The physical properties of matter, this universe, enacts the ego's law of separation between cause and effect. Every single thing which happens in this universe stems from this fundamental canvas of separation.

For one thing to do something to another thing and not experience the same effects, is separation. The laws of physics even tell us that an action produces an equal but opposite reaction - not the same reaction at all but one completely different.

In this world therefore, what applies to one thing does not apply to another. There is no equality. It therefore becomes "possible" to do something in isolation in this world, and have it affect only an isolated part of the world, and perhaps not even effect the person who does it at all.

Another way to put this is that this world allows the ego to get away with murdering God. Its pictorial statement that cause is separate from effect is a statement that God has been separated from His son. It is also therefore an attack on His Son and therefore a picture of the crucifixion of His son.

The way that the ego gets away with murder, is to suggest that it is capable of doing something to God, causing God in some way, but that the effects produced by that attack affect God only, and not the ego self. Therefore the ego self "gets away with it" by separating itself off from the effects. It claims that what applies to God does not apply to you, and therefore you can produce attack without experiencing the results.

This ENTIRE UNIVERSE is set up based on this. ACIM even explicitly says this: "This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son." Also in chapter 27 there is an entire section titled "The picture of crucifixion" where Jesus goes into this more.

The physical universe was made by the ego to depict what it would be like for God's son to be crucified, ie murdered and attacked and rendered separate from God. To be separate from God is to be separate from Cause, and therefore cause and effect are separate in this universe, down to the subatomic particle.

Even the idea of space and time, that there could be something which applies in one place or time and not another, is an idea of the separation between cause and effect, and Jesus states in the Course that both space and time are merely beliefs. That doesn't mean you have a belief ABOUT space and time, it means space-time ITSELF is a belief in the larger mind, and is therefore an illusion.

If it were not for this entire world, this entire universe, being based on this separation from Cause, it would be IMPOSSIBLE for you do any of the things you do "in life". You could not use a knife to slice an apple - if the effects which apply to the apple apply to the knife, the apple would have to equally cut the knife. You would not be able to eat food and digest it, the food would have to eat you and digest you also.

Nothing that we call "life" in this universe would be possible without the separation of cause and effect playing out.

Now, here is a VERY important point to make. You can change your mind about this world and work on changing what seem to be your personal beliefs "about" the world, correcting your thoughts and perceptions in terms of undoing your inner belief in separation from Cause. BUT, even if you achieve that, what is to become of the physical universe?

If it persists, it IS still a picture of crucifixion. It is still a physicalized expression of an idea of death and murder. It is still being run by laws of separation and conflict. Everything that takes place in it is un-heavenly and an attack. Every way that every single object moves and interacts with other objects symbolizes and IS the belief that cause and effect are separate - which ultimately is the belief that God and His Son are separate.

You could seem to be awake in the world and yet if the world continues to govern what happens to you, if you have no apparent power to undo it or change it, if you are subject to death, if you cannot heal the sick and undo disease, if you cannot cause objects to move or to change into other objects, then you are BOUND by the laws of the ego. That's a fact.

How can this be allowed to persist, thought to be in some way holy and real, as we stay in this world, confined by this world's laws, completely governed by them, still subject to aging and DEATH, and claim that we are enlightened? There is much more to the truth than this. This world was made as an attack. That's all it was made for. You can see it as a beautiful illusion but does it undo it?

This world's fundamental functioning, it's separation-based operational laws, is precisely what we derive our egoic beliefs from. We base our logic and reasoning and beliefs and values on top of how this separation of cause and effect operates. This leads to an "automatic" ego mind which believes and THINKS just like this universe functions, as though this universe makes sense and is normal and natural and true.

And if we are to reunite cause and effect in our awareness, in our mind, then this should mean that we re-gain access to a causal power which was completely separate from us when we believed what the world shows us. Its picture of death is completely the opposite of real life.

Its claim that cause and effect are separate is a law which MIRACLES break. Miracles come to demonstrate that this world's entire foundation, the fabric of this "reality" (bullshit) is simply false and not true and not what is running the show. Miracles demonstrate that cause and effect are NOT separate, because they come from a mind where the two are one.

Miracles therefore are capable of overriding everything which arises from this world, beyond the ego's laws, and that literally means your causal power is capable of doing absolutely anything which this world would consider physically impossible.

In this world an apple is not an orange. To a miracle-worker, an apple can be turned into an orange. In this world, throwing a ball at someone's head will hurt them. To a miracle-worker, throwing a ball at their head will stop the ball mid-air and turn it into a butterfly which then lands on the person's head and kisses them. In this world when a match is taken to a flammable liquid it will ignite and explode. To a miracle-worker, the match will be cancelled out and nothing will happen, and maybe even that flammable liquid will be turned into wine.

Miracles. Miracles. Miracles. Miracles which completely DEFY absolutely every physical law and limitation, every way that one thing does something to something else against its will, and any way that one cause seems to produce an effect on something other than itself. Think you can punch Jesus in the face and knock him out and leave him with a black eye? Have a try.

The Son of God is NOT subject to this stupid illusory world and its stupid pretend laws and made-up rules and fictional regulations. Jesus tells us in the course, literally, "there is nothing you cannot do". NOTHING. NO-THING. Not just just some small things, not just some big things, not just a few slightly miraculous-seeming hints at something magical. You can literally do ANYTHING. Including moving a mountain.

Is this too far fetched? Is your mind too scary to wield such power? Are you too afraid of the potential of this, being so profoundly abundant that you can manifest anything you need at any time directly from God's unlimited supply, without having to go through stupid ego laws to slave and work hard to earn ridiculous bits of paper and metal so that you can buy what you need at a store? You are far more capable than that. BY FAR!

There is no limit. "There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

Here is the main problem we all face day after day. The body makes an ILLUSORY WORLD seem real. The world is an illusion of a world, a picture of crucifixion, a vision of hell, a depiction of total lies, holding not one single shred of truth and is designed to tempt you believe that illusions of death are reality.

The BODY, was INTENTIONALLY MADE, in order to sense this world and to try to make the world SEEM real - to seem to really EXIST. It does this through what we call senses, sensory inputs, detection, perception, ways of discerning that not only is something REALLY THERE, but it's DOING STUFF, it's changing, it's shifting, there are sensations being produced, you can touch it and smell it and see it, and all this turns into EVIDENCE trying to testify that THE WORLD EXISTS.

EVERYTHING THE BODY SENSES IS A LIE!

The body is designed to DECEIVE you. Its senses are designed NOT to be aware of reality. It's eyes are designed to be BLOCKED by forms of sin/error/matter so that you do NOT see. It's ears pick up on fake sound vibrations. You touch the surface of nothing with your fingers and believe it's a real object. It's a massive deception.

This is a pretty major issue for us because we're strapped into these bodies. We're being presented with this holographic virtual world all around us, showing us pictures of death, suffering, sickness and hell, a world where everything is fundamentally imperfect and impermanent. And then we're forced through the body's sensory inputs to PICK UP ON "what's there" and to relay that as messages to our mind. Our mind sees these messages and now has a choice, either you BELIEVE THEM, or to recognize them as UNREAL.

When your mind believes what the body senses, which includes ANYTHING YOU CAN SEE, any notion that "something is happening", any sound or smell or taste, any appearance of any body doing anything anywhere in any way, you are FALLING FOR TEMPTATION. You are being deceived by illusions and have entered into the ego. And that means your spiritual eye is not open, you're not having christ vision, and are unconscious.

The problem is, you're going to remain strapped into the body UNTIL you can COMPLETELY 100% transcend the world, and transcend and NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING the body detects. And yet the body is going to keep bombarding your mind with all of its sensory inputs. Pictures of crucifixion, bodies writhing in pain, wars waging, fights breaking out, people crying etc.

The body is going to just keep picking up and sensing this stuff and broadcasting it to your mind. So what is your mind going to do about this? How do you get out of hell? How do you transition from being DECEIVED by everything the body picks up on, to being NOT deceived?

This is where changing our beliefs comes in. And this is where forgiveness comes in. Because "to forgive is to OVERLOOK". Which means to forgive the entire world you must overlook it, not see it, must learn to RECOGNIZE that it IS AN ILLUSION, and NOT BELIEVE IT. Believing the body's sensory impressions of the world are real is FALSE perception. Believing illusions are reality is FALSE perception. To reach true perception you must come to RECOGNIZE and believe, that everything the body picks up on as "out there" or "happening" IS NOT TRUE AND NOT REAL. IT IS NOT HAPPENING AND DOES NOT EXIST!

