Is it possible to accept the world?

First of all, we have to keep in mind that we have perception, and our perception of the world is going to change depending on our mindset. This renders the world not really a "static" objective thing. So as we attempt to be more accepting, most likely our perception is going to change, and it's going to show us something different about the world we were trying to accept.

Secondly, Jesus says that "whatever you accept into your mind you make real to you". So if we are accepting something into our mind, that's going to seem real. We seemingly need to be careful about what we accept, otherwise we could inadvertently make something real to us that isn't.

So if we're trying to be more accepting, we have to look at a willingness to let go. This means letting go of various aspects of ego false perception. Such as resistance, control, denial, unwillingness, unawareness, blockages, trying to change things, not wanting things to be a certain way, a need to fix, etc. Let's say that we make progress towards relinquishing a lot of this ego activity. What then happens to acceptance?

If we resist and deny the world less, as though we are becoming "more accepting of" the world, allowing it to be whatever it is, this should lift away from our mind various resistance and darkness, allowing us to see the world more fully and accurately. Being more accepting or allowing of the world should put us in a more spiritual mindset. Our perception should become truer and more whole, more encompassing, more inclusive. The exclusivity, narrowness, selfishness and control should diminish.

But this also is going to mean that how we see the world - the world we're trying to accept - is going to change. We will see less of what we were making of it, in our resistance, and more of its "true nature". In a way, this will seem like opening up to simply allowing the world to be whatever way "it is". As if to suggest, we are becoming completely passive in simply observing it. Neutral. But we have to be careful here.

We don't want to be accepting into our mind that the world is real. We don't want to be believing "something really bad is happening" and to then try to accept it. This is the same as making something real and not being able to forgive it. Maybe it's useful to equate acceptance with forgiveness. To properly accept the world for "whatever it is", we must be forgiving of it. Which means OVERLOOKING whatever it is and not making it real.

So perhaps we need a new definition of acceptance, just as the course introduces a new definition of forgiveness. If the old forgiveness was to believe things are real and to pardon then, not really undoing anything, the new forgiveness recognizes this is just a dream world where nothing is really happening and you should not make any of it real to you. Similarly, the old acceptance said "accept whatever seems to be happening", which accepts into your mind unreal things that aren't happening. The new acceptance should say, accept the truth about this world, that this world is not real or happening, allow it to be an illusion of nothing, accept that it isn't there, and don't fight with illusions.

You can accept the truth about the world without having to make it real and accept bad stuff. If you're experiencing it as bad stuff it's because you're not accepting it. As you go to accept "the bad stuff" the bad stuff should stop looking like bad stuff. Less resistance should make the world less real, not merely leave you at the same place you were before. Less denial should make the world less solid to you Jesus even says in the course that if you have more guilt in your mind it will make the world seem more solid - so having less guilt should make the world more transparent.

You really then cannot accept the world. You can accept that it is not a world. This is the atonement. You can accept that nothing happened. You can accept God. But you cannot really accept what isn't even there to accept. But if you use that fact to try to resist or deny or make real the illusory world prior to accepting, you're just going to accept things which aren't true.

I could accept that the tree is burning, but if I try to be at peace while believing this is true, it will be impossible. If I can recognize the tree is not really burning, trees and fire are not real, I am now accepting reality and truth, and this is acceptable. The burning tree is now recognized as an illusion of a burning tree, a mere figment in a dream, which I don't have to accept "as real", only to accept its "true nature". It's true nature is that it's part of an illusion and nothing to be concerned about. Accepting the "real world" allows you to not be disturbed by the unreal content.

You can only truly accept what true perception shows you about the world. A forgiven world can be seen as forgiven (overlooked). You can accept the holy spirit's view of it, which correctly identifies that it is unreal. But trying to accept the unreal world, the illusory world, as if it's real, will never work. There is no peace where illusions are real. You can't be at peace while believing something real is dying. But you can be at peace by recognizing and accepting that nothing real can ever die, so whatever seems to die isn't really there TO accept.

Then you need not resist the illusory world, or deny it, or hide from it, or make it real, but nor do you need to accept it as though it's something to be accepted. Being neutral it is nothing, asking neither for acceptance or denial. Only God can be accepted, everything else is unacceptable.

There are some parts of the course which suggest that if you will just change HOW you look at the world, or what meaning you GIVE it, suddenly seemingly horrifying scenes are interpreted as healed and lovely.

Obviously this loveliness MUST transcend the FORM of what is happening, because a broken leg is still a broken leg, and an explosion is still an explosion. But somehow, Jesus is saying that just by changing your perception, a world which used to look like hell, can look "like heaven".

