There's a bizarre contrast between the absolute unchangeability of your real self, versus this entire realm of spacetime and matter in which everything seems to change.
Given you are completely changeless, permanent, eternal, always and forever, it is starkly UNBELIEVABLE how the world of change has absolutely NO EFFECT on you at all.
It's like, there you are this completely fixed motionless immovable mountain that is absolute and permanent and infinite in its consistency. And there's this entire world of changes, transitions, alterations, adjustments, modifications, things causing other things, and NOT ONE SINGLE SPECK can even come close to touching you or affecting you.
So that means that everything in this entire world that CHANGES, which is all of it, is LYING TO YOU when it says that it IS changing something real. You are real, it is not changing you at all.
This means we are faced with a "world of change", maximum change, and yet for all that changes NOT ONE SINGLE THING about you changes. So every single "change" that the world appears to undergo, that seems like an ACTUAL change, is NOT a change at all.
So here we have a world which is entirely made up of comings and goings, beginnings and endings, changes and transformations, everything becoming something else, and all of this is a LIE, suggesting that massive change is happening to reality, when in fact NO CHANGE AT ALL is taking place.
Not one single change in the world has any power whatsoever to cause a change in ANYTHING real. The weather, the natural disasters, the armies, the tides, the seasons, the environments, the temperatures, the erosion and destruction, the murder and death, NOT ONE SINGLE PART OF IT CHANGES YOU.
Every single thing in this entire "universe" is FAKE CHANGE. Fake news. Utterly an ILLUSION of change, appearing to be a change, when in fact it is ABSOLUTELY NOT CHANGING ANYTHING.
When you contrast the sheer degree to which this world seems to suggest that change is absolutely normal and maximal and everywhere, against the fact that nothing real EVER CHANGES, it becomes clearer just how much of an illusory dream this world is. How FALSE it is, how much of a LIE and DECEPTION it is. Nothing happening here does anything whatsoever to anything in reality.
Change is in fact IMPOSSIBLE. What God creates can never change. God never changes his mind. Creations never stop being creations. There is no suffering or sickness or death. There are no beginnings or endings. There is no growth or decay or maturation or degradation. There is no destruction or dismantling or starting over. There is no sickness or malfunction or damage or hurt. There is no dying and no death.
Not one single thing in the entire seeming history of space and time has EVER DONE ANYTHING AT ALL. And YOU have never been altered even slightly by a single part of it. You stand like a beacon of infinite power and light and truth and certainty in the midst of the deceptive waters of spacetime, and nothing happens to you.
"(mind) .. it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere." UrW167L9
"The "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes." UrP3B2
"For this one thought would be enough to save you and the world, if you believed that it is true. Its truth would mean that you have made no changes in yourself which have reality, nor changed the universe so that what God created was replaced by fear and evil, misery and death. If you remain as God created you, fear has no meaning, evil is not real, and misery and death do not exist." UrW110L1 (I am as God created me)
"Today we practice making free our minds of all the laws you think you must obey; of all the limits under which you live, and all the changes which you think are part of human destiny." UrW127L6
"God changes not His Mind about His Son with passing circumstance which has no meaning in eternity where He abides, and you with Him." UrT24G3
"Perception changes, MADE to take the place of changeless knowledge." UrT26H2
"The shifts and change are what the dream is made of." UrS3D2
"Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur." UrT17C4
"dreams are what they are BECAUSE of their illusion of reality. Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it become PERFECTLY apparent that they had no effect on reality at all, AND DID NOT CHANGE IT." UrT17A1
"All the images His Son appears to make have no effect on what he is. They blow across his mind like wind-swept leaves that form a patterning an instant, break apart to group again, and scamper off. Or like mirages seen above a desert, rising from the dust." UrW189L9
"Appearances deceive BUT CAN BE CHANGED. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all. And if you fail to see BEYOND appearances, you ARE deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and CAPABLE of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change." UrT30I1
"But time, with its illusions of change and death, wears out the world and all things in it. Yet time has an ending, and it is this that the teachers of God are appointed to bring about." UrM2A4
"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found." UrT29F7
"Change is always fearful to the separated, because they cannot conceive of it as a change toward HEALING the separation. They ALWAYS perceive it as a change for further separation, because separation WAS their first experience of change." UrT4B6
Our opinions don't mean anything at all. They are absolutely worthless. It doesn't matter what your truth is or what my truth is or what anyone's truth is. It's all bullshit. An opinion is the delusional voice of the ego.
In attempting to express what we think is right or true, we actually are covering up the truth. We are replacing the truth with a viewpoint of what we want the truth to be. These expressions of "my truth", which come across as "this is what the truth is", are actually censorship of real truth.
Then there are those who say that everyone's truth is different or unique and to have your own truth. That's insanity. And then there are those who say no-one knows or can know the truth - not quite true - you CAN know the truth, it's just that hardly anyone is willing and we've become expert at obscuring it.
More and more I see that the truth - as God - simply 'is'. There is absolutely nothing we can do to change or define what it is. It can either be accepted, or denied, but nothing else.
We don't get to decide what God is. We don't get to decide what reality is. We don't get to decide what is true or false. We don't get to decide who we are. We don't get to decide where we came from or what our characteristics are. We don't get to decide God's will for Him. And we don't get to change God in any way. We also don't really get to be separate from God or have our own separate existence or "my life" that I've taken possession and control over.
"There is no life outside of Heaven" - ACIM
"I am as God Created me." - ACIM
"Only the truth is true." - ACIM
Fortunately for us, the gift that God has given us is so perfect and amazing that we couldn't really want for anything else, and nothing else is better for us. It is an absolute blessing and an act of grace. We should be overjoyed to accept what He has deemed us worthy of.
The truth is fixed. It is permanent. It doesn't change. God doesn't change. And no matter what anyone's opinion is, no matter what my opinion is, it's not going to change the truth.
It is actually insane to insist that I or anyone knows what the truth is IF it is not actually aligned with what the truth is. It is, however, sane to know the truth when it is clear and correct and in full acceptance of what the truth actually is.
The more that I allow Jesus and Holy Spirit to express through me, with less censorship and less desire to change what they say, the more "raw" their message becomes. The more completely blunt and unhidden and direct and factual it becomes. I see myself wanting to cover things up and not say some things and not be so brutally honest but they urge me to stop saving face and let the raw truth out.