"Forgiveness recognizes that what you think you brother did HAS NOT OCCURRED." It has not even happened. The events were ILLUSIONS! What your body showed you WAS A LIE! This is profound because it means literally we have to learn to open the spiritual eye which looks with TRUTH (holy spirit) and clearly recognizes what this world IS (a lie), rather than believing in it. A forgiven world is a NOT BELIEVED world. A forgiven world is a FALSE world. And this means weakening investment in physical senses.

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

So this is our issue. We are using a body which is picking up on a world of sin and hell which is not real, and which tries to tell us "ITS REALLY THERE". "It exists". Add this is what the body was DESIGNED TO DO. And it was designed to never do anything else. Which means it CAN ONLY LIE to you. So you have to learn how to STOP BELIEVING IT. You must learn to recognize ALL body signals are UNREAL and UNTRUE. Add that means the entire world you're in, everything you see, is NOT REAL.

It's by learning to recognize illusions as illusions, sensory inputs as FALSE, and trusting only the spiritual eye of truth and light, that you escape from the dream of hell and wake up to reality.

"Nothing you see means anything."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it."

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"To sense is not to know."

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."

"Theirs (body's eyes) 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."

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel."

"But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."

"God's teachers choose to look **on dreams** a while (the world). It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. **The dream says otherwise**, but who would put his faith in dreams once ****they are recognized for what they are****?

Awareness of dreaming (recognition that it IS a dream not a reality) is the real function of God's teachers. ****They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. (body visions) Yet they are not deceived by what they see.**** They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity (reality, truth) alone is not a thing of dreams (not of or in this world). And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as ***behind the dream*** (behind the illusory world), beyond all **seeming** (appearances, illusions) and yet surely theirs."

"The ***body’s eyes will continue to see differences.*** (for a teacher of God who is still in a body using it temporarily alongside christ vision) 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed ****will no longer acknowledge them.**** 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, ****and the body’s eyes will report their changed appearances as before.**** 4 ******But the *healed mind* will put them all in one category; they are unreal.******

5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in ***sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world*** (all body sensors inputs including everything you see - you SORT OUT these messages in your mind). 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth. (mind recognizes the world is an illusion, because it sees WITH truth, which reveals what is true and what is not - the world is not)"

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

When we believed in separation from God, we entered into a very confused and backwards way of thinking. We shut out reality. We denied truth. We split and narrowed our minds and drove ourselves insane.

"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."

"This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity."

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."

We swapped the meaning of everything. What was true became false. What was false became true. Innocence was considered a sin. Sin was considered innocence. God was regarded as an evil dictator. Ego was regarded as your saviour. Death was believed to be life, and sickness was believed to save you from God. Darkness was light and punishment was atonement.

You no longer recognize what anything actually is. When you look upon things you do not see what they are, you see what you made of them. You see the twisted meanings and deceptions that you made of them. You don't believe that God is love. And you think death is your friend. You do not even recognize your own self.

"There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this: I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on myself."

"Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."

So now we have a world filled with crazy people. People who do not know which way is up. People whose priorities are all over the place purely because they think they've made a really great decision, when in fact they have poor judgement.

If your whole belief about what something is, is wrong, it changes how it looks to you and what it means to you. If it's something which in truth would hurt you, and you see it as helpful, you might choose it on purpose believing it will help you.

This is the case with sickness. "Sickness is a defense against the truth" tells you that you mis-perceive God. You think God or Truth is a threat to you, an enemy. You see attack and vengeance and danger in him. Having hallucinated these lies, you then react to them. And you reason, if God is trying to destroy me, I need to get away from God.

Then you will try to create a distance between you and God. And this is a problem because God is, in the big picture truth, life and wholeness and health and happiness. So you resist God, thinking God is your enemy, and by doing so choose to go away from these things. So you head towards sickness and death and limitation and weakness, all under the belief that you are saving your life from a real threat.

Then you end up suffering and you hate it and you think you didn't choose it. You don't want it because who could want it really, but you did want it because you chose it. And you chose it because you made a wrong decision.

"I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace."

The decision was based on you thinking that you knew what everything is, when you didn't, and were misinformed and deceived. So you deceived yourself and lied to yourself and then followed that lie as guidance and ended up hurting yourself. But you didn't think it was going to hurt, you thought it was helpful.

So literally the people in the world believe that suffering is salvation. Punishment is seen as justified and right and a form of healing and education. More suffering for the guilty is seen as atonement. And people literally choose to die, in an attempt to claim their innocence. If someone else is to blame, you get to be exonerated, and you think this will save your life, but you die instead.

"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die."

It's all to do with having a faulty guidance system. A screwed up navigation. The map is all wrong. The signposts are all backwards. You think you're going towards stuff which is truly good by choosing things which are definitely not. And all because you do not know what the fuck you are doing.

You do not know who you are, what you are, where you came from, how you got here, why you are here, what you are doing, why you are doing it. You even doubt whether you were even ever really created and suspect that you are an illusion that doesn't even exist.

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

So this is the problem we all have. We do not correctly recognize what anything actually is. And so we keep being in a state of self-deception. And then we make choices based on this deception, which turn out to move us towards "what we want", just as all choices do, except the stuff we've chosen is not in our best interests. But we thought it was.

So we keep hurting ourselves. We know not what we do. We are lost. We are insane. We need to be straightened out. We need help from outside the insanity (Holy Spirit etc). We need to be corrected. We need to be willing to be mistaken. We need to examine the beliefs and meanings we've given to everything and look for a better way.

"Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you."

Every strategy. Every form of problem solving. Every way of relating. Everything you think you'll gain or lose. Every scenario. It all has to be brought into question and re-evaluated by the One who knows. Your mind needs to be corrected and trained to line up with what is ACTUALLY TRUE, and what you can actually have, and want, and what is fully in accord with God's will.

"ALL real pleasure comes from doing God's will. Whenever it is NOT done an experience of lack results. This is because NOT doing the will of God IS a lack of self."

Recognition is the key. Properly discerning what something is or isn't. Being not deceived by anything. Correct clear accurate perception. Proper categorization of things. Is something true on God's terms, or is it false? Can it be real in God, or is it unreal? It is really what it appears to be, or is it something else? Are you mistaken? If you are not enlightened, you are mistaken.

"Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all."

If you could fully recognize what everything actually is, to see it clearly, without distortions of reality, without hallucinations, without fake meanings and artificial values, without wishful thinking or delusion, without denial and without attack or resistance, you would be enlightened.

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."

When everything false is finally seen for what it is, recognized to be unreal and nothing, with no value and no further purpose, it will disappear.

"Illusion recognized must disappear. Accept not suffering, and you remove the thought of suffering. Your blessing lies on everyone who suffers when you choose to see all suffering as what it is."

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

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are."

"Healing, then, is a way of APPROACHING knowledge by THINKING in accordance with the laws of God and RECOGNIZING THEIR UNIVERSALITY. WITHOUT this recognition, you have made the laws themselves meaningless TO you."

"Yet what makes them God's teachers is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body."

"In fact, the recognition that you do not understand is a prerequisite for undoing your false ideas."

"The ego will NEVER let you perceive this, for this recognition WILL make it homeless. For, when this recognition dawns clearly, you will NOT be deceived by ANY form the ego takes, to protect itself FROM your sight."

"Today we would experience ourselves at one with Him, so that the world may share our recognition of reality."

"He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the Face of Christ shining in front of him, correcting all mistakes and healing all perception. Healing is the result of the recognition, by God's teacher, of Who it is that is in need of healing. This recognition has no special reference. It is true of all things that God created. In it are all illusions healed."

"Let us try to recognize this today, and experience the peace this recognition brings."

"The light is come today to bless the world, for you have recognized the Son of God, and in your recognition is the world's."

"That is why the recognition of your OWN invulnerability is so important in the restoration of your sanity."

"The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself."

"For recognition comes of vision and SUSPENDED judgment."

"The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation NEVER OCCURRED."

"The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world's learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible."

"Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have BEEN redeemed."

"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws which you have set up to save you."

"Your function here is only to decide AGAINST deciding what you want, in recognition that YOU DO NOT KNOW. How, then, CAN you decide what you should do? Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it."

"The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you, out of what you have made, and to perceive only this is salvation, because it is the recognition that reality is ONLY WHAT IS TRUE."

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point."