"What loveliness we look upon today! What holiness we see surrounding us! And it is given us to recognize it is a holiness in which we share"

"There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven."

This seems ridiculous at first. You ask yourself how this is remotely possible, and how it is not just a totally insane idea to suggest that THIS world's horrors can be "smiled upon" or interpreted as "lovely". But this is what true perception and forgiveness is offering.

Somehow, a changed perception projects God's love onto the world, God is seen as a reflection IN the world, and Earth now reflects heaven instead of hell. It still has its same forms, and the same things may be happening physically, but what they MEAN changes. And there becomes a light that you see in and around everything.

Jesus says the Holy Spirit can liberate even the darkest bullshit we made, and make it appear lovely and a blessing. That even a dead body could appear to use like it is sparkling and healed. And this doesn't necessarily mean it is in a form or condition that is physically healed, like a cancerous tumor disappearing, but it is still interpreted as healed.

This SEEMS to suggest that the cancer could remain, physically, while perceiving from an advanced perspective of love and light. It would be seen as "lovely". This however doesn't necessarily imply that the cancer SHOULD remain, because the mind is capable of performing miracles to change matter. And sane minds heal bodies so that even symbolically, even in form, they symbolize eternal life and healing.

"Think of the loveliness that you will see, who walk with Him! And think how beautiful will each of you look to the other!"

"The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of loveliness they do not see."

It is hard to get ones head around how it is possible to see this shitty-ass world as beautiful, light-filled, lovable. But ACIM says that even God loves the world. And that we can see God in everything, when God is in our mind, due to projecting God's meaning ONTO the world. That you can see God IN it, because you mix it WITH His love.

I used to get a sense of this, when I would read the course even years ago, where it sounded like he was saying that just by having a different state of mind, the world would be seen as entirely healed. I wasn't sure this was a correct interpretation, because I wanted to also include miracles. But it does seem to hold without undermining miracles of healing.

The world seen through the eyes of Christ, is a "healed world". It's redeemed. It's "translated into heaven", ACIM says. And then this REFLECTION of heaven, paves the way to knowledge and to the return home to the real thing.

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth."

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something. This is why perception involves an exchange, or a translation, which knowledge does NOT need. The interpretive function of perception, (actually, a distorted form of creation), then permitted man to interpret the body as HIMSELF, which, although depressing, was a way out of the conflict he induced."

"Through Him, YOU stand before God's altar, where He gently translated hell into Heaven. For it is only in Heaven that God would have you be."

"Be not unwilling now, you are too near, and you WILL cross the bridge in perfect safety, translated quietly from war to peace."

"For, once you have accepted it as the ONLY PERCEPTION THAT YOU WANT, it is translated into knowledge, by the part that God Himself plays in the Atonement, for it is the ONLY step in it He understands."

"This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel you need a course which, in the end, teaches that only reality is true. But do you believe it? When you perceive the real world, you will recognize that you did not believe it. Yet the swiftness with which your new and only real perception will be translated into knowledge will leave you but an instant to realize that this alone is true. And then everything you made will be forgotten; the good and the bad, the false and the true. For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into Heaven. 9 The reinterpretation of the world is the transfer of all perception to knowledge."

"Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release.

All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing ALL illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there, in peace."

As I observed some activities in my mind, I noticed a lot of thoughts which went like "I wish this wasn't happening" "I want this to go away" "When will it stop" "Its so annoying" "I don't want it."

Then it occurred to me that these are all a form of avoidance, or in other words, trying to escape. So I figured, this must be an attempt to escape from reality. I could feel how I was not wanting to just 'face' something. I wanted to get away from it, to make it stop and go away.

I also notice that attempts to have things stop and go away is also fear, because fear is a form of attack that tries to get rid of what's happening.

So then I thought, well, if all of these thoughts are basically trying to get away from something, what if I was to try to go toward it instead? What if I was to be present with it, welcome it, sit with it and let it be? What if there is a present reality that I'm trying to avoid and escape from?

It then became clearer that trying to escape from present reality puts the mind into a state of imprisonment. It thinks it is then trying to escape from something bad toward something good, away from what it doesn't want toward what it does want, but it is in fact doing the opposite. It's trying to move away from reality into illusions.

I also noticed the mind was just chattering away with commentary and judgements and so on, all of which were further forms of having something to say about everything. Ways of pushing it away and being displeased with it, not wanting to accept something.

So I started trying to do the exact opposite, which at first felt a bit alien. As if all the thinking before was going in the wrong direction, and what I was trying to do was completely 180-degrees totally opposite to what was correct. To just approach the reality of the situation and be with it without trying to avoid it or stop it or run away from it, seemed unfamiliar at first. But it also felt like a surrender.