I expect Jesus to have some kind of persona or way of softening the blow, but He is just like.... in your face! This is what the truth is, boom... take it or leave it. Totally exposed and out in the open with nothing to hide and no attempt to cover anything up.
If something is true and we try to avoid it or deny it or reject it or cover it up or disbelieve it or try to make something else true in order to claim it is false, we're being nothing but arrogant and we have an authority problem.
It's not going to matter whatsoever whether someone claims to know the true version of ACIM or any other teaching, or not. The truth is true. It can only be what it is and it can only be experienced "as-is". The truth itself will be the true measure of who is correct or not - you could call that "judgement day" in a symbolic kind of way. The truth knows what the truth is. The rest of us just get to accept it or attempt to block it and pretend we know better.
But this at least means that the truth is accessible, and you can accept it, and if you are willing to accept it you can align with it and it can be shared with God. Truth is sharing. But you can't have an isolated truth of your own. Isolation is not sharing and puts you into a private world where your own opinion seems to mean something. Your opinion doesn't mean anything at all.
God knows.
God just is, like it or not.
God has given His Creation. He has created us. He has shared everything with us. He has defined what we are forever. The course says something like - think not that you can improve upon Heaven, you cannot add anything to the truth that is more valuable than what it already contains.
We literally therefore must SURRENDER to the truth, lay down everything we want to believe that opposes or blocks or changes it, and simply allow it, accept it.
Related to this, when A Course in Miracles begins it says "This is A Course in Miracles, it is a REQUIRED COURSE." Do you think Jesus is being factual, literal, and absolutely truthful? It is a required course because it is part of God's plan for awakening, and what God says goes. It is inescapable. We have a curriculum for awakening and we must take it and we will take it. It is God's will. you can't avoid it. You can't pretend there is some other completely separate path that doesn't include the curriculum somehow.
The metaphysics of the truth as laid out in the Course is completely true. There are steps in awakening. There are things you have to admit to. You have to learn to admit to the real truth - not a truth that one book says or another argues with. The experiential factual real LIVING truth. You can deny it all you want but you cannot change it or define it. Other pathways may also lead to God but only if they include the same factual real truth.
This is why the "only" path to God is really A Course in Miracles, or to put it another way, it's not the form of the Course but.. "the course" is the "divine curriculum" which is "required" no matter what form your path takes or what materials you use or what books or what teachers. All paths - all forms of paths - lead to God, but some obscure it more than others. You cannot wake up without taking the one curriculum, either directly or inadvertently. And you can be an ACIM student and avoid the curriculum for a long time. ;;-)
This leads me to a different but related point.
I was asking Jesus about how I can possibly accept that someone is sick. If acceptance of the truth is so important, surely I would be better off not resisting the fact that someone is sick? Surely I would be more at peace if I stop fighting with the sickness? Can it be possible that I can come to a complete acceptance of and allowance of that sickness?
Jesus said no. How can I accept something that is false? Jesus speaks of His inability to tolerate the absence of truth in himself or others, and asks us to join Him in the great crusade to correct error in everyone. "As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you." - ACIM
I cannot accept someone being sick because the sickness isn't real. I can't simultaneously believe that it is real and be at peace. I can accept that they really DO NOT have sickness. I can accept that they are NOT sick. I can accept that they are One with the truth, in truth. But the sickness, the illusion of sickness, it is intolerable IF it is real. Fortunately it is not real, and that is what can be accepted. But then ... Love compels a desire to perform miracles.
"How can I help?"
All this time, I and most of us have been seeking the truth from the bottom up. That means, we find ourselves in the midst of the illusion, lost and confused, scrambling in the dark, trying to find our way to the light.
But everything about the darkness has been lying to us, painting a picture the opposite of the truth. The darkness makes it appear that we have become sinners, or fallen from grace, or changed into a limited confused person, or have developed an ego and changed our identity. This is not true.
As you move "upward" closer to the truth, you will gradually open up to greater awareness and insight into the nature of the truth. And gradually you will start to "take root" in the truth. Another way to put it is you "attach" to the truth or identify with it more, having un-attached from ego lies. Jesus once said to me "you are growing stronger in the truth". So as we undo the lies and the ego, the darkness starts to clear and we can see more clearly and accurately.
At some point you start to get this sense that the ego has been lying all this time, and in fact, not only have you not really been changed into a sinful corrupt evil being, but the person you were before the separation is actually still your true nature.
So now we flip things around. If you look at the truth from the top down, we put Heaven first as the only real truth and everything else is a lie. If you can recognize that you were created perfect from the outset, you are incapable of sin, nothing has gone wrong, you have not left God, you are permanent, you can't change yourself from God's intention, your real self has not changed at all, etc.... then you'll start to get this picture... .that actually you literally ARE still as God created you, and everything else the ego says is just an attempt to COVER IT OVER with a bunch of lies and denial.
So this is quite a different focus. Acknowledging that inside of you, even if it's buried, you literally ARE already innocent, holy, awake, with God, in heaven, having eternal life, unaffected and unchanged, sinless and guiltless, already free of every ego illusion, and nothing has happened to you. And this is true NOW, and it has ALWAYS BEEN TRUE.
So now you start to put things into their proper perspective. If it's true that you are STILL as God created you, and you are PERMANENTLY as God created you, then everything else cannot be true of you. It can't be true that you have changed, or fallen from grace, or sinned, or become a different identity, or that you have removed your light, or lost yourself, or become corrupted or damaged, or anything else the ego makes up.
Not only have you ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED PERFECTION because God created you perfect to begin with, and you are incapable of changing God's Will, but this also means then that the "spiritual goal" of trying to become enlightened is, itself, unnecessary really, because you already ARE PERFECT LIGHT right now. Anything else which suggests otherwise, must be an illusion or a lie.
So it's like, you were created 100% perfect and whole and complete by God, so utterly perfect that you could not possibly be improved upon or added to. And that self is PERMANENT. It does not go to sleep, it does not really dream or enter a dream, it does not go insane, it does not sin and it does not become affected by anything. Only a TINY PART of that self seems to have dreamed and seems to have entered the dream temporarily, but really it hasn't.
