Introductory text prior to lesson 221 in the ACIM workbook - one of the Course's masterpieces on Forgiveness:

"What is Forgiveness?

Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin, except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God.

An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. The mind is closed, and will not be released. The thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its wanted goal?

An unforgiving thought does many things. In frantic action it pursues its goal, twisting and overturning what it sees as interfering with its chosen path. Distortion is its purpose, and the means by which it would accomplish it as well. It sets about its furious attempts to smash reality, without concern for anything that would appear to pose a contradiction to its point of view.

Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.

Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide, your Savior and Protector, strong in hope, and certain of your ultimate success. He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God."

But often you feel vulnerable.

Vulnerability is an experience of feeling exposed, accessible, hurt-able, noticeable, visible, targeted and attacked. When you are vulnerable you perceive that the whole world is out to get you.

Experiencing vulnerability is a familiar state that you normally refer to as "afraid". It's another word for it. You can't help but experience what you call 'fear' when you are seeing yourself as being attackable.

However, this sense of being vulnerable has only come about because you have created an enemy within your own mind. You've projected this enemy onto other people or situations, thinking they now are the cause of the threat, but the enemy is still in your own mind. And since you created it, you can undo it.

It is therefore possible to stop feeling vulnerable, and to re-access a state of INVULNERABILITY.

Any form of resistance will create a division in your mind, a separation, and will make your mind be "split". Literally, your mind seems to take on two identities, one which experiences itself as being victimized, and the other which experiences itself as being a victimizer.

Usually the part that is a victim uses denial and disassociation to block awareness that the victimizer part is also a part of the same mind. It is the victim's resistance to the victimizer that makes it a victim in the first place, and denies and therefore projects the victimizer into being. The victim then does not perceive that they themselves are the cause of their own victimization, that they are literally doing it to themselves within their own mind, that their mind is in a state of self-attack, and that they therefore could do something to stop it.

A sense of vulnerability must occur as soon as you have made yourself unwhole. This can happen in many forms including self-abandonment, self-attack, self-rejection, denial, believing in enemies, resistance to the truth, trying to block awareness, blame, scapegoating, trying to stop things from happening, being controlling, not accepting everything as it is, etc. These are all forms of separating and putting up walls. And putting up walls, experientially, actually takes down walls in your mind, producing an experiencing of having become exposed to something that you were previously safe from.

You can't feel safe while you are attacking yourself.

What you can realize though, is that it is YOU that is attacking yourself, and it has nothing to do with anyone else. Immediately you will feel significant reduction in the experience of exposure and vulnerability, if you can remind yourself that you are not being affected by other people or situations. They are NOT the cause. That alone will relieve much of your anxiety. This also deflates some of your belief in separation and your resistance to yourself. But you need to take it further and undo as much as you can of the split that's happened inside your own self.

Quite literally, you can become completely invulnerable. Or rather, recognize that your invulnerability is still completely intact and was simply blocked from your awareness when you thought you were vulnerable. You can become whole, free of the split mind of the ego, and experiencing your SELF as free of attack. In such a state, there is nothing outside of you which can bring about an internal experience of attack, and therefore you are invulnerable to everything. Nobody can give it to you or take it away. If you do not choose to believe in attack, you will have no enemies. And then you will enjoy peace of mind.

You as love cannot be attacked by the ego. The ego in others or in the world is utterly incapable of doing ANYTHING to love. Love is completely outside of the entire realm of the ego’s dream. All ego identities are totally out of reach of it. Never the two will meet.

The course says "Love was never in the world." Meaning, the world - ego, people’s attacks, war and conflict, have no ability to be where love is (because love is everywhere and ego does not really exist). This is also why nothing can assail the Kingdom of God.

However,. ...! ... IF you choose to believe that you are something other than love, if you believe that something else is true of you and that it is not true that you are ONLY love, THAT IDENTITY that you’ve made-up is now WITHIN the realm of the ego. It’s now a PART of the ego’s thought system. This makes it possible for it to be attacked.

This is why minds (which are fused with love) cannot be attacked, but it seems that bodies can be attacked. Bodies are part of the ego’s dream.

IF you have chosen to believe that something false is true of you, such as... you are guilty, sinful, unworthy, unlovable, not good enough, shameful, inferior, right/wrong, good/bad etc, then you are positioning yourself "on the battlefield" in amongst the rest of the ego.

The ego can and does attack ITSELF, because the ego IS the idea of self-attack. It is inner conflict, a war with yourself. It’s attacks are illusions, but the ego believes they are reality. If YOU believe that your false beliefs are true of you, YOU will see yourself as "attackable".

Once you are *identifying* yourself as equated with something false/ego/untrue, you’re going to experience vulnerability, victimhood, you will seem to be "accessible" to attackers, and you can seem to be hurt.

If you do something in which you feel you’ve sinned, or are guilty or wrong or unlovable in some way, you will walk about the world feeling like there is a TARGET on your back. You will become paranoid. You will FEAR that someone is going to do something to you. You will see yourself as being constantly looked at, which makes you feel very "self conscious". You SUSPECT everyone of having a murderous intention towards you, and this completely undermines your sense of feeling safe.

You cannot feel safe or certain of being unharmable, while you hold false beliefs about yourself. With these beliefs intact, whenever anyone attempts to insinuate that something false is true of you, you will not be truly able to stop or deny the accusation, because YOU believe it is true, even if you don’t want to admit that. You will AGREE that you SHOULD be attacked. Even if you try to avoid attack, believing things true of the ego are true of you, ASKS for you to be victimized.

No-one who regards themselves as part of the ego thought system, by believing something false is true, can escape attack. However, if you HEAL your false beliefs and let them go, your IDENTITY is going to shift away from "I am guilty" (made of guilt), "I am sinful" (made of sin) etc... to... I AM LOVE (made of love).

