We have appointed our own worst enemies, our controllers, our dominators, our victimizers, our haters, and everyone we do not like, to do all of these things TO us, FOR us, because we have a secret agenda.

We do not want to be responsible for our own lives. We do not want to own up to who we really are. We want to hide. We want to shovel responsibility for our own lives onto someone else. We want to be victims so that the state of our lives is someone else's responsibility and then we can blame them for what has happened in our own life.

We have disowned ourselves. We don't even know who we really are. We have attempted to shut out God. We've gone unconscious. And we've displaced ownership of our own Real Identity, our Truth, into the hands of everyone and everything that we think is 'not us'. We now say the world is responsible for our life being terrible. No it's not. Our irresponsibility is what makes it seem like the world is responsible for our life sucking.

We need to wake up. We need to take our fucking power back. We need to own up to who the fuck we really are. We need to stop hiding our light and our truth and stand up and be visible. We need to return to the truth and stop wallowing in a dark world of victimization and blame.

It is not someone else's fault. It is not them that are doing this to you. It is not the government or the neighbors or the coworkers or strangers on the street. It is not anyone else. Its YOU. YOU are fucking up your life by not being who you really are. YOU are destroying your happiness. YOU are the one who is against yourself. YOU are your worst, and ONLY, enemy.

You are doing this to yourself. On purpose.

Why are you hiding from God? Why are you hiding from yourself? Why are you pretending to be someone you are not? Why are you pretending that someone or something outside of you is responsible for who and what you are and what you're experiencing?

Nobody has any power over you. ZERO. ZEEEEERO!

You are the one who has done all of this shit to yourself, and it's you who can undo it. You can choose again. You can remember who you really are. You can wake the fuck up to reality and stop burying your head in the sand with this victimy sob-story about, oh, so-and-so did this to me, and such-and-such a government body did that to us, and they-and-them did these terrible things to these poor innocent people, etc... its all ego blame. It's all passing the buck, shifting the responsible, and acting righteous about deserving to be outraged about how everyone ELSE is wrong.

LOOK AT YOURSELF. Take an inventory of your OWN fuck up. This is all about you, what you're doing to yourself, on your own, all by yourself, without any help from anyone else. You do not need anyone else's attack or vengeance to make up for the tremendous job you are doing attacking the living shit out of yourself, all on your own. You have enough self-hate to fill a mountain, yet alone needing anyone else to come along and add a tiny amount to it. This is all about you.

Who are you? Who the fuck are you really?

"The secret to salvation is this, that you are but doing this to yourself" - ACIM

STOP IT!

Your sense of who you are depends entirely on the extent of your awareness. Awareness is your IDENTITY.

How much of your mind you are aware OF, determines the boundaries of your sense of Self.

If you have a lot of repression and denial and unconsciousness, your sense of Self will be little and confined. This is what Jesus refers to as "littleness".

You will still be aware, but your awareness will be limited. And yet, you will believe that the amount of Self you are aware of, is all of yourself. You won't even suspect there is more to you.

Everyone always believes they are their whole self. Whether they are actually aware of the whole of their self, is another matter. You could be aware of only 10% of yourself, and still believe that you are aware of your whole self.

The amount of awareness you have, if your awareness of your wholeness is limited, will also be limited. You will think you wake up in the morning and are "fully aware", at the maximum of your ability to be aware. But you won't be.

Your mind is vast. But it is blocked and divided and segmented. Your conscious self has been sectioned off into a small corner of the mind, and the rest has been made unconscious in order to hide your sin and guilt.

You will still, as the conscious self, believe that you are all of yourself, and that you are a whole person.

When obstacles to peace, blocks to awareness, denial and suppression and unconsciousness begin to be lifted away from your mind, you become aware of parts of your mind that you didn't even know existed.

That means your awareness of your whole mind increases.

Realize, that IDENTITY, is very tightly tied into how much awareness you have of your mind. If you are only aware of 10% of the mind, you will believe that everything you ARE aware of is all that there is to you. Your sense of SELF is limited by the outer edges of your awareness.

As your mind becomes freer of blockages, and things which were unconscious become conscious, your awareness is going to increase. And along with that, you are going to become more aware of a "larger Self", or a bigger sense of Identity. Your identity is going to expand.