So all this other stuff, the ego stories, the notion that you stopped being perfect and are not this limited, weak, fearful ego self stuck in a body, not sure how to get home or if it's even possible, not even remembering what Home IS or how to get there, forgetting who you are and not even sure if you exist, all this stuff is actually just designed to BLOCK OUT the truth that is ALREADY present, your divine immortal self, which is already DONE, TOTALLY DONE, with any need for awakening, because it is not asleep in the first place.
To think that anything can have happened to you is a lie. To think that you can have changed into someone you are not is a lie. To think that you actually turned into a body is a lie. To think that you are sick or suffering is a lie. To think that you can die is a lie. To think that you replaced what God made with something else is a lie. To think that you changed God's mind or will is a lie. None of this has happened. This entire world we're in is a lie. The human race is a lie. This planet is a lie. ONLY HEAVEN IS REAL. Only the creations of light are real.
So all this while, you think that you are just this little self who is struggling to get to God for the first time.. welll... it's not the first time. You've ALWAYS been with God and can't leave God. So is it the fact that you are away from God and need to go home that you're trying to accomplish, or is it the fact that you actually have NOT left God and the suggestion that you have is, itself, a lie that needs to be undone?
All you need to do here is REMOVE AND UNDO layers of lies and denials which are fictional which are layered ON TOP OF your perfect immortal self, your divine permanent unchangeable self, which is ALREADY PERFECT, in order to reveal and expose your real self once again. Enlightenment is a recognition of who you already are in God, not a change into something you weren't before. The ego has lied to tell you that you changed in the first place and must change again to become what you are not. Which is impossible.
You're already with God. It's a done deal. You can't not be perfect. But like Jesus said, He has nothing that does not come from God - ie He is fully as God created Him to be and has not tried to change that into something else, to deny it or to cover it up. All that we're doing is still coming up with a story about how we have changed God's creation into something else and now have a huge pile of stuff to "do" to fix it. But really we need do nothing but accept what is already true. It is already fixed. "Let me recognize that my problems have already been solved".
We simply need to remove the layers of denial and lies and hiding and avoidance and accept what is already true. This is what it means to accept the atonement. To ACCEPT that God's truth is true. It has nothing to do with accepting life's circumstances or accepting the world or accepting events or whatever else. They don't exist. It's only to do with being vigilant for God's kingdom ONLY and accepting NOTHING ELSE into your mind, because what you accept into your mind becomes real to you. So if you only accept that God's Creation is truth, then you will stop making illusions real and return to full awareness of who you are.
You are not in the business of making yourself. You are not in the business of establishing yourself. You are not in the business of transforming yourself. You are not in the business of producing a perfect self. GOD ALREADY DID IT. You are only in the business of UN-LEARNING the lies you told yourself so that you can admit the truth and become aware again that you already, and still, are perfect as God created you, and it has not changed, and it will never change.
"But to the Holy Spirit, the goal is life, which HAS no end."
The Holy Spirit's goal is eternal life and immortality. That means everything he is doing is working towards the complete resurrection of the entire sonship back to their original state of perfection. This also includes the return to a state of total wholeness, innocence, happiness and health. It is the complete undoing of ALL sickness, ALL suffering, and ALL death.
Whereas all the world's roads point toward death, and the ego tries to steer everything toward destruction, the Holy Spirit steers everything towards immortality. A Course in Miracle is a course in immortality, because it's a way to move you back towards God who is life.
If you can imagine, what if everyone in the world became healed? What if everyone was a healer? What if all the sicknesses started to disappear and everyone's bodies returned to total heath? What if people stopped dying and there was no further war or attack or murder or damage? What if the entire population of the planet resounded in laughter and joy and love as one happy family?
That ultimately is the goal, or a step toward the goal, because the Holy Spirit is tasked with nothing LESS than the TOTAL resurrection of everyone. His goal is to restore everyone to eternal life and health. His goal runs completely opposite to all the goals and paths of the world, all the likely outcomes, all consequences and effects, all prognosis and diagnosis.
What's happening here in the atonement is nothing short of the absolute global resurrection of every single person. If you think that Jesus managing to surmount death was astounding, and indeed it is, since he returned to immortality and eternal life, imagine what that's going to be like when the entire population does the same?
No more sickness, no more death, no more suffering, no more unhappiness, no more corruption, no more hospitals, no more separation, no more world. Everyone lifted up and resurrected and restored and renewed through miracles. Everyone healed and whole and happy and healthy. Everyone united in a single chorus of celebration and joy and gratitude.
"The offer of Atonement is universal. It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances. And in it is the power to heal all individuals of all forms of sickness. Not to believe this is to be unfair to God, and thus unfaithful to Him."
"The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal ALL errors, to take no thought of the body AS SEPARATE, and to accomplish all things IN MY NAME."
"Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal the Son of God."
"It MUST be true the miracle can heal ALL forms of sickness, or it CANNOT HEAL."
"No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. No thought of theirs but has the power to heal all forms of suffering in anyone in times gone by and times as yet to come as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now."
"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."
"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls to him to return, because it blesses and honors him even though he may be absent in spirit." "Yet would His justice not be satisfied until it is received by everyone."
"Healing must be for everyone BECAUSE he does not merit an attack of any kind."
"And everyone is EQUALLY entitled to His gift of healing and deliverance and peace."
"No-one can lose, and everyone MUST benefit. Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish, when it is offered to everyone alike."
"What is God's BELONGS to everyone, and IS his due."
"And because I am unafraid, everyone must share in my understanding, which is the gift of God to me and to the world."
"God has given everyone a Teacher Whose wisdom and help far exceed whatever contributions an earthly therapist can provide."
"Within its holy circle, is everyone whom God created as His Son. Joy is its unifying attribute, with no-one left outside, to suffer guilt alone. The power of God draws everyone to its safe embrace of love and union."
"Your special relationship will be a means for UNDOING guilt in everyone blessed through your holy relationship. It will be a happy dream, and one which you will SHARE with all who come within your sight."
"He uses everyone who calls on Him, as means for the salvation of everyone. And He will waken everyone through you, who offered your relationship to Him."