When you are made of love, YOU CANNOT BE ATTACKED. The ego has absolutely no ability to make its illusions do anything to reality. In love, you are *invulnerable and immortal*. And I mean this literally. Absolutely beyond all ability to ever be attacked ever again. Becoming REAL therefore makes you invulnerable, because "nothing real can be threatened". And since this state recognizes that illusions have NO POWER, NO WILL and NO CAUSALITY, the tranquility of PEACE is permanently undisturbed.

You are safe in God because you are innocent, lovable and loved. When this is your IDENTITY, YOU will not perceive that anything anyone does can affect you in any way. You will not perceive that their insanity has anything to do with you. You will take nothing personally. You will see the insanity of others as a CALL FOR LOVE. And anything anyone ever tries to claim about "you" will only ever be a claim about some ego identity. Who YOU ARE will be different to the ego identity that other people are trying to target, and so it will be CLEAR AND OVIOUS that they weren’t even targeting you at all. This makes it impossible for you to see yourself as being attacked.

You are immortal spirit. Immortal spirit is literally invulnerable. Love CANNOT be damaged. Nothing real can be threatened because only love exists. Love is your real identity. You are IMMORTAL.

You can either be in a state of total forgiveness, or you are in a state of judgementalism.

In forgiveness, judgement is given to the Holy Spirit who has full access to all knowledge and can judge correctly. His only judgement is that there is no sin anywhere and everyone is innocent. Or to put it another way, he repurposes judgement to judge that nothing is judged.

If you fail to be in a forgiving state, you will enter into ego, into its thought system, and into limitation. You will then attempt to judge separately from the Holy Spirit, and will do so on the basis that separation is true.

This will lead to incorrect judgements, limited judgements, condemnation and accusation of sin, projection of guilt, labelling and categorising, and a general judgey attacky harsh attitude.

This judgment always concludes falsely because it's not based on wholeness so cannot see the whole truth. It is a mistaken form of judgement, in which we think we know - or have an opinion about - everything we see. We then turn into critics who are never satisfied and nothing is acceptable to us.

We then actually use judgement as an attack and a defence. It becomes a wall of interpretation in between you and everything you see, and a way to keep things away from you.

It's then used as a way to not join, and to keep your distance from things. It has a feeling of a withdrawing and avoiding and rejecting and not wanting.

As it becomes stronger you can notice that it is in fact hate and is not loving. So you form a rift, a barrier of hate, around yourself, to keep the world and reality and other people at a distance.

Judgmentalism twists everything it sees in an effort to frame it how you would prefer it be, or how you judge it to be. You form images in your mind overlaid on top of what you see, based on these judgements, and relate to the images instead of the thing itself.

This means that you're not really welcoming reality or truth as it is, and you are not really seeing, or engaging, or joining, or really looking and registering what is there. Instead you are pulling away in disgust and hate and unwillingness, and relating to your judgements as if they are real and true.

We are doing this all the time, if we're not being forgiving, and it actually removes us from direct immediate reality. It takes us out of the present, and puts us in the past psychologically. The ego's judgements are designed to keep God away from you.

The ego in us is very critical and accusatory, bitter and angry, unloving and unkind, labelling things as wrong, judging as guilty, condemning and finding things wrong, tearing things down and separating things out, disagreeing and disapproving and offering an opinion about everything. This is judgementalism.

If you will suspend judgement and decide you are not going to judge in any way, you may notice your awareness opening up, and you look more directly at things without any sense of attacking them or having something to say about them.

As you stop judging, you become more present, and it feels like you have more direct awareness and are paying fuller attention. You see things more for how they are and not for what you were making of them, and they in fact become more interesting and beautiful.

To see without judgement is to see with the eyes of Christ, which looks upon everything while remaining still and not having all this mental activity of evaluation and analysis and labelling and so on.

This forgiving state of mind just looks without hurling something at what it's looking at. The problem we really have is that we do not recognize how much and when we are judging, and it's pretty much all the time.

We also may not recognize that there is an alternative, a way of seeing that isn't riddled with judgements, defensiveness, accusation or attack. Try just looking at something without having anything to say about it at all in your mind. Just see it quietly.

"An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is untrue. The mind is closed, and will not be released. The thought protects projection, tightening its chains, so that distortions are more veiled and more obscure; less easily accessible to doubt, and further kept from reason. What can come between a fixed projection and the aim that it has chosen as its needed goal?"

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is."

"The Holy Spirit does not teach your mind to be critical of other minds, because He does not want you to teach your errors and LEARN THEM YOURSELVES. He would hardly be consistent if He allowed you to STRENGTHEN what you must learn to avoid. In the mind of the THINKER, then, He IS judgmental, but only in order to unify it so IT CAN perceive WITHOUT judgment. This enables the mind to TEACH without judgment and therefore learn to BE without judgment."

"How can His Son AWAKEN from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge NOT, and he WILL waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is PART of it. Judge not, for he who judges WILL have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. Nor CAN he know the Self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a PART of evil dreams, where idols are your "true" identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid, in terror and in guilt, upon yourself. All figures in the dream are idols, made to save you FROM the dream. Yet they are PART of what they have been made to save you FROM."

This filesystem of a computer on an open network is actually a very good analogy for the structure of heaven and the relationship of individuals.

Let's say that there is a file system containing all this content.

Let's then say that you have your own computer (your soul) which is networked into the file system (via the christ mind which connects the souls).

Let's say that because the system is "open", other souls also can hook themselves up to the file system (via the christ mind).

And let's also say the system is so open that anyone who connects themselves to the file system also becomes "part of" the system, and their system is open, and so it allows access to their own computer by the main filesystem and also by all the other computers (souls).