Gradually your sense of "Who am I" is going to expand away from littleness into magnificence and grandeur, and thus your sense of Self will expand. You will "turn into" your Higher Self.

Really, it is just a matter of revealing, uncovering, remembering, making conscious again, and becoming aware of again, parts of your own mind which have been hidden and kept in the dark for a long time.

We call this clearing out of the clutter, "purification", and it produces an "awakening", i.e., simply an increase in awareness. Becoming aware that there is more to you than you realized.

That you are not just a little self stuck in a body. You are not just some little victim in a dream. You are huge and powerful, you are Christ.

And the amount of awareness that you are going to have as a result, is going to be much more than you have been used to. You literally will be MORE AWARE than you ever thought was possible, because you will be AWARE OF more than you ever thought existed.

When there is nothing left hiding in the darkness, no secret sins or hidden hates, and no more unconsciousness, and no more shadow or persona, the mind will be made whole again - fully aware of all of itself at once, and that is what it means to become aware of your Real Self. Spiritual awakening.

Aware of all that is - God.

Quite a lot of quotes here about LETTING the Holy Spirit do stuff for you and through you…

“I will step back and let Him lead the way.”

“Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be. So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him.”

“Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven.”

“Let Him fulfill the function that He GAVE to your relationship by ACCEPTING it FOR you.”

“When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by ANYTHING, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, IN SPITE of fear, to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one which YOU would rather have. He will NEVER fail in this.”

“I rest in God today, and let Him work

In me and through me, while I rest in Him

In quiet and in perfect certainty.”

“Trust all things to Him. Let Him reveal all things to you, and be you undismayed because you are His Son.”

“The unredeemed cannot redeem. Yet they HAVE a Redeemer. Attempt to teach Him not. YOU are the learner; HE the Teacher. Do not confuse your role with His, for this will NEVER bring peace to anyone. Offer your empathy to Him, for it is HIS perception and His STRENGTH that you would share. And let Him offer you HIS strength and HIS perception, to be shared THROUGH you.”

“He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracle to come to me."

“The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him. And I will understand it is impossible that I could have a problem which has not been solved already.”

“Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face.”

“Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.”

“Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God.”

“Follow His light and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.”

“The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way. His way is very different. He does NOT understand suffering, and would have you teach IT IS NOT UNDERSTANDABLE. When He relates through you, He does NOT relate through the ego to another ego. He does NOT join in pain, knowing that HEALING pain is NOT accomplished by delusional attempts to ENTER INTO IT, and lighten it by SHARING the delusion.”

“The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still ATTRACTS you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there, LET HIM RELEASE YOU. He needs only your willingness to SHARE His perspective, to give it to you completely.”

“Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His call. And LET Him call on Heaven FOR you.”

“God's Voice alone can tell you how to heal. Listen, and you will never fail to bring His kindly remedy to those He sends to you, to let Him heal them, and to bless all those who serve with Him in healing's name. The body's healing will occur because its cause has gone. And now without a cause, it cannot come again in different form. Nor will death any more be feared because it has been understood. There is no fear in one who has been truly healed, for love has entered now where idols used to stand, and fear has given way at last to God.”

“The teacher of God must, however, learn to use words in a new way. Gradually, he learns how to let his words be chosen for him by ceasing to decide for himself what he will say. This process is merely a special case of the Workbook lesson "I will step back and let Him lead the way." The teacher of God accepts the words which are offered him and gives as he receives. He does not control the direction of his speaking. He listens and hears and speaks.”

“And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further. He has earned your trust by speaking daily to you of your Father and your brother and your Self. He will continue; now you walk with Him as certain as is He of where you go; as sure as He of how you should proceed, as confident as He is of the goal, and of your safe arrival in the end.”

“I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you each time you call to Him to help you.”

“They will not hear another voice but yours, because you gave your voice to God and now you rest in Him, and let Him speak through you.”

“I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me.”

“It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you.”

“Then turn to Him who shares your function with you, and let Him teach you what you need to learn to lay all fear aside, and know your Self as Love Which has no opposite in you.”

“He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is HIS decision to undo EVERYTHING that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let Him, therefore, be the only guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him, you will not fail to learn what God wills FOR you IS your will. ”

“The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference FOR you, allowing Him to demonstrate which MUST be true.”

