There is a simple law about health that you need to know about, as described here:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."

If you do not regard yourself as an illusion in any way ("I am not an illusion but a reality"), you do not see YOURSELF as an illusion, and therefore you do not SHOW UP AS an illusion. Instead, you show up as INVISIBLE. As if you have no body. You do not need a body, and the body would not be an accurate identification of what you think of yourself.

The body is always coming from your mind, as an outward picture of an inward condition. Always. It is always being projected outward. It never has its own condition or its own state of being or its own mind or will or power or thoughts or anything else. It’s purely a projected mental image. It is YOUR mental image about what you think your identity is. Or, what you are made of. Or, what you think is true of you.

If you think it is true of you that you are less than as God created you, pure spirit, wholeness, having no form or need for form, you WILL materialize - ie mis-create - what appears to be a body out of nowhere. The mind makes the body. And the mind can make as many bodies as it likes. As Jesus said in the special notes to Helen, here are his exact words where he describes exactly what I’ve just said:

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand."

His body disappeared because He had no illusions about himself, his identity. He did not identify himself as dead, or made of separation, and so He stopped showing up as that. He stopped imagining himself as that.

Note he also says, the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. The mind MAKES the body. And it constantly is projecting a body when it sees itself as limited. It is projecting the body at every moment to sustain an illusion of a constant self. But the body is always an effect, never a cause of anything. So if the mind wants to believe something else, the body MUST change. It has no will to stop the mind.

Now, a very important thing to realize is, the state of the body, being a mental picture of "self", directly corresponds ALWAYS to how a person’s mind is seeing itself. What it believes it is. So if it believes it is sinful or guilty, the mind will attack itself, thus attack its own image of itself which will show up as a body infected by or attacked by guilt and sin. This will make the body appear, ie be projected as though, it seems to be "sick". It does not "have" a sickness, it IS a sickness.

It will REMAIN showing up as sick for as long as the MIND decides to be sick. It will have no ability to heal itself. Bodies DO NOT heal themselves. The immune system is a bullshit ego concept. It is an illusion. Bodies does not heal anything. They do nothing. Only the mind orchestrates stuff happening.

When the mind says jump, the body jumps. Literally. When the mind says, I am sick and separate, a body will be projected which shows signs of sickness and separation. When the mind says, now is the time that I am well and joined with God, the body MUST show up as a picture of a body that is in perfect health.

You have to realize, the body has NO ABILITY to counter the choice of the mind as to how it wants to identify itself. It IS the mind’s attempt to identify itself as an illusion. There also IS NO OTHER CAUSE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD that can do anything to the body. It cannot be made sick, or hurt, or damaged in any way, unless the mind is believing it is damaged. And then the MIND puts the damage into the body, not the world. As Jesus says here clearly:

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself ... No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

That means there is NO CAUSE outside of you, at all. Ever. The body CANNOT be caused against YOUR will. Ever. However it shows up, is how you are MAKING IT show up.

There is nothing in the world that makes your body do or feel or adjust or change in any way at all. Any appearance to the contrary is some illusion the mind is putting in place to pretend it is irresponsible. Sickness IS irresponsibility. The mind however is ALWAYS in charge even if it makes an illusion of death. Death cannot happen to the body unless the mind destroys the body itself. "No-one dies without their own consent".

This also means, that if the body is showing up as sick, SOMETHING IS WRONG with the mind. Guaranteed. 100%. If the body is sick, the mind HAS NOT been healed. This is metaphysical law with zero exceptions. There can be states of mind reached which seem like awakening, but where the body remains sick. In such states, the mind HAS NOT awoken from the dream of death, as proved by the fact that the body still seems to die, because the mind STILL BELIEVES it does not deserve eternal life, and so accepts death - an illusion of giving up all will and causality. An attempt not to choose at all.

Rather than see this as some kind of condemnation or guilt-inducing statement that, if you are sick, it’s your fault, which the ego would love to indulge, instead see it as perhaps shocking or upsetting at first, to have to admit that YOU are responsible for making your sickness. This is not always welcome news, often producing ego reactions of guilt and fear and so on. But it is also revealing to you a POWER that you have. A power and a CHOICE, a FREEDOM, a HOPE, in which IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND, you NEED NOT SUFFER.

This does not EVER mean, that if you change your mind, you will transcend sickness and death and not care that it "happens to you". This is 100% missing the point and a total bastardization of the teaching. No-one can be at peace with death because peace is evidence you do not believe in Eternal Life. Sickness and death DO NOT happen to you. YOU HAPPEN. Sickness only happens in your body beacuse it’s a picture of YOUR MIND’s sickness. Death only happens in your body because YOU DESTROY YOURSELF. This has to be owned up to before you can claim the right, and power, and freedom, to EXERCISE your FREE WILL choice to NEVER SUFFER AGAIN.

It does mean, on the one hand, you HAVE to admit to being responsible for causing ALL of the suffering you have experienced, it was ALL you doing it to yourself, and no-one and nothing-else EVER caused anything you’ve experienced. That can be a big chunk of crap to swallow. BUT.... it also opens the door to the POSSIBILITY, that you still have this power, and can CHOOSE AGAIN and therefore produce a state of NO SUFFERING.

You MUST demonstrate a body that is invulnerable, cannot be hurt, cannot be damaged, has no sickness, does not show any signs of attack, and PROVES that your brother and the whole world has done NOTHING to affect the Son of God. OTHERWISE... you WILL attack yourself, and you will suffer, by your own hand. No-one else will be doing it to you but yourself. This is the SECRET TO SALVATION! YOU ARE DOING THIS ALL TO YOURSELF. And because you are - if you OWN IT - you can choose simply to NEVER AGAIN be sick or dead or suffer in any way. Claim your IMMORTALITY!

There is no power in all the world that does anything to you against your will, other than YOU. There is no cause in the world whatsoever to produce effects in you or your body that YOU do not put there yourself. Worldly causes are cover-up jobs for your mind to pretend its irresponsibility is someone else’s fault.

There is no form of sickness, even DEATH, that cannot be reversed, if the MIND decides to no longer believe in it. Whatever you believe about yourself, IT WILL SHOW UP. It must. Mind is cause. Form is the effect of believing in illusions. Your mind has power over ALL MATTER. "My self is ruler of the universe".

So realize this. While you have a body, your body ALWAYS EQUALS your state of mind. So long as you THINK you are a body, YOU WILL MAKE ONE. So long as you think you are separate from God, you will PRESENT A PICTURE of what you believe for all to see. "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt"!! But there can also be a totally transparent depiction of what’s going on inside of you, if you fully accept atonement.

If the body is showing up as sick, your mind *IS* sick. You ARE responsible for it. No-one else is. The world is not. The body is not. Having mastery over form REQUIRES extreme, absolute ownership and responsibility for EVERYTHING you are experiencing, down to the atoms that make up the body. YOU are putting them there. If the body is not doing well, it’s because you keep attacking yourself. Period. Don’t let this induce guilt or worthlessness. Instead forgive yourself and choose again.

If you can recognize this correlation between mind and body, you will realize that *IF* you change your mind, THE BODY HAS TO FOLLOW. It is guaranteed. It is a depiction of your "Self" as you see yourself. This is why when you shift into a miracle, you temporarily move into INVISIBILITY. "Miracles are temporary shifts into invisibility, that is why they heal." Invisibility (of form) correlates to having a mind which is CLEAR and FREE OF SEPARATIONS. You can see through it because it has become transparent and UNBLOCKED. This movement into formlessness heals the mind and thus the body MUST follow.