In this open environment (heaven/sonship), I can access a file, say a pdf file, on the file system, and have full access to it. I can read the whole file. Simultaneously, you and other souls can access the same pdf file, and have full access to it, and share it, at the same time, and read the whole thing without limits.

Similarly I can access YOU, the file on your own computer (soul), and fully access everything about you and share "what you are", including any "creations" which you might have stored "inside" your own computer (within your being).

And as such in this open state, the entirety of creation is accessible to everyone simultaneously, fully, and without restrictions. Everything is shared. No-one is denied access. Everyone can access everything fully, even if others are accessing the same content, at the same time. Our access overlaps.

NOW.

Consider the separation idea, or the ego. What would happen if you suddenly became selfish, and decided that you wanted access to one of the files on the file system, to have the same full access you had before, BUT... with a condition.

The condition is, that no-one else is allowed to access it at the same time as you. You want exclusive rights. You want ownership. You want the content to be isolated. You want to keep others away from the content and not share it with them. And to do this you have to put a "wall" of some kind around the little piece of content to a) keep you inside of it where you can access the content, and b) keep others outside of it so they can't access it.

Now, let's say that rather than you doing this with a file on the main filesystem, you instead try to do this with your own computer (soul). Let's say you try to make it so that you have access to your self, but other souls don't. That the main file system is also deprived access from your computer, and no-one is allowed to share what's on your computer. You want a "private" system.

So you put up a wall around your computer (the body, around the mind) to try to keep you in and others out, so that you can have exclusive rights and possession of what is "inside" you and reject what now seems to be "outside you" (the rest of the network/sonship). You're now being selfish. You've put yourself into lockdown. You have shut yourself off from SHARING with the whole, from the network, and from the main filesystem, and so all you are left with is what's inside your own system.

In this state now, you are still basically the soul, the self, which you were before this happened. In this act, you did not actually invent a self. You already were a self, when you were sharing the filesystem, as God intended. Openly. But now that you put a wall around yourself, this makes "your self" become "separate". It's like you unplugged your computer from the network so that no-one else could share what you have.

So this produces "a self which has BECOME separate", which previously was not separate. This is what "the separate self" means. THIS *SELFISHNESS* is the EGO. Not the idea of a self or soul.... the idea of a self or soul that has become trapped in isolation due to the walls its put up, the blocks to awareness, which have disconnected and disassociated itself from sharing with the whole networked system. So now you are a perfect being surrounded by limitation. The limitation needs to be removed, not your SELF.

In fact, in order to "wake up" from the state, you need to plug your self back into the network (sonship) and re-join with the whole system (heaven), by plugging your computer (soul) back into the network via a cable (christ mind) so that you can share the whole system again. And this also means the whole system now has access to YOU as well, because you are part of the content. Literally this means that a part of the sonship, a part of creation, which was orphaned, is now returning to the whole, so that the whole can now SHARE IT and access it and therefore benefit from and enjoy it (you) just as much as you enjoy others.

So you see just like with computers, which host NON-PHYSICAL content, Heaven also hosts non-physical content. And in that kind of system it's possible for us to SHARE and have simultaneous access with everyone else, without anyone being limited or restricted or shut out in any way. This is the nature of Heaven, God's creation. It's all based on openness and sharing by many individual souls who ALL have FULL access to the WHOLE of everything all at once.

Your soul has full access to everything, and to the ego that would mean "there is nothing left" for anyone else. But to God, your full access means everyone else ALSO can share and have everything. Just not exclusively. There is no exclusivity, isolation, SPECIALNESS or selfishness in heaven. It's a totally 100% open shared system of freedom.

ACIM: "The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self fullness."

You might ask what does miraculousness mean, because God is also miraculous and all living beings in reality are miraculous in nature. There are references to "God's miracles" and "You are a miracle" for example, referring to creations in heaven. There is of course other context to do with miracles "in this world" or on this level, used for healing and such.

But miraculousness itself is a little trickier to describe. It has something to do with the golden rule relationship between multiple beings in a holographic system. It's the way by which for example God can create multiple sons and each of the sons contains the whole of God and is whole in and of itself and shares the same whole, yet is still a created thing absolutely created in its own right. That it can be one and many simultaneously - there is a transcendental nature to that which goes beyond non-duality and duality. It's what most people would describe as a paradoxical thing - seemingly impossible.

For example there is this line which mentions the miraculous power of the soul:

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

This is talking about a transcendental holographic ability of the soul in which even if it were to have literally everything for itself, there WOULD STILL be absolutely everything accessible to everyone else at the same time. Its possible for the soul to be the whole and have the whole and give and share the whole, and each soul can have the whole all at once simultaneously, without any sense of compromise or taking turns or lack or whatever else. The soul transcends these ideas because it's part of the holographic principle in the mind of God, in which the whole is in every part and every part is whole.

To boil that down, if you ask yourself about what makes it possible for God who is everything to create another whole being, whereby that being IS distinct and a whole being in its own right, yet STILL is 100% one with God and sharing everything with God, WITHOUT losing its distinctiveness. .... how those two things can be true at once - oneness and manyness. .... trying to put your finger on what that quality is, that possibility, that nature of God that allows this to happen, it is quite literally MIRACULOUS, and it defies absolutely all explanation.

Personally I believe it to be somehow related to the INFINITE nature of God which makes everything possible, such as in the will of God being able to do anything, even things which seem utterly impossible to us. The creation of many sons of God IS a miracle and is made possibly BY miraculousness - the miraculous nature of God. God is literally miraculous - and the miraculous-ness is driven by the holographic inter-relationships and symbiotic harmony of God and his creations, which are living thoughts, who are many and one at the same time.

Another aspect to this is that it's all about LIFE. Pure life. God is pure life. Life without the slightest notion of death or change or suffering of any kind. Pure immortality. God's eternal nature. Totally 100% life forever. The essence of life itself. THAT is GIVEN in the creation whereby God literally creates his children simply by WILLING IT, through an act of GIVING LIFE. He thus extends and creates literal beings that are ALIVE - souls, that are so immortal and alive that they live forever.

"ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life."

On Earth, what we call miracles reflects that, something that kind of emanates out of the mind from a state of LOVE, in which there is unconditional giving - maximal service - where a person who is "more alive" or whose mind is more aware of being purely immortal, gives LIFE ITSELF to those who seem to be trying to play dead or who are in darkness or suffering. That giving of LIFE (could call it love, light, power etc), literally resurrects and heals and returns people to life, and can do the same to their bodies as well. Because there is NOTHING your holiness cannot do, literally.

Here from the CoA edition or Notes... "Remember a miracle is a spark of Life. It shines through the darkness and brings in the light. You must begin to forget and remember."

Don't think of miracles as a STATE therefore. There is a state of miracle mindedness and miracle readiness, but that is not MIRACLE DOING or MIRACLE WORKING. Working a miracle HAS to be an act of GIVING TO ANOTHER, or to CREATE ANOTHER. A spark of LIFE has to come out of you and enter another to enlighten their mind and heal it. It's the most open loving unconditional pure blessing that you can give to anyone. It literally reverses death and sickness and makes them impossible, REPLACING them with life itself. There is massive power in this because it uses the power of God.

You being in darkness and shifting your perception up to a greater level of "being alive" is in a sense a miracle that you work for yourself, but the purpose of doing that is purification so that you can become able to GIVE miracles to others.

"He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

You can only give the miracles you have received, meaning that as you heal you become an instrument for healing, because you become more alive and more loving and more able to GIVE what you have received. The more you give the more you receive also and miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver by increase the total amount of love - which is through a similar mechanism to how the kingdom of God increases and how ideas of love strengthen when they are given away - giving and receiving are one - thats part of what miraculousness means.

Ultimately the performing of miracles CREATES LIFE that has eternal life and lives forever. You create your creations in heaven with God and your brothers through miraculous acts of life-giving power. On earth you can't use it to create because of the separation/ego etc, but you can use it to restore and heal which is a similar use of giving life. And this is what RESURRECTION is all about.

Recall this about miracles GIVING LIFE:

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

What you have to give, what is within you, is LIFE ITSELF. Pure essence of livingness, shared with and given by God. Awareness, presence, being, vision, creative power etc. You GIVE YOURSELF. You GIVE GOD. You GIVE LIFE to others. That is miracle working as a "creative energiser", which you become able to do when you have done sufficient purification through "working a miracle for yourself" ie focusing on resurrecting your mind and moving yourself back closer to identification with your immortal spirit.

The so-called "shift in perception" is a SIDE EFFECT of temporary changes in the mind, it is in and of itself not a miracle. "Those who speak of "the miracle OF healing" are combining two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is NOT a miracle. The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a REMEDY. It is purely a means, while any type of healing is a result."

A shift in perception may be called an EFFECT of a miracle, a healing result, it itself is not a miracle. A miracle is a spark of life from the power of God extended through you from God which has the power to extend to others through you, CAUSING perception to shift IF it is needed. Miracles have a whole lot to do with CAUSATION, not passive states of perception.

Our opinions don't mean anything at all. They are absolutely worthless. It doesn't matter what your truth is or what my truth is or what anyone's truth is. It's all bullshit. An opinion is the delusional voice of the ego.

In attempting to express what we think is right or true, we actually are covering up the truth. We are replacing the truth with a viewpoint of what we want the truth to be. These expressions of "my truth", which come across as "this is what the truth is", are actually censorship of real truth.

Then there are those who say that everyone's truth is different or unique and to have your own truth. That's insanity. And then there are those who say no-one knows or can know the truth - not quite true - you CAN know the truth, it's just that hardly anyone is willing and we've become expert at obscuring it.

More and more I see that the truth - as God - simply 'is'. There is absolutely nothing we can do to change or define what it is. It can either be accepted, or denied, but nothing else.

We don't get to decide what God is. We don't get to decide what reality is. We don't get to decide what is true or false. We don't get to decide who we are. We don't get to decide where we came from or what our characteristics are. We don't get to decide God's will for Him. And we don't get to change God in any way. We also don't really get to be separate from God or have our own separate existence or "my life" that I've taken possession and control over.

"There is no life outside of Heaven" - ACIM

"I am as God Created me." - ACIM

"Only the truth is true." - ACIM

Fortunately for us, the gift that God has given us is so perfect and amazing that we couldn't really want for anything else, and nothing else is better for us. It is an absolute blessing and an act of grace. We should be overjoyed to accept what He has deemed us worthy of.

The truth is fixed. It is permanent. It doesn't change. God doesn't change. And no matter what anyone's opinion is, no matter what my opinion is, it's not going to change the truth.

It is actually insane to insist that I or anyone knows what the truth is IF it is not actually aligned with what the truth is. It is, however, sane to know the truth when it is clear and correct and in full acceptance of what the truth actually is.

The more that I allow Jesus and Holy Spirit to express through me, with less censorship and less desire to change what they say, the more "raw" their message becomes. The more completely blunt and unhidden and direct and factual it becomes. I see myself wanting to cover things up and not say some things and not be so brutally honest but they urge me to stop saving face and let the raw truth out.

I expect Jesus to have some kind of persona or way of softening the blow, but He is just like.... in your face! This is what the truth is, boom... take it or leave it. Totally exposed and out in the open with nothing to hide and no attempt to cover anything up.

If something is true and we try to avoid it or deny it or reject it or cover it up or disbelieve it or try to make something else true in order to claim it is false, we're being nothing but arrogant and we have an authority problem.