“The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE.”

“But the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep, and can use dreams on BEHALF of waking, if you will let Him.”

“Your creations are protected FOR you because the Holy Spirit, Who is in your minds, knows of them, and can bring them INTO your awareness whenever you will let Him.”

“The Holy Spirit knows NO-ONE IS SPECIAL. But He also perceives that you have MADE special relationships, which He would purify, and NOT let YOU destroy. However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM.”

“For here is both his pain AND his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful, and His remedy is quick. Do not HIDE suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly TO Him. Lay before His eternal sanity ALL your hurt, and LET Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His Light, and search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought that you have kept to hurt you, and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.”

“Leave, then, what seems to you to be impossible, to Him Who knows it MUST be possible, because it is the Will of God. And let Him, Whose teaching is ONLY of God, teach you the ONLY meaning of relationships. For God Himself created the only relationship that HAS meaning, and that is His relationship with YOU.”

“Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you.”

“But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away.”

The ego always has an ulterior motive, a secret agenda, and a hidden plan that it would hide from you while it lies to your face.

Or rather, while you lie to yourself.

When the ego says you are afraid, it makes out that you're not choosing to be afraid, and that someone else is the cause. This isn't true. Secretly it wants to be afraid so that it can scapegoat someone and displace its own guilt onto others.

When the ego says you are guilty, it makes out that someone else has found you guilty and that there's nothing you can do about it. This isn't true. Secretly this belief in guilt is a choice that you're doing to yourself, you're the one who decided to be guilty, and you are doing so that you might keep your plan to be a separate individual.

When the ego says you have sinned, it tries to claim that this is because of something you really did, but this isn't true. Secretly you know that you cannot sin and did not do anything wrong, but are making out that you did, because you want to be sinful, so that you can continue your plan to be separate from God. Even if being sinful seems like a horrible experience, this horrible experience is 'worth it' if it means you can inch closer to death.

Death is your ultimate goal because it's through deaths doorway that you imagine you can finally escape from God's wrath and be born into a new reality where you are completely independent of God and have no need for Him. You hold this in your sights at all times, regardless of what seems to be happening or why, secretly planning on death every step of the way. Even if it means seeming to have to suffer sinfulness, or guilt, or fear, or punishment. Because there is always this secret ego agenda of self-destruction.

These secrets are all a part of denial, which is your attempt to deny that you are deliberately trying to die, or that you deliberately want to be a separate identity. You use denial to disown the choice you keep making for death, and to pretend that you're inching along toward it against your will, and driven by forces outside your control. To suggest you are not doing this to yourself is denial, and you layer denial upon denial upon denial to try to bring about a complete suppression of yourself, so that you can pretend to be someone else.

All along the way, we maintain and keep these special secrets. They are the secret truth that we are really doing this all to ourselves. It's the secret that we don't want to be revealed, because if we were to own up to it and be responsible, the illusions we're making which create the appearance that we're unwillingly being dragged to the grave, would be totally blown. We wouldn't be able to believe our own self-deception if we were to admit that we were the one choosing every single part of this.

And so sin, and guilt, and fear, and punishment, and suffering, and death, are all things we're choosing on purpose, because we see death as the way to achieve independence from God. It's what we've wanted all along, and we constantly pretend that we DON'T want it, SO THAT we can have it. Choosing to appear to have no choice, is a choice to have no choice, which is a choice to choose to die. Choosing to be afraid, choosing to be guilty, choosing to suffer, but claiming and making the illusion that this is absolutely nothing to do with what we want. Bullshit.

Secrets and lies, secrets and lies. How about some honest owning up to being powerful, immortal, invulnerable and not a victim?

From "Sickness is a defense against the truth", Lesson 136:

"No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

...

Here Jesus tells us simply that if we can clearly recognize a sickness for what it IS - an illusion, it will disappear automatically.

When we look at sickness we think it has a variety of causes. None of them are true. We also think it has a valuable purpose. The purpose is supposedly to defend our ego identity against truth. That's because we're mistaken about the truth and think that it will destroy us, so we "naturally" defend against it. Defense (denial) manifests reasons to believe that illusions are more real than God.