"The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. "
"The Holy Spirit knows your part in the redemption, and who are seeking you, and where to find them."
"Salvation's song will echo through the world with every choice they make. For we are one in purpose, and the end of hell is near. In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who would join with me in reaching past temptation, and who looks with fixed determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own, for they belong to You. And can You fail in what is but Your Will? I give You thanks for what my brothers are, and as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny, scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell, and giving thanks to You."
"To heal, or to make joyous, is therefore the same as to integrate and MAKE ONE. That is why it makes no difference TO what part or BY what part of the Sonship the healing is done. EVERY part benefits, and benefits equally. YOU are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude."
"Accept Atonement and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God. Accept His Word and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept His Word and every miracle has been accomplished. To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there then he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?"
"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness."
"Every decision is made for the whole Sonship, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of."
Beware the ego. You bring it with you into the Course, and it will do everything it can to delude you, confuse you, distract you, blind you, and make you use the Course as a weapon.
One of the main ways that it does this is by engaging the intellect. Whatever you are experiencing right now, that is your most real-seeming experience and represents your current truth/beliefs. In order to really change that experience you have to undo some ego, which will shift you to experiencing something else.
The ego doesn't like that. The ego wants to keep the ego and increase itself. A major way it does this is through shifting into concepts. In essence, attempting to take on board "truth" which is too far outside the envelope of what you actually are experiencing, it shifts awareness into the intellect. You can "conceive" of the thing being talked about, but you cannot experience it.
The intellect is the ego's attempt to bridge the gap between where you are most authentically at, and where it pretends it wants to be. It is a tool for dissection and analysis and trying to find answers in illusions. It's a mechanism for judging, it experiences reactions, and tries to make realities. It's part of the dreaming mind.
What happens unfortunately is that the intellect becomes strongly engaged by studying the Course. There are so many concepts, theories and ideas in the Course. There are so many quotes which say or thing or another. A student will amass an internal library of all these things, and then the ego will use them as weapons and justifications.
What happens is, because the intellect takes you away from the present experience and into fantasy, the intellect becomes a way for the ego to avoid the present. The intellect loves to be a quotation machine, it loves to get hung up on the form of words, it loves to fixate on what is specifically in or not in the course, and it loves to be the ultimate judge or the authority or thing which figures out and decides what is true or not.
What I've seen is, some Course students become so lost in the form of the Course's words, the theology, the quotes, the concepts, that their intellect goes into overdrive. When you try to hold a normal conversation with these people, there is practically nothing you can say which won't be picked apart. You can't speak to these people with normal words because if there is any overlap with course words or if the course seems to have a redefinition of a term, they will see the use of the word as an error.
What then happens is they will have a reaction to a perceived error, will use the course to back up "why" its an error, and then the conversation will shift away from presence and into the course concepts where they'll assert all the reasons/quotes as to why what you said was wrong. You don't even really know what it was you said, being normal, that was so erroneous, and then you end up being bombarded with all this "correction" that you didn't even need.
Another favorite ego tool is to jump around in the levels. This is a classic move. Basically you're talking about something within a given context. Maybe you're discussing the ego or the world or something. You say something. Their ego intellect kicks in and sees a opportunity to be right, or basically pulls up a quote or course concept which they believe has truth to it, and they then use it as a weapon. They'll jump out of the `level` or context you're discussing on, and jump into some super-high conceptual level of the course. This "trumps" whatever you said, and seems to render you in error, or less true, and therefore you're wrong.
For example, you could be talking about forgiveness or how to apply it to something, and you say something, they get triggered, and then they suddenly come out with something like "that doesn't exist" or "nothing happened" or something... something at a higher level, which basically ultimately is true, BUT, it's being used as a way to discredit and overly dismiss whatever you said that wasn't even a point of contention. The person positions themselves with weapons of truth, concepts, in order to have the best most high trump-cards possible, so that no matter what you try to discuss with them, they will constantly undermine you. There is no way to hold a normal conversation with such people.
I think we all do this to some extent. But Course students especially are prone to this. It is so easy to get hung up on what the Course said on some matter and to then use it as a way to be subtly right, to use it against other people, to make people wrong etc.
I recently was in a group of people discussing ACIM stuff. I was shocked. I couldn't believe how much of this intellectual prostrating was going on. It seemed practically impossible to say anything without some person jumping all over it and pulling it apart, with a sort of "I've got a better truth" attitude. Even saying things which were absolutely nothing to do with the course whatsoever, which suddenly were turned around and explained to be false or in error because of something it contained. It turns into an addiction to correcting people.
The intellect can be used by the ego to really firmly latch onto the concepts as though they are the truth. They are held onto like precious jewels. And then they are used as weapons. The concepts are not the truth itself. Truth is an experience. Getting lost in debating the Course is very easy to do. It's possible to amass a considerable body of conviction about what the Course is saying or meaning and to then be so rigid and fixed in that that you can no longer talk to people normally or allow them their mistakes.
One person I was talking to was so distracted by intellectual positions that it was almost like talking to no-one. I would say one thing, they would do an instant bypass, find some other quotation or concept to go against it, and throw it back at me. I also wrote a few posts which were clear and obviously correct. But what happens is, people will then read it, sort of quietly refuse it, find one word you said which was slightly "not pure course-correct lingo", and then go in a diatribe about how you were wrong, completely glossing over and ignoring what you actually said or whether it was true.
This is what the ego does. It creates diversions. Distractions. Cover-ups. It makes noise about something, anything, other than what is immediately present. It pulls you away from the here and now. It takes you out of conversations and into wars. It uses its prowess to launch counter-attacks to perceived attacks, which it itself put out there with its mis-perceptions and judgements, and then reacted to.
You have to beware of the ego doing this. It will try to use the Course to point out the ways that people are wrong and then react to this perception by trying to correct them, when in fact it is your own mind which is at fault. It's just another way the ego projects responsibility and blame.
This is quite an interesting teaching. As God created you, you are always the same. You are immortal, eternal, permanently you.
In your spiritual self there is no sense of change, no disturbance, fluctuation, alteration, changes. No tensions, no upsets, no parts that malfunction, no things that fall off, no breakage or damage. There is in fact nothing happening as such, within your self, at all.