It's not going to matter whatsoever whether someone claims to know the true version of ACIM or any other teaching, or not. The truth is true. It can only be what it is and it can only be experienced "as-is". The truth itself will be the true measure of who is correct or not - you could call that "judgement day" in a symbolic kind of way. The truth knows what the truth is. The rest of us just get to accept it or attempt to block it and pretend we know better.

But this at least means that the truth is accessible, and you can accept it, and if you are willing to accept it you can align with it and it can be shared with God. Truth is sharing. But you can't have an isolated truth of your own. Isolation is not sharing and puts you into a private world where your own opinion seems to mean something. Your opinion doesn't mean anything at all.

God knows.

God just is, like it or not.

God has given His Creation. He has created us. He has shared everything with us. He has defined what we are forever. The course says something like - think not that you can improve upon Heaven, you cannot add anything to the truth that is more valuable than what it already contains.

We literally therefore must SURRENDER to the truth, lay down everything we want to believe that opposes or blocks or changes it, and simply allow it, accept it.

Related to this, when A Course in Miracles begins it says "This is A Course in Miracles, it is a REQUIRED COURSE." Do you think Jesus is being factual, literal, and absolutely truthful? It is a required course because it is part of God's plan for awakening, and what God says goes. It is inescapable. We have a curriculum for awakening and we must take it and we will take it. It is God's will. you can't avoid it. You can't pretend there is some other completely separate path that doesn't include the curriculum somehow.

The metaphysics of the truth as laid out in the Course is completely true. There are steps in awakening. There are things you have to admit to. You have to learn to admit to the real truth - not a truth that one book says or another argues with. The experiential factual real LIVING truth. You can deny it all you want but you cannot change it or define it. Other pathways may also lead to God but only if they include the same factual real truth.

This is why the "only" path to God is really A Course in Miracles, or to put it another way, it's not the form of the Course but.. "the course" is the "divine curriculum" which is "required" no matter what form your path takes or what materials you use or what books or what teachers. All paths - all forms of paths - lead to God, but some obscure it more than others. You cannot wake up without taking the one curriculum, either directly or inadvertently. And you can be an ACIM student and avoid the curriculum for a long time. ;;-)

This leads me to a different but related point.

I was asking Jesus about how I can possibly accept that someone is sick. If acceptance of the truth is so important, surely I would be better off not resisting the fact that someone is sick? Surely I would be more at peace if I stop fighting with the sickness? Can it be possible that I can come to a complete acceptance of and allowance of that sickness?

Jesus said no. How can I accept something that is false? Jesus speaks of His inability to tolerate the absence of truth in himself or others, and asks us to join Him in the great crusade to correct error in everyone. "As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you." - ACIM

I cannot accept someone being sick because the sickness isn't real. I can't simultaneously believe that it is real and be at peace. I can accept that they really DO NOT have sickness. I can accept that they are NOT sick. I can accept that they are One with the truth, in truth. But the sickness, the illusion of sickness, it is intolerable IF it is real. Fortunately it is not real, and that is what can be accepted. But then ... Love compels a desire to perform miracles.

"How can I help?"

1. Everything in reality is miraculous. Miraculousness is the nature of God's thought system. Everything real is permanently miraculous. The omnipresent and holographic nature of God's thought system is literally miraculous, in that it does not adhere to limitations, fears, blocks, constructs, physics, ego laws, space or time. It's a holographic system where the whole is in every part which defies all ego systems of thought.

"You are a miracle"

"Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life"

"Miracles are a universal blessing from God"

"The miraculous nature of the soul"

"Miracles are natural to God, and to the One Who speaks for Him." (holy spirit)

These kind of statements are all aimed at "level 1". Everything in reality/heaven is miraculous, creation is a miraculous act, your "children of your will" are miraculously created by your will alone, and Heaven's laws break all the laws of the ego world. Everything real is ALWAYS miraculous and returning to being ALWAYS miraculous is the goal of the course.

"That is what we meant when we once said that miracles are NATURAL, and when they do NOT occur, something has gone wrong."

"I KNOW that miracles are natural, because they are expressions of love."

2. "The miracle" (singular) refers to God's answer to the separation. It is represented by the Holy Spirit who is the medium of miracles. This is a singular whole miracle which encompasses and includes all the miracles of type 3. In a similar way to how Christ encompasses all the Sons of God in the Sonship. The miracle is the state of atonement, true perception, salvation, right mindedness, forgiveness. THE miracle is hidden underneath all blocks to awareness and egotism. It's how Heaven touches on this world very lightly. Being miracle MINDED allows you to access your miraculous nature, FROM which you can perform miracles (type 3).

"The miracle forgives; the ego damns"

"This terrible mistake about yourself the miracle corrects as gently as a loving mother sings her child to rest."

"The Children of God are very holy. The miracle honors their holiness."

"The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle is the one thing you can do that TRANSCENDS order, being based, NOT on differences, but on equality "

"The miracle offers EXACTLY the same response to EVERY call for help."

"The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise."

"The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you."

"The miracle extends WITHOUT your help, but you ARE needed that it can begin."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone."

"There is ONE miracle, as there is ONE reality. And every miracle you do (see #3) contains them all, as every aspect of reality you see blends quietly into the One Reality of God. The only miracle that ever was (on level 1), is God's most holy Son, created in the One Reality that is his Father."

3. "Miracles" (plural) refers to individual expressions of the one miracle, whereby the holographic wholeness of The Miracle EXPRESSES in this world, through the Holy Spirit, as an act of giving and receiving the miraculous nature of love. Miracles break all the laws of the world because they're coming from another world whose laws are totally different. They can override the laws of physics. They can reverse death and restore life. They can heal the body. They can move mountains. They can allow you to walk on water and do everything Jesus did. They are interpersonal acts in which another person benefits from what you give. They fulfill your function of healing in this world and eventually lead to revelation and atonement for yourself and others. Miracles happen mainly on level 2, but you are still miraculous on level 1.

