you end up believing that this physical world is "verbatim", ie this is all there is.

In understanding why miracles are supernatural, it is very important to recognize this. In order to be supernatural there has to be an order or layer of reality deeper or higher than what appears to be the physical surface of this universe. We have to recognize that bodies and objects are not "immediate reality", they are once removed, and are EFFECTS caused by some other hidden level of causality. There is a whole other layer of causality, and everything in this world is "coming from" that hidden realm, making this world entirely an secondary effect.

When observing just the appearances of the surface of this world, there is a tremendous vast illusion before your eyes, which seems to operate in terms of "horizontal cause and effect". It seems as if some parts of the world cause and effect other parts. But this IS entirely an illusion. It's not what is happening. Anything which looks like being "different" in this world, ie one thing is a cause and another thing is an effect, is an illusion.

What secretly is happening is a higher, hidden level, a more immediate level of reality, is causing this entire universe all at once. Causality moves in a "vertical" direction from above, downwards, projecting the universe below. This means that there is a realm where you are "outside of" or above the entire field of horizontal illusions, outside the dream, where you are under absolutely none of the illusory horizontal laws and free of ALL limitations.

In that realm, you essentially are like a movie editor, someone who can reach into the movie and rearrange parts of it, orchestrate what goes where, and make significant changes. While within the movie itself it seems there is this consistent "story" playing, which utterly depends on the existence of many limitations and props and illusions of things which "must" happen according to certain rules or laws, realize that all of these stories of causality are entirely a fiction, where nothing seems to betray the illusion, nothing hints at this not being all there is, and nothing "blows the illusion" of horizontal or linear causality.

An example is a movie that you go to the cinema to watch. When you watch the movie you believe it is a single seamless story, in which certain limits and rules have been put in place in order to paint a seemingly "consistent" picture. But the fact is, if you could've been in the studio when the movie was being created, you would realize it was simply a bunch of people "acting" and a bunch of computers producing CGI special effects, working "behind the scenes". You as as a miracle worker as a BEHIND THE SCENES OPERATOR who orchestrates and produces the second-hand "effects" or "results" of a creative process. We used this same process initially when FORMING the physical universe, which is an entire order of reality removed from those who pull the strings.

When expression is made from the higher level, the more immediate level of causality, that expression is able to cause changes to the expressed world below. Just as an editor would make changes to a movie sequence from outside the movie which has the potentially to "break the illusion" of linear consistency within the movie itself. And when it DOES "perform a miracle", it literally BREAKS the illusion of linear cause and effect - the horizontal consistency or predictability of one thing leading only to another specific consequence. It's like someone editing the movie, and to those observing from WITHIN the movie, it will look like reality just did something "impossible".

If you seem to be living in the movie and you think that all that can happen is what's inside the movie, then suddenly a spaceship appears out of nowhere because the movie director decided to insert one, you will "witness" what appears to be a miracle. Something happening that seems impossible based on the linear laws. If you think of The Truman Show - a great movie, the same laws and rules and limitations had to happen day after day to maintain an illusion that nothing could happen outside the law, but when the main character started to "wake up" and see through the limitations, the world around him started to "break" and he eventually stepped outside of the whole illusion, coming face to face with the "directory" of the movie. You as a miracle worker are a director of the physical movie.

Or similarly, if it appears that there is a law of gravity where, over time, objects are attracted towards the center of the earth, and therefore human bodies are almost glued to the surface (you can jump, but only so high before you are attracted back down), and if suddenly a human body were to fly up in the air or walk on water, this would BREAK the illusion of horizontal laws. That means, the laws "within" the linear dream, within appearances of horizontal causality, could not have "resulted in" this effect, and it must have required someone to reach in from OUTSIDE of the laws and make an adjustment that the laws themselves are incapable of producing.

The key point to realize is that all of the linear laws are VERY LIMITING. We are confined by them. We are trapped by them. They seem to play out as if having a force or power over us. We don't seem able to escape gravity, time seems to proceed in one direction, one object seems to collide with another, no objects share the same space, very large heavy objects like mountains seem completely immovable, even sickness seems to have a causality in the body or due to external forces. These are all very limiting illusions of things on the SAME LEVEL causing other things on the SAME LEVEL to change.

From the point of view of the miracle worker, who is under no laws but God's, there are NO LIMITS. And so when the miracle worker manipulates the limitations in ways which defy and BREAK the linear laws, this appears to those in the horizontal dream as SUPERNATURAL MIRACLES. Things which should technically be "impossible" according to the limits we have accepted, suddenly become possible. Things we have assumed to be "normal" or "natural" are shown to be ARTIFICIAL LIMITATIONS.

Since we don't generally recognize that we LIVE IN WORLD OF LIMITATIONS, we don't realize that there are additional FREEDOMS and flexibilities that we have decided are off-limits or impossible. Miracles are capable of exercising that freedom and of PROVING that you are NOT BOUND by the horizontal laws of the ego's illusory world. This is why miracles are super-natural, they have a freedom of potential way beyond what any physical law in this second-hand universe suggests is possible.

There is therefore literally NOTHING that they cannot do. We have to open our minds to see past the limitations of physical illusion and realize that even the things we think are impossible are perfectly possible. There is NO REASON why you cannot do anything you can imagine. "There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

So the main keys to this are:

1) This physical world is once removed from true cause, it is not immediate reality

2) This world has no real causes in it, they are all effects of a higher reality

3) Cause-and-effect in this world are totally fictional illusions designed BY a higher level causer, to create a "story" in which limited things happen according to limited rules

4) Miracles wield a freedom way beyond the limitations of this world and express and demonstrate that ANYTHING is possible because they originate in the FIRST ORDER of causal reality, and therefore can BREAK and OVERRIDE any of the limitations or laws present on the physical level, since those laws are limitations PUT IN PLACE BY someone from the more primal level of reality. This is why Jesus says "you made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

Here's what ACIM says:

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them."

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence."