This might sound obvious and a no-brainer, but it can be quite obscure to both realize and believe and accept that God is with you at all times. Like, intimately inside you.
It can feel safer, for example, to relate to the Holy Spirit or Jesus, keep an abstract, nebulous idea of God further afield at a distance. After all, direct full experience of God is typically a revelation experience, seemingly once in a lifetime.
I only occasionally remember to really commune with God and to get an experience of Him being right here with me right now, like, close-up, inside my mind. Experiencable. Then I forget. As my mind then wanders off on tangents of thinking, it's as if I'm so quickly forgetting that God is present each and every time. God is like this ultimate truth and reality which is "blocked" by any kind of block to awareness and so easily out of sight, out of mind.
But I've been dabbling with this moreso recently, of allowing and accepting God to be with me. The other day I had this nice open experience, where the Holy Spirit was revealing his love and helping me to know that God has not only "always been here" but will "always be here".
It's interesting that God is so permanently present. He is always here. He's with you now. He's always been with you. Just saying that fills me with something divine. The question isn't so much whether God connects with you or not but whether you slip off into a snooze and start dreaming of something else, imagining you are exiled away from where God is.
"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of waking to reality."
It seems so basic and primitive, just the notion that God Himself would be close to you, that you would share with Him, directly communicate with Him, allow His Presence to fill you, receive His love, know HIm, on a long-term basis and not as a "hi how are ya" that lasts for 10 seconds. But as we approach God, perhaps this time accepting, allowing, inviting and being with God, in God, extends until it becomes permanent. And then you are always AWARE that you are with God at all times.
As Jesus said, he was always with God and aware of His Presence. It is that kind of openness and clarity and joining and relationship that is a prerequisite for miracle working.
The only therapy anyone really needs is a therapy focused around what they are doing to themselves.
They don't need therapy about what other people are doing to them, or what they are afraid of, or why stuff is happening to them.
The only truth is that they are doing everything to themselves, and everyone else is only ever doing anything to themselves.
Only real love is shared, all other illusions are a private fantasy. All attack is self attack. All disempowerment is self-disempowerment. All sickness is self inflicted. All guilt is because of one's own belief in sinfulness.
Really the only "problem" is entirely within your own control, which is good, because it means you can choose again and be free of your own self attack. If it is in any way caused by anyone or anything else, you are reliant on them to set you free, and thus you are stuck and cannot heal.
If the therapy can purely focus on becoming aware of what you're doing to yourself, owning up to that, taking back that power, realizing what you're doing to yourself, seeing past all of the illusions and coping mechanisms of denial and projection etc, you will find the key to salvation.
You don't need therapy about your neighbors or relationships or your work or your boss or people in the past or things you fear or stuff happening in the world. None of it. Your entire insanity is happening inside yourself in your private world. You are your only enemy.
"The secret to salvation is but this... that you are doing this to yourself." - ACIM
Everything in the ego's mindset looks like one thing but is actually something completely opposite.
e.g.
What we call attack, is actually retreat.
God cannot be attacked. When you try to attack God, if you were to go punch God in the face, guess what happens? Every effort you make to throw your fist forward, it's as though your fist goes nowhere, and instead the rest of your body is pushed backwards. I'm just using this as a 'visual' to make my point.
Metaphysically, energetically, mentally, any form of attack is really a withdrawal of cowardice and fear, a recoil into darkness and AWAY from love.
How can love be attacked when attack is a movement away from love?
This is why we are immortal.
Immortality cannot be attacked. Nothing real can be threatened. Illusions cannot assail the Kingdom of Heaven.
This isn' just information. This is the composition of reality.
Love is, and ego is not.
Love is, and attack is not.
Viciousness and terror goes hand in hand with being terrified. Torrorism IS fear.
Everything the ego does looks like one thing - attack - outward expression and forward motion towards harm - but is in fact the exact opposite - recoil away from and withdrawal from love.
Love is therefore always perfectly protected.
"The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen" - ACIM
This is why you cannot be really hurt. This is why nobody else can do anything to you. This is why you are permanently invulnerable. This is why you have IMMORTALITY and can never die.
There is no death, silly.
Miracle principle 15: "Each day should be devoted to miracles."
Miracles are supposed to happening all the time. That's because God is giving love all the time.
That miracles are not happening, means we're doing something wrong. We're making mistakes, we're blocking God's love, and we're actually rejecting miracles constantly.
When we are in victimhood, we are are rejecting miracles. When we are believing in sin/guilt/fear, we are rejecting miracles.
All activities of the ego are actually attempts to STOP GOD, and therefore to stop miracles. They are attempts to block the flow of love and life.
So just because you're in the ego, in the ego world, stuck in a body, suffering, being a victim etc, you think maybe that this is not having any "effect", or you're just coasting along passively, etc... but maybe you don't realize..... every way that you are aligning with the ego is STOPPING GOD.
Even if you're just wallowing in a state of weakness, or fear, or guilt, or you'r all caught up projecting shit onto other people, or you think someone's sickness is real, or you're lounging semi-unconsciously watching a tv show, or whatever.... if it's BLOCKING GOD in some way, you're causing miracles to stop flowing.
So if you look at just how much ego is present in the world, in people's lives, those are all BLOCKS to awareness, and therefore are BLOCKS TO GOD. Blocks to love. Blocks to miracles.
The world is greatly lacking an expression of love. It's constipated and resistant to miracles. Death is the ultimate claim that God isn't giving life anymore, and it happens a lot.
When miracles aren't happening CONSTANTLY, something has gone wrong. If miracles are HARDLY EVER happening, something really has gone wrong. And this is very widespread.
But partly it is because you do not REALIZE, or are not willing to admit, that even something as disempowering as fear or dying is actually an attempt to STOP GOD.
The things in which we seem to be the most a victim, where we seem to have the least power, the least choice, where stuff happens to us against our will significantly, and where we don't seem to be wanting it at all... THOSE are the ways that we most severely are blocking God. Fear blocks God even more than guilt, and even more than sin. And death, the ultimate passive aggression, is the ultimate attempt to end the miracle while looking like you're not doing anything at all.
Death is an attempt to bring an end to Life - to stop God from being Life, and regardless of how victimy and unwanted and terrible it seems to be "happening to us", it IS actually a choice to PREVENT the expression and receipt of God's UNLIMITED LOVE.
Let the love flow. Shine!
You don't need to become more loving. You already are created by love as love.
You don't need to become more innocent. You are already perfectly innocent in God's eyes.
You don't need to become more truthful. God already has established the truth and nothing can be added to it.
You don't need to become more spiritual. You are already immortal spirit.
You don't need to seek to find what you think you have lost or never had. You have everything God provided already, and it has not been lost and never will be.
You don't need to become more of yourself or figure out who or what you are. God has already established who and what you are.
All of these qualities which you might strive for, in your "spiritual seeking" is usually the ego seeking to maintain the the idea that you lack all of these things, and usually it will very passionately tell you you are not any of these things already. This is what takes you away from what is already your natural inheritance.
You don't need to be in the business of becoming spirit, or gaining immortality, or establishing innocence, or getting forgiven, or turning into God's child. YOU ALREADY ARE. Underneath all the bullshit, lies, cover-ups, deceit, illusions and denial, YOU already are absolutely perfect, shining in the brilliance of God's love.
The ONLLLLLLLLYYYY task you have, is UNCOVERING YOURSELF. Taking off the mask, removing the presence, getting rid of the illusions, seeing through the deceptions, shining a light on the untruths, recognizing false beliefs as false, not believing the ego's lies and not listening to your own bullshit.
Underneath your own bullshit is YOU, the real you, already perfect and immaculate and immortal and innocent. It has not been removed. It has not been changed. It has not been damaged. It has not been defiled. It has not been interrupted or upset or made to be what God didn't want it to be. You are still EXACTLY as God created you.
So this is all you need to work on. ... uncovering the truth, not defining it, not making it up. Revealing it. Exposing it. Not strengthening it - it is already total strength - but becoming more aware of the strength that is already in you. Not building yourself up. Not becoming a hero or a spiritual guru of worship. Just being yourself - the you that you are, beneath all the facades of the ego persona and shadow that seem to disguise you in a cloak of death.
You're immortal spirit, you know, son of God, hiding out with heavy clothing on. You just need to get naked.
The world can't really offer you a choice, because it really has no choice.
It didn't choose, by itself, what its nature would be.
When we believed the tiny mad idea and believed in being separate from God, we believed in an opposite to God.
An opposite to God HAS TO function in a certain way. It has to be based on separation, relativity, exclusion, lack, imperfection, mortality, etc.
It has no say in this. God's system is one of immortality, perfection, omnipresence, eternal life etc. If you want something opposite to that it really can only take on one specific form.
The premise of God produces heaven. The premise of separation produces hell.
"The Kingdom is the result of premises, as much as this world is."
The premise of oneness gives rise to the perfect system of heaven.
The premise of separation gives rise to the imperfect system of spacetime, including Earth and bodies.
The nature and laws and functioning of Earth have NO SAY in this. They HAVE TO function the way they do in order to be God's opposite.
The real choice was made in the moment where we tried to deny God's will and produce an opposite kingdom.
That's the only moment where choice was involved. It didn't give choice or the freedom to choose TO the world that was made.
Therefore the world itself has no choice in this, it cannot choose to sometimes work and sometimes not work. It cannot choose to sometimes be perfect and sometimes not.
It has no ability to decide whether to function like heaven or like hell. It is literally locked in to a single kind of system.
As such, the world ITSELF did not choose to be the way that it is. It isn't sitting there deciding whether to be heavenly today or not. It just always has to be like hell - the projection of the ego thought system.
This means that you can't expect it to suddenly flip around and work differently. You can't expect its laws to suddenly change, or its nature to suddenly be different.
It was made and designed for a specific purpose, to oppose God, and that is what is does very well. It stays faithful to that design and cannot deviate from it.
If you therefore think that the world is offering YOU a choice, you are very mistaken. All its roads lead to death. All its outcomes are the same. Its entire purpose is the same. It cannot end up any other way.
There IS no real choice in the world, therefore, because the world ITSELF has no choice, and is not a thing of "choosing". It's a thing that was CHOSEN. The choice is locked in.
The only way there would be a choice is if you choose heaven instead, and indeed you only ever choose between the two SYSTEMS - spacetime or God, heaven or hell.
The world itself cannot offer you ANY real choice, because it has none. It has no choice. It has no say. It just be's how it was supposed to be. It does what it was supposed to do.
What that means though is that, since the world itself did not choose its own nature, and is the result of something ELSE choosing its nature for it - in the mad idea - the world IS NOT RESPONSIBLE for being the way that it is.
This mean the world is not trying on purpose to be sinful - as if it had a choice and could just as easily be not sinful. It is not deliberately choosing to make your life difficult, it can't be help it.
It's just like a piece of machinery which was designed with a certain function and that's the only way it can work. You can't fix it up and you can't change its function and you can't make it work better.
You have to let Earth be Earth, and let heaven be heaven. Let God be God, and let hell be hell. There's no point resisting the world or expecting it to be not the way it is.
If you can recognize that it IS NOT CHOOSING, then you can also recognize that it is not "to blame" for the way it is. It is just the product of a mad idea some of us had. It's not its fault.
In that view, you can forgive the whole world, because it's just following orders and has no mind or freedom of its own with which to choose something else.
YOU have a freedom to choose something else because you are the maker of the world, or the chooser of whether to be in heaven or on Earth.
You can choose between systems, but you cannot choose what those systems would be like. The systems and their nature and functioning ENTIRELY depend on the premise on which they are based.
From the absolute you get a heavenly system. From the relative you get a dysfunctional codependent impossible system of frustration and nonsense and murder.
You can choose between those systems but you CANNOT change the nature of those systems.
So you should let the world be the way it is, and just acknowledge that you made it by mistake, and it was a good effort, but it's not a completely constructive creation. It is an mis-creation, an 'oops' that you made when you were not in your right mind. Like something you came up with when you were drunk.
Allow and accept that the world is the way it is, and then by realising it CAN'T HELP IT, you can forgive it. You can realize you should not hold anything against it, because in this sense it is innocent - it isn't CHOOSING to be this way. It isn't doing it on purpose - it's just fulfilling its original purpose.
You can repurpose it by using it differently and seeing it differently and forgiving it for its shortcomings. But don't expect the ice cream to stop melting, or the tigers to stop eating living creatures, or the seasons to stop producing death, or for bodies to last forever.
The world is a system of imperfection. Let it be.
"The eyes of Christ look on a world forgiven. In His sight are all its sins forgiven, for He sees no sin in anything He looks upon."
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."
Nightmares and happy dreams have one thing in common, they are both dreams. It cannot be the fact that it is a dream that determines whether it is happy or not. It also can't really be a matter of what the dream depicts as happening.
A dream of a beach with a nice sunset and lapping waves might be regarded as a happy dream, while a plane crash with broken bodies strewn upon the ground might be considered an unhappy dream. But this is not really what makes a dream happy or not. If you think the form of what happens determines whether you are happy, you are being a victim of the world and are blind.
There can be an illusion of happiness, whereby a dream takes on a form of happy things, or things we think of as positive or uplifting. And there can be an illusion of unhappiness, whereby a dream takes on forms we do not like such as things going wrong. And likely we will decide only to be happy along with happy things, and to be upset around the bad stuff.
But what really determines whether we are in a nightmare or a happy dream has a lot more to do with one factor alone: HOW REAL IS IT. It's not a matter of what the dream is about or what it depicts, which is a trap easily fallen into. Dreams going in your favor are a trap just as much as evil doings.
Dreams are always essentially always dreams of death. They are dreams of death because reality, which is the opposite of dreams, is always eternal life. Every dream has underpinnings of separation and conflict.
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."
So in effect, every dream you have has its basis in the separation from God, in opposition to God's nature, and in the idea of an opposite to eternal life. The themes of dreams, even the ones with the seashores and sunsets, are still rooted in some degree of separation.
What makes a dream a dream is that it opposes reality. It is a protest against reality. It's an attempt to turn reality into something unreal, something impossible, and something unnatural. Even if a dream is not real or is recognized as not real, it will always feature things happening which cannot happen in God's reality.
It isn't so much the fact that strange and unnatural things happen in dreams, because if you were to recognize it's just a dream you would laugh it off. It's more to do with the fact that you take it seriously.
A dream which is believed to be real, is given far more weight than a dream that is recognized as nothing. A real dream becomes a nightmare. If it is real, then everything that happens in it is true. If it is true, then all the experiences are real threats, real dangers, real awful situations, and real horrors.
The mind then experiences them as if reality is now a horrifying, twisted, unnatural but nevertheless real thing. As if it's true that someone has died a horrible death, or its true that everyone died in the plane crash, or its true that there was a revolting murder. Only IF IT IS TRUE does the dream upset you.
What ACIM is telling us then, is that since we're appearing to live in a dream world, a seemingly waking dream of Earth, if we believe it is real and true it will seem like a nightmare. Sometimes it will seem tolerable if the events taking place are regarded as safer, but it won't be long before it comes up with some new problems or disasters.
"The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."
You can be sure then that the world is setup to be highly problematic, with temporarily illusions of reprieve and peace, in between vast hordes of horrors and stresses. But what determines whether it UPSETS you is whether your mind believes it is REAL or not. What makes it a living hell, is not so much what happens, but WHETHER it really happens. Whether it is true or not.
A happy dream then isn't so much a dream where nice stuff happens and you have a gap in between the world going to shit, because the world is permanently shit. It's more a matter of a mindset or way of looking at the world, in which it is not GIVEN reality or truth or power, and so it is recognized as not having any.
It cannot upset you because you don't choose to use it to do so. It does not hurt you because you know you can only hurt yourself by believing the world is capable of real harm. It cannot make you sick or die unless you use the world as a prop to pretend that you, as an immortal being, can suffer and die.
So what once would've been interpreted as a nightmare, comes to be reinterpreted as harmless, because you have lifted away from it the one thing that ever made it dangerous - the idea that it is REALLY HAPPENING. If the world is nothing BUT a dream, and is regarded correctly as NOT REAL AT ALL, then nothing in it can threaten you, hurt you, make you sick, or destroy you.
A happy dream is a dream thus in which your mind is free from the world because it does not GIVE it any reality, power or truth. It has power OVER the world because of this. You are now recognizing yourself as the dreamer of A DREAM, and not of a reality. And no nightmare can remain a nightmare when its heavy darkness is lifted away by the light of truth.
"There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."
"The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds."
"Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be EXCEPT a happy dream? For you are asked but to forgive all things that no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to look upon the unreal as reality."
"That is why forgiveness of another is an illusion. Yet it is the only happy dream in all the world; the only one that does not lead to death." "In your relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world; the world of happy dreams, from which awaking is so easy and so natural."
"Listening to the ego's voice MEANS that you believe it is possible to attack God. You believe that a part of Him has been torn away by YOU."
"We have repeatedly emphasized that the ego DOES believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that YOU have done this."
"But sin, were it possible, WOULD be irreversible."
So you have this part of your mind, which believes in ego ideas of attack, which is the same as sin. The ego in you believes that you CAN attack real things, even though "nothing real can be threatened." It also believes that not only can it attack God, but it HAS attacked God.
It's the part of you that believes, deceives, and is trying to convince yourself, that you are the ego. That you are not as God created you. And therefore that YOU can attack God, and that you have done so.
"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."
If you believe this, you will believe that you've sinned. This is what the "original sin" is all about. It's the authority problem, the notion you can cause your own cause. That you can cause God against His will, and therefore change him and destroy him.
It is utterly impossible that you're able to do this. God cannot ever be attacked because He is permanent and immortal. You cannot have attacked anything real, at any time. You have never sinned. Not only have you never sinned, sin is actually literally impossible.
The ego however believes that sin IS possible and HAS happened. So you have these two perspectives. The truth in you is asserting that you must still be sinless, but the lies in you are fighting against it and trying to insist you have done something awful. Something totally EXTREMELY awful, as to try to murder God. The ego even thinks it has succeeded.
The belief that you HAVE attacked God, produces a death wish. If you've attacked Him and hurt Him, then he would logically be in a position to be completely justified in revenge. And that now means that God is angry and attacking and threatening. This goes hand in hand with believing that you've attacked and threatened him through anger.
"Death wishes ... DO kill spiritually. ALL destructive thinking is dangerous. Given a death wish, a man has no choice except to ACT upon his thought, or behave CONTRARY TO it. He can thus choose ONLY between homicide and fear."
"And you do not recognize that it is WHAT YOU INVITED IN that would destroy you, and DOES demand total sacrifice of you."
"The ego wants YOU dead"
That being your "new truth", you will then believe that because sin has actually happened, you deserve to be punished. That you are guilty and should die to atone for it. Or that death will allow you to escape from God's wrath. Because now you see God as having vengeance, as having a very good reason to hate you and to want you dead. That your death is God's will.
You will also then see that by believing you attacked God and hurt him, he is not happy with you. That he cannot possibly love you any more. And therefore you find yourself unworthy and unlovable. And even moreso that you cannot go home. That you are expelled from Heaven and are not welcome there, nor do you ever want to go back there.
What this does is it sets you up for the belief in "death as inevitable." Because if you can't go back home to LIFE, then your ONLY choice is to head towards death. It means you can kind of "never live again". And so you crawl away with your tail between your legs, licking your wounds, condemning yourself for what you think you did, and trying to guarantee your own punishment. And to think this is only because you LISTENED to the ego and BELIEVED it's lies about you being sinful.
Thus you become suicidal because now you yourself believe you deserve punishment for sin, that it makes complete sense that you're guilty, that God would never forgive you, and that what you did is irreversible. It's not even that you think others will punish you for this crime, it's that you yourself believe you deserve to be punished, and you yourself begin to actually enact it upon yourself.
This then frightens you because now you are actually against yourself and are entering into self-harm and self-punishment. You are trying to make yourself dead to pay for what you did. So that now means that you've become suicidal. And your only seeming hope to take away from God all power and rights over you, is to head towards death as a doorway out. You reason that if you will die, you will be saved. And now although you fear it, death becomes salvation and is attractive to you as a solution.
This is literally how every single person chooses to CAUSE their own death, and why all death is suicide, and why "no one dies without their own consent." It's all because you don't think you deserve to live. The ego in you believes so strongly that sin exists, you CAN sin, and you HAVE sinned, that a whole cascade of logical conclusions follow on from it, condemning you to death as the ONLY remaining option.
The only way you will get out of this downward spiral into hell and self-destruction, is to move away from the ego's "version" of what is true, and embrace God's version of what is true. That means questioning the belief in sin, that sin is possible or that you're guilty of doing it. This means the undoing of guilt as well, and therefore also fear.
While the ego in you is screaming "I have sinned", the God in you is gently reminding you that "sin is impossible." While the ego is trying to condemn yourself to hell, God is reminding you that you can't attack anything real. While the ego in you believes and is committed to keeping guilt, and to project it, in order to keep the separation going, the Holy Spirit is trying to teach you that you're not guilty because you have never sinned. Because sin is impossible. That everything the ego believes and asserts is a lie.
"You think if anyone could see the truth about you he would be repelled, recoiling from you as if from a poisonous snake."
"Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged."
"You need to hear the truth about yourself as frequently as possible, because your mind is so preoccupied with false self-images."
"The truth about YOU is so lofty that nothing that is unworthy of God is worthy of you."
"The Holy Spirit knows the truth about you. The image you made does not."
"Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable."
"You have NOT attacked God, and you DO love Him. Can you change your reality? No-one can will to destroy himself."
Going into a questioning mode, in which you ask yourself, should I do this or shouldn't I.... is actually a movement into fear.
As soon as you're in this mode of perception, there is no way you're going to settle on a peaceful decision.
You'll think that deciding one way will bring you peace, except that.. you can't get the other way out of your mind. And then you think if you decide the other way, maybe that will bring you what you want, except that, the first solution still seems to have something about it that the other doesn't.
Always in this mode of fear, it is a mode of duality, where your mind is split in two and you can't "make up" your mind - because you HAVE 'made up' a mind - an ego mind, which is now trying to rectify the fact that it has to deal with two different and unrelated options.
By perceiving differences, you are fixating on the appearance that one option has something about it that the other does not, and these differences are what MAKE the two options seem like two distinct options. And yet, as soon as you see this and try to deal with it, you cannot possibly see any kind of certainty, truth, clarity, obviousness or lack of confusion.
There is no sane way to choose between these two different paths, at least not from within a position of choosing. When you're weighing up your options, what you're really doing is trying to decide whether to accept what's missing about one of the two things, versus whats missing about the other. And the fact that they are both incomplete, can only leave you uncertain and unconvinced.