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

"Miracles are a part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement. "

"Miracles make minds one in God."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God."

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another."

"Miracles are NOT in competition, and the number that you can do is LIMITLESS. They can be simultaneous and legion."

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind."

" Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less. "

"Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating that it is more blessed to give than to receive. They simultaneously increase the reserve strength of the giver, and supply the lack of strength in the receiver."

"Like all expressions of love, which are ALWAYS miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws "

"Miracles make time and tide wait for all men. They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes, and can abolish both."

"Miracles are a form of healing."

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed."

"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT of what it made "

And sometimes Jesus speaks on all these levels at once. e.g.

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. "

"Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."

Being miraculous is normal and natural and permanent. It's your NATURE to be miraculous. You are miraculous in heaven, where you create miraculously. On Earth, it is your function to rediscover your miraculous nature, by uncovering and restoring a state of miracle mindedness by removing blocks to awareness and becoming forgiving. As denial is removed, your miraculous ability is made accessible and you become MORE miraculous. You continue becoming MORE miraculous until you are unlimited in what you can do. And you will NEVER lose this miracle-working ability.

Jesus asks that we PRACTICE working miracles. "Doing them brings conviction in the ability". Without attempting to TRY to do them, we remain in fear. Miracles can only be performed in love, which is a state of truer perception. ("Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles.")

Purification must be done first to remove ego blocks so that the light can shine. Once the clouds are parted, love can come through to express miraculous power. It is by EXPRESSING FROM a state of love, that you perform miracles.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

"The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of his Atonement."

"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me. "

It's important to realize the role of the Holy Spirit. We have A Course in Miracles, a book, which has teachings and theory and lessons and so on. And you could conclude this means all you need to do is use the book. But there are two things much bigger than the book.

1. The universal curriculum, is the plan of atonement, which applies to everyone in the universe regardless of backgrounds or beliefs or life experiences or religions, even if they've never heard of ACIM. Everything that happens, all lessons, all encounters, are orchestrated for a purpose of atonement. This goes way beyond the book. It includes everything that happens every day.

2. The Holy Spirit is God's literal answer to the separation. His function is not only to maintain an unbreakable bridge between your wandering mind and the Christ mind, guaranteeing that you will come home. He also is a healer, therapist, teacher, guide, helper, comforter, and friend. His presence isn't like some person sitting at the top of a mountain waiting for you to go up there to join him. He has an active function.

He is there to help you. He has been appointed to you, given to you, added to you. He is not just some principle or concept. He doesn't just sit there shining a light and asking you to join him. He actively comes INTO your dreaming mind. He can extend through the body. He can heal the body. He can perform miracles - he is the mechanism of miracles.

He enables you to do things which are so supernatural they are clearly not of this world and break all the laws of space and time and physics. He is the way by which Moses parted the oceans, and the way by which Jesus raised the dead. He can come into your body, into your emotions, into your thinking. He can influence you, direct you, guide you, even literally speak through your mouth. He can move your limbs. He tells you very specifically what to do. He counsels you and advises you and corrects you and steers you in the right direction.

He has the power to reverse death and sickness and all forms of suffering. He is a living spirit, with a mind, a Holy Spirit, able to literally guarantee the correction of every illusion, every form of mental or physical illness, to reverse death, and ultimately to completely undo the separation. He is the initiator of the atonement, he has the power to part oceans and to move mountains. There is nothing he cannot do.

So as we go forth working with the course, doing lessons and studying and discussing and so on, we really should be trying to get in touch with and develop trust in the Holy Spirit as much as possible. We need to be having a daily relationship with him. To talk to him, to ask questions, to have conversations. We need to be listening to and following his guidance with trust. We need to be allowing him to heal us and to heal through us, even physically.

The Holy Spirit is the power by which the disciples of Jesus go out to be physicians of the lord, healing the sick, casting out "evil spirits", raising the dead and so on. He was made accessible to all people when Jesus ascended, to stand in for Jesus and to be a way by which we can all express the same miraculous powers that Jesus demonstrated. We are to be livened and infused with him. Lifted up by him.

He is the power by which our physical bodies are supposed to be healed, for all signs of sickness and death and attack to be undone and reversed, so that He can use our bodies as "living examples" of harmlessness, symbolic eternal life, aliveness and health. To use our bodies to communicate the only thing that he can communicate - healing. We are to share his function with him on earth, which is healing. We are to be healers, using him and working with him to heal through us to help others be alleviated of suffering and darkness.

So the Holy Spirit is really super important. More important than the book. The book is only a beginning and a major goal is to put you in touch with and develop trust in the Holy Spirit so that he can continue to be your Teacher going forward, to continue to develop your miracle working abilities and to strength and support you. We are supposed to be using this help that God has sent to us, which absolutely means not doing everything yourself, not thinking of it as a "self study", opening ourselves up to rely on, depend on and trust the support of this living being that has been sent to guide us home.

It is our task to listen ONLY to the Voice for God and not to the ego.

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

"The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles."

"The Holy Spirit can use ALL that you give to Him for your salvation."

"The Holy Spirit is the Bringer of Revelations"

"Power is of God, GIVEN by Him, and re-awakened by the Holy Spirit"

"When you hear the Holy Spirit, you merely feel BETTER, because loving seems POSSIBLE to you."

"Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God the gift to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed."

"Whatever your appointed role may be it was selected by the Voice for God"

"Henceforth, hear but the Voice for God and for your Self when you retire from the world, to seek reality instead."