It is because we have a multitude of beliefs that tell us that sickness is real, that we have the sickness at all. It is sustained by those beliefs and created by them. It seems the sickness has no purpose and is a victimization, but really it does have a secret purpose. Its purpose was to block reality by demonstrating that illusions are real. Therefore we 'manifest' illusions that seem real, to try to prove that this is true. Manifesting illusions and making them real invents sickness.

We need to become willing to see instead that the purpose of sickness was to block the truth, not to make something true. It's purpose wasn't to affirm reality, it was to lend reality to something that is unreal. It's purpose wasn't to confirm how real the body is, but to deny how real the truth is. And finally we need to become able and willing to RECOGNIZE that sickness is an illusion, NOT a reality.

This is the defining principle. Sickness is the illusion that illusions are real. It is a denial of the truth - an attempt to hide the truth from awareness. This denial of truth causes sickness because it is your attempt to make God sick and dead. Your attempt to destroy God destroys you. Your belief that God (reality) is sick, produces sickness in your reality.

Your challenge in undoing sickness is to shift your sense of reality away from the sickness and place it on the real truth - God. If the sickness is true and real, God cannot be. And because your sickness is a choice to believe illusions are more real than reality, they are choices to believe that God is not real. They therefore block God, which is the giver of Life, and blocking life manifests as sickness (and death).

To undo sickness you must be willing to admit and recognize that sickness is not REAL, it is an illusion. It can't be real because of the ways in which God is real. God has to be more real than the sickness otherwise you will keep the sickness and continue to believe in its reality. Your belief in its reality is what puts it into your experience, because you are mis-creating.

You need to un-believe that the sickness is real in all its respects, in every way. There is nothing about sickness that can be "true" for you. Otherwise you will value it and keep it. When you can see that it LITERALLY is NOTHING, i.e. its an illusion that isn't real at all, you will cause it to disappear, because you will cease to GIVE it reality.

That's a miracle, an acknowledgement of God's truth and its equal meaningfulness to everyone.

The ego is the idea of the TOTAL opposite of God. It is vile bitter hatred and death and darkness.

Usually, however, we are not really aware of just how vicious it is, because it hides most of its viciousness behind the persona, which covers up most of the "special hate" with "special love" and other illusions of things being okay.

The world we live in is largely populated by personas and fake identities all colluding together to repress and hide and reject everything that they deem unacceptable. They shove all of this hatred and darkness into the 'shadow' which is the more unconscious, more opposed-to-God aspect of the ego.

Sometimes, when you work on becoming more authentic, you are dissolving the persona and undoing the fake sense of identity it contains. As you do this, however, it's going to 'unmask' the ego. It's taking the covers off the repressed vicious darkness that lurks under the surface.

Now, in regular day-to-day interactions most people are quite fake and they will not genuinely, authentically or fully express how they 'really feel', regardless of what that feeling is. So a lot of actually genuine feelings become heavily repressed and stuck in the unconscious layers of the ego. These feelings might actually be more genuine than you realize, because they might express how someone actually DID betray you, or how someone actually WAS being dishonest, or how you really DID feel victimized... given that you probably instead covered up these 'genuine' awarenesses for the sake of saving face or not confronting people or people-pleasing or whatever other persona-tactic you were using.

So then when the ego persona mask comes off, even temporarily, it can sometimes trigger the exposure of and 'release of', or shine a light upon, the darker hidden repressed expressions of yourself. The shadow self. This is where the vicious ego experiences a much more immediate and unfiltered engagement with every form of negativity. So all of those repressed feelings, regardless of their subject matter or justification, start to flood out. They flood into the conscious mind and take it over and make the mind become unconscious, meaning that you are put into the dark, cannot see, cannot think clearly, lose sight of what is real, become lost in intense negative delusions and can't see past these strong feelings.

So these strong negative feelings arise, as all the feelings you repressed and didn't experience due to the persona saying it was not 'appropriate' or 'allowed' or 'acceptable' at the time, or due to you holding onto them for some reason. And so then the person experiencing this might start to point out much more bluntly how other people suck, how other people are deceptive, how other people are liars, how other people are haters, how other people are victimizers, etc... all the repressed feelings which might actually have had a basis in 'reality' of some kind, start to flood out. And it can be extremely negative. But these are, if you like, genuine feelings, which really are trying to be released and fully processed.

So what we then have to do is become willing to find ways to actually be more authentic, to be more real, and to make it okay and acceptable and allowed to have these negative feelings, at least so that you can fully feel and process them and release them. Fuck society if they don't like it or its not appropriate, society is completely fake anyway. So this release of 'darkness' is really a release that's asking for healing and light and forgiveness and acknowledgement. When seen as such we can become willing to let go and allow and accept this darkness of the furthest extremes of the ego, and instead of fighting with or trying to repress or get away from it, find instead ways to transcend it and transmute it and transform because of it. And this can produce awakening.

We need to learn to stop treating fear like it's just some kind of natural phenomenon, or a normal response, or some aspect of a biological flight-or-fight mechanism, or something that protects us from danger, or any of the other bullshit explanations for fear.

We actually need to question what fear is doing and why it is doing it, and where it's really coming from. It's all too easy to simply "be afraid", to experience the fear, without any kind of questioning of whether the fear is natural or needed or well founded.

Fear is the opposite of love. You can't be loving when you're afraid. Which would you rather be, loving or afraid? Which one is a more truth-filled experience?

It's one thing to become afraid and to think, well, I'm afraid "because of" a big long random list of outside influences that you think cause the fear. And to then be locked inside that perception with no apparent way out of it, since you believe that you are not the one who is choosing the fear at all.

But we can't do that. We have to bring fear into question, because fear is actually untruth. It is always a lie. There is never any good reason to be afraid. Fear is never justified. And fear is always a deceptive ego mechanism for making your situation worse.

We have to look at our "fearing" and take some responsibility for generating this condition. We have to be willing to admit that we are the ones who have actually created fear. We keep making it. We keep putting it in our experience. We keep choosing it. And we keep using it ON PURPOSE to play the part of victim so that we can get some side-benefits.

Fear allows us to disown responsibility. It allows us to seemingly shield ourselves from guilt. It lets us pretend that someone else is at fault. It allows us to label others as enemies and project guilt onto them. It lets us hide from God. It lets us have a separate identity that God did not create. And it allows us to pursue our 'dream' of being an individual. These are quite significant reasons for fear that we need to look at and own up to if we're to live a life without fear.

Is it possible to live with no fear? To be 100% fearless? Not like, some idiot that is over-confident and reckless and putting on a show of bravado while being secretly insecure... but the complete absence of all fear, and therefore, only the presence of unconditional love at all times? A love that is so certain and so secure that within it there can be no reason for fear? And no desire to choose it. Of course it is possible, as Jesus has demonstrated.

So don't think fear is just some natural biological or human thing. It's not. It's a state of mental illness. It is insanity. And it is a game that we keep playing with ourselves to pretend we're not who we are. There are some very sneaky reasons for having fear, and none of them are honest or truthful.

So when Jesus says "be not afraid", he isn't just saying, don't freak out when I appear out of nowhere, He's saying, stop choosing fear and recognize that love is the only reality. He's not telling us to be brave in the face of danger, he's telling us there IS no danger. And that any efforts we're making to go into fear without questioning it, are really a deception on our part. We don' need to be afraid because only love is real.

Before the physical world of matter was produced, there was already an insane ego mindset of sin, guilt and fear. This is referred to as the "original error" below. The tiny mad idea took hold and we were now in an insane thought system.

Mind is not able to create "nothing", but it can create a sort of "empty shell" with seems to lack. And this emptiness is like a void, which is meaningless. The lack of meaning makes it act like a "screen", onto which you can PROJECT stuff.

Once the ego thought system was established, we PROJECTED that mindset onto the void of meaninglessness, forming the physical world as a kind of image on the screen, made from the idea of sin turned into flesh and matter.

So there's sort of a layer of egoic thought and mind, outside of heaven and believing in sin and separation, which then projects onto the empty screen forming "a physical world" as a symbol of the separation.

The ORIGINAL error seemed to cast us out of heaven into a 'empty void'. The ego mindset was present, and then projected its ideas of sin and separation, turning them into what we call physical matter.

"You have expressed surprise at hearing how VERY different is reality from what YOU see. You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error. It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge. What else COULD come of it? Its fragmented ASPECTS are fearful enough, as you begin to LOOK at them. But nothing you have ever seen BEGINS to show you the enormity of the ORIGINAL error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and TO FORCE YOU TO FURTHER SUBSTITUTIONS.

That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth. For truth extends INWARD, where the idea of loss is meaningless, and only INCREASE is conceivable. Do you REALLY think it strange that a world in which EVERYTHING is backward and upside down, arose from this? IT WAS INEVITABLE. For truth brought to THIS could only remain within in quiet, and take no part in all the mad projection by which this world was made." UrT18B2

also

"If a mind creates without love, it can create an empty shell. This CAN be possessed by evil." URT1B28C

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection." UrT2A3

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life." UrT20G11

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?" W250W41

also the secret dream behind the physical, in between you and reality. "The gap between reality and dreams lies not between the dreaming of the world and what you dream in secret. THEY are one. The dreaming of the world is but a part of your own dream you gave away, and saw as if it were its start and ending, both. Yet was it started by your SECRET dream, which you do NOT perceive, although it CAUSED the part you see and do not doubt is real." UrT27H11

This all points to a somewhat 'hidden' state of mind, the ego thought system of separation and sin, of which a portion "materialises" as physical matter. If you like, a mind-dream of separation, followed by a projecting from that mindset to form physicality. A sort of "ego content" followed by "ego form." Two layers covering up God's Kingdom.

The ego does not exist. It cannot be loved or embraced. It cannot be turned into a friend. It cannot wake up or heal or convert into something spiritual. It is nothing but an artificial idea of impossibility, and as such is impossible. It does not exist, cannot exist, and has no reality. To have a relationship with it is it attempting to have a relationship with itself.

Light dispels darkness. Ego is darkness. Love is light. If you shine your love in the direction of the ego darkness, it simply will disappear, because it does not exist as anything other than the illusion of the absence of love, which is impossible. It's not there. Shadows are not truth, light is truth. And darkness cannot hide the light. You cannot "love your ego" without your love disappearing it.

While it may be a stepping stone to learn not to fight with the ego, since that is the ego fighting itself, and to not resist it, and to not attack the body, and to undo all basis for ego thinking and reactions "to" the ego, this is only so that the ego itself is undone. The ego is already undone, we just are hallucinating that it exists at all. It never existed to begin with.

Eventually we have to look within and be willing to see that not only is there no sin, there is no ego either. There IS no central core of isolation. As the clouds which promised to conceal an underlying artificial identity clear, you discover that there is nothing there. It was not what you expected. There is no ego to go up against or even to really undo. Enlightenment is a recognition and not a change at all.

Holy Spirit knows that the ego does not exist and this does this forgiveness teach:

"T-9.IV.5. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear."

(do not use fearfulness or making illusions real in an attempt to relate to or deal with or undo or address the ego at all)

"2 Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it."

(do not make the ego a real thing and then attempt to have a relationship with it or deal with it or change it or do anything really about it directly)

"3 Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you."

(True forgiveness is fore-giveness, it gives ahead of time. That means, it looks WITH a forgiving attitude, IN ORDER TO ENSURE that it is not mistaken, so that it does not MAKE error or ego, so that there IS no ego or error to have to undo. Only when forgiveness fails do we enter judgement - he who would not forgive must judge - which makes the ego, and so if we simply remain fore-giving the ego does not come into manifestation at all.)

"4 Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven."

(Pretty straightforward isn't it? If you make the ego real in any way then you will start to fight with it and believe that you have work to do or stuff to fix or whatever, and doing so you will be stuck.)

"5 What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent."

(Error does not exist because true forgiveness fore-gives, failing to make errors or perceive erroneously, and therefore RECOGNIZES that there IS no error, therefore there is no ego.)

"6 By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it."

(There is no ego, period. Believing there is an ego, is an attempt to make an ego real, which is impossible. Ego is fiction. It's just a useful concept for teaching that it does not exist, and nothing else.)

In the separation from God, we introduced an idea of "separateness" into wholeness. We believed it was possible for there to be a lack of wholeness. This produced the idea of "over here" and "over there", each distinct and different and seeming to lack the some part of the whole, setting them apart.

This laid the foundation for both space and time - notions that what is here is not there, or what is there lacks what is here. And so each seeming part of it seems to have a different form, a partial collection of attributes which sets them apart from each other. And neither has everything.

"You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness." And then we continued to subdivide and split the mind. We tried to assign certain collections of properties, aspects, characteristics, to some parts, and others to the rest. To break wholeness into seeming isolated chunks of form.

Each part took on a different form and meaning. Various forms or examples or versions of the same one error of separateness. This caused a multitude of differences to seem to appear, each held apart from the rest and separated out as if many things.

This inevitably produced an entire universe of many "forms of error", where each object or body is different to the rest. Each lacks what the others have, rooted in sacrifice and limitation. Not one is whole, and every one is partial.

And so each form appears to comprise different materials, shapes, structures, behaviors, colors, textures and appearances. From these scattered fragments of illusion, entire worlds seemed to arise, each unlike the others and unique in its appearance. Including every human body and every atom.

An illusion is the appearance that something is other than what it actually is - seeming to be something it is not. The single idea of separation, the one problem, shows up as multiple things and multiple problems. It is really one thing, but separateness leads to many forms. And every form is an illusion that the one error is many errors.

Each form says, "look at the ways I am not the same as the rest". And so as one form pulls itself away from sameness, another form does the same. And the two forms try to disguise the fact they are one thing.

And now each form seems to vie for attention. Every form is different, and therefore in conflict and competition. Some are larger, smaller, more or less important, more or less valuable, more or less serious, more or less difficult to deal with.

And now we have an entire hierarchy of illusions, from the gigantic to the tiny, and everything in between. The form that each form takes deceives by distracting you with its claim that it is not like the rest. My car is not a house. My boat is not an airplane. My trousers are not shoes. My ice cream is not a burger.

Every form is designed to assert a deception, a temptation, an illusion, that if its form is real and true, then it IS NOT the other things. This was founded in the simple premise that this world is NOT reality, or the negation of God, and so everything appears to be NOT the rest.

If you believe it, you are deceived. Because every form is a form of deception, an illusion that a singular idea of separation is many things.

One part says, I am not like the other part. Look at how I am different. Look at my different shape, color, size and makeup. Look at what sets me apart. Look at what I have which the other lacks. Look at our differences. Look how we are separate and not the same at all.

And to believe this is to be completely blinded to the the truth. Because if you fall for this and take sides, if you come to prefer one form over another, or think they are truthfully unique and valuable, then you have fallen for the ONE temptation of the world.

Every form is a lie. Every physical object and every body is a lie. Every planet and every star and galaxy is a lie. They are all designed to hide and disguise the one single illusion of separation.

So long as you are caught up in a life where the worshipping of DIFFERENCES prevails, where you prefer some forms over others, where you think that two things are not THE SAME, you are deceived and blinded. There is nothing so blinding as to fixate your vision on the perception of FORM, making the separation real.

The body's eyes look only upon the forms of error. Only the body makes the world seem real. Its fixation on differences, changes, inequalities and comparisons, blinds you to seeing any kind of singular truth. It sees a world of a billion truths, none making any sense or meaning anything at all. The whole message of ACIM is that we need to transition AWAY from a world of differences, towards wholeness. To repair the sense of fragmentation in the mind and restore singular oneness.

This requires seeing THROUGH the deception of form, and not believing it. Not believing that a car and a house are real differences. Not believing that a living body and a dead body are real differences. Not believing that some objects are more important or valuable than others. Realizing that we gave the world of forms ALL the meanings that they have.

To flatten the hierarchy of illusions is to recognize that ALL illusions are one illusion. A single error presents itself to you in every conceivable form of deception. If you buy into it, you think there is an order of difficulty, where some things are harder to deal with or change than others.

To recognize there IS no hierarchy, is to recognize that all forms are the SAME. That every form of suffering is the SAME. That every form of sickness and death and life is the SAME. That there is ONE thing here, not many. That the manyness and the differences are entirely untrue. That one thing is sneakily showing up as a massive multitude to HIDE its true nature of being just one thing.

This is why there is really only one lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, that ALL FORMS of suffering have a SINGLE cause. This is why the workbook lessons have us NOT be selective in which forms we apply things to, so that we will learn that forms are meaningless decoys. This is why we are to recognize there is ONE problem not many. And this is why there is ONE truth and ONE law and ONE atonement.