The only way out of this confusion, which masquerades as very careful decision making - on your own, in isolation - but really is a movement AWAY from decision and certainty, is to entirely STOP this whole deception of choosing between things. When you are questioning what to do, you are questioning YOURSELF, and throwing yourself into fear and confusion needlessly. "My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability." - ACIM
There is no way you can choose between things, because that requires separation and rejection and you will never be able to experience certainty or peace while separation is operating.
The only way to peace is to entirely step back out of the 'split' between options, to back off from being in a position of trying to know, or trying to figure out. You even need to get past the illusion that a decision even needs to be made, because the sense of NEED has entirely come from the very same FEAR that you have entered into, which has CAUSED you to think that you have to decide something in the first place. "Let my recognize my problems have been solved." - ACIM
You have to RECOGNIZE that what you are trying to do is impossible, and that's why you will be confused and frustrated. You need to see this deception for what it is - not two clear-cut choices, but a device for indecision, fear, egocentric control, and trying to know everything on your own.
You can't know everything when your mind is split. So when you are in this decision-making mode of selecting between things, you are not only choosing which of two things is "better", you're also choosing which of two IDENTITIES you want to associate with. And that means you are literally putting your SELF into one of two boxes.
Once you're inside boxes, or are attempting to hide in boxes in the name of getting out of a box, you can no longer see clearly and won't be able to feel the sense of relief and peace that comes from being OUTSIDE the box.
So really there is absolutely no way that your ego (split mind) can make a decision on its own and be certain or happy with it. Either you struggle and seek for truth in only one part of existence and not another, causing you to be inherently insane, or you stop trying to decide on your own.
Decisions can still be made from a vantage point outside of this split mind, where you join with Holy Spirit and see the whole situation as one, recognizing the temptation of the illusion of deciding for yourself and ceasing to enter into it. Then Holy Spirit can share His light and freedom with you, to instill a knowing, inspiration or guidance - a peace-based decision - which you CAN trust and feel certain about.
As Jesus says in the Course, seek not to make decisions about doing something you do not want to do, because it will only make you afraid.
You need to learn to notice when you've slipped into a "I don't know if I should" mode, or a "what should I do" mode, or a "I can't decide mode", which pretends to be decision-making, because it means you've gone into the ego split mind and cannot possibly decide anything. You are AFRAID, and for no real reason.
Questions are doubts. They are not real questions. This is why the tiny mad idea was a movement AWAY from knowing and truth, towards "questioning truth", i.e. entering into fear and doubt, in an attempt to pretend that you're looking for an answer, while using that excuse as a cover-up for actually moving AWAY from the answer.
Ego questions do not lead you to truth. They lead you to more illusions, and you will never find happiness or peace of mind there.
So stop yourself if you notice you're being indecisive. No matter what your ego mind says - for or against certain options - do not listen to ANY of the arguments or cases for or against anything. They are all deceptions, because the overall deception is you believing that you NEED to decide at all.
You only think you need to decide when you've become afraid, and really then you're in a state of fear, trying to decide something in order to gain relief from fear, but every effort to do so will just make you more afraid.
Imagine all the wonderful things you will actually achieve and 'do' and feel good about and act fearlessly on, when you're moving and flowing with Holy Spirit's truth and trust and awareness, instead of trying to be "sure" about what "you" need to do with "your" life.
What you will realize eventually, as is dawning on me now, is that maybe there isn't even a decision to be made, and maybe moving into decision-making is actually just fear and undermining yourself with your ego, and you need to stop doing THAT, because that is the real problem here, not what option to choose.
I thank Jesus for this clarification today, and for reminding me when I am questioning whether I'm doing the right thing, thinking that this means I have to decide all over again what to do, I need to recognize the real problem - I've entered into fear and have attacked myself, and that's the only reason I seem to be separated from truth. To return to truth I do not NEED to make this illusory decision, I need to stop listening to my own bullshit.