"The recognition of the real creative power in yourself AND others brings release because it brings peace."

"Truth must be all-inclusive if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposite and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true."

"Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow HIS plan of Salvation, in recognition of the FACT that you do NOT know what it is." "Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love OF YOUR FREE WILL, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them."

"Defenselessness is strength. It testifies to recognition of the Christ in you."

In order to uncover a blocked awareness, we need to be willing to admit to the truth. And that means being willing to admit that we are NOT doing what we are claiming to be doing, we DO want the suffering we are experiencing, and we ARE actively forcing ourselves to be victims.

There is a very simple law at work. And it is this: You are completely free. Which means that whatever you are experiencing, YOU MUST WANT IT. There are no exceptions to this. And this is very difficult to fully and deeply look at, yet alone to accept. Yet it is the secret of salvation.

Half the time we might be saying things like, I really want to be with God, I want to love everyone, I love my kids, I believe in healing and health, I don't believe I'm guilty, etc... BUT, at the same time, EXPERIENCING the exact opposite.

This is the ego talking. The ego is VERY good at lies. It's very good at disguises. It's very good at talking out of both sides of its mouth and being two faced. Generally speaking, the ego is the idea of dishonesty. And in dishonest states, you are quite capable of saying or even believing things that you do not REALLY believe deep down, and do not believe fully.

When you take a look at the evidence, either you ARE ACTUALLY EXPERIENCING what you say you believe is real, or you are lying to yourself. You can wrap up all kinds of lovely statements in what seem to be well-meaning fervent desires for something, but this doesn't mean you are CHOOSING TO DO these things.

For example, someone who sees themselves as being unfairly treated or victimized, will complain a lot. They will make a whole lot of noise about how much they DO NOT WANT what is happening. But all of this noise is utter bullshit. What's happening is the person HAS chosen to suffer, WANTS to keep suffering, does NOT want to actually take the steps of healing that would UNDO it, and so is literally STUCK in a state that they CLAIM to want to get out of, but which they are not ACTUALLY getting out of.

Instead, the ego victim tries to point fingers at all the reasons and powers other than themselves, that are keeping them bound to hell and upset. Waiting for someone else to bail them out. Waiting for someone to save them. Waiting for someone to change on their behalf. Or even waiting for someone to do something to them to make a difference. This is all an UNWILLINGNESS to ACTUALLY look within and undo the ACTUAL belief in sin that is lurking in the background, causing the suffering.

You have it in your power to undo all forms of suffering if you so choose, because you have free will. Your free will means you can NEVER get away with finding ANY excuse for why you are in the situation you are in. NOR that you can find any excuse for why you cannot get out of it, or why getting out of it depends on ANYTHING. Not on another person, not on the body, not on forces of nature, not on money or circumstances, nothing.

There is NOTHING STOPPING YOU FROM CHOOSING HEAVEN. No-one is holding you in hell but yourself. This is the secret of salvation. If you would simply ACTUALLY go ahead and CLEARLY, CONCISELY, CONFIDENTLY COMMIT to a more healed state of mind, your mind would be healed instantly. Nothing can stop you but yourself. All the beliefs we have about WHY we can't, are made up lies.

"If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

Jesus states clearly in the course that your completely clear single-minded decision to heal causes you to heal. Because in this unwavering commitment to ONE OUTCOME, your will is completely unopposed BY ITSELF, and therefore does not thwart its own efforts to CHOOSE. The power of decision is your own, enabling you to DISTINCTLY CHOOSE what you WILL. Whatever happens you have asked for, and whatever you do not want does not happen. This is why you are ruler of the universe.

So if we're in a state where we're complaining about the state we're in, or we feel stuck in it, or can't get out of it, or are claiming to have the best intentions, or would do something "IF" a dependency on something else is fulfilled, we are really not being completely honest. We are not admitting to how we ourselves are holding ourselves in hell by NOT undoing the ACTUAL problem.

If the real problem is a belief in sin, we need to stop believing in sin. This will take care of ALL problems. But if we do not WANT to undo the sin, we will remain in guilt and suffering, complaining about why the suffering is unfair and making tremendous steam about just how much we "really want" to get out of it. Or to be rescued. But we have to stop and get really honest. If we are STILL suffering, we MUST NOT WANT TO STOP IT. Even if we are screaming at the top of our lungs "I want this to stop". Saying so is not taking constructive action steps to DO IT.

This deeper desire is the choice to continue suffering, and this choice is the deeper problem. It's what's blocking awareness. We have to be willing to ADMIT that we HAVE CHOSEN to suffer, and become willing to CHOOSE AGAIN, a better way, which means being willing to actually address and undo the "real cause" of the problem in our mind.

All of our positive-sounded well-meaning wishful-thinking pleasantries about how much we want the truth and love and light and God, do not actually take us closer to God. They take us away from God because they are forms of denial covering up desires NOT to be with God. Either we will choose to be with God or not to be. But when we're choosing not to be, and claiming that we want to be, we must be lying. We can't have it both ways.

Looking within to the honest facts of what we are ACTUALLY DOING, and admitting that if we are not with God it MUST be because we want some kind of sinful suffering, this opens up the doorways, lifts away the denial, removes the illusions of peace, and allows us to shed real light of truth on the situation. Then we can SEE, that in fact we have a grievance, or an unhealed wound, or a secret sin or hidden hate. And this hidden stuff's REMOVAL is what will actually brings us closer WITHIN to awareness of God's presence.

Going through the dark shit is unfortunately a lot harder and requires a lot more radical honesty than the fluffy externalized "happy seeker" route of rainbows and nice-sounding fluff. We DID choose to reject God. We did actually push away our inheritance. As Jesus states in ACIM, "the separation HAS occurred." We have to admit that we're STILL choosing it, if we are not GETTING the result of reunion with God.

We did seem to WANT to suffer. We DID make a mistaken decision by choosing that, and we need to choose again if we want peace. That means looking at what we ACTUALLY DO BELIEVE, and not at what we THINK we believe. And these dark beliefs can then be brought into the light and released.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. (meaning, I literally CHOSE TO SUFFER, and I have to admit I have chosen that, in order to recognize that I need to choose again)

I made the decision myself (no one else made me suffer, I did), but I can also decide otherwise. (meaning I have the power to CHOOSE NOT TO SUFFER, and to force this to happen).

I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace. (I want to stop suffering and by WILLING NOT TO SUFFER, the suffering stops - if I'm doing so honestly and fully)

I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM. (I am not GUILTY for making a wrong decision, I am just mistaken and need correction of the ACTUAL problem, which is a belief in the desire to suffer)

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me." (I receive healing help from the Holy Spirit and open up to His Light of Truth to shine into my mind and illuminate it, so that I can ACTUALLY experience what I've been saying I want.)

I've been having a lot of deep insight lately about cause and effect and taking back my power, so I want to share some more on this. This may be a little lengthy so bear with me.

When we think of a victim we're usually talking about something negative. Someone does something to a person that they do not want. An enemy attacks, someone calls a name, someone judges, something happens to someone seemingly against their will, producing the effect of suffering.

And then we think that the things that don't do this, are not negative, or there's nothing wrong with it. Such as, feeling that a certain person is the love of your life, or having a special friend, or someone makes you happy and makes you laugh, or there's a favourite place you like to go to, or a place you call home because you like it more than other places.

You like these things, enjoy these things, want these things, "love" (conditionally) these things, because they seem to "cause you positively." They do things to you that you seem to prefer. You have needs, you have lacks, you have shortcomings, and these people or things seem to make up for it, they seem to do for you what you can't do etc. You seem to need them. They are the "other half" of you.

But the problem then comes when the person goes away, they die, they fail in some way to give you what you want or need. Or you leave a favourite place, or you break up with a person, or you lose a favourite possession or whatever. Given that your mind has become dependent on these things, it now suffers, and it flips into "special hate".

That is, the ego now sees itself as a NEGATIVE victim, instead of a positive one. The things you depended on are now seeming to turn against you and cause you pain. The people that you loved and cared for are now, in their absence, the seeming source of loss and misery. You might even feel angry at them. Special hate especially comes out AS hate if the person turns from favoured friend to an enemy, and seems to outright attack you.

What I've been realising is that when I attribute CAUSE to something outside of myself, it doesn't matter whether it seems to be positive or negative, wanted or unwanted, if I give it causal POWER OVER ME, to cause me something, I'm on a slippery slope and am now gambling in highly risky ego territory. I'm now striking a deal, doing a bargain, forming a special relationship, in which I prefer to get something out of it that I want or need. I have become dependent on something external, and don't want to let the dependancy go.