You just remain exactly the same, all the time. And because of this total lack of disturbance, of transformation, or changes of any kind, you re totally at peace.
This is not a peace that results from achievements or striving or accumulating or learning. You just are simply the same all the time, and this alone is a stillness so constant and so unaffected that it is totally peaceful.
In the world we keep trying to do a whole lot of stuff. Learn more, become something, accumulate stuff, achieve goals, turn into something, improve yourself, apply techniques, learn concepts, increase understanding, even healing. We keep trying to CHANGE ourselves.
And this leads to the idea that if you change yourself enough, you'll become enlightened. With enough transformation and learning, you'll end up at the ultimate goal. But this doesn't actually work. This is not what is needed.
You see, God has already perfectly accomplished his will. He created you to be a perfect being that is ALWAYS THE SAME FOREVER. A permanently perfect creation, perfect innocence, perfect invulnerability, never changing or turning into anything.
Just BEING that is all you need to do. That is what is natural. You just know yourself as God created you and just be that, always the same, never changing. Just being you, living happily, creating freely, loving endlessly.
There is nothing that you can really DO that can put this in place. You do not establish this. You cannot create it yourself. You cannot cultivate it or make it happen or cause it. You cannot get to that point through tons of polish or perfecting or training or learning.
In fact the whole purpose of learning is to learn to stop learning. Learning is supposed to expire itself and outlive its usefulness. The aim of learning is to learn that there is nothing to learn, and that learning itself is actually preventing you from accepting what you are.
The whole RE-PURPOSING of learning is to try to use learning, which was made as a weapon against yourself, to try to lead to the REALIZATION that you need do nothing. Or that you need learn nothing, because you're already perfect.
So this whole business of an ultimate goal, of spiritual awakening, it's NOT about accumulating stuff and getting yourself to change into something. It's in fact just a matter of realising what you already are, what God already created, recognizing the existing truth about yourself. It's an uncovering, an unlearning, an undoing of everything that interferes with that awareness.
This waking up, it's not the same thing as a producing. You don't cause or create or produce your perfect self. God did that already. So the journey isn't about you starting out with nothing and ending up with everything. You already had everything before the separation. It's just about being RESTORED to what you already are, REMEMBERING what is already true, and sort of coming to your senses again.
You don't need to do God's job of creating yourself. That was the whole ego problem to begin with - believing that you could CHANGE YOURSELF, that you could change what God created, and thus turn yourself INTO what you wanted. And now you are using that same approach to try to turn your ego self into what you want - some kind of more spiritual self. It won't work.
It's not your job to create or put in place the enlightened self that you want to be. God has willed that you be that forever, and you ARE that right now. All you are doing is being in denial of it and trying not to accept it. So all you have to do is be willing to accept what is ALREADY true of you. That is just a matter of realisation and recognition, not a matter of accomplishment or achievement or some kind of skill you learn.
So basically what you really need to do is to GO AGAINST everything that says you are not perfect already. That includes learning, it includes denial, it includes trying to be a body, it includes identifying with form, it includes any sense of self that is limited or not permanent. And instead it asks only that you simply JUST BE THE SAME ALL THE TIME. Just carry on being absolutely perfect. In other words, STOP TRYING TO CHANGE.
All this seeking, striving, learning, accumulating, perfecting, studying, conceptualising, thinking, it's all ultimately in and of itself getting in the way of you JUST BEING YOU. Enlightenment has NOTHING to do with changing or transforming or achieving. It is NOT a change. Your spiritual self is already in the light. It IS light. When you seek to change you are seeking to move AWAY FROM the changelessness that you are.
Consider instead that you are perfect now. Continue being perfect. You are constantly perfect. You don't NEED anything. You don't lack anything, you haven't lost anything, you haven't turned into evil, you haven't stopped being innocent and holy, you can never change or become lost or degrade or malfunction. You just are always the same. Always you. Always unchanging. And that is why your soul is at peace.
"Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all." UrW188L1
"The response of holiness, to ANY form of error, is ALWAYS the same. There is no contradiction in what holiness CALLS FORTH. Its ONE response is healing, without ANY regard for what is brought TO it." UrT14E7
"This may threaten my ego, but cannot change my function in any way." UrW82L6
"You were NOT born to die. You CANNOT change, because your Function HAS been fixed by God." UrT29G4
"The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state." UrW167L6
"You cannot change laws you did not make, and the laws of happiness were created FOR you, NOT BY you." UrT8J13
"It is impossible that God lose His identity, for if He did, YOU WOULD LOSE YOURS. And BEING yours, He cannot change Himself, for your identity IS changeless." UrT14G8
"Whatever is true and real is eternal, and CANNOT change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters." UrT1B37C
There are some basic facts in the course. These facts are completely clear cut, black and white. They do not have any exceptions. There is no "maybe" to them. They are so perfectly defined and clear that all you can do is either accept them or deny them. Such is the truth.
e.g. The fact is, God is eternal.
So if you can start by accepting this fact, we can move on to another fact. But if you cannot accept this fact, or think there are exceptions to it, or don’t understand what eternal means, we can’t make any other sensible conclusions.
Eternal - lasting forever, always the same, permanent, unwavering, lacking all change or difference, never ending or beginning, constant and unfaltering. Yes?
If you can accept this, you can accept this is God’s nature. And under NO circumstances is this ever opposed, or untrue. If God is eternal, the truth about God must also be eternal. It is fixed. It’s a fact.
Upon accepting this premise, we can move on to say, clearly, if God is a creator, and because God is eternal, God creates in an eternal way. What he creates MUST BE eternal also, as an EXTENSION of His own nature.
Would it make sense to say that an eternal creator would create anything less than something eternal? Think about what that would entail. It means God has a VARIETY of kinds of creations which are different and contradict each other, and so is confused. It means God does not always think eternal thoughts, and so thinks of death. It means God changes his mind. It means therefore that sometimes God is not God. In fact, it means sometimes God stops being eternal also, and dies. Do we really want THAT to be the truth?? Does that make ANY sense? Not at all. Do not accept this nonsense.