Every form that the world takes is a lie. Every time it says you should want this form or that form, it is trying to get you to take sides. Every time you take sides there is war. Every difference of form IS conflict. Everything you see with the body IS conflicted, with objects vying for attention, some nearer some further, some louder some quieter, some more "appealing" than others.

All of this is ONE thing, one effort, one scheme, to TEMPT you to believe in the differences so that you will not recognize they are ALL THE SAME. That this whole world is entirely unreal. That not one form is more real or important or valuable than another. That there aren't billions of choices, there is only one choice.

ALL illusory forms are like two characters who act and speak and present themselves differently to try to create the illusion that they are not ONE actor. The mind is ONE actor, taking on the role of multiple simultaneous parts, pitted against each other. So long as you do not recognize that ONE mind is playing ALL the roles, of both victim and victimizer, you will be deceived by form.

In a world of forms, all the forms are untrue. Not one of them IS reality. And none of them show you what is true. To see only physical form is to see nothing but error and sin. True vision will show you that their many appearances are lies, and that there is a singular truth behind them. We are addicted to a world of forms, believing in specialness and made-up values. Made-up worth. Made-up importance. Goals and toys and special jobs and relationships and things you want and things you don't want.

All designed to keep you locked into a hell of form and separation. To keep you tempted that the next big thing will save you. That the next form the illusion takes will be the one you've always wanted. So that you never realize NONE of them are true, NONE of them are real, and NONE of them are what you really want.

That without deception, lies, falsehood and temptation, there is NO WORLD HERE AT ALL. Without form, there is no planet and no body. And behind all forms is the one lie that started it all, which the world of forms was made to hide - that separation is even possibe.

"A problem can appear in MANY forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts."

"It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real."

"For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes which have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?"

"Today's idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as different. On one side stand all illusions. All truth stands on the other."

"Illusions battle ONLY with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment."

"Illusions CAN conflict, because their forms ARE different. And they do battle ONLY to establish which FORM is true."

"The meeting of illusions leads to war."

"EVERY illusion is an assault on truth."

"Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless."

"The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague, uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the gap is NOTHING."

"The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take."

"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion."

"For time and space are ONE illusion, which takes different forms."

"The dream is but illusion in the mind."

"The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing."

"Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."

"You are so used to choosing between dreams, you do not see that you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and ALL ILLUSIONS."

"This course attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the SAME illusion and the SAME mistake."

"Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized."

"Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion."

"Those who are special MUST defend illusions against the truth."

"Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin."

"What is perceived takes many forms, but NONE has meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent."

"Yet has God given Answer to the world of sickness, Which applies to ALL its forms."

"NO illusion has ANY truth in it. Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

"What relevance has preference to the truth? Illusions are illusions, and are false."

"Illusions HAVE no witnesses, and no effects. Who looks on them is but deceived."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true."

"For this establishes degrees of TRUTH among illusions, making it appear that some are HARDER to be overcome than others."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."

"This illusion can take many forms."

"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth.""

"The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth."

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."

"Though the dream itself takes many forms, and SEEMS to show a great variety of places and events wherein its "hero" finds itself, the dream has but ONE purpose, taught in many ways."

"Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees NO differences where none exist, and He will teach you how each one is CAUSED. None has a DIFFERENT cause from all the rest, and ALL of them are easily undone by but a SINGLE lesson truly learned."

"Not once do the advanced teachers of God consider the forms of sickness in which their brother believes."

"The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms."

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see ONLY illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside FORM of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"

"You are advancing to love's MEANING, and away from ALL illusions in which you have surrounded it."

"You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still IS what it was. That ONE error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it. And every special relationship you ever made is PART of it."

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs."

"Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing forms that shift with time and place, is an illusion that has no meaning."

"Never foster this illusion in yourself, or encourage it in others. An "object" is incapable of release, because it is a concept which is deprived of creative power."

"What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it."

"All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

"Fear is the emotion of the world. It has but one. Its forms are many - call them what you will - but it is one in content."

"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. ... Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured."

"Before a holy relationship, there IS no sin. The FORM of error is no longer seen."