This also means, as Jesus has said, *IF* you get your mind into a state of perfect clarity and truth, and given that you are temporarily still projecting a body, the body BECOMES INVULNERABLE because YOU ARE, it cannot BE sick for ANY reason, because you are not sick, and IT CANNOT DIE because you see yourself as immortal spirit. Or at least a glimpse of that. Jesus assures us there is a divine protection that the body will experience IF we will be purely vigilant for the truth. Your body CAN be indestructible, free of aging, weather, the need for food and water, and so on. "I am sustained by the love of God all through the day", goes to the extreme!

And He literally means this..... IT CANNOT be sick. Sickness is IMPOSSIBLE where guilt has been removed. Sickness CANNOT RETURN where guilt has been removed. A guiltless mind cannot produce a suffering body. And why would it. A suffering body is an attack on your brother and yourself, due to a belief the world is causing you. Sickness is NONSENSE. It is a portrayal of a victim who believes they are sinful. But everyone is free to choose. You can choose whatever you want, but you cannot escape the consequences of your decisions.

You are cause. This is a course in cause, not effect. Choose health by choosing to heal the mind of its misperception of itself, and it will automatically take care of projecting a healthy body in the short term. This is the same as saying to seek first the kingdom of God and your way will be made straight.

The metaphysics of ACIM is not something that someone made up, it is not an interpretation, it is not subject to someone's opinion, and there is no room for questioning it. It is not one of many possible definitions of the truth. It is THE truth. Either you understand it as it is and accept it as logically true, or you are in denial and confusion.

Metaphysics are FACTS. The thought system of the Holy Spirit is completely logically consistent, as is the thought system of the ego. There is absolutely no room for interpretation. What is "true" can easily be determined by looking at the logical structure of what has happened and where things fit. If you master the metaphysics, you will be able to extrapolate the logical thought system to explain absolutely anything in its correct perspective.

What happens after the separation from God is completely 100% logical. Everything that happens after separation MUST happen, and it MUST happen in a very specific way. The effects of separation are not varied or one possibility among many. There is only one way to separate, there is only one scenario which comes about when separation seems to have happened, and there is only one outcome.

If you can learn the fundamental, completely logically consistent metaphysical structure of the separation, it gives you a framework in which everything else fits into place. A Course in Miracles is teaching this metaphysical structure, but it is not always very obvious. Its obscure nature tends to lead people to not even realize there is a solid "core" to the Course or that you can use this structure to perfectly explain everything the ego does, the meaning of death, and what MUST be true based on it.

For example, separation from God is not possible, because you cannot be somewhere that God is absent. God is everywhere. This immediately tells us that, logically, to believe that this IS possible is insanity. It also must tell us that to believe in such a separation is to believe in a DREAM, a fiction, something which is false or not true and not real. This is already the beginning of some very solid metaphysics, and many people grasp this basic starting point.

But then there is a progression, because as soon as there is a belief in separation, the ENTIRE ego thought system can be logically described and predicted for how it will operate, what it will perceive and believe, what it will value, and everything else about it. Even such things as special relationships, special hate, unconscious guilt and so on, are not just things that happen to be a part of the situation we're in, they MUST ABSOLUTELY FEATURE in an experience of being separate from God. There is a completely LOGICAL progression of thought and circumstance which HAS to come about when there is separation, which leads to all of these things.

Jesus describes some of this in the Laws of Chaos, where he says that first there are separations into individuals/bodies, then this MUST give rise to the perception that each individual is different and therefore lacking, and this MUST then give rise to a sense of competition because others have something you lack, and this MUST mean every individual is sinful for the attack that their "independence" inflicts on each other, and you then end up trying to "get" from others what you lack, by valuing what they lack and trying to possess it - which is the purpose of "specialness" and leads to all special relationships. All of this is a completely logical progression. It's simply what must happen and must unfold based on the separation having taken place.

Another example is what happens right after separation in terms of the split mind and how it becomes at war with itself. If the mind believes in separation, in order to be separate from God, it MUST have separation within itself. There is nowhere else for the separation to be. So the mind becomes divided, believing in "self and other". This MUST mean that WILL is also split, and this MUST mean that both of those parts are in conflict. There are two wills operating seemingly separately or with separate goals, since they logically cannot be the same or in agreement otherwise they could not BE separate. They MUST be at war with each other. They MUST be in a state of conflict. This conflict leads to ALL expressions of war and attack and vengeance and eventual death. It all progresses completely logically.

The metaphysics also shows that what once was a single whole mind, or whole self (Christ), must have become divided and split apart following separation. This mind that believes in separation thus gave rise to multiple illusions of individuals. The illusion of these individuals BEING individual is completely dependent on a strong illusion of the ways they are different, and as this illusion of difference becomes stronger and more established, it turns into what we call "form", which is what the BODY is. So a body is actually a logical progression of the thought system of separation and MUST come about if the separation has happened. Bodies are just very strongly-believed-in fragments of mind appearing separate and unique in order to maintain the ongoing breakdown of wholeness. This is also why bodies are a "picture" of the destruction of Christ, made as separation devices to keep individuals apart and therefore keep Christ from being whole.

There is no guesswork here. There are no opinions. There is no interpretation. This is simply a completely logical, consistent development which takes place. If there is a separation, it has "features" which come from it quite "naturally" and which are completely unavoidable. They are not optional. Bodies, worlds, special relationships, death, sickness, it is ALL a "natural" part of a thought system of separation. The metaphysics recognizes this and gives a perfectly consistent structure to it. The metaphysics can explain WHY all of these things come about.

As you learn the metaphysics, which is somewhat deeper than just "the words" of the Course, you will acquire a kind of template or set of simple laws which you understand to make perfect sense. These can be somewhat abstract so it can require some learning to "generalize" the learning and realize that it's all based on a simple set of logic. But once you then "get" the simple logic, you can now USE that simple logic to examine absolutely any aspect of life, any activity or purpose or way that something happens, and describe it in terms of what the METAPHYSICS says about it, which will be the truth. Irrefutable truth. Provided your grasp of the metaphysics is clear and consistent and you're not making subtle logical errors, the metaphysics gives you VISION to be able to see the truth of what's happening or where things fit together.

For example, recently there have been discussions about whether you can be at peace with death. There were many opinions given. None of the opinions were relevant. The only truth is in what the metaphysics says. In the metaphysical truth, the body is a separation device, it is an illusion, and it is within the mind of Christ. It blocks and hides what is behind it and its only function and purpose is to maintain the illusion of the mind being separate. The metaphysics also tells us that since God is life, and being opposite to God is the separation, separation MUST be death. It also must be a fiction of death - a dream of death. It HAS to be. It also tells us that therefore when the body is "alive", the body is still inside a dream of death. This also tells us that the death which occurs at the end of "life" is just a symbol for death, because what happens before it is also death. This is why Jesus says "death is not an end, it is a continuation."

Also since the metaphysics teaches that death is the opposite of life, and life and peace are one, and therefore death is not peace, we VERY SIMPLY can conclude that it is IMPOSSIBLE for there to be death and peace at the same time. This is irrefutable, perfect logic. This is the truth that the metaphysics tells us. It has nothing to do with anyone's opinion, anyone's lack of understanding, anyone's version of what they think is true based on their so-called experiences, or anything else. It CANNOT be true that death and peace are the same thing or that they truly can be 100% experienced at the same time. Yet many people have tried to justify that they are at peace with death or have come to accept it. They MUST be in denial. The metaphysics makes this clear.

Another simple truth which you can conclude based on the simple metaphysics of separation, is that the split mind is in a state of war BUT it also simultaneously NEEDS that war to continue, in order to maintain a sense of being less than whole and of having an opposite. If truly the opposition were completely wiped out of existence, there would be no more possibility of being at war, and war is entirely founded on being separate and having a split will. So on the one hand, the ego now is constantly trying to attack and be opposed to the "other", but at the same time, it MUST KEEP the other as an enemy for as long as possible. It does not want war to actually SUCCEED, it wants war to be CONTINUOUS.

This is a simple logical conclusion based on the metaphysics of separation. It's not my opinion or someone's interpretation. Therefore all states of conflict and war entail people choosing to suffer for as long as possible. It also means that if one group of people wins the war and totally wipes out the opposition, there would have to be PEACE, because without an opponent there is no basis for fighting. To end the war would thus truly undo the separation, it would be the undoing of those who tried to wage war, and this is not what the ego thought system wants. This is all simple logic. So if someone comes along and has a discussion about war or conflict or attack, if you grasp the metaphysics you can use it to explain what MUST be true about war and conflict.

The separation from God is an entirely CLOSED SYSTEM. There is no room for accidents, there is no room for multiple opinions or interpretations. There is only the FACT of what has happened. You can accept it or you can deny it. If you have a solid grasp of the metaphysics you can DEPEND on it so much that you can TRUST it and you can use it to discern whether people are saying bullshit or whether they are aware of the truth. It also however requires that YOU not be in denial and you not be making logical errors. And the fact is there are a lot of people making a lot of logical errors. Sometimes they are quite subtle. But when someone thinks they know what the truth is but have not quite got it, they will defend it to the death and it must produce war.

Metaphysics reveals that there is only one truth. There is no room for error. There are facts, and that's it. You don't get an opinion. You don't get to interpret it to fit what you want it to be. You don't get to change it. In fact, this extends to your relationship with God and the fact that you keep trying to believe that God has changed His mind about you, or that you can change God. Both must be logically false. But that doesn't stop us believing otherwise, because we are insane. To not get the metaphysics is insanity, and the ego will use it to confuse you and delude you.

There is so much "insight" which can flow out about all kinds of topics if you will just learn the fundamental basic structure of separation. It also reveals to you that there really is only one problem, one dream, one solution. Illusions of how certain things seem different or unique or unlike each other, calling for a special explanation, can be "seen through" if you have the metaphysics right. You will know what to trust, and how to discern. You will be clear about what is true and what is false. You will also be amazed at how you're able to use the metaphysics as a powerful TOOL to give you the truth - what MUST be true - based on what you have learned is logically consistent, EVEN IF you have never thought about the particular topic before. The metaphysics will tell you WHAT IS the truth of the situation, and MUST be true about it, regardless of whether you even believe it yourself.

This logical consistency also builds upon itself. It's like, if you have this blueprint and you use it to place the first few pieces exactly where they belong, then you start being able to draw further logically consistent conclusions from it. It's like a jigsaw puzzle, where if you start out with the correct corners and the correct edge pieces, all of the other pieces can be correctly positioned and discerned, leading to a completely consistent whole picture. It's almost like effortless learning. You don't need to keep learning lots of individual separate modalities or pieces of information. You just get this one 'guidance system' which is the light of truth, the thought system of the Holy Spirit, which puts into perspective absolutely everything else. You switch on this one light and ask IT what is the truth, instead of being in the business of MAKING UP what you want the truth to be all the time, and it will very obviously and clearly tell you exactly what the truth is, from a clear and consistent perspective.

This is also why it is imperative to surrender your egoic attempt to always be the one who decides everything, to always be the one who decides what things mean, to always have your own opinion, to always be running "your own life" which you see as a possession of your own separate from God's will. Trusting Holy Spirit/God is trusting the metaphysics of the truth. The metaphysics completely correlates to the Holy Spirit's thought system. As you trust IT, you are trusting HIM. And as you begin to THINK WITH it, you are thinking WITH HIM, and you will start to have thoughts which are in line with, compatible with, and consistent with, HIS way of thinking, which is perfectly supportive of the metaphysics. The metaphysics of truth IS the way that the mind functions from a true perspective.

So our opinions mean absolutely nothing. Our separate viewpoints are an act of war. Thinking we know that our interpretation of the Course is right, unless it actually IS in line with Holy Spirit's thought system, MUST be a state of denial and MUST entail the authority problem - the ego trying to be the one who determines what is true or not. Only the truth is true. We can accept it, or we can be in denial. If we are in denial, believing we know the truth, we are mistaken. You can accept God's love, or you can reject it, but you cannot change it. You can deny that God is real but that won't change the metaphysics of reality whatsoever. You can pretend all you want, but ultimately, all of reality is a CLOSED SYSTEM with no options and no alternatives. It is what it is. Trying to make it be something it is not, is ego, and WILL produce the illusion of death.

"A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at ALL levels. Illness, which is really "not Right Mindedness", is the result of level confusion in the sense that it always entails the misbelief that what is amiss in one level can adversely affect another."

"All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion which created magic rested on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter, which can control the mind."

"It was the first level of the error to believe that the body created its own illness. Thereafter, it is a second mis-step to attempt to heal it through non-creative agents."

"The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else. ... To use a medium of communication as a medium of attack is an obvious confusion in purpose. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously WITH THE SAME THING, and NOT suffer?"

"The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

"LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect. What you would prove to him you will believe."

"All sickness comes from a confusion of the levels."

"Sickness is but another form of guilt."

"Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what is not true. Free your minds from the belief that this is possible. In its complete impossibility, and your full awareness of its complete impossibility, lies your only hope for release."

"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself."

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more."

"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it FOR."

"The ego SEPARATES through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches THROUGH it to others. You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies AND YOURS solely as a means of JOINING THEIR MINDS and uniting them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has NONE. If you use it for attack it is harmful to you. But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you. If you use the body for this, and ONLY for this, you CANNOT use it for attack. In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion IS. "

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you.Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition."

"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it. ... "You THINK you are PROTECTING the body by HIDING this connection. For this concealment SEEMS to keep your identification safe from the "attack" of truth. If you but understood how much this strange concealment has hurt your mind, and how confused your own identification has become to you, BECAUSE of it! You do not see how great the devastation wrought by your faithlessness. For faithlessness is an attack, which SEEMS to be justified by its RESULTS. For, by withholding faith, you see only what IS unworthy of it, and cannot look BEYOND the barrier to what is joined with you."

"Sickness is but another name for sin. Healing is but another Name for God. The miracle is thus a call to Him."

"Thus are you JOINED in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him."

"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. "

"Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make the separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it can not surmount."

"Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health, is to recognize in hatred the call for love."

"What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to this, and you will see all pain in every form wherever it occurs but disappear as mists before the sun."

"Only the wholly insane could look on death and suffering, sickness and despair, and see it thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly, fearful, and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there."

"Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and death, to their believers. The form in which they are accepted is irrelevant. No form of misery, in reason's eyes, can be confused with joy."

"Any form of mental illness can truthfully be described as an expression of viciousness. We said before that those who are afraid are apt to be vicious. If we were willing to forgive other people's misperceptions of us, they could not possibly affect us at all."

"Pain, illness, loss, age and death seem to threaten me. All my hopes and wishes and plans appear to be at the mercy of a world I cannot control. Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"For example, do not say, 'God did not create illness', but, 'God did not create cancer,' or heart attacks, or whatever may arouse fear in you. ... This is your personal repertory of horrors at which you are looking.These things are part of the world you see. Some of them are shared illusions, and others are part of your personal hell. It does not matter.What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning."