So to make sense here, we have to accept, admit, the fact is, when God EXTENDS HIMSELF, when God expresses eternity, when God GIVES HIMSELF to His creations, He MUST produce ONLY eternal life. He can only give what he has. He cannot create UNLIKE Himself. This should make perfect sense because it is impeccably logical. Creation is the extension of God’s own eternal nature. And this simply leads to the fact that God CANNOT create anything that lacks eternal life.
So now you might be thinking about things you know of in this world, wondering if or HOW they might have eternal life. You might now enter into wishful thinking, even strong resistance, or unwillingness to realize that they may not HAVE eternal life. You might want to blur the definition of what eternal means. You may not want this "cold hard fact" to be true. It might imply some things you do not want, or incite ego reactions and upset. And these are poor quality ego thoughts. The mind is slipping out of impeccable logic and reason and going into denial.
Facts can be accepted or denied, but they cannot be changed. You have to have a CLEAR grasp of what ETERNAL means. And you can’t be wishywashy about it. It is black and white. Something lives forever or it does not. Something is permanent and unchanging OR it is temporary and changes. Which is it? You have to be honest here. Denial does not bring the truth.
There is no OPINON involved here. There are no "multiple possible interpretations". The facts are rock solid. Impeccable. Clear. Perfect. So true that they are not OPEN to interpretation. You either accept them as a result of RECOGNIZING the sense they make, or reject them. The great thing about dealing with impeccably logical facts is that the ego cannot have a say, opinions do not matter, and there is no way to be incorrect UNLESS you fail to reason correctly. Your role of "decider of what is true" goes bye bye. Facts are the end of the ego. The truth sets you free.
Fact is, a world that changes is not eternal. How could it be, when eternal means NEVER ENDS and NEVER CHANGES? If God is eternal, he CANNOT create a changing world. This is a raw fact. Beginnings and ends are not of Him. This is why the world - Earth - which ONLY changes, and has no permanent identity, cannot have come from Him. And therefore, it cannot be eternal reality, or His creation. This is why ACIM refers to it as the world YOU made. And it OPPOSES His because it opposes eternal life.
It is an impeccable fact that this world is not God’s Kingdom. It is not real. And it does not really exist. This is why there is no world. This can be accepted, or denied, but the fact cannot be changed. Your only freedom is in whether you are WILLING to ACCEPT that it is a fact, or deny it. And denial of facts brings illusions of suffering. If you want the truth, you have to be WILLING to let go of anything which goes against the facts.
A Course in Miracles is BASED ON these facts. It’s metaphysics lines up with it perfectly. And it is these facts which lay the foundation for the Holy Spirit’s thought system. Accepting there is no world is accepting the facts. And accepting the facts results in accepting eternal life. The truth of God is not yours to define. And only His eternal truth is true.
"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit."
"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death."
"follow the simple logic, by which the Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for truth, and ONLY truth."
"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."
"you made death, and it is but illusion of an end."
"Miracles make time and tide wait for all men. They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes, and can abolish both."
This world we seem to be in, is not really a world. It is an illusion of a world, hallucinated by an insane mind, imagining that something impossible exists. It is a meaningless world. It is not good or bad, or evil or holy, or positive or negative, it is absolutely nothing at all.
What we call "the ego" then picks out certain parts of this singular illusion, and says that some parts of it are more alive than others, and other parts more dead. We GIVE it this meaning. We say, ok, this form and shape and behavior means death, and other forms and shapes and behaviors mean life.
And so we assign death to certain states or conditions. We say ok, there's decay and decomposition and damage and seeming lack of life or motion, so we're going to call this death. And when there is motion and vitality and symbols of aliveness, we're going to call this life.
This is literally what you made up. You decided some parts of the one illusion mean death just based purely on appearances. As Jesus says, life and death then seem like opposites in the SAME illusory world, made of ONE substance, and you then decided within that scope that "death ends life". Or that some of the illusions cause other illusions to change and lean towards the "dead state" that you gave the meaning of death to.
It's all made up. There is no part of the illusory world that is more alive OR dead than another part. A dead tree is not really any more dead than a living tree. A dead body in a grave decomposing is really not any different to an exuberant newborn baby smiling at its parents. Nor is a healthy dude at a gym any more alive than a seeming sickly old woman in a hospital. It's all the same stuff.
The ILLUSION is that they are NOT the same. That's the whole trick of it. The suggestion that some FORMS MEAN SOMETHING DIFFERENT to other forms. That their FORM IS their meaning, and their meaning sets them apart as not the same.
"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."
"It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived."
"The FORM it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from REASON's eyes."
"Therefore, He (Holy Spirit) OPPOSES differences in form as meaningful, and emphasizes always that THESE DIFFERENCES DO NOT MATTER."
In the big picture, ALL of the contents of the illusory world are EQUAL in the illusory nature, EQUALLY unreal, and EQUALLY nothing. There are NOT parts which are more alive, and there are NOT parts which are more dead. The body and the world are not alive, or dead. They are neither and nothing.
"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."
"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose which the mind would use it FOR."
What this means is the body as a meaningless illusion in a meaningless world, cannot HAVE any properties inherent to it. The world HAS no inherent meaning. When you USE it for an ego purpose, you actually distort the body and steer it towards unnatural states which produces what appears to be physical sickness and death. But as we just said even these states are illusions equal to the rest.
When the mind uses the body to bring the word of God, or the perspective of sanity in which the world is all one illusion, to those who lack this awareness, ie when we love and extend God, we stop distorting the world into states of difference, contrasts, conflicts and opposites, and this lifts away from the "body image" the signs of sickness and attack and conflict. Thus the body "resurrects" to what SYMBOLICALLY is a state of health and life. But even this is still not really life.
There is no death because it only seems to happen in a made-up world with made-up meaning based on made-up forms. A dead body is no more dead in truth than what we call a living body. They are totally the same illusion. One illusion of strange separate things, to which we've assigned arbitrary meaning based on nothing in particular.
WHEN the mind can recognize this, it is no longer participating in the hierarchy of illusions, recognizes both "life and death" as the same one illusion, and now has power over ALL states of matter. It has become miraculous because it sees no order of difficulty. It is no longer believed to be any harder or more difficult or strange or intense or chronic or stubborn to make one thing change into another thing.
Then it becomes EASY to change one state of matter into another, just as Jesus demonstrated materializing food and converting a branch into a snake and back, raising the dead and so on.