When the mind is giving POWER to someone or something to cause you in some way, that's a double-edged sword. If they comply, you might think you are happy, and for a while they seem to "do something to you" that you like. Whether it be making you happy, causing you to laugh, giving you good feelings even, making you love them more, paying your bills, whatever. They are the chosen one. The best person you ever met.

But at the same time there is tremendous risk, and likelihood, that at some point this will stop, and you will suddenly feel deprived and neglected and ignored and lost and very unhappy. Because if they are not there to do what you have become dependent on them to do, you will revert to deprivation and suffering.

I've seen that this reversal of cause and effect, this giving of POWER to someone else or to some thing else, to have power over you in some way - positively OR negatively - results in your mind becoming DEPENDENT on that thing. This dependency, is what some people, buddhists for example, would call "attachment."

It produces a sense of holding on, identifying with, of DEPENDING ON someone or something outside of you, as though you lean on it, you need it, you are hooked into it like it's a part of yourself. Like you plug your mind in, you form cords or bridges of energetic and emotional attachment, you build inroads mentally, which feels literally like being attached and "connected" in some way. In a special way, which passes for "relationship". And indeed this can feel like special love, as much as it can feel like having a nemesis when the power is given to an enemy.

This dependency results from reversing cause and effect, disowning responsibility, claiming that you have no power to choose anything, suppression of your will, projection of cause and will and power and responsibility onto someone or something else. It's then like you've struck a deal, where this person or thing has power OVER you (always with your consent), and the bargain terms entitle them to some kind of "hold over you", like, there's a string attached. A conditional-love relationship.

Somehow they have some rights, some say in it, some POWER, some logical power, which entitles them to have some control over you. And what they say or do goes, and you cannot but be affected by it. And you feel bound and artificially joined and like they own you in some way, like you're a pet on a leash. And so long as you maintain the belief that they have your power, using it over you, even if its in ways that you seem to want or that seem positive and loving, it's still an egoic special relationship because cause and effect are backwards. It's a relationship of false/backwards perceptions.

And it still feeds the role you're playing of being "a victim" - someone who is AFFECTED BY something other than themselves. ie, that you are preferring to live by being AFFECTED BY someone or something, rather than proactively choosing and taking responsibility for what you feel and experience. So long as the thing, the person, the place, the object etc, is regarded as something that you WANT to have the POWER to CAUSE you, in some way, you will see yourself as a victim of them when they eventually fail to follow through. And now sunsets turn into thunderstorms.

If they die, you are up shit creek, because you need them, you want them, you depend on them to be or do something for you, something that you were not doing for yourself. They were responsible for your happiness, they were the cause of your well-being, they were looking after you, making your life better, giving you something that you seemed to be unable to find unless someone outside of you sourced it. You even thought of them as a parent to you in some way, because they were the cause of you.

What i've seen now is that for example when someone you love dies, or you leave a home, or some other big change where something that you had SPECIAL LOVE for stops being there, you're going to experience "loss". Your ego is going to go into a negative victim role, it's going to see itself deprived and hurt and rejected, lost and alone, lacking and in need, and it's going to create a lot of emotional pain and wallow in the misery of powerlessness, and in weakness and sickness. And it's going to feel like there's been a big terrible loss because the external thing that you believe you NEED in order to be happy has gone. And it will feel that even part of your own self is gone.

It's not really loss about the person or thing, or really to do with the fact that they've left. The loss is caused by the continued "relationship" psychologically in which you see them as the cause of you. The same "power" you gave them to cause your happiness, is still being given to them, and that means that when they fail to give the happiness to you, you will be unhappy. And the more power you gave them to do this, the worse it will feel. THAT is the cause of grief - not getting what you want. And the ego will pout and cry and feel like a child that isn't getting what it wants.

The attachment. The dependency. The depending on something external. The seeking for the source of love, or even of your SELF, outside of yourself instead of finding it within. The unwillingness to own the power and the love within, resulting in a projection and disowning of it, such that when the person providing the love leaves, you're left empty handed with your own lack of inner love. And then you are in sorrow because you're empty and miserable without their "help." And you feel lost and don't know who you are anymore because part of your identification has died.

The secret of salvation says that you are doing this to yourself. So yes, it means that you are unhappy because you have given your power away, and are using the relationship to disempower yourself. If you are in this "unholy" relationship with someone or something, where you are "getting" something from it that you believe you lack inside, or NEED from the person, you're not going to be happy long-term. As soon as they leave, you're screwed, because now there's no-one to fill the shoes that you keep handing over to be filled.

When you admit to this and own the power, taking back the power you gave TO these things to cause your happiness, now you are correcting the REAL problem. The real problem isn't the loss or the change in life events, it's the "seeking and not finding" love outside yourself. It's wanting some external person or thing or place to love you, be there for you, reassure you, give something to you. It's essentially you being dependent and irresponsible, and it's you trying to disown your power. You have loss because you think YOU lack something, something you gave away.

When you take that power back, and own the responsibility, and see yourself as CAUSE, no longer regarding the person or thing as the "cause of" what you feel, or what you experience, this then uproots the entire ego thought system and the dynamic that generates the suffering. If you are causal, no one else can CHANGE YOU or influence you or make you feel something or alter your experience. And that is spiritual because it means you are owning up to the powerful being that you really are - a being with NO NEEDS.

You CANNOT be ANY KIND of victim if you are empowered, if you are responsible, if you have owned the CAUSE of your suffering. Because the cause of your suffering is NOT the absence of the person or thing, it's your SELF ATTACK, in which you are giving your power away and using it to hurt yourself. The only way to end the negative consequences of victimhood, is to also end the so-called "positive consequences". You do NOT want your happiness to be depending on anyone or anything other than God who IS ITS SOURCE.

When you take that power and causation back and own it, you are not only undoing the attachment, you are undoing the dependency, you are undoing the neediness and lack, you are undoing both forms of victimhood, and are reclaiming your INDEPENDENCE. Your freedom from suffering is literally a choice. You choose to stop giving your power away to people and things that are not supposed to have power over you. Not even the good people, not even the friends, not even the family, not even the beloved partners, husbands or wives. You can have a far healthier relationship still but without the conditions and dependent needs.

Moving OUT of that specialness, that dependency, that power game, that subtle positive victimhood, that neediness, that irresponsibility, that insecurity, is a movement towards a holy relationship. A holy relationship with yourself and others, in which you no longer are trying to have an egoic specialness as the foundation for "what they mean to you" or "what they do to you." You stop playing the negative victim, AND the positive victim, and stop trying to get your needs met from outside of yourself. God and your reclaiming of the inheritance which God has given you is all you need for that.

I can say that realising this is very freeing, empowering, and does for me seem to be greatly reducing the sense of loss that I've been having for months. I cannot suffer if I do not choose to do so. I am ruler of the universe, master of my destiny. Nothing happens to me without my consent. I cannot suffer or be hurt unless I do it to myself. And the only way I can do something to myself is to disown my power and try to get someone else to do something to me, for me. Do I want to be a slave to someone or something else deciding for me if I am happy, or will I choose to own the power and the happiness that God has given me already?

All sense of loss arises from believing that a changing world is real. If it is real, and if something goes away, a part of reality has been lost. If it is real, there has been a real separation. And if that's true, you absolutely must be in a state of deprivation. Time itself induces loss every second, and time is death.

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

Something that you thought was real and valuable has been taken away. A part of reality or God itself has been destroyed and kept apart. The mind reasons that, because it's real and because it's not there, there is an absence, and a part of yourself has been ripped away.

The feelings of grief then rise up to correspond to that belief that something real is lost. The mind invents them to make sense of the situation. Then people in the world who believe in bodies will tell you that it's completely normal and natural to grieve. It does make perfect logical sense, given the premise that this world is real and loss has happened, but it is not natural at all.

In God's immortal reality nothing real can ever be lost, suffer attack, be ripped away or destroyed, forgotten about or separated from. No-one can suffer or be sick or die. Everyone is a part of everyone forever, by God's will. Impermanence of any kind is impossible, and nothing real can be threatened.

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today."

What it then boils down to is, that if you to any degree believe this world or bodies is reality, you will be constantly in varying degrees of loss. If anything at all so much as moves an inch, it implies a separation. If something bigger and more important seems to go away, you will miss it. If a body person dies off and stops being around, you'll notice it intensely. And then there will be the logical conclusion of a loss of something real - a real loss and a real grief.

The problem we have is that we're still working on waking up to God's truth and we still believe in bodies. We still confuse people for their physical bodies and still regard this world as reality. And that sets us up for the consequences of our wrong decision. It means that we're primed to experience losses before they even happen. We've set ourselves up for a fall, by choosing to believe that something temporary can be depended upon forever.

It's our attachment to bodies, our valuing of bodies, and our confusion of bodies with souls/minds, that lays the foundation for devastation and despair and grief. If and when they do go away, which everything in the world of form does eventually, its cruelty will induce all manner of egoic reactions.

"They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

An important dynamic that I've experienced is the belief that the person dying is causing you to be upset. If they have gone way, they have attacked you and caused you to grieve. How dare they die. And how dare they stop being there. This will produce anger and resentment. And of course this means you will scapegoat the dead person and project guilt onto them to blame them for causing a loss, which will have nothing to do with them at all and everything to do with you trying to get rid of your own guilt.

Then even further, underneath the anger will be a sense of hurt, as though you have been hurt by the death. And of course that boils down to a belief that the death of anything can infect you and cause you to die along with it. And so now the person who has left the body has returned to life in heaven, and you are left behind in a state of death and suffering, and you are the one who is dead.

"The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death."

Death isn't real and doesn't really exist. It doesn't do anything to anything real and nothing real can ever die. But if you believe in a world that dies all the time, you can be sure you'll be upset before long. This is why the world is a constant disappointment, because you expect it to last forever. You'll be torn between efforts to wake up and acknowledge God's truth, and the continued belief that death is real which constantly pulls you back into hell like an anchor.

To try to forgive death really means forgiving the entire world of space and time and everything in it. To focus on the reality that a person has not really died, still lives on, and is still a part of me in communication and sharing is of course helpful. But at the same time, the other part of me which is ego aligned and trusts death, is continually pulled into the consequences of that belief. And that means the constant nagging reminder of "yes she really is dead isn't she!"

Feelings of grief, loss, absence, deprivation, anger, etc arise. The seeming "fact" that a person has died slaps you in the face, telling you that you have "suffered" a serious loss. As if the serious loss has happened to you against your will. You might be in grief and feeling like a victim, but at the same time it's true that nothing has really happened. And how can you have been caused to grieve against you will?

But this focus on truth can cause a hurdle to the grieving, because while you try to align yourself with God's truth of immortality, the rest of you is pulled horribly into a dark place of sadness and hopelessness and loss. You can't properly deal with the loss, in a typically dysfunctional way at best, because trying to be holy and perfect all the time makes it seem like a guilty sin to give it any time and attention. And yet it calls to you constantly to deal with it.

At some point then, if you're going to persist in believing in the world, you have left yourself with little choice but to go through a grieving process. If you are not yet ready to completely eradicate all belief in death and thus spacetime ("without the idea of death there is no world"), you're probably going to have to settle at least in part for second-best, failure, impossible struggle, and forced grief that seems pointless. If the world is real and the body is real and the body is lost, your ego is going to suffer about it.

So then at some point you have to turn to the grief and just go through it and feel the horrible shit, acknowledge it and be terribly upset. And this is the part that people call natural, but it is far from it. It's like being stuck in a state that you're not supposed to be in and having to deal with it in a totally conflicted way. And even when you egoically have a total spaz about it, which seems to make it go away for a while, it still doesn't solve it completely.

You can't possibly find peace and acceptance about the situation if the situation is real. There is no atonement there, so there is no cure. Grief will keep regurgitating and producing more upset emotions. There is no freedom while the world is still a reality. So then you're in a situation where you can't find peace and are forced face-to-face with a horrible loss, and all you can do is cry and feel unhappy and be a victim.

People will tell you that you then must allow yourself to grieve - embrace the victimhood, as though this is healthy, and perhaps it is at least better than bottling it up or going into less healthy forms of handling it. You are just going to have to feel it, grieve, and go through the loss. And that does indeed totally suck because it's not really a sane solution. And that means turning away from the constant barrage of God-truths and forgiveness statements and just letting yourself feel the horror for a while. Sometimes you just have to do something even if it's bullshit.

So then you cry, and you cry again, and you do some more and you have a huge catharsis. And somehow this is what the world calls healing. And supposedly you adjust and adapt, as though that's some kind of transformation or coming to terms with it, but that really isn't an awakening either.

It's more like a putting up with and a tolerating and a gradually undoing of the special relationship dynamics, attachments and so on. It's more like learning to let the person be ripped away and trying to just tolerate the pain of that until it stops hurting so much. And until the separation is truly undone it will keep coming back and haunting you for years to come.

It then seems like you pretty much have to grieve and be miserable and mourn and all that, which is a total course failure given that it means you're now part of the "black draped mourners" who are in the funeral procession and not doing God's will, per ACIM's teaching. But since you are where you are with this whole thing, and are not ready to totally surrender into atonement, you just have to go through the bumpy road rollercoaster of despair until it eases up somehow. Hopefully you can use all this as an opportunity to forgive and let go of the belief in death and the world.

"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself."

I'd like to say I personally am beyond all this but I'm definitely not. Last week was horrendous, entering into states of victimhood and terrible strong emotions and crying and being bedridden for several days trying to avoid vertigo and sinus stress. The body wasn't too happy about the grieving process either - feel the feelings and it becomes stressed out - don't feel the feelings and it develops physical symptoms instead. It's a lose-lose situation until you somehow just get through it. And it keeps coming.

Moral of the story is, if you're not enlightened it's going to suck. And that's your fault because you chose it, and you're not ready to stop choosing it, so get ready to suck. And then hopefully after some severe sucking you can free yourself from death's nipple and actually find some sense of happiness again.

You'll have to just deal with an impossible situation as best you can until it sucks less. And meanwhile do your forgiveness shit and hopefully someday you'll find true salvation about it all. You can't avoid the inevitable production of grief feelings if you believe there has really been a loss, and until you can face the fact that you do believe there's been a loss and feel through it, you'll just be in denial.

At least something we have to look forward to is the day when we remember to laugh at all this and realize that none of it was ever true anyway.

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision."

"The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be changed."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer I cannot experience loss and I cannot die. I am not a body. Love created me like Itself."

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Grief from a loss can be very, very difficult to deal with. I've personally had to go through a ton of it. 18 years ago I left my home country of England and immigrated to the USA.

This entailed a significant sense of loss in ways I never imagined and was just horrendous to go through producing massive amounts of tears over a span of several years. Some of the losses included:

Loss of family - not being around them or able to be around them, even on holidays. Not being able to travel easily to see them. Not a single member of my family was at our wedding or any other event. Although no-one literally died, it was as though they all had. Actually just even writing that just now has brought me to tears again.

Loss of culture - not being immersed in the culture and not even realizing it was a culture. Being surrounded by a completely alien environment where no-one even speaks your language or sounds like you, where there are no recognizable holidays or shared events, with no familiar social cues, no familiar traditions, sense of dress code, or anything. Top this off by being surrounded by an entire country that celebrates things you have no familiarity with or sense of identification with, and it adds up to even more alienation.

Loss of familiar forms - an entirely different set of foods, brands, products, money, buildings that are completely different in design, traffic laws totally flipped around, extremely different weather, totally different tv shows, clothing, standards, a different style of working, all new holidays, etc. Not to mention the loss of a sense of "home" or belonging or fitting in or being part of anything.

Loss of identity - I assumed that so much of what made me "me" was inherent to me. It was not. It was inherent to the country and culture. Once I was outside of it it brought into question who I even am, what is truly "mine" and what was just something I inherited or assumed as part of "normality". My whole sense of self was shaken to the core and transformed. I grieved even for who I used to be.

Each year various thing would trigger me off. Especially holidays, birthdays, christmas, and even American holidays which were celebrated en masse but which I could not relate to, making me feel deeply left out in a whole other way. Christmas was a nightmare. The first sign of decorations or snow or holiday jingles would immediately trigger 2 months of hell. Sometimes I felt powerfully compelled to just run away and get the hell out of here.

What I had to learn, was about what this grief is, what is causing it, and what I can do about it. Besides hundreds of boxes of tissues, accompanying the massive purge of "losses" that I perceived, I tried various things. One thing which did immediately help was EFT (emotional freedom technique) - a form of acupressure, which alleviates emotional pain. It takes the edge off and offers some relief. But I wanted to truly heal this suffering.

What I've learned about grief is that is stems entirely from ego beliefs. Just as the course say, "No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision." Meaning, unless I am doing something to myself, there can be no basis for grief.

Every single sense of grief or loss comes from a perceived "real separation" occurring. Something which seemed real, which is now inaccessible, unavailable, distant, kept apart, or more permanently removed. This can be a loss of a person's life or a country or a pet or a culture or a favorite job or a tv show or whatever.

The ego first values these things by making them special, making them real, attaching to them, identifying with them, and believing they are important. Then, when one of these things is "lost" or separated from us, we literally are experiencing this idea that we're separated from reality, from what we "love", from what we think is valuable or important. This produces a rift within our mind, a split, and it can be very deep.

This sense of "real separation happening" is absolutely nothing short of a reflection or fragment of the idea of being separated from God. Every "loss" is the idea that God has been lost. That love has gone away. This produces horrendous feelings of lack, emptiness, depression, sadness, loss, loneliness, hurt, anger, fear, guilt, shame, you name it.

Additionally, in the ego thought system there is an idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice means that you first of all make something real or valuable or special, and then you believe that in order to atone you have to forceably be deprived of it, even while you still value it, which *guarantees* that you will suffer a sense of having lost something important to you. It is the idea that if you lose i.e. sacrifice something, you will gain something. The ego is totally nuts.

Even giving something to someone else through the ego and perceiving it as you being diminished or lacking or losing in some way, is the exact same dynamic which all grief is based on. And your reaction to it will be varying degrees of a sense of loss. It may not be a deep deep grief when you begrudgingly give up something you liked, but it's still the same dynamic.

I've found over time that all of my grief stems from my false perception. i.e., it ENTIRELY erupts out of the perception that a "real separation" has occurred. There is no other cause of it. It is not really about "oh I miss that person" or "oh I lost that job I loved" or "oh I don't have my family any more". These are mere forms of the same basic content of separation. It is the sense of having lost something you are attached to or which is special to you, i.e. fake reality, that produces the ego responses of grief.

I have also found, that even if I am deep in feelings of grief and it becomes possible to reclaim or get back or visit people or things which were "lost", this still does not in any way fix the grief. It is my own perception of real separation which causes the upset and until that is undone, as a false belief, I can still be in the presence of the very people or things I lost and still feel a loss. All loss is an inside job.

The grieving is actually taking place INSIDE my mind, between one part of myself that I made special and another part which has lost it. I've seen that my grieving is entirely selfish and about myself, and never really about anything outside of me. This has also taught me that e.g. returning home or going back to family will NOT resolve the problem of grieving, and through my own experience it never has. For the ego it's a fake promise of salvation.

I've also found therefore that any grief that I am having is entirely due to my own beliefs, my own choices, my own perceptions, my own attitude, and what I choose to perceive. If I choose to believe death is real, I WILL automatically be very upset when someone dies. If I choose to make someone special or attach to them or "need" them, I will AUTOMATICALLY grieve whether I like it or not when they are taken away. I set myself up for loss every time that I try to take possession of something or depend on it too heavily or make it special or considering it more exclusively valuable or conditional. And so, I literally do this to myself.

Every ego attempt to make something special, to "have it" or value it or attach to it or believe in it (ego beliefs) or possess it or need it, will AUTOMATICALLY bring with it the conditions for its INEVITABLE LOSS. It is a total trap. You literally are signing up for LOSS, when you sign up for "getting".

The truth is, no-one needs to grieve, no-one is supposed to be experiencing loss, no-one is supposed to be crying or unhappy, no-one is supposed to spend 50 years getting over the loss of a parent or child, no-one is supposed to be SUFFERING like this. Without using ACIM whatsoever, and just fudging our way through this stuff, we will take however long it takes to cry and cathartic and remember and try to keep them alive etc...ie reluctantly letting go. Without any other tools, most people spend years dealign with deep losses.

And then there is another camp of people who are so level-confused that they'll try to force you to just "get over it" or repress it or censor it or not feel any feelings or never cry or bypass it with ACIM pleasantries like "it never happened" etc. For most people, they HAVE to go through a "grieving process" because its the only way they have to heal the ACTUAL problem, which is a sense of separation from God. And that is the ONLY problem, even in the case of grief, and even in the case of death.

If a person is having such a deep emotional pain, there is nothing helpful in repressing it or trying to ignore it or not letting it out or trying not to cry or to shove it down in some way to pretend it's not there. Feelings, once they are created, MUST be felt and allowed to flow. And usually the sense of loss is so deep that it simply generates a ton of feelings. They must be felt, not turned into emotional constipation. But that said.... tentatively.... there must be a better way, and there is.

Tackling the real issue, which is a sense of "real separation" or "real loss" or "real sacrifice" or "real absence", which is a BELIEF in your mind that has nothing to do with the world or other people, there is much more HOPE for a swifter recovery. What a person has "suffered" in a "loss" is really that they are suffering from a false perception of reality (God) being lost permanently, as though completely real. It is very, very convincing to the ego, and it produces just horrendous depths of unhappiness.

But this separation, this loss, it can be healed. And it can be SIGNIFICANTLY undone if not entirely, through applications of ACIM principles. i.e. forgiveness, seeing the truth, unearthing the lies about "justified grief" or "everyone grieves" or "loss is normal after death" or whatever else... stuff that well-meaning psychiatrists have made up to explain why most ego-driven people suffer. Jesus has a different message: "You need not suffer."

It is ONLY a perception of real separation that produces grief or loss, ever. There is no other cause. And perception CAN be healed because beliefs CAN be changed. It is NOT necessary to have terrible grief. It is NOT necessary to have a deep, bottomless pit of misery for years and years. It is NOT necessary to feel like you lost part of yourself forever and ever. It is NOT necessary to feel hurt and angry and abandoned and upset for the rest of your life. There is nothing that cannot be healed.

For me now, every single year my "christmas grief" has dwindled at a rapid rate, since doing the course. This years was the least upset I've ever been. Triggers have been collapsed. Ideas of real loss undone. A sense of major separation significantly reduced. Tears have dwindled. It's not simply been through years of suffering and tears or "normal grieving process". It's because I apply forgiveness principles to what I am experiencing. In the middle of a moment of grief, if I can even remember that "I am not separate from God", and that this grief is about that... it immediately cuts through it like a knife.

Grieving can be a very long term process for many people, me included, but it does not HAVE to be. There is no requirement in God's Creation that anyone be upset for any reason. There is no justification for unhappiness. There is no rational for why it's "normal" to be seriously upset about anything. The Course is offering us the END of all death, all suffering, all sickness, and all grieving. To restore us to life, to happiness, to joy, to freedom, to liberation from all sad feelings and all sense of God being dead.

You need not suffer. What can you possibly grieve for but the belief in separation from God, which is not real? There has been no loss. Separation has not happened. God is alive and well and loves you. What's to be grieving about in truth?

If you are immortal, you cannot suffer. You cannot be hurt, damaged, offended, upset, sad, unhappy, depressed, lacking joy, unloved, abused, made sick, killed, harmed, bruised, wounded, angered, nothing. You can only be immortal.

So what does that mean, in light of what seems to be "you suffering"? Even "your suffering" cannot be truly happening to you. YOU cannot be suffering. Your immortal self CANNOT be experiencing suffering. You cannot suffer. So who is suffering?

"Spirit is in a state of grace forever."

So when you seem to be suffering, let's say you feel hurt because someone called you a "stinky fart face", can it really be that you ACTUALLY are hurt? And if you FEEL hurt by this, is this "you feeling hurt" actually really happening? Even if you feel it, even if it seems "it applies to me", even if it seems it was targeted "at you", even if its "highly personal and reminds me of the time I kept farting in church", CAN IT BE POSSIBLE that YOUR IMMORTAL SELF is actually experiencing this or believing it?

It must be that even when under attack, "you" that feels attacked is some kind of fictional construct. It can't REALLY be your immortal self that is attacked. Your immortal self cannot be sad or upset or feeling betrayed or victimized. It's impossible for your real self to feel anything but joy and love and happiness. So when you have an "I feel hurt" moment, even if it involves HEAVY emotions, and terrible pain, and totally seems to be all about YOU and how you feel... CAN IT BE?

It cannot ever be really your true identity that is suffering. Even if you seem to "hurt yourself", you are not hurting yourself. You can't BE hurt. So who or what are you hurting? If you even decide to kill yourself, YOU cannot be killed. So what is dying?