"The gap IS little. Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a WISH to keep apart, and NOT to join. And thus it seems to give a CAUSE to sickness which is NOT its cause. The PURPOSE of the gap is all the cause that sickness has. For it was made to keep you separated in a body which you see as if it were the CAUSE of pain. The cause of pain is separation, NOT the body, which is only its EFFECT."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

"Pain is the thought of evil taking form, and working havoc in your holy mind. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. In pain is God denied the Son He loves. In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity and Heaven. And the world becomes a cruel and a bitter place, where sorrow rules and little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain that waits to end all joy in misery."

"Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud, obscuring voice, whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Him, and focusing upon itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means TO MAKE THE BODY REAL. What shares a common purpose IS the same. This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who share in it within itself. Pleasure and pain are EQUALLY unreal, because their purpose CANNOT be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning that their PURPOSE has. "

"Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. For EITHER witness is the same, and carries but one message, "You are here, WITHIN this body, and you CAN be hurt. You can have pleasure, too, but ONLY at the cost of pain."

"Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes which will not disappear if seen aright. For pain proclaims God cruel. How could it be real in any form? It witnesses to God the Father's hatred of His Son; the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death. Can such projections be attested to? Can they be anything but wholly false?"

"Pain is but witness to the Son's mistakes in what he thinks he is. It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassailable. It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love Which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love."

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE. Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

"Of one thing you were sure; of all the many causes you perceived as bringing pain and suffering to you, your guilt was NOT among them. Nor did you, in ANY way, REQUEST them for yourself. This is how ALL illusions come about. The one who makes them does NOT see himself as making them, and their reality does NOT depend on him. Whatever cause they have is something quite APART from him, and what he sees is SEPARATE from his mind. "

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes. "

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you. "

"Delay will hurt you now MORE THAN BEFORE, ONLY because you realize it IS delay, and that escape from pain IS REALLY POSSIBLE. Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this. You could no longer find even the ILLUSION of love in ANY special relationship here."

"This makes it an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this ALWAYS means YOU STILL FIND SIN ATTRACTIVE. No-one accepts Atonement for himself who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your one responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who PREFER pain and destruction."

"You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of displacement is to hide the REAL source of your guilt, and KEEP from your awareness the full perception THAT IT IS INSANE."

"This is the only thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain, and the complete escape from sin, all to be given you. Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of salvation lies: "I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

"I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am. My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son."

"Every illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness. Yet, in these dark and heavy garments, are those who seek illusions covered, and hidden from the joy of truth. Truth is the opposite of illusions, because it offers joy."

"No risk is possible throughout the day except to put your trust in magic, for it is only this that leads to pain. There is no will but God's."

"And to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause, and with no power to accomplish anything. It cannot purchase anything at all. It offers nothing, and does not exist. And everything you think it offers you is lacking in existence like itself. You have been slave to nothing. Be you free today to join the happy Will of God."

"To the ego, the body IS TO ATTACK WITH Equating YOU with the body, it teaches that YOU are to attack with, because THIS IS WHAT IT BELIEVES. The body, then, is not the source of its own health. Its condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function. "

"These are not laws, but madness. The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself. The body suffers that the mind will fail to see it is the victim of itself. The body's suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers. It would not understand it is its own enemy; that it attacks itself and wants to die. It is from this your 'laws' would save the body. It is for this you think you are a body."

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival. But consider what this means to YOU. UNLESS you are sick you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you possibly WANT them."

The "tiny mad idea" was an idea of madness, leading to an entire thought system of insanity. Within this thought system there is a sense of self that we call the ego. The course refers to this as yet "unmanifested" thought system as "the first dream", which was then projected out as a "second dream" as the physicality of spacetime.

"The first dream has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear on which the world was based." UrG3A9

The ego projected out, ie "mis-created" from fear, a world from the INSANE mind, symbolising in form its ideals, preferences, beliefs and attitudes. This produced the physical world, which symbolises the ego's "attack on God." A sort of solidified defence against the truth. And now the physical world SYMBOLIZES the ego thought system in all its ways.

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear." UrW240W32

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see." UrT11J4

"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it." UrT11D10

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death." UrT11J2

"It can indeed be said the ego MADE its world on sin. Only in such a world COULD everything be upside down. This IS the strange illusion which makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness this world's foundation SEEMS to have is FOUND in this." UrT19C6

This means that the way the physical world is set up and how it functions - its nature, the relationship of separate objects, what it seems to mean when things happen, was all originally a symbolic representation of an ego idea of madness. And this isn't with any kind of judgement or negating entering into it. Just its nature and how it functions is NOTHING like God's Kingdom.

"For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true." UrT16F3

For example the ego sees you as a separated off person, and in its insanity (which is sin), this insanity led to the making of the body, giving the body eyes and senses, and regarding the body as a real person.

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?" UrW250W41

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

Similarly the ego believes that there is a separation between giving and receiving, between cause (God) and effect (Son). Thus it perceives that to give is to lose, and means deprivation and sacrifice. This plays out PHYSICALLY by virtue of the fact that if you give someone something physical you DO NOT have it any more and have lost it. This is a simple fact. Any object you give you lack.

The idea of SHARING (oneness), natural in heaven, is pretty much obliterated on a physical level. So too is any idea of oneness or real love or creation or extension or sanity or harmlessness or safety or any other property of God. This is why the world is so opposite to heaven and so dysfunctional on a physical level, regardless of any judgements about it. It is designed by the ego to be "physically insane." And yes - that confusion of mind and body is what the ego is all about.

"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN." UrT28D2

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus." UrW153L1

Also on the physical level, when a body is regarded as a person, and if the body dies, this is a statement of the ego belief that death is real and the son of God is dead. Its whole system is anti-life and death promoting. It is against health and wholeness in every way possible.

"For vengeance is not part of love, and fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain." UrW190L3

The entire notion of physical space is an idea opposite to omnipresence and depends on separation. You can't even have particles of matter without separation. While time is an attack on eternity, attempting to make everything that existed before stop existing (die). Change itself is the idea of uncertainty (fear) and instability and impermanence - the opposite of immortality. As such everything in the physical world is mortal.

"They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die." UrM13A6

"Death (physical) is the symbol (physical symbol) of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction." UrM28A3

"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." UrW129L2

Everything in the physical world is a SYMBOLIC VERSION OF THE EGO THOUGHT SYSTEM. Like a physicalised MIND. That's why it was made, that's who made it, and that's how it is set up. So it is indeed a PHYSICALLY INSANE world, so to speak. Riddled with separations, contradictions, attacks, death, murder, lack and loss, suffering of every kind, etc. All ideas the ego made up.

You can see throughout all these quotes that there is clearly a level of mind post-separation which is an insane thought system, which houses all of the ego's fearful beliefs. That mind is mad and dark and horrifying. That mind MADE spacetime and everything in it as a physicalised, condensed version of that thought system. You can see in the quotes sometimes references to the underlying "ego mindset", and in others to the physical world that was made FROM that.

"You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error (the insane ego mad idea thought system). It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge (the physical world/spacetime illusion projected from it). What else COULD come of it? Its fragmented ASPECTS are fearful enough, as you begin to LOOK at them (physical things). But nothing you have ever seen BEGINS to show you the enormity of the ORIGINAL error (underneath the surface, the ego mindset that made it), which seemed to cast you out of Heaven" UrT18B12

"That was the first projection of error outward (the physical world was a symbolic projection of the mental error). The world (spacetime, physical) arose to hide it (to hide the underlying mindset of ego), and became the screen (like a physical screen) on which it (the ego mindset) was projected (as a second projection onto the world AFTER the world was projected), and drawn between you and truth." UrT18B3

The ego thus projects its mindset out, making an insane world, which symbolises TOTAL INSANITY and a TOTAL OPPOSITE to heaven, as physical form and spacetime and galaxies. And then it projects its underlying insanity ONTO that world in its purpose and USE OF that world. To sort of "operate it", make it real and believe that what happens physically is what it means. The physical world is a MEANINGLESS world, and has no meaning of its own, because it is really nothing, like a void.

"Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space (void) which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void (spacetime) may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality. And on this alone it is correct." UrW13L2

You can see clearly that 1) We were in heaven ("level 1") and believed the mad idea, 2) This produces a whole thought system of insanity ("level 2"), 3) Ego symbolises this thought system, 4) Ego insanity projects out as spacetime ("level 3") a physical fake "universe", 5) That universe is meaningless and nothing, and now the ego tries to project its MEANINGS onto that spacetime world, using the SAME insanity it used to make it.

So now the ego's thought system, mindset, beliefs, attitudes, identification, starts to PERCEIVE (through the body) the physical world IT MADE, from its vantage point, with a psychological false perception that MATCHES a PHYSICAL false perception (physical sight).

It sees it through a thought system of insanity and darkness and evil. And so it believes that the physical world is reality, it believes people are bodies, it believes there is no level of mind (the physical denies the mind, hides the ego thought system), and basically regards physical things as the symbolic version of itself.

Thus even the body symbolises the ego, the egoic mind identifies with the physical, and believes this is all that exists, hiding in the body as "its chosen home." The ego in the mind sort of now "takes up residency" in the body it projected.

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. UrT15I8

"For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego's chosen home, which you believe is YOURS." UrT23B3

So now you've got the underlying ego thought system which is insane still, a physical world being projected by that thought system as an hallucination, and then further projections of insane egoic meaning ONTO that physical world by that thought system to try to keep the separateness going.

For example it says that a physical person is the son of God, and when the physical body dies the son of God is dead. That death is a hard ending from which you cannot return. That's the egos idea of a total and utter permanent destruction and cessation of all creation. Putting a STOP to God. So it sees the death of a body as a total ending, after which there is nothing, and no coming back from it, producing horrendous loss. And there should be loss if a part of reality itself has been lost.

But this is the ego's insane perception of the world that IT set up to look this way on the surface. There is ANOTHER WAY to perceive the physical world thought because the insanity in the MIND can be corrected, causing the mind to USE the world for a higher purpose. You can see it without the ego, without the insanity, without the murderous thought system of separation. You can see it with the Holy Spirit with Christ Vision and forgiveness.

This forgiveness looks upon the highly malfunctioning lacking world that your ego made, and OVERLOOKS the ways in which it falls horrendously short of an immaculate creation. It does not BELIEVE the forms of the world. It does not interpret change as death, or the death of the body as a finality. I takes no meaning FROM the world, because it knows it HAS NONE. It recognizes that what is real is NOT OF THIS WORLD, and is utterly unaffected by what happens in form. Thus death is nothing and the world is nothing.

To this mindset of sanity and reason there is no death at all, and all physical things are illusions not to be believed. A mere MIS-creation produced by a MAD mind. It can be forgiven and reinterpreted and UNDONE by sanity. And then it must disappear, when an ego insane thought system is no longer upholding its separations and its physicalised lies and literal physical madness. The world is a mistake, not a sin, and mistakes can be undone.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error (a projection from an insane mind), and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation (insane mind) has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world (physical) be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear (physical literal disappearance), and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well." UrW240W31

Even death can be reinterpreted and seen as "not meaning" what it means to the ego. It can mean nothing more than that the illusory form has changed and the soul/mind has left the body to continue its eternal existence. That is a thought and perspective of permanence and immortality and continuation, rather than a thought of death and endings.

And so thoughts of eternal life replace the egoic thoughts of death and interruption, and this causes us to PERCEIVE the physical world as "the forgiven world", overlooking its nonsense and disregarding its physical falsity. Such a healed mind RUNS OPPOSITE to the nature of the world, and the entire thought system and physical nature is REVERSED.

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely." UrM29A2

"The only effort you need make, to give this world away (earth, physical, spacetime, bodies) in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (Kingdom of God, heaven) is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE (cus ego made it FROM falseness)" UrT12G3

"And now God's KNOWLEDGE, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its Kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever." UrU5A7v "Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die?" UrM28A6

"The ego made the world as IT perceives it (how it perceive it is the SAME AS how it is designed physically), but the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made, sees it only as a teaching device for bringing you home." UrT5E15

This will be a touchy and controversial subject. But we need to be more honest about death and what exactly is going on when spiritual people keep getting sick.

When someone's body dies, and when people have believed that the body IS the person through body-identification, there is a sense of loss. And this makes sense.

Something "real" seems to have been destroyed. If this were true, it SHOULD induce grief. If a real being has ended, it is definitely grounds for grief. This perceived "real death" can induce horrifyingly intense feelings of loss, massive waves of grieving and anger and hurt and loneliness etc.

All of those experiences and feelings can be extremely difficult to go through. Pangs of grief that come out of nowhere. Constant floods of emotions causing huge amounts of crying. A sense of missing and longing, an unfairness, and a justified anger. All of this accompanies the belief that something real has died.

Because of this, it then becomes very difficult to say ANYTHING about death, about what the person chose, about how the sickness came about, or to QUESTION in any way whether the person themselves had something to do with it. To even suggest that someone wanted to die, caused it to happen, chose it, or used it on purpose, seems like a horrible slander against the central character in the dying.

Indeed, when some body person dies, the dying, as the ego interprets it, appears to be the loss of an innocent victim. Ego beliefs tell you that they did not ask for this, they could not stop it, they did not want it, it could not be avoided, it happened unfairly, it victimized them, the person suffered greatly, it was horrible to watch, it was so sad and such a loss, etc. All of this appears to be true when a person is regarded as a body.

In light of this, when we are framing a person as the face of innocence, an innocent helpless victim of death "happening to them" or of diseases being "acquired" from the world, or the environment hurting someone etc, we make it look like the person is "untouchable" in their innocence. We start talking about them as if they were an angel. We go into a total denial of anything they seemed to do wrong. And no-one then dares to say a single word which might imply the person was anything OTHER than absolutely pure and perfect.

As a result of this behavior and this "falling for" the APPEARANCE that the person died against their will, death itself becomes protected. It becomes shielded by a facade of innocence and victimhood, helplessness and powerlessness. As if the person couldn't lift a single finger to influence anything that happened, and as a result was completely unfairly ripped away by forces beyond their control.

Death itself benefits from this view. By framing "dyers" as innocent victims, it puts up a powerful shield of denial, which seems impenetrable. And because it is framed as innocence, everyone suddenly is watchful of anyone even remotely suggesting that the person was "not innocent" in any way. There is a protectiveness that suddenly comes over people, which then justifies immense anger and projection, if anyone should dare to even HINT at the idea that the death was not how it appeared to be. As if death is an innocent baby that no-one can touch with a bargepole.

To even then question death at all, to suggest a person might've chosen it, that they caused it, or wanted it, or made it happen, or used it to try to kill the Son of God, would be considered a kind of blasphemy. And anyone who speaks out against death then is considered some kind of horrible insensitive accuser, victimizer and attacker, who has come to trample on the very carefully laid picture-frame of death-encrusted jewels that surrounds the tomb. To question death then seems completely off-topic, inappropriate, un-asked for, unwanted, and an act of war. How dare you suggest death is a lie or that all death is suicide?