"Be very still, and hear the gentle Voice for God assuring you"

"If you cannot hear the voice of God, it is because you do not choose to listen. "

"He will direct you VERY specifically. "

"Ask Him very specifically: "What would You have me do?" "Where would You have me go?" "What would You have me say, and to whom?" Give Him full charge"

"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."

"The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings"

"Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows."

"Healing is the change of mind that the Holy Spirit in the patient's mind is seeking for him. And it is the Holy Spirit in the mind of the giver Who gives the gift to him."

"There is a way in which the Holy Spirit asks YOUR help, if you would have HIS."

"We have said that the Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for miracles."

"Right-mindedness listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world"

"To you who still believe you live in time, and know not it is gone, the Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and senseless maze you still perceive in time, though it has long since gone."

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

"Say to yourselves the following, as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:

I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace.

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

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

Attachment occurs whenever you are trying to get rid of or avoid something you don't want.

It follows the simple rule that what you resist, persists. Or what you are afraid of, you attract to you.

What happens is, when your mind chooses to perceive that something is separate from you, and that this thing is in some way against you or behaving in a way that you do not want, or is having an affect on you that you do not want, you are actually choosing for that thing to happen. And so you are actually keeping it and creating it. You are effectively visualizing it and believing in it.

When you decide to see someone as your enemy, or a situation happening that you don't want to happen, your mind becomes split. Within the confines of your mind there will now be a sense of identity that you want to keep and protect (ego persona) and a seemingly separate projected enemy that you are resisting (ego shadow). You will perceive that the shadow-part is within someone else, or within a situation, and that it is trying to attack the persona part of you, and thereby cause it to be afraid.

What you may not realize is that your own mind is now in conflict with itself and is literally scaring itself, by having this perception of separation and victimhood. It is not really another person or situation that is causing the fear, but the portion of your own mind that you perceive IN or projected ONTO that person or situation. And that's your own mind's content. You've made an enemy of yourself.

So now you have this mind which seems to have two parts, which are against each other, and the persona part is resisting or trying to deny or push away the shadow part. And as such it seems to project outward. And that means that you now have this booger hanging around in your mind which you're trying to shake off, but it keeps sticking. And the more that you try to get away from it, the more you reject it and hate it, the stronger it seems to become.

Denial is an attempt to push away, but this pushing away actually broadcasts and transfers every. It simply funnels more energy from the persona part of you into the shadow part of you, and so you literally 'empower' or give power/energy to what you think of as your projected enemy. As you try to get rid of, deny or resist stuff, your 'rejection' of it seems to you like a pulling away, but it is in fact an attracting towards. Your attempts to PUSH your enemies away therefore brings you closer to them.

So now while there's one part of you that is thinking hey, I don't want what 'they' are going to do to me, and which is actually already perceiving that they ARE doing something to you - you see them as a threat or danger - there's this other part which is firmly anchored in and as that very threat. So you've effectively latched onto that person or situation with your mind, as though you cast an anchor overboard and it's hooked itself into your worst enemy.

The way you will generally experience this is that you feel like you've become vulnerable. That there is now some part of you that is weak and afraid and susceptible and exposed. And this exposed part experiences itself as accessible to the projected enemy, it feels like it is unsafe and very visible and noticeable. Your mind reaches out (in its projection) and latches onto that person or situation and forms a kind of energetic connection to them. Through projection you've basically taken your mind and stretched it out and have tied it into something outside of you. Now it seems like there's almost a kind of funnel or bridge joining you to your worst enemy, as though this allows them to gain access to you and target you and upset you.

When this happens, often you'll find it hard to stop thinking about that person or situation. They will keep coming into your mind. You'll keep having fearful thoughts about them. Or if it's driven by anger (which is usually based on fear) you'll keep feeling more and more angry about them, as though you just can't put it down and can't let go of feeling this way. This energy seems to keep coming up inside you to remind you that you are not at peace about them, and they are simply "on your mind" all the time.

So what's happened is, by creating a split in your own mind, forming a sense of threat and an enemy, creating a persona and a shadow, and projecting it outward onto something separate (which really has nothing to do with anything - its just a scapegoat), you've become "attached" to that person or situation. While you seem to be wanting to get rid of it, you are keeping it even more.

Each time you try to escape from it, it follows you. Every time you try to avoid it, it hunts you down. The more intensely you try to remove it from existence, the more it seems to become empowered and gains extra staying power. You just can't seem to shake it off this way, because you are moving your own power around in your own mind and are visualizing yourself being your own enemy.

So there is an attachment in place, and it's there because you have not forgiven, and are at war with yourself. What you need to do in order to energetically, mentally and spiritually stop being so agitated and upset 'by' this supposed opponent, is obviously that you need to apply some forgiveness. That is, you need to get really honest about who is doing what to whom, and what is happening in your mind, and own up to the responsibility you have of MAKING them seem like they are doing something to you.

The 'sword', if you will, which will cut through this attachment - which actually can take on the form of a 'cord of fear' that seems to tie between you and others, is simply to recognize and affirm that "they are not doing anything to me" or "I am not being affected by them". This is a taking back of the projection and it almost immediately will deflate the sense of exposure or vulnerability, will massively decrease your fear, will stop you from obsessing about that person or situation, and will help you to return to some sense of having power and peace. You need to then simply complete the forgiveness the process, taking back all of the power you gave away, owning up to the fact you have only been doing this to yourself, and thereby LET GO of whoever or whatever it was that you were attached to.

So in this process there is an owning up, and there is a letting go. You actually have to learn what it feels like to let something go, to drop it, to relinquish the attachment. It feels strange particularly if you are used to being controlling (afraid). It means allowing people and situations to be as they are, regardless, unconditionally. Letting go of believing that you have to do something about it, or that there's something wrong with it, or that it's simply 'wrong' and upsetting you. Learning to let go means, ultimately, letting go of all sense of being at war with yourself, letting go of the split in your own mind and surrendering to God. It is a letting go of the ego, because the ego is nothing more than self attack. And once you do that, you will have peace.