I noticed that really most of the thoughts that arise, even those thoughts to do with waking up and being spiritual and pursuing truth and all that, they all seem to still be thoughts moving away from reality. On the surface they seem like a keen interest in approaching the truth, but they are actually ways of getting away from it.

That's a bit shocking to realise that what you thought was a genuine desire to improve somehow was actually an avoidance and an attempt to make sure it doesn't happen. And of course, that's all part of the ego.

From there I noticed a sense of greater awareness somehow, that the thinking commenting judging 'me' that I thought was me, was actually something less than me, just some kind of bundle of thoughts and ideas that I thought was myself but isn't. I was more outside of them, and there a was a sense of some space or a gap between what I am and this incessant mind that rambles on and thinks it knows.

It makes me wonder actually if all this thought is really the ego in disguise, an attempt to actually avoid reality and attack it while framing it as an attempt to move toward something that I want. And maybe living life more has to be to do with confronting the present moment and engaging with reality, rather than with the commentary about reality.

There can be a whole lot of intellectual activity which can all sound like it's totally geared towards awakening and being spiritual and all that, while simultaneously being a way to avoid actually being it. Jesus in the course for example says that we attack the real world every second of every minute of every day.

So If we're constantly in a state of avoiding God, avoiding reality, avoiding the present, trying to escape, we're really trying to escape from reality into unreality. Except it's always framed as trying to escape something we don't want, that is bad or wrong, or we think it's not what we're supposed to be closer to, which is an attack upon it.

So we're like... framing God and reality as something we don't want, judging it, attacking it, and then justifying that we should be moving away from it, not wanting it, resisting it, in order to get away from it, as if we'll be better off.

I also realised that the more you try to escape the more you become imprisoned, even if you don't recognise it as imprisonment. And in fact, the way to find freedom is to stop trying to escape. Of course the ego will not agree with that because it'll say if you stop escaping you'll be imprisoned forever. But it's totally insane.

When you stop trying to escape from reality and accept it and let it be, that's when you actually find a sense of freedom. Because your mind is really inventing the sense of imprisonment itself, as the effort to resist and get away from freedom.

I guess long story short, we should be being more present with what actually is, rather than all our attempts to avoid it.

WHAT IS SIN?

Every aspect of an insane egoic mind is JUST A MISTAKE, which calls for correction. The mind "accidentally" considers something to be possible which isn't, and so is making an error. Like an error on a math test - a false conclusion, a miscalculation, a mis-thought. The mind believes impossible things, and because they are impossible it is not doing them.

"Sin" is what we call it when you become mistaken ABOUT a mistake, and fail to recognize its impossibility. Being mistaken about mistakes, not recognizing them as mistakes, converts them into TRUTHS, which are now sins. You don't realize they can't be true, and you think they are possible. As if you are actually doing them, giving them reality.

"Sin" is thus a "mistake about a mistake". A failure to recognize a mistake, leading to taking it seriously and taking it to be true and real. As if it is actually happening with real irreversible consequences.

Insane people are regarded as sinful when their insanity is not recognised as insanity, and is instead thought to BE SANITY, and thus assuming the person is SINNING ON PURPOSE from their right mindedness, which would indeed be deliberate attack. If this were true it calls for guilt and punishment.

Mistaking someone's delusional state for truth and reality, you think they are "actually attacking on purpose from a sane mind that should know better", which justifies anger and revenge for such a violation of the rules of sanity.

Guilt therefore arises from being mistaken about mistakes, regarding mistakes as deliberate acts of defiance against God and reality. If you COULD attack God it WOULD be a sin and you WOULD be guilty.

Sin is therefore a fiction about a fiction. The insane mind is in a deluded state believing illusions, which is just a set of mistakes, and then on top of this the delusion is taken to be NOT a delusion.

Sin is twice removed from God, mistakes are once removed. Guilt arises from taking mistakes to be truths. Or believing that illusions are real. Such as believing that the physical world is happening. If anything seeming to happen physically IS TRUE, it is a sin. If it is recognised that the world is JUST A MISTAKE, it is open to forgiveness.

Sin sees everything as unforgivable because it locks in the mistakes and regards them as concrete truths. Forgiveness recognizes what the mistakes ARE, and so sees an error has been made, which calls only for correction to appropriately treat the error. To fix the problem correctly.

Sin does not fix errors correctly, it compounds them by trying to use punishment as a fix. It says that the "mistake" is that you really did something impossible, as though it were possible, and now it has had real effects.