By doing do, we never really get to question death itself. We keep hiding it behind this shield of illusions. We keep framing people as innocent victims who never wanted what happened. We keep denying that anyone ever chose any of it. And all that revolves around false perceptions, perceptions of a person AS a body, and AS a victim of the world.

It is a fact, however, that A Course in Miracles takes a radically OPPOSITE view of death than this. A view which would actually reveal a lot of activities taking place by the egos of not only those who die, but by those who mourn for them also. Those who are in grief and loss, as horrible as those experiences may be, are revealed to nevertheless be mistaken. Jesus even goes so far as to quite blatantly point out that those who attend funerals and who grieve over dead bodies, are completely going against God's will. He basically calls them death-worshippers.

"But what of those whose dedication it is NOT to live? 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."

"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."

So the way Jesus describes this is that, those who die, AND those who react to the death on the basis of body-identification and ego loss and "something real died", which is a mistaken perception, are death worshippers. They are people who are themselves dead. The walking psychologically dead, who are actually worshippers of death and sickness, who make bodies real, who react to body deaths in horror, but whose egos are secretly celebrating the proof that yet another Son of God has been slain.

These truths are underneath the grief and the loss and the horrible aftershocks of "someone dying", and as such remain buried in the minds of most people. These truths are so opposite to "how terrible it is that someone died" attitudes that it would embarrass and likely induce guilt in someone to whom it were revealed. And that's because people who are circling around death like vultures are trying to perpetuate death and keep it going.

Jesus is very clear in A Course in Miracles that this is a course in life, in living, in resurrection, and in the surmounting of death. We are being asked to "swear not to die", and to be so committed to the goal of LIFE, that we completely blot out and make death IMPOSSIBLE. Even that our bodies should enter a state of completely healthy functioning, not merely devoid of sickness but actually INCAPABLE of becoming sick or dead. Where they are locked into health because the mind is healed.

Jesus once told me personally, that the entire purpose of this life, is "to eradicate death in all its forms."

Such a teaching is obviously completely diametrically opposed to death, to sickness, to suffering, and to any kind of pity party about someone's body seeming to come to an end. We're even told that the Holy Spirit will produce a "picture of you" (a body) which has never been hurt or suffered pain in any way, and therefore symbolizes eternal life and immortality, teaching your brothers who look upon it that they are sinless.

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

There is even an entire radical teaching in ACIM about the fact that when you project sin or use the body for attack in any way, the body itself becomes sick. And the body is thus used as a messenger to try to communicate to those who look upon it that they are the CAUSE of its sickness. Thus, a body which is sick, broken, damaged, diseased, or in any way defective, in fact physically ACCUSES others of being sinful. It is what the course calls "a picture of crucifixion", which you show to your brothers in order to condemn them and be contagious in negatively affecting them.

"This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

As a result, Jesus is EXTREMELY clear that any amount of sickness in the physical body at all IS PROOF that the mind HAS NOT been healed. That if there is still physical sickness, there has NOT been a forgiveness. The forgiveness is not REAL, unless it has brought a healing to your body and to the body of your brother. That if the body remains broken, it CONTINUES to accuse your brother of sin, and teaches by double messages. That no-one can learn from this contradictory demonstration because a) mind is claiming to be healed and b) body is proving otherwise. No-one will listen to such a hypocritical assertion.

So basically Jesus is saying that we need to put our money where our mouth is, and we need to become genuinely healed in the mind, SO THAT the body is FORCED to be healthy. And by doing so, we make all physical sickness and death IMPOSSIBLE. So much so, that the body can no longer become sick, be made to be sick, be caused to die against your will, or in any way decay. That it cannot even age and grow old, or become decrepit over time, or malfunction as a result of "natural processes."

Jesus wants us to learn that we are NOT at the effect of death. That we have power OVER death. And in fact that we MUST gain power over death if we are to reach atonement and resurrection. If there is any way, any loophole, any exception, in which the body could potentially still be made to be sick WITHOUT your consent, there is still a power in the separation that can KEEP the son of God in hell forever. The notion that there is a force in the world that can MAKE you die, against your will, is nothing more than a fantasy belief in death and an attempt to GIVE it power over you.

"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."

Whether you are an ACIM person or not, if the body is sick, it is simply because the MIND is sick. And if the mind is sick, it projects its sickness onto the body. And therefore the mind has to be healed. And when the main is healed, the mind DOES ALWAYS heal the body. And the body cannot resist this, it cannot maintain its own sickness, it cannot keep dying on its own, and it cannot stop the mind from forcing it to be well. A guiltless mind HEALS the body and makes sickness and death impossible.

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication."

THIS ..,. is what everyone is supposed to be achieving...

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live.""

If you do not reach this state, then you have not reached the resurrection, and you have not finished the curriculum of ACIM. The curriculum of ACIM ends in resurrection, NOT death, and resurrection means LIFE, which is the opposite of death. Anyone who produces sickness in the body HAS in truth CAUSED it to be sick on purpose, for the purpose of hatred and attack and murder, in an attempt to prove that the son of God is guilty and deserves to die. Anyone who HAS died as a seeming "effect" of physical sicknesses such as cancer, HAS NOT HEALED THEIR MIND fully.

So to put it simply, people keep dying because they have not reached resurrection. They keep dying because they keep identifying with the body. They keep dying because they have not fully healed their minds. They keep dying because they are not done with the curriculum. A person can become closer to not dying, for sure, and can still cause death while being mostly healed. But until a person is fully healed the body will be attacked. Only in TOTAL RESURRECTION does a person reach a state in which they can be said to be "fully awake" and able to leave the dream permanently. "A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

In such a state, the body is INCAPABLE of being sick or becoming sick. It cannot rot or decay. It cannot contain cancers or any other malfunctions. In fact, the only way to remove it then is to make it disappear. And this is precisely what Jesus did in his resurrection, causing his body to DISAPPEAR because he recognized it was NOTHING. This happened because recognized that the body IS an illusion of death (separation) and that it was not true. He erased the body and erased the separation in his mind, attaining total resurrection.

We need to drop the idol worship, we need to stop thinking that death is natural and inevitable, we need to stop buying into body identification which is guaranteed to induce grief and loss, we need to stop thinking that death is God's will, we need to stop believing that you OR your body can die as a result of causes outside of your control, we need to question death and recognize it as a lie, and we need to STOP CHOOSING IT. You do NOT have to die!!!

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"To witness sin, and yet forgive it, is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof (a sick body) he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well."

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"Here the curriculum ends."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

Jesus "My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. 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."

In terms of the truth, these are our only two options: either accept it as it is, or deny it. Denying it is an attempt to reject what the truth is, and to replace it with something else.

Jesus says denial is an act of 'positive creation' not just an attempt to negate the truth. By denying, we substitute the truth for something else, and invent or make some other illusion to take its place, to try to prove that something else is true. We actively erect barricades and something else to fixate on and believe in.

In the Atonement, we accept the truth as it is, as God has established it, without any desire or need to change it.

The opposite of Atonement or resurrection, is death, in which there is an attempt to reject all truth (life) and prove that something opposite is true (death).

Denial produced the physical universe. Denial implements all forms of sickness. Denial is death. Denial is also fear. "All forms of sickness even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening." Or to put it another way, when you do not want to accept the truth, you invent fear to try to explain "why" you cannot accept it. The fear is fake, just as death is fake. Death does not END real life, it DENIES IT and paints a picture which PRETENDS the immortal son of God has been killed. ("You have made a bargain you cannot keep.")