"You are immortal and you cannot die."

WHO or what is being killed? Sure enough it is the body that is involved. But in addition, how is it that there seems to be a sensation that it's YOU that is going down with the ship? WHO or what is under attack? Is this taking place IN YOUR MIND?

Is it possible, that when there is a sensation of hurt or upset feeling or guilt etc, that the feeling ITSELF brings with it a kind of illusion or "sense of" "self"? Could it be that when you are feeling guilty, and you feel like a target, and it feels like everyone can see you and knows you are there, and you are "self conscious" in public, and you want to hide from everyone because you feel like they KNOW your inner guilty secret.... is it perhaps that the guilt ITSELF brings a sense of "centric identity"? Is not anything other than love, a sense of selfishness, and thus a sense of ego?

Some years ago some stuff happened and I had a large amount of guilt because of it. And because of this guilt, I felt ashamed and took it with me everywhere I went. And I felt constantly threatened. Anywhere especially in public, which I avoided, it felt like I had a target on my back, that EVERYONE knew that I was guilty, and they could see this guilty self, and MY experience of this guilty self was a feeling of being very "self conscious". Nervous about what I AM. Feeling like I am "evil" or "bad". Feeling certain that I AM THE GUILT. And that everyone was pointing a finger at me.

It would then happen that if people would attack me, or call me names, or accuse me or whatever, I would feel like "this guilty self" is vulnerable AND attackable. If they would accuse me of something, they were accusing THIS guilty self of it, and IT was self conscious, and IT felt attackable and vulnerable, and IT believed that it deserved punishment and that IT was the ACTUAL target of what people were putting out there. So when they called me by name, and then hurled an abuse, this "guilty self" felt like it was ABOUT IT, personally, and that they were directly addressing this guilty self.

But then after a time and much healing, this guilt was gone. And then I noticed that when these same people were being the same way they seemed to be before, it clearly did not appear to be ABOUT ME, and it was not targeting "that self", that guilty self, that was in me before. And that guilty self and its sense of being "self conscious" ie in fear, was not there to "receive" the attack. It did not exist, so they could not AIM their attack AT it. And so "I", my identity, which was no longer bound up with the guilt, saw myself as NOT being the target of their expressions. And so I felt invulnerable and could now recognize that they were attacking themselves. What happened to the sense of SELF that was present IN THE GUILT?

See, whatever you make TRUE of you you will believe is WHAT YOU ARE, and in effect WHO you are. So if you believe of yourself, "I am guilty", you will believe this DEFINES you. And now you ARE guilt. And this guilt has components of ego in it. And ego is selfish. Ego is a kind of "self centeredness", a self-important self-interest.

If the absence of separation means that there is pervasive light everywhere throughout the universe, then ego is a massive CONDENSING of that, down to a point, such as a star, so that all you are now left with is masses of darkness and a tiny CENTER of a point of light. And this "all that's left" little concentration of "self" now seems to be separated off and small and weak and vulnerable. That littleness is the sense of EGO, and it is experienced like a focus on yourself alone, in isolation.

Everything about ego is about becoming small, little, contracted, compressed, diminished, weakened, self-focused, self-centered, selfish, self-attacking, self-important, self aggrandizing, delusions of grandeur, etc. This condensing produces a kind of "sense" of "me", distinguished from the rest, broken off and separate. This sense of self is "self conscious" ie made of CONCERN for self and FEAR of its own weakness and littleness. The "self conscious" self is in fear and looks out frightened of the world that threatens it. The more EGO you have, the more ego stuff you have, baggage, dark feelings, guilts and hurts, the MORE you feel self centered and like this stuff "is a self". A sense of "separated me", cut off from the rest and not sharing.

It brings with it a kind of "focal point", a contracted little fearful corner of the mind, and the more this little corner withdraws and hides and tries to be even smaller and weaker, the MORE the sense of artificial "self" increases. Because the amount of selfishness is going up, the amount of self importance is going up, the amount of superiority/inferiority complex is going up, and this all produces what SEEMS LIKE a sense of "there is something here", "I am something", "I am all these feelings", "I am these thoughts". You become identified with FORM.

The whole egotism, the attitude, inherently has this bunching up, crunching together, condensing, tightening, contracting kind of thing about it, and this SENSE of this happening FEELS like the formation of a hot-spot in the mind that seems like "where something is, moreso than the rest", or "self interest". A sense of an island within the mind. A "self".

When the guilt goes, when the self attack goes, when the sin is gone, the egotism is gone, and all this tightened contracted littleness "dissipates" and stops being so focused, and without the focus on a tiny little huddled-in-a-corner-hiding sense of identity and truth, that sense of being "separated off" and "a separate identity" goes with it. It just disappears. But that isn't the end of YOU, because your sense of self EXPANDS and moves towards the UNLIMITED, universal, endless holy christ self that you really are.

So who is it that suffers? Who is it that can BE hurt and FEEL vulnerable? It is not your immortal christ self. It is not the real you. But it can seem to be a SENSE of "you" because part of your mind gets caught up in the contraction and withdrawal into "a center", into a little prison, a bodily identity, an identification with locality in space-time. And the more ego-stuff you have in your mind, the more intensely that your mind forms into a huddle of tightly-held-onto stuff, creating an IMPRESSION of you being kind of snagged or caught up on this collection of ego material. And being localized around a "point" it makes you feel like you are this little separated off dot of identity.

It is kind of like.... the suffering, ITSELF, suffers. Just as how fear is self-fulfilling. The guilt ITSELF brings with it a feeling of separate self. Any ego emotions, be it anger or sadness or grief or loss or lack or abandonment or unworthiness or sinfulness or fear or whatever, all brings with it SELFISHNESS, which is isolation and contraction and that attempt to GET AWAY FROM everything else, producing an increasing sense that you are "this something" in the middle of the ocean of mind. And this "sense of self" always feels vulnerable and threatened and unsafe. But this sense of self is PART OF the ego material that's in the mind, and without it your mind DOES NOT experience being a target.

Without the guilt, you cannot feel this. Without the unworthiness or loathing, you cannot feel this. Your mind is elastic and sort of snaps-back into its expanded, non-localized state, spread out evenly and smoothly instead of tightened and restricted and limited. When the guilt goes, YOU stop feeling like "you" are susceptible and attackable. You stop feeling like YOU are guilty. And that sense of "contracted self" goes.

Your sense of identity stops being "caught up in" the "truth" that the guilt expresses. Because if you believe "I AM guilty" then this will set you up to experience that you AND the guilt ARE ONE. And now you ARE guilt. And in the guilt is your "self", your identity. And you will not want to let it go if you believe that letting it go will be the loss of who and what you are. So there is a kind of addiction to the ego materials and an unwillingness to see YOUR SELF as being something NOT associated with, or identified with, the ego materials. e.g. with the guilt. "I am guilty" will feel like you are MADE OF guilt. That it is fundamentally your nature.

So who is suffering? Who is hurt? Who is it that is having loss? Who is sad? Who is unworthy? Who is afraid? THOSE THINGS, combined with your mind, produce a sense of identity, or identification WITH those things, that makes YOU feel and perceive that it is YOU that is those things. That they APPLY to you. Because you think they are PART of your makeup. But it is those things themselves that bring with them the sense of artificial SELF, that is the ego, the selfish self-centered self, the hoarding possessing self, the playing small self. And without YOUR CONSENT, without your BELIEF, that these things are true of you, that sense of little self cannot remain. Because true self is expansive and infinite.

You seem to suffer because you identify WITH and AS ego stuff. Which temporarily makes you believe YOU are being attacked and YOU are the guilty one suffering. But it is really "the ego", the non-existent fictional self, the selfishenss, that is the guilty one. IT feels like IT is guilty, made of guilt. And when you WITHDRAW your allegiance from THE GUILT, that sense of "its about me" goes with it. And then you recognize that your REAL self, your immortal self, was NEVER guilty. It CANNOT BE guilty. And your immortal self doesn't have that sense of self-consciousness, self-concern, self-importance and selfishness.