There is now "proof of sin", tangible sin, physical sin, evidence. Or in other words, an illusion (such as form) is mistaken for a real true possible thing and held up to be the "evidence" as to what you did wrong. Such as that the body did some wrong act causing the plates to be smashed, proven by the pieces of broken plate on the floor. Instead of being recognised as more illusions, it's taken to "prove" that you broke the plates in reality.

That presence of "an illusion being interpreted as proof that it's true" means "you did it" in space and time, and therefore are guilty. If you did sin, you deserve absolute punishment and death. Sin sees death as the way to CORRECT sins - death as atonement.

"Sin calls for punishment, as error for correction. And the belief that punishment IS correction, is clearly insane." UrT19C1

"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death." UrT19C3

"Yet, for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole IDEA of sin, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. For the wages of sin IS death, and how can the immortal die?" UrT19C3

You not recognizing that this world is an illusion, converts the world into a place of sin and guilt, demeaning punishment for every act. You recognizing this world is just a MISTAKE and IS IMPOSSIBLE, forgives and overlooks the error and calls for the true atonement of the UNDOING of the error. The erasing of the world and space and time. The correction of the error - the illusion of a world - through its cancellation and disappearance, in which the mind returns to sanity and to God's kingdom.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty." UrU5A5

I see now that forgiveness of another must entail an appreciation of how we are joined in oneness, sharing everything. We have to realize that we ARE each other, and that we are included in everything. There has to be awareness of the golden rule and the fact that giving and receiving are one. Whatever applies to me must be seen to apply to the other. And there must be shared interests. Without this there is not forgiveness.

It used to seem as though forgiveness was some act performed by one separate person towards or with regard to another separate person. There was something that the separate person did to the the other separate person, and now the separate person had to do something to forgive them. This is clearly not in accord with ACIM’s teaching on forgiveness because forgiveness requires the two minds to be one. You have to love your brother as yourself.

When your brother is seen from the perspective that they are included in who and what you are, and are thus part of you, sharing everything with you, everything now applies to both of you equally and simultaneously. You ARE each other. In that light, any unforgiveness is an attempt to separate from one another, while forgiveness is a reunion. The two become one in forgiveness.

The same applies to atonement, true perception, salvation, and miracle mindedness. It is not just some separated-off state, it’s an entirely shared state. It’s just a tiny bit short of total oneness. Communication means immersion and union and sharing everything as one, and miracles raise the level of communication and sharing. Miracles make minds one in God. Miracles unite you with your brother. Being IN the miracle is to be IN a united shared state.

More and more now it is becoming extremely clear that, very simply, “being separate” is the entire problem, and “being joined” is the entire solution. There is nothing else. Either you’re separating off of you are one with each other. Oneness isn’t two separate people bumping bodies. It’s literally a fusing, melding, merging, unifying, sharing of everything. True connection. True opening and trust. True communion.

You can’t see forgivingly without that shared union because it is literally the light in which you see. It is the way to recognize your brother’s attempts to separate as untrue and as a call for love. It the proper framing of your holy relationship. Without the union there is a breakdown in forgiveness. To be completely forgiving is to recognize that everything applies to both of you equally at once, as one, together, as the whole. Wholeness is inclusive, and wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles.

Either you live in such a way as to always regard your brothers as a fundamental part of your own self, in which you are literally one and two, sharing the same spark of life, in the same light, or you are moving into separation and grievance and war. It’s very simple. Separate or join, fear or love, die or live forever. Atonement is a lesson in sharing, because we’re forgotten how to do it.

All miracle mindedness requires a shared state of mind and identity. You have to BE the other person to join with their mind and share light with them. We can’t do any of this correctly if we remain separate. There is no miracle without sharing, there is no love without sharing. There is no atonement without sharing, there is no salvation without sharing. Your brother is your savior because he is your self.

“Your Father is as close to you as is your brother. Yet what is there that could be nearer you, than is your Self?” “This state, and only this, must YOU attain with God beside you. For until you do, you will still think that you are separate FROM Him. You can feel His Presence NEXT TO you, but CANNOT know that you are one with Him.”

“And He will speak to you, reminding you that you are Spirit, one with Him and God, your brothers and your Self.”

“He must see someone ELSE as NOT a body, one with him, without the wall the world has built to keep apart all living things who know not that they live.”

“Forgive him now his sins, and you will see that you are one with him.”

“Every altar to God is part of your Soul, because the Light He created is One with Him. Would you cut a brother off from the Light that is yours?”

“Your brother's holiness shows you that God is One with him AND you; that what he has is yours BECAUSE you are not separate from him OR from his Father.”

“No-one unites with enemies, nor is at one with them in purpose.”

“Then let him offer you the light you see in him, and let your "enemy" and Friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. Now are you one with them, and they with you. Now have you been forgiven by yourself.”