Denial was the attempt to reject the fact that you cannot sin, by trying to replace it with an attempt to prove that sin can and has been accomplished. Even in that attempt, it is a state of denial. It hasn't changed the truth. Denial has no power to actually alter what the truth is. But, being denial, denial is "in denial" of this fact, and so attempts to change the truth anyway, believing that it is possible. Such is denial.

Denial also represents unwillingness. When we attempted to deny God's will, or to deny that we are as God created us, we moved into unwillingness. This was an attempt to suppress our own will. We became unwilling rather than willing, or imprisoned rather than free. Death is a state of unwillingness, as are punishment, suffering, fear, guilt and sin. This is why it takes "a little willingness" in order to move towards acceptance of the Atonement (truth) because denial has to be undone.

Blocks to awareness are denial. Since the truth cannot be changed (it's established by God's will permanently), denial cannot actually change the truth into something else. And the only way to "believe in" something else being true, is to block out awareness of the fact that the truth is true. While you are still aware that only the truth is true, you cannot bring yourself to believe or be convinced by an alternative. So you have to "block awareness".

Denial does this by putting up an illusory psychological barrier, comprised of a "will to reject", which makes the truth go unconscious. Conscious awareness is cut off from accessing the truth, hidden behind this wall of denial, and so now all that you are consciously aware of is "whats left" that hasn't yet been denied. The stuff that has been denied now forms the unconscious mind, hidden from awareness and kept in the dark. Consciously, since you are no longer aware that it is present, or still true, or an unchangeable fact, and you cannot "find it" when you search around with your awareness, it SEEMS not to exist.

Many false conclusions are made based on this unawareness - based on incomplete information. For example if you are not aware that you yourself chose to believe in sin, you made the sin unconscious by implementing denial and inventing fake guilt to cover it up, you will now be unable/unwilling to see that you are the one who made you guilty. Instead you will now search elsewhere for a "cause" of the upset, and inevitably blame it on someone else, because that seems to make sense given that you are not aware of the hidden key fact of what you did to yourself. This is why Jesus said "Forgive them father for they know not what they do" - as soon as you go into denial, you do NOT KNOW what you are doing, because you don't have all the facts in awareness.

The secret of salvation lies in your willingness to remove the block to awareness, so that you can become able to SEE the chain of causality coming from yourself, the choices you made, and thereby realize that none of your conditions are caused by anyone else. Your mind is the sole cause of your experience. But this block to awareness, in order to remove it, MUST entail the willingness to remove denial. The layer of denial which literally blocks awareness - blocks the ability to SEE, must be undone. And that will only be undone through honesty and willingness.

Denial takes on many forms, and indeed all forms. It includes the belief that you are already innocent even if you have unconscious hidden hates, secret sins, unhealed wounds and layers of self-repression that you don't want to admit to. This can produce a state of "fake innocence" in which you don't SEE that you are the cause of something and so become justified in blaming it on someone else - scapegoating, accusing your brother of your own sin. It also then justifies anger, and this is why anger is never justified - to become angry is ALWAYS based on denial and unawareness of the facts. If you knew the facts, the truth, you would have NO reason to conclude that you should be upset.

Denial also accounts for this world - Earth - this universe. Jesus says in reference to it, "a world that denies itself cannot exist." The world denies itself, because it is made OF denial of God's Kingdom. All denial is self denial, and so this world is made of denial. That is why it is a BLOCK to awareness. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form." This is also why, when denial is lifted, and we are willing to see the whole truth, this world must disappear because, being made from denial AS a block, it is merely an illusion preventing us from seeing, and once you see PAST it and become AWARE that you are the cause/dreamer of it, you will stop USING IT to make God's Kingdom unconscious.

Another expression or use of denial is in the ego's motto of "seek and do not find". By denying that you already are perfect, you don't SEE the perfection in yourself so you think it is not there, and so are now empty, and are in need, and this need compels you to search for a solution to the emptiness somewhere ELSE, outside of yourself. This sets you on a "spiritual path" - ultimately the journey without distance. Here you will pursue FAKE SPIRITAULITY, fake peace, produce a spiritualized ego, spiritualize the world, spiritualize the body, and seem to side with one half of duality (ultra positive or ultra negative).

This also produces the PERSONA, which is a fake identity or fake mask which forms this idea of who you think you are, which is made of the denial of yourself. Even your physical body is a fake image, designed to make people believe that they are seeing YOU when they see IT, when in fact it is made to HIDE YOU. The body and persona then become filled with fakery, lies, self deception and dishonesty, resulting in a veneer of "looking spiritual" or "acting spiritual", decorated with spiritual clothing and performing fake rituals, which are all really designed to maintain the denial and block you from being AUTHENTICALLY YOURSELF.

The facade of innocence hides unconscious guilt, and makes a person seem holier than they really are. The main problem is the person themselves is unwilling to admit to why they are overcompensating for a deep belief in unholiness, by pretending to be holy and trying to convince everyone that they themselves are convinced of it. This "spiritual seeker" has to be undone just as much as any other denial, because it takes you away from yourself. You do not need to seek. You need to *acknowledge* what is already TRUE about you, and be grateful that God's creation has not changed.

Denial also plays out in the unwillingness to accept what is happening in your life. I spent many many years in denial that I was unhappy, afraid, angry, and it wasn't until my mid-20's when I started to admit that the way I was feeling was even those things. I did not recognize the mountain of upset in me AS fear or AS anger, and didn't even know that I was afraid and angry. Such was the denial. Denial obscures, making reality seem twisted and not what it is, so that you do not *recognize* it, and so remain in a state where you think it IS something ELSE. This failure to recognize the truth is what keeps us in the dark. Yet "illusions recognized must disappear". They can only be recognized by not being in denial.

Denial also produces various kinds of blindness. The unwillingness to see the truth. Even though people may be walking around in bodies talking and performing activities, they can be in various states of awareness ie various states of denial, thus various states of unconsciousness. Just because someone is working in a job and playing on the internet and chatting to their friends, does not mean they are aware or awake. Denial indeed is sleep. It is a suppression of awareness.

Since denial is unwillingness, it also produces justification for fear whenever the truth comes along to challenge the denial. If you are in denial and you are believing that the truth is not the truth, you've made it out to be evil, and have replaced it with a lie that you believe is your salvation. When the truth comes along, you see it as an attacker, a threat, and thus USE denial once again as the ego's only tool to reject, shut out, or put distance between, you and that truth. You bury your head in the sand to avoid it and to pretend it is not there. This induces all forms of sickness, because sickness is a defense against the truth. So yes, sickness is denial of life, as is death.

The funny thing about denial is that instead of being able to actually change the truth at all, you instead hide from the truth and block your awareness of it, reasoning that if you are not AWARE of it, it must not BE there. This is clearly denial because you are simply hiding your vision. Pretending that something is not there, does not make it go away. But in the ego, we become convinced by this delusion and think "out of sight, out of mind"... that if we can't SEE something, or cannot be AWARE of it, then it must not exist.

This way, we've told ourselves that we actually UNDID God, reversed creation, cancelled Heaven, and erased our true self. By believing that our denial of truth CAN change the truth (that darkness can hide the light), it's very easy to make the tiny shift from "I'm in denial of it" to "It's actually gone." Therefore we have come to believe, in ego denial, that we ACTUALLY HAVE changed the truth because our awareness does not show it to us and it seems not to exist any more. This way we came to believe that sin is real and has had real consequences. We think that we actually HAVE hurt God, produced a new truth, got away with murder, and destroyed ourself and our inheritance.