"Appearances deceive BUT CAN BE CHANGED."
"You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed."
You become able to change material objects into any particular form, as part of your awakening to the fact that they are in fact ALL THE SAME. Overlooking their differences is forgiveness. Recognizing there is only ONE PROBLEM is forgiveness. Seeing the world as having no meaning of its own is overlooking illusions. Recognizing that a body IS NOT REALLY DEAD, and is no more dead than another living body, allows you to convert that body back to the living. Or at least to the symbolic illusion of living.
There are a number of stories in the book "The saints who raised the dead" which is a great read to hear about actual miracles. For example one saint visited a woman who was insane, and had attacked her children and killed them, and then was actually chopping them up and cooking them and eating them. And some of the parts had already been eaten. Totally greusome story yes. However, the saint arrived and, knowing none of these appearances were TRUE, performed a miracle and re-constructed the bodies of the children, putting all of the material back together into fully-formed, fully functioning, unharmed and seemingly totally alive and happy young kids again.
In another story, a man had died and was buried and had already been in the ground for several days starting to decompose. Surely this would mean that it was "too difficult" to resurrect the person to life. But a saint arrived and performed a miracle, recognizing that again the states and forms of matter meant nothing at all. And raised the body up out of the grave and recomposed it into a healthy living body, and the man walked away happily.
There are NO LIMITS on what your holiness can do because your holiness has the power of God in it, plus the awareness that this entire world is NOTHING, and so how can it be DIFFICULT to do anything? All forms CAN be changed precisely because they ARE illusions. Nothing here is permanent or fixed or beyond help. It is precisely because the world is NOT real that it CAN be changed by miracles.
"If sin were real it would forever be beyond the hope of healing."
"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found."
You made death. You invented death. You decided it is death. You made it up, imagined it, labelled in, assigned it to certain forms, and tried to separate it out from other forms. It is not any of that. Death is no different than life in a world of singular illusion. Raising the dead should be effortless for someone who knows this deeply and uses it.
"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."
"Prayer is the medium of miracles. Prayer is the natural communication of the Created with the Creator. Through prayer, love is received, and through miracles love is expressed."
Ok so... we talk about GIVING something in a miracle - expressing love. But there is another half to this - the RECEIVING of love. We are actually all quite averse to RECEIVING FROM GOD because we denied that God is our father, threw away our inheritance, and tried NOT TO RECEIVE in the separation. And the only reason we are all so miserable and suffering is because we are not willing to RECEIVE AND EXTEND. God's gift is to simply "give what you have been given."
This is really about the higher level of prayer. In lower prayer, you see yourself or others as lacking and in need, and so you make the need real and then ask for its removal. You pray "God, please take this away" or "God, please help them stop being so whatever."
But these are requests based on a belief that something is wrong. And believing something is wrong with ANYONE is the same as believing they are guilty and dysfunctional. "God, please help my enemy stop being such an asshole." Or, "God, please help my team to win the match." Or, "God, that person is so defective, please heal them."
This isn't miracle working. Miracles operate at the much higher level of true prayer. Real prayer is not based on believing that something is wrong and then asking that it be fixed. It is an acknowledgement and a recognition that NOTHING is wrong, God has ALREADY GIVEN what is needed, and NOTHING is lacking.
This high state of prayer is a willingness to RECEIVE LOVE from God, to acknowledge he is the cause of you, that you have received effect from him, and is a reclaiming of your inheritance.
The ego would say, in order to give something you have to lose it, and so giving is not receiving, and if you give love you will use up your love and run out. That in order to heal another, you have to sacrifice and lose what you have, and they better be grateful for transferring their lack to you.
But in this there is no receiving and no inclusion in what is being received. The golden rule says what you give you receive and all you give is given to yourself. But it also means, you have to be willing to RECEIVE LOVE FROM GOD, in order to HAVE LOVE TO GIVE.
So you cannot work miracles without first receiving God for yourself, because you then have to EXTEND what you have received and GIVE GOD in order to perform a miracle for another. That means a recognition, acknowledgement, and gratitude, that God HAS GIVEN EVERYTHING ALREADY.
Everything was given you in your creation. It is your natural inheritance. You threw that inheritance away by denying it when you bought into the mad idea and adopted an authority problem. The authority problem has to be undone so that you recognize 1) God is your creator 2) You are not God's creator, and therefore 3) God has given something to you.
Recognizing that everything has been given to you should inspire natural gratitude to God, and where there is gratitude there is love. To THANK GOD for what God HAS ALREADY given, and is giving now, is to RECEIVE LOVE. And THAT is what the highest form of prayer really means.
It is more aligned with an experience of a COMMUNION with God in which you are sharing with God, receiving from God, and giving what you receive. It is your natural state. In this state, you are open to BOTH GIVE AND RECEIVE, not just to give.
In this state of what we're calling prayer you are not really asking for something that you DON'T have, or that another LACKS. You are looking to the light and recognizing IT IS THERE already, because God has put it there already. He has fore-given (given ahead of the need) in order to prevent a state of need.
So you be grateful to God and thank God for having already given perfect love to you, and you open to RECEIVE that love and LET yourself BE loved. And then you receive that love from God, which heals your mind in a way like nothing else can. And then you GIVE that love as a miracle.
Once you have love, expressing yourself is miraculous. Every way that you then express the love you have received and shared with God, is a way of EXTENDING and SHARING that love. God is given, and is allowed to extend THROUGH you to another. This also entails recognizing that the light and love that is IN another IS ALREADY THERE, and IS NOT MISSING.
You receive God within yourself, acknowledge and be grateful that God HAS GIVEN IT ALREADY, and so you are blessed with it. And then you recognize that it is ALREADY IN ANOTHER - seeing past all sense of lack and damage and brokenness and sickness as UNREAL and NOT TRUE, seeing past it (which is forgiveness - to overlook), to the light. To see the Holy Spirit IN THE OTHER ALREADY, because God ALREADY PUT IT THERE.
Then you continually extend God from the prayerful awareness of having been given God within you, as love and light and power, and you extend it (unconditionally give it with no strings attached) to the other who HAS IT, in order to amplify the awareness that it is ALREADY IN THEM. And so the light in them intensifies as you strengthen the idea of the Holy Spirit in them, and their mind becomes healed also.