“I trust my brothers, who are one with me.”

"My Father gives all power unto me."

"all power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His"

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS."

"All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do."

"But the truth is very simple; ALL POWER IS OF GOD. What is NOT of Him has no power to do ANYTHING."

Our natural relationship with God is quite different to how we think of ourselves in a separated state.

Here we might think of ourselves as independent, relying on no-one, having our own power and our own abilities. We walk in separate bodies and think of ourselves as self-sufficient and reliant on ourselves. But this isn't a natural state to be in, and it isn't how God set it up.

From God's point of view, he does not create separate things, which stand apart from him as though disconnected. He doesn't create things which have special stuff of their own, or powers that they don't share with others. Nor does he let go of them or cut the off or stop being a part of them.

When God creates you he extends his own self, gives everything he has, and includes you within his own being as part of himself. It's like living and staying in the womb forever. You have nothing that you've gathered for yourself, and nothing that didn't come from God. And everything you do have, remains his as well, but shared simultaneously with you.

Your natural condition then is to actually be completely dependent on God, in which you host God within yourself. It's like, without him you are an empty vessel, and he places his own power, mind, will, thought, life, love, peace etc, into you. And now you act as a host to him. And this mean that unless you are hosting him, you don't really have anything. No power, no mind, no love, nothing.

So in order to be in your natural state, functioning the way God intended, you actually have to rely on God and depend on him to BE the qualities that are best in you. There is no other source and you literally cannot live without him.

The sense of strength that you have does not come from you, it is actually the presence of God in you. The light which you see in isn't a light that you put there, it's his light shining in your mind from God. The will you will with, the thoughts you think, the freedom you share, your very own life, is actually all HIS. He shares it with you and you therefore have a symbiotic relationship with him.

This really means that not only do you have nothing that is exclusively your own, you literally have nothing at all without him. You are nothing and do not exist without him. However, with him you share and have everything that he has. You have all his gifts, all his power, all his thought and mind, all his will and freedom, all his love and life. It is in you, but it is not of you. Yet it is yours, because it is his, and you are part of him.

This means the only way to function naturally is to acknowledge God in everything, to let him BE the strength in you, to let his light shine through you so that you can see, to align with his will and thoughts, to do his will, and to function as a team with him. He does protect you and strengthen you and provide for you.

This plugs you into his power, and regardless of having NO power of your own, you have ALL of his power. By allowing your power to be his power, shared with him and expressing through you, his power becomes your own. He has given it to you, but without losing it himself, and so both of you have it. Without what God has given you, you have no power to do anything.

This is why the model of your body and your ego are against your inherent nature. They are ways to cut you off from everything and to have nothing. They disconnect you from God and from the only source of anything real. And once you are orphaned, you basically have nothing but scraps of lifelessnes and weakness and incapability with which to function. You can't live life like that, as an exclusively autonomous prisoner, captive to nothingness.

You can only really live and be happy and have strength and sanity by sharing life with God. He has to be acknowledged, interfaced with, and allowed to be a part of you. He has to be integrated into who and what you are. You have to make room for him. You have to let go and let him deal with stuff through you, because you simply cannot do it alone. He lives withiin you at your inner altar.

Depending on your own strength will only make you afraid because you know you are too weak to deal with anything without God. Depending on God however, you become all-powerful, strong, confident, certain and capable. And then there is nothing your holiness cannot do, miraculously, because he does it for and with you. God has taken care of everything.

This is something that few of us want to look at. I don't like looking at it or talking about it either.

But there is a DEATH WISH in our mind which is literally deadly, and is the cause of all death and suicide. It must be undone if you are to surmount death forever.

The decision to consent to death occurs at the moment you believe sin is real, not later. Anyone who believes sin is real, HAS consented to death. However, this doesn't mean you cannot change your mind.

Believing in real sin means you believe you have attacked God, causing him to change or be at the effect of you. Since God was innocent, your "willing against his will" seemed unjustified, and this therefore JUSTIFIES GOD'S ANGER. You reason that God SHOULD be angry with you, because of what you DID do to Him. It proves and supports your belief in sin having real consequences.

So by believing in real sin, you automatically but into the belief that God's wrath is now going to enact revenge. And this means, you believe that it is GOD's WILL that you be dead. This means God is against you (because you are against Him) and therefore is your enemy.

Believing that you therefore cannot find forgiveness or love from God, and there is no way to return to LIFE, your ONLY OPTION LEFT is to head towards death. And so with a sense of shame and guilt, which keeps the sin intact and builds upon it, you head off alone with your tail between your legs. You reason that you "might as well die". You see NO other option because LIFE and forgiveness are off the cards.

What follows after that is simply years of suffering and sickness and unhappiness only to end in death. Death then seems INEVITABLE, precisely because SIN DEMANDS DEATH. The inevitability or sense of fate stems entirely from that initial belief in sin, that "the wages of sin is death", that sin demands guilt, guilt demands punishment, and punishment brings death.

Jesus speaks of how people come into the world to suffer a while, wither and die. He speaks of how no-one dies without consent. Consent TO DIE is given at the instant you believe in sin, not later. What happens later is merely the "onset" of dying or preparation for dying. Jesus describes also how even children come into this world, only to find that love abandons them, they grow old, become sick, suffer and die, and not ONE of them but believes that God is cruel. They believe God is cruel because they believe it is God's WILL that they suffer and die and could see no other option.

Sadly, although it is not real and really we should laugh, nevertheless billions of people choose to die. Or rather, have chosen to. We are perpetual diers, coming into bodies repeatedly, driven by guilt, trying to escape God, only to enter into suffering and sickness and "inevitable death". This is ALL driven by the death wish - the belief in sin. It is this belief ALONE that is responsible for justifying death.

If you did sin, death is inevitable. If you did not sin, LIFE IS INEVITABLE.

This is when as we are purifying and healing and correcting and forgiving, we MUST make sure that we uproot the belief in real sin. Otherwise we are leaving the roots of death in our mind. We must confront this belief. It can be dark and vicious. It can be terrifying. I can seem completely true. You can experience the death wish itself as a strong desire to die. It is not pretty. But you MUST NOT allow it to be true or to act based on it. It has to be undone and shone away, shown to be FALSE.

When you accept atonement and can recognize that you DID NOT SIN IN REALITY, or against God's will, and God has not been hurt, and therefore you MUST BE INNOCENT, this is an acceptance of your ENTITLEMENT TO LIVE. This is the point at which you UNDO THE DEATH WISH. Only in accepting atonement do you accept RESURRECTION and surmount death. Death is literally made IMPOSSIBLE in the atonement. "Only atonement can be said to cure."

Atonement cures death. This is what we need to choose. If we do not seem to WANT to die, even though underneath we secretly DO WANT TO, then we need to look at this, be very honest and own up to this choice to believe in sin, and CHANGE YOUR MIND, so that you stop believing that you sinned for real. Otherwise you are keeping the death wish. And that death wish will find a way to "make you dead". Eternal life is attained through the complete undoing of ALL DEATH through the undoing of SIN.

When there is no sin, there can be no death. Death comes FROM sin. It is the consequence of sin, the payment for sin, the atonement for sin, and the effect of sin. Without sin, there is no death. You must un-believe sin and accept that you HAVE NOT SINNED, in order to overcome death entirely.

The ego thought system, the mind with which you operate most of the time, and the system of perception or 'world view' which governs most of your decision making, is completely the opposite of the truth.

The mind which uses the egoic mind, still experiences, interacts and expresses itself, but the egoic mind acts as a reversal of cause and effects.

This generally means that instead of creating what you truly want and causing it to come into being as a direct effect of your power, you instead cause to come into being exactly what you did NOT seem to ask for, do not want, and are in fact trying to get away from.

Most of this world is heavily engaged in a state of consciousness where they do not realize that they are miscreating or mis-using the mind's power, and are therefore inadvertently creating and manifesting expressions which they are in conflict with. They are literally bringing into expression everything they do not want, not realizing that they are doing so, and then are fighting with those expressions.

When the egoic mind expresses and therefore fails to express what should have been a miracle, it instead expresses the opposite, manifests it, makes it seem real, and the result is that you produce stuff you do not want. The perception and experience then that stuff is happening that you do not want and did not intend, further reinforces your belief that there is a disconnect between what you are causing and the effects you are producing.

Since your effects do not seem to match your awareness of how you are causing, you conclude that these effects are happening against your will, are not things that you wanted or asked for, and therefore you are being unfairly treated. You will then react to this by fighting with and waging war against these effects, as though they have come with an "alien will" to have power over you, to threaten you, to disturb your peace, and to bring death.

And so in this confused state, few realize that they themselves are actually, literally, directly, causing to happen ALL of the effects that they are experiencing. The unconsciousness with which these effects are being produced, and their apparent opposition to what the person is aware of desiring, amplifies the sense of disconnect and disownership, leading to victim consciousness.

Since you do not see the mechanism by which you are choosing everything that happens to you, by which you are experiencing exactly what you are asking for, and by which nothing is happening to you against your own will, is simply evidence that you are not AWARE of the way that you are using your own will and power against yourself. You are your own, and only, enemy.

Since you think that there are powers outside of the scope of your will, which you really share with God, that are capable of preventing your will, or which interrupt it, or which interfere with it, you also attribute responsibility for the deeds of such a will to other people, mother nature, random chaos, sudden events and so on. Or perhaps even a devil. But ultimately it is YOU who are doing all of this.

You just do not realize just how powerful you are, the fact that you are very creative, the fact that you are expressing your desires correctly, and the slight 'error' that you are making expressions through the ego mind, which is interfering with the outcome of what you want. It is because your ego mind filters and interferes with and reverses and opposes and turns upside-down everything you are flowing outward, that you keep seeing and experiencing results which seem to be what you do not want to happen. And as such, apparently outside of your awareness - unconsciously - you keep choosing to be sick, to suffer, and to die.

Jesus reminds me, we are but doing this to ourselves, and awareness of this fact and ownership of this fact and complete experiential living out from this fact, is the secret to salvation.

What if everything that ever happened was done by yourself? What if everything that ever happened to you, seemingly, was actually chosen and done by you, even if you did not seem to want it, even it was torturous and horrible? What if you asked for every single person to treat you the way they did, and they did so faithfully? If this is true... then there are absolutely NO GROUNDS WHATSOEVER on which you can claim that you are a victim.

This might seem horrifying at first, to reclaim responsibility for what you seem to have done to yourself, and to let everyone and all external causes off the hook, but it also means it's opening the way for you to accept your power, to become clear that you CAN and DO do things to yourself, and that you can now choose to treat yourself with love and respect. Then once you put down your own weapons, there ARE no other weapons or sources of attack that can come to threaten you. And you are invulnerable.

Immortality.

Forgiveness only seems to be needed, as a process, because you currently believe there are things that need to be forgiven.

In other words, you currently are experiencing unforgiveness, and therefore the world seems unforgiven and unforgiving. And therefore, you think that you need to forgive.

But this process of forgiveness, is supposed to take you from a state of unforgiveness - an unforgivingattitude, to a state of forgiveness - a forgiving attitude.

It's supposed to occur to you that the purpose of forgiving is to undo the perceived need to 'do forgiveness'. Because ultimately there is not anything that needs to be forgiven.

There is a forgiven world here. A world of innocence. A world with no guilt. But you don't perceive it because you have judged it as unforgiven and unforgivable, having judged yourself as such.

So it seems like you need to do some forgiveness. And as you do this forgiveness, what you're doing is re-accessing the awareness that whatever it was that you thought was unforgivable, is forgivable, and is in fact innocent. An ancient hatred has become a present love.

Whatever it was you thought was judged and hated, is innocent. Whatever it is you thought was really happening, is not happening and you don't even see it anymore.

So as you proceed with your forgiving, your practice, you should gradually come to realize, there is less and less to forgive, precisely because you're becoming aware of the real world. You're becoming aware that everything is forgivable and forgiven.

Forgiveness ultimately is not a process, but a state of awareness in which you see forgivingly, with a forgiving attitude, and this forgiving attitude does not show you things to forgive. It does not show you errors or mistakes. It only shows you innocence.

This attitude of being forgiving doesn't mean you are having to constantly forgive and forgive and do more work and counteract more crap that shows up. When you are in a forgiving attitude, you do not see crap. You do not see problems. You don't see enemies or things to forgive.

So its a bit of a paradox, that when you have a truly forgiving attitude, when you are in the Holy Spirit's mind, you see everything as forgiven already. You pro-actively fore-give, which means you give ahead of time, which means you extend love and you extend innocence and truth and therefore that is what you will perceive because that is your reality.

In your reality there isn't any 'thing' to forgive. All is forgiven.

So really, you think you need to do lots of forgiveness still. Yes, for a time. But only because you think forgiveness is needed. Only because you're not yet able to sustain a consistently forgiving attitude. Only because it hasn't yet dawned on you that everyone including you is completely innocent and calls only for love.

So as you work you way through this forgiveness 'process', this undoing, this purifying, you're really erasing the mistakes that you're making in your forgiveness, you're polishing up your attitude, you're getting ready to see with forgiving eyes. You're preparing to look upon the world with innocence in order to see only innocence.

This process is itself not forgiveness. This process is the way that you gradually wake up to forgiveness. It's a sorting out, of what is forgiveable and what is not forgivable. Eventually you will accept that everything is forgivable, and as such, will no longer seen anything as unforgiven.

A forgiving attitude shows you a forgiven world. A forgiving attitude doesn't give you lots of work to do trying to counteract illusions of judgement. A forgiving attitude is simply clarity. It's the clarity of truth, the clarity of awareness. A forgiving attitude shows your mind, clearly, that when you can see clearly and with truth, you are able to properly discern that THERE IS ONLY INNOCENCE.

All appearances of things not being innocent, only looks that way because you have blocks in your mind. All appearances that there is nasty dirty stuff and grievous enemies to overcome, is because of blocks in your mind. These things DO NOT REALLY EXIST.

You see them, you look upon them, precisely because your mind is distorted and is projecting images that aren't real. You see enemies because you are attacking your innocence. You see attack and threat and danger and victimhood because you don't realize that you can't be a victim. You see impossible things because you are not yet aware of how these things are impossible - you actually take them seriously and think they are possible.

So ultimately, this forgiveness process that we all undertake, it's really a transition away from "I need to forgive" towards "there is nothing to forgive". There is nothing to forgive because there is no sin, there is no guilt, there is no fear, there is no attack, there is no harm. There is nothing to forgive because nothing has gone wrong. Nothing has happened. Holy Spirit sees this. You need to learn to see it too. And then you will be done with the 'effort' of forgiving, which ultimately is not a 'doing', but a 'being'.

Everyone loses when there is separation. It doesn’t matter what side of the fence you fall on. It doesn’t matter which side you take. It doesn’t matter who wins the conflict. Everyone loses. Anyone participating in the ego’s game automatically loses.

If you can think of the ego like a third party, whose sole interest is to "come between", it has no real intention of acting for the benefit of either party. All it wants is to pit two people against each other, to reinforce division.

It couldn’t care less if you think you are the one who is right or not. It doesn’t care who is righteous or correct or better or worse. It has no allegiance to anyone. All it wants is to make two brothers separate.

As a third party, the ego schemes and plots to find ways to make two people fight. It does this when a person has a split mind, hoping to increase the split. It wants to intensify the division between that person and themselves, by intensifying the division between that person and another.

If you could see, that you and your enemy are both in the same boat, and you both have a common enemy - the ego - perhaps you will see the sense in uniting against IT, rather than against each other.

All it takes is to stop for a moment, and realize, you know what, "the ego" is trying to make us fight right now, to come between us and pit us against each other. "It" wants us to separate. It is playing us off against each other. Neither of us is going to be better off because if we become separate from each other, we both lose unity and wholeness.

The only sane option then is to unite against the ego, by stepping out of the argument and both brothers agreeing to a "shared interests", a common ground, in which they no longer see each other as the enemy, but simply recognize the ego is the "enemy".

When neither of you wants to allow the ego to get ITS way, you will side with each other and join as one. When you decide to do this, the ego has been completely disempowered. But if you do not decide to do this, you are feeding it.

I have found this useful in my own life in experiences of arguments with some people where, I stopped and said, you know what, the ego wants us to be arguing right now, it wants us to disagree, so that it can make us both unhappy.

And this totally cut through the whole argument because it reframed the entire thing in a fuller light, a broader picture, in which the ego was called out as that which was the "problem" and not either person. We were quickly able to then repair the damage seeing that we were in fact in the same boat with the same desire for "separating less".

The only war is a war in which everyone loses. There are no winners in the ego’s dream of death. If you play with the ego, you WILL lose. It is guaranteed. It’s the only rules of the game. Try to use the ego and you will suffer. The only way out of the trap is not to play it at all.

It is impossible to find a loophole, or a workaround, or some way you can find success, or a way to win, or a way to benefit more, or to be the one who comes away with no effects while the other suffers. It is absolutely impossible. The ego’s game is totally rigged against everyone involved.

As soon as you participate, you are guranteed suffering and loss. Even if you seem to "win", you still will suffer and lose.

Winning requires defeat. Success requires failure. To win is to lose, and to succeed is to fail. The only winners are those who have separated themselves from others, and that is a loss with far higher cost than any bounty can compensate you for. It requires you to be separate from yourself, and so now you are worse off, in the name of victory.

The only way out of this is to recognize the ego is a pointless, futile, hopeless, impossible mess of dead ends and failure and disaster. It simply does not work, ever. And therefore it is not working for you. It works only for itself and its own aims of separation.

Do not be fooled into thinking the ego can be your savior or your hero or your friend or protecting you or making you succeed or win. It will never do anything other than lead you away from God, away from your Home, away from yourself, and away from happiness.

The temptation to believe that you are smart enough to get way with using it and not pay the consequences, is a disaster for all concerned. There are no winners in the ego world. There is only loss. The only true gain is the return to God, to wholeness, to sharing, to shared interests, and to recognizing your brother as your equal and innocent counterpart.

Your brother is not your enemy. Your ego is. And its attacking you as much as your brothers when you separate from them. Separation is a double-edged sword. Both of you always suffer.