You can think you are suffering, but you aren't. In a way, it is the ego that is suffering. Ego = suffering. You can think you are "the little self that suffers", but it is NOT really you. Your mind can get CAUGHT IN the trap of the ego viewpoints, which bring with them a sense of self-focus and self-worship and vulnerability, but you are not ever really those things. It is the ego that suffers because the ego IS suffering. It is the ego that has guilt because the ego IS guilt. Without guilt there is no ego. Without a bodily identity there is no body. Without sin there is no world of sin. And without death there is no world.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

So when you feel like "I am guilty" or "I am anything" other than as God created you, know that you are lost in the ego and are feeling ego stuff and ego stuff feels this way and the sense of artificial "me", self importance, being self-absorbed, selfish, comes with that territory. And it is that vulnerable, sensitive false self that seems to be the target of the suffering, NOT your immortal self. And once you dis-identify from that EGOTISM, the whole ego thought system, you let go of these false accusations and the falsely accused goes with it. And all that is left is your immortal spirit. Your true identity in God which can never be attacked.

If you're like me, you probably regard your "self", whatever sense of self you have as "me", this self that seems to perceive and have emotions, as being NOT the ego. And you probably regard the ego as something tucked away in a dark corner that surfaces once in a while, something that you don't think of as "being" all the time. Surely your general day-to-day "self", that you refer to as "me", is not the ego?

But what if the entire sense of who you've regarded yourself as this whole time, who you call by your name, including all your emotions and egoic thoughts, all sense of a self that can suffer in any way, IS the ego? And what if that is not real, and your entire sense of being this self that suffers and feels unhappy and can be hurt is not really the real you?

Jesus hints that our personalities are superficial...

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct."

In truth we're supposed to be experiencing a state of immortality and perfection where we are permanently happy, unaffected, invulnerable, incapable of suffering in any way. Our real self cannot suffer or die, or cannot suffer loss, cannot grieve, cannot be upset, cannot be unhappy or lacking peace in any way.

ACIM tells tells us that "Happiness must be constant" and "God's will for me is perfect happiness" and "Reality is a constant state" and "Immortality is a constant state." If your happiness is meant to be constant, how is it possible that you EVER experience unhappiness? It also tells us that we cannot really suffer, and whatever is experiencing the suffering cannot be my self. As if we have a sort of imposter self, a second self, that we've identified with as who we are, but isn't who we really are.

"The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore this self does not exist at all. And anything it seems to do and think means nothing."

"The self you made, evil and full of sin, is meaningless. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God, and light and joy and peace abide in you."

"I am in the likeness of my creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die." Also lesson 248 says "Whatever suffers is not part of me. What grieves is not myself. What is in pain is but illusion in my mind."

Șo if "I" seem to be having upsets of any kind, unhappiness, sadness, loss, grief, guilt, shame, fear, anger, anything that isn't constant permanent joy, that "stuff" cannot really be a part of my real self. My real self cannot suffer and cannot be unhappy. My real self cannot experience any kind of loss or deprivation or guilt or anything less than perfection.

So if that's true, then what is this self that seems to suffer? And I don't mean some remote hidden ego, I mean the very self, out in the open every day, that you think of as "you" this whole time. On a daily basis, going through life reacting to things, having upset emotions, feeling horrible about stuff, being unhappy, perceiving threats, etc. It's way more out in the open and much closer to "you" than you might have realised. You're being it every single day.

This "you" that you're being, this you that suffers and is unhappy and has grief and anger and so on, that experiences any kind of suffering, THAT is ego (being identified with ego). Or more accurately, who you are has identified WITH a "suffering self", and you see yourself AS IT, as a self that suffers. A self that can feel hurt, a self that has pain, a self that grieves losses, a self that can be in fear or guilt. When "you" suffer, ego is suffering, and YOU are believing IT is who and what you are, as if it is YOUR suffering.

Somehow there has been a mixup, where you currently find yourself "constantly" experiencing various problems and reactions and upset feelings, thinking that these feelings are a part of yourself, that it's even POSSIBLE for you to have such feelings.

How can an immortal perfect loving constantly joyful being ever have even the slightest unhappiness as a part of themselves? They can't. So it then begs the question, this "self" that seems to suffer, which is the combination of your mind plus a false identification WITH ego/body/suffering, can it really be who and what you are? Is this suffering self really you? Can YOU really suffer at all?

This you that you've been all your life and think of as normal, that has emotional reactions and instability and fears and guilts. Can this possibly be a part of yourself as God created you? Jesus says that you cannot suffer and you cannot die. He says you cannot be unhappy and you cannot experience loss. How if you are experiencing loss and are unhappy, is that really YOU that is experiencing it? Or are you experiencing a false sense of self identity, bound to some kind of egoic construct, that sees "itself" (yourself) as even capable of suffering?

If I am having grief and loss for example it feels like "I" am grieving, and I have the feelings, and I feel unhappy, and I have the emotions and I have the cries and I am the one who has had a loss. But this can't be true. My mind can't bring an "end" to the loss by trying to "get over it" as an ego-identified self, but it can dis-identify from that which believes in loss, and that indeed will end it.

So if there is a feeling of loss, it has to be false, and it cannot be a part of myself. If I feel like, or experience it like, "I" am the one who IS IN the loss, HAVING the loss, then I have identified with something that can't be a part of myself in truth. My real self cannot ever lose anything, because nothing real can be threatened.

In such a suffering situation it means my so-called "ego" is not tucked away hidden from sight in the background, it's something I am actively BINDING to and see myself as IN, like I'm wearing it, and have identified WITH it, as if I am trying to be ONE WITH IT, living out from it every second of every day.

And that puts it right in front of my face and even closer than that. It's lurking in plain sight in the very sense of false "self", in the sense of "I am suffering". That it's ME that is suffering. That's my identification with something false. God-given mind, believing falsely.

That's pretty eye opening because no longer does it mean that the ego is some background figure that rears its head occasionally. Even if it is, identifying WITH AND AS it, trying to BE an ego, binds me to it and makes me experience life as though I am suffering. I am the one who is feeling, I am the one who is upset. Only ego can be upset, and if I am UNITING with ego I will be upset as though it's my own upset. And that leads to unconsciousness - spiritual sleep.

So if we ask ourselves, who or what am I, and if there is a feeling of upset, can this feeling of upset really be a PART of me? Can it be mine? Can it possibly be me that is really suffering, if it's impossible for my constant divine self to suffer, ever? If who I really am can NEVER suffer in any way, how can I BE something that suffers, and how can the suffering be truly mine?

It then frames your egoic emotion reactions, yours stresses, as not really yours. How can these upset feelings be yours? Yes you are identified and "one with" the ego self that suffers and who sees itself as capable of suffering through its false narrow perception, but this is a false association. IT's suffering cannot be YOUR suffering unless your sense of identity is confused with it. We don't just have a little ego in the back of our minds, we are actively holding onto it and trying to BE it and regard it as us!

So now it brings into question, whether we should be distancing ourselves from, detaching from, whatever seems to be suffering, and from suffering itself. If we have upset feelings in any way, perhaps we need to be telling ourselves, these feelings are NOT a part of me, I cannot suffer, and therefore I cannot be having these feelings. I'm not having these feelings. And we must have chosen to have them if we've put them there.

That seems pretty radical, to just regard all upset emotions and sickness and suffering as impossible and not a part of you.

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent."

If we are meant to be fully identified with and as immortal spirit, then we need to shift our identification away from this "suffering self". We can't BE a self that suffers if we are permanently holy. We can't be a self that is vulnerable and attackable, or frightenable, or capable of being guilty, or of experiencing loss and grief. Whoever or whatever is having that stuff, it can't be me or mine. And if it's there and I'm immersed in it so much that I feel like "its mine", I am unconscious and have identified with ego, and have forgotten who I am.

And that really brings into question, who are you really? Perhaps you are being FAR more ego than you thought. Perhaps every single day you are immersed in egotism and suffering and unhappiness. Perhaps your whole sense of identity is lost and wrapped up in living AS an egoic entity, seeing yourself as having emotions that are impossible in reality, as having forms of suffering that cannot affect your soul.

Perhaps you are much more ego-identified than you ever thought possible, and perhaps your whole sense of self, of who and what you are, is much more out of touch with your real self than you thoughts. Perhaps your real self is on some whole other level or dimension, and perhaps this self you're being every day is the self that is the "not me that lurks in the dark corner". To your real self, made of light, your everyday suffering self IS trying to be an ego. Who you have become, is not who you are.

Are we ready to identify fully with spirit, stop seeing ourselves as capable of suffering, bringing into question ALL ego emotions and reactions, and even questioning whether we are the self that we thought we were all this time? What if you are not you, and you are not being yourself right now, and you don't even know who you are?

"There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this: I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on myself." Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will TELL you of Itself."