The completed sequence then is simply: "A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God (received in prayer) through Me (extended by me) to all My Brothers (acknowledging they already have it also)." This is achieved through higher prayer, which is now a MEDIUM through which God is extended, in recognition of a pre-existing perfection that overrides any notion that something is wrong.
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE."
"I give the miracles I have received." "God is but love, and therefore, so am I."
"However, we also noted that prayer is the medium of miracles, and also the natural communication of the Creator and the Created. Prayer is always an affirmation of knowledge, not of accurate perception."
"Prayer is a way of asking for something. When we said that prayer is the medium of miracles, we also said that the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven HAVE everything. Once forgiveness has been accepted, prayer in the usual sense becomes utterly without meaning. Essentially, a prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that we may be able to recognize something we already have."
There is a divine order to your creation.
God is the primary source and creator. Without him nothing exists, not even you.
God created you. Just to be clear, that means everything that you are, everything that you have, everything you are capable of, came solely from God.
You did not receive any attributes from the environment, from food, from upbringing, from self-taught ideas. Nothing.
You have absolutely only what God decided that you have.
Your joy, your love, your life, your power, your creativity, your expression, your freedom, your peace, your unity, your sharing, your relationship, your being, was all given to you by God.
You did not put it there. You did not create it. You did not invent it. You have no ability to change it. You cannot control it. You cannot make it go away. It is rock-solid permanent and utterly beyond you.
Here is the second facet of this interesting scenario.
Since you only have what God wills that you have, and are only what he wills that you be, you have nothing else and can be nothing else.
And this means that you cannot obtain any other qualities, characteristics, abilities, skills, talents, natures, conditions, or anything else that did not come from God.
"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while."
You essentially were created with a full plate. Fully complete. Lacking nothing. Completely perfect in all ways. So finished and so fully divine, that you were not created in a position of having to go out and hunt or find or assemble or build or do anything at all to become whole.
You therefore cannot add to yourself. Just as you cannot remove from yourself. What you are is a permanent light in heaven sustained by the thought of God forever. Fixed and absolute. Unchanging, unwavering, eternal.
This means that any belief you have that you have added to yourself, redefined yourself, invented yourself, have something not of God, have something you gave yourself, something you found on your own, something you are capable of that is "new", something you've changed about yourself, etc... these MUST all be illusions.
As you move into the separation idea, into ego, it is these "alterations", "adjustments", that you begin to believe in. It is accompanied by a sense of lack, or being incomplete from the outset. That somehow God did not give you *everything* already, and so there is something to add or find or collect or establish. Some progress to make.
And this will include the belief that you have something of your own, which God did NOT give you, which you think is yours and that you can have. You cannot truly have anything that God did not give you, however. So when you believe that you have something not of God, you have nothing. And when you reject what God has given you, you have nothing.
God gave you all of his love, mind, will, power, joy, peace, beauty, freedom, life, etc. When you believe that you have something that did not come from God, you are rejecting what He gave you, which is your natural inheritance. As host to God, you inherit all of God. If you throw it away, you have nothing. And there is nothing else.
So now if you think you have power, but it's not God's power, you are mistaken. You cannot have any power at all if you do not have God's power. Yet, if you accept what God has given you, you have all power. The power is yours, but it is not sourced by you. The power you have IS God himself, in you, since you host him.
"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power."
What you are, is more like a host or medium or relay-station or conduit or channel or re-expresser of God. You literally have nothing OTHER than what God has given and put into you. It is yours, truly, because it is fully given to you. And yet, at the same time, it is not an exclusive property of yours, nor did you make it, nor can you remove it.
Ego is the idea that you are or have something not of God. Something exclusive, special, unique, isolated, which is not shared with God. And typically not shared with anyone else. It's a possessive, selfish attitude. An attempt to hoard a piece of heaven for yourself alone. And this makes you alone. It's what makes you a "separated one".
If you try to own, grasp, possess, grab or steal away something shared, in an attempt to put a label on it and say it is yours ONLY, you lose it. Attachment is loss. Possession is emptiness. Try to own a piece of God and you lose everything. But share in it, and it is fully yours and fully everyone's.
Jesus says:
"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. ***I have nothing that does not come from God.*** The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."
The problem then is only that you think you have something OTHER than or in addition to what God gave. And this must entail the belief that you DO NOT have what God gave. And its the belief in lacking what God gave, which causes you to be compelled to replace it with something else. Which will never work. You can only have what God gave you and the rest must be let go.
"I am still as God created me" also means "I am not what I made of myself."
You who are host to God, inherit everything real from God. And this is whole and complete and perfect. All of Him is in you forever. What seems to be "your" anything, is simultaneously HIS. "God is my strength". Your strength, which truly is yours, IS GOD. God, in you, is the sense of strength that you feel. It's literally like it is YOUR strength, to use, but it is ALSO His.
It's a very interesting relationship. God causes you. You are his effect. God being cause forces you to be also a cause. Now you are a co-creator. Not just a creator but a collaborator, because you can only create WITH him, using HIS power, which is shared with you.
It's like God has fully given all of himself to you, in your creation, establishing you as completely "having" everything, as if were fully yours, and yet at the same time, all that you have, is STILL HIS, and is still shared with him. That is your oneness. You are united with Him. You are a team.
You have nothing of your own. Yet you have everything, because God gave it to you. It's kind of like if it were "on loan". You have the use of it, but it's not yours exclusively. It still belongs to God. You're kind of renting it, permanently. And so you enjoy the benefit of it forever, but it's still technically His.
Thus you have the power of God in you. You are strong. You are immortal. Because God is in you. Because you are His extension. And you are free, yet you are joined. You are nothing without Him, but can share everything with Him. Either you share or you have nothing. But never can you have it all just for yourself. Nor do you source anything without Him.
When I think of it, it makes me think of the angels. They operate in service to God. They go where they are directed. They do what he wills them to do, in agreement with Him. They fulfill a function. They are joyfully glad to be what they are. They have no desire to improve themselves, nor do they need to. They give thanks to God for what they are in celebration and worship. And everyone's happy.