This belief then leads to the distorted perception that we stopped being innocent, CHANGED into a different state, our innocence went away, and now all that we're left with is guilt. And in that view it seems as though we have become unworthy, have transformed from sinless to sinful, or from innocent to guilty. The blocked awareness viewed from inside denial, makes it SEEM as if this is true. And so in denial, we automatically come to believe that our denying is actually WORKING, and is CAUSAL, and has power OVER the truth to change it. And so we think we have sinned, are really a sinner, deserve to be guilty, should be punished for it, and are worthy only of death. Denial produces the death wish.

From this side of denial, not seeing that our denial HAS NOT changed reality, we're quite convinced that we actually are guilty sinners who don't deserve love or forgiveness. And so we think we are working on or in or with this guilty "ego self", which has not only replaced our real self, but is the ONLY self left. In denial, we are not aware that our real self - our innocent self - still as God created it - is STILL THERE, still fully alive, still perfect, and has not changed whatsoever. That real self is right here with you now. That real self is already in heaven and never left, nor did it change anything in reality.

And so now we're in this strange position where we think we are only this evil self who can never go back to being holy, while all along our true self is perfectly undefiled and holy forever, existing in parallel to this false idea of ourselves. Your "higher self" therefore exists right NOW, even if your sense of identity is all caught up in denial and confusion and ego. This is why "enlightenment is but a recognition and no a change at all". It merely entails the willingness to be AWARE of what is ALREADY TRUE. And to reach that awareness, ALL layers of denial MUST be removed from the mind so that you CAN be aware of it.

To admit to being in denial, or even to admit to wanting to stay in denial - wanting to keep your denial - is still an admittance. It reveals a willingness to allow the truth to enter. Even if you say, "I admit I do not want to wake up", that is better than an unwillingness to even admit that. To admit, is to permit access. It means you are willing to let truth be said or expressed about whatever the situation is. And this truth then sets you free. Even if just a little bit. Even if you are just admitting to being in denial and that you don't want to do anything about it, admits more truth than to not even want to admit to that.

This therefore takes some willingness, and it takes honesty. It requires a willingness to be mistaken, without implying punishment. It requires you to get honest with yourself, to stop being in resistance or avoidance, and to LOOK AT what it is that you don't want to see. And looking at it with the truth, is looking at it with the Holy Spirit. He represents the state of mind in which there is no denial. Your willingness to dig out and offer up secret sins, hidden hates, grievances, and also ways that you don't want to admit or accept something, allows Him to shine away those lies and release you.

Now, in ACIM circles there are various forms of denial and blindspots and each person is different. I've seen the most denial circling around topics to do with the body not existing, and to do with the world not existing. These are two of the major sticking points because the ego denial has

built a fortress to protect belief in these two things, and believing you "are" a body or that there "is" a world are the two most fundamental "givens" in this world. The body is the hero of the dream, and the world is the dream itself. To question belief in either of these seriously pushes the ego buttons and seems to "threaten your establishments."

There is a lot of denial around these topics and a lot of refusal to accept them. Accepting that there is no world is one of the hardest things to do, because denial makes the world seem true, real, valuable and desirable. Denial that the world is a cruel place, for example, leads many to believe God created it. And with that kind of a conclusion, who would want to question God's reality? Yet we are still in denial until we are sure to have removed all denial. And we will be in denial that we are in denial, because we don't SEE that there is something unconscious to us that we believe does not even exist.

There are also good and bad forms of denial, or uses of denial. If denial is used to reject the real truth, that's not a good thing. If denial is used to reject lies, that IS a good thing. Or rather, if denial is used to reject the belief that denial is true, using the mind to ADMIT that the denial is there, or that it is FALSE, that is a worthy form of denial.

There are unworthy forms of denial, which usually entail either a direct 1st-hand rejection of what is real, OR a 2nd-hand rejection of the illusions that have arisen due to the first level of denial. For example it is denial to produce a body. The body was made to deny God and shut out sharing with the Sonship. This denial needs to be undone. But additionally, on a second level, while you are making a body, if you KEEP making it through denial, but then pretend in some way that it does not exist and try to "separate from" it, THAT is also an unworthy form of denial. Up to a point, "the body is merely a fact of human existence." But at some point, human existence (bodies) is also denial of Spirit. These denials are at different levels.

Jesus also tells us in ACIM that "the separation HAS happened." Many people DENY this, mainly due to confusion about "nothing happened" as the atonement principle. This is level confusion. We did have the tiny mad idea, and we did share it, and it did produce imaginary worlds of illusion. Jesus even says, that to deny this fact is an unworthy form of denial. But to "accept" that it has happened should only be done in order to quickly realize that atonement is the only meaningful "correction" for the separation, and that it should be done as soon as possible.

It is also possible to have denials on top of denials on top of denials. For example when you are in fear, you are pretending that you have good reason to be afraid of something outside you. But the fact is, the fear is a decoy to deny guilt. Fear is protecting you from guilt and deflecting attention away from it as the "reason" why you are afraid. Fear makes guilt unconscious and blocks the guilt. The only reason you are afraid is because you think you are guilty and want to punish yourself. But without awareness of that, in fear you'll look for causes of the fear externally. To undo fear you must remove the denial behind it, become MORE AWARE of what you denied, reveal the guilt, and fix the guilt. So you can see there are multiple layers of distortion surrounding the guilt, and even guilt itself is denial.

The ego only has one tool. "Deny what is." The one antidote is the atonement - "accept what is". But to accept what is, you have to first remove the denial, so that your awareness of "what is" increases. So this doesn't mean just accepting the world "as it is", because how you are perceiving it is NOT the fullness that's present. You are NOT seeing it for what's really there, and are not recognizing it as an illusion. Blocks have to be removed in your mind, so that you can SEE. By seeing accurately and fully, you have true perception, which shows you the truth about this world, that it is not real and doesn't exist. Without removal of denial you will try to accept it, but won't be able to recognize it or accept its unreality.

The ego used denial to hide God, by making sin. The ego used denial to hide and keep sin, by making fake guilt. The ego hid the guilt behind fake fear using more denial. The fear produces self punishment but by denying that you are doing so. And eventually death is denial even of punishment. At every step the ego is denying, denying, denying. Denying who you are, stripping away layers of what remains, until eventually there is nothing left to deny. In death there is TOTAL denial of the truth, and no-one who goes through death is in their right mind.

It all boils down to this simple dynamic. Either you accept the truth - God's truth as God established it, or you deny it. You have no other choice. And because denial does not change the truth, denial MUST be a lie, where you are PRETENDING that the truth is not true. So either you are pretending to be something you are not, or you are being your real authentic self - as created by God. It's your choice, whether to accept or deny. But no-one gets to define what the truth IS. Only God can do that. And being in denial DOES NOT redefine the truth, even though those in denial believe that this is precisely what they're achieving. This is the authority problem, which is nothing but denial and an unwillingness to be honest.

The freedom we have is one of accepting or rejecting, not establishing, but anyone in denial with an ego will be in the business of trying to establish what the truth IS, acting as a gatekeeper to have to "approve" or "disapprove" before anything is permitted into awareness. Only when we are willing to give up our attempt to be God, to make the truth, will we be willing to simply open up to ACCEPT and RECEIVE it. Accepting the atonement is like throwing up your hands and admitting, only the truth is true, and only God's will is possible, and only God's way will work. Nothing else works. The ego is a lie and death is failure. Nothing else is true. I might as well accept it and go with it. And this takes TOTAL SURRENDER.

Thankfully, the truth is on our side, and loves us and has created everything for us. A perfect home, the inheritance of eternity, immortality, absolute peace and total joy. Not too shabby an option to accept, when you realize you stand to gain everything and give up nothing by letting go of denial.

"No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

"The truth shall set you free."