P.S. Archangel Michael can be particularly helpful in cutting energetic cords, fear attachments and other such gunk if you ask for his help in clearing you, and helping you to detach and let go.

God created you as a holy child of God. He gave you an individual soul with a mind and a free will. God has many creative children, forming the family of God.

"The soul is the idea of self fullness." It's the idea that you are fully a self, and that the whole of your soul/self is shared with the fullness of the Kingdom of God.

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

The idea of separation is simply an idea of denial. It's an attempt to deny and block reality. In a way, it's an attempt to disown what you are. Its a refusal to accept yourself as God created you. It's an attempt to NOT will, moving into unwillingness and imprisonment.

This means, "the ego" is not really the production of an additional self, or the manufacture of a first-and-only self. It is in fact the idea of NOT HAVING A SELF. It is self denial.

The ego is also the attempt to not be yourself. Being a denial of your soul, it's a withdrawal away from the awareness of what you are. As a rejection of light, this throws you into what seems to be the illusion of darkness.

Generally speaking, your soul is infinite and unlimited. It is everywhere, like God, sharing all of existence with Him. God occupies all "space" in the Kingdom and so does your soul in an "overlapping", sharing union.

In the idea of denial of self, you become withdrawn from being everywhere. You attempt to isolate yourself, to not share, to close down, to possess some small part of yourself which you claim is yours alone and NOT shared with the rest. It's the idea of having something exclusively yours which is unique and different and not accessible to anyone else.

This really is the idea of selfishness, the desire to have something special that no-one else has.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness." An idea of selfishness is NOT the idea of A SELF, it's the idea of a self having a poor attitude and not wanting to share with others.

But we have to frame this correctly. The ego is not a self. The ego is the idea of what you are NOT. It's the idea of NOT HAVING a self. It only SEEMS to be "a something" that you made, when in fact it is NOTHING. The belief that it has existence IS a state of deception, believing illusions are true. The ego is NOT really a self at all.

The ego, or egotism, is really the idea of self destruction, which is why the entire system of thought is centered on and leads towards death - the destruction of your self.

In death you are attempting to finish off the intention of becoming completely unwilling to exist. This is a selfish act. And it is there that the so-called ego reaches its climax. In essence, by trying to be selfish, a soul/mind tries to have private ownership, and ends up losing everything instead.

So it's not so much that we really made an ego. We didn't really invent a separate self. We didn't start out with no self and come up with a new self. We HAD a self before the separation and WILL have a self afterwards. Every soul that God created has individuality and eternal life.

The problem is not a matter of whether or not you have a self or are an individual being. The problem is a matter of whether you are willing to SHARE EXISTENCE with all of the rest of creation.

To be the fullness of the soul, you have to expand infinitely and unlimited. You have to be open to allowing access to YOU by everyone else, and to have access to everyone else. To join minds, to share all that exists, you cannot be closed off, isolated, excluded or imprisoned.

So by "going into egotism", we basically "made an ego" but only in the sense that we really did NOT create anything. Th ego has not been created, and in fact it does not exist at all. Not only is the ego the idea of what you would be if you did not exist, it also does not exist. In essence, "the separate self" is total fiction and DOES NOT EXIST. The belief that you ARE IT, is a mistaken belief and needs correction.

So you really can't be the ego, but you can believe you are. You can't be not yourself, but you can pretend to be. You can't lose your soul, but you can think you gain the whole world and lose it all anyway. You can't stop being as God created you, but you can dream of being something you're not.

The ego isn't the idea of a self. It's not a separate self. It's the idea of NOT a self, of NO self. An illusion that appears o be a something, but is a nothing. Believing that the ego is a self, or that you have an ego, is an upside-down belief. It suggests that in reality there is no self, and in illusions there are selves. This is an EGO perspective, having bought into the illusion that the ego state is a state of existence, not recognizing it as NON existence.

If you think that awakening means the end of self, due to the end of ego, you are thinking upside down. Selves ONLY exist in the Kingdom of God, NOT in the world of illusions. All illusory selves DO NOT exist, all REAL selves do exist.

"The Kingdom of God includes all His children, and their creations."

The Kingdom of ego death contains NO selves. Selves attempting to destroy themselves and ending in death.

This world of ego perspectives is merely a world of pretend selves, blocking and covering up the world of real selves. Trying to end self is just another extension of the ego's suicidal approach resulting in SELF DENIAL. Rejecting the soul results in death, not life. The ego does need to be "let go", but since it was never who you were to begin with, this is a loss of NOTHING. You give up nothing, to gain everything.

Recognizing that this no-self does not exist, and that you are the self God created, is the atonement. The ego doesn't have to "die" because it never existed in the first place. All we really need to do is stop pretending to be OTHER than the self that God created, or opposed to our self in any way.

Jesus also clarifies that our sense of self will EXPAND as we awaken. It will expand to INCLUDE all of the brothers and creations that we tried to deny. And it will expand to include the infinite immortal soul that you forgot is who you really are.

Losing the ego isn't the end of you. It's a return to your self. It's a reclamation of your immortal identity - still a God created you.

The separate self is really just the idea of being a SEPARATED self.. a self that had a self before the separation, which BECAME separated due to a lack of sharing, and will RESUME sharing and cease being separated after the atonement. This is why Jesus refers to such selves as "separated ones", NOT "separate ones". Just because you are separated does not mean you throw out your self when the "separateness" ends.

Awakening is a return to your real self. An acceptance that you are as God created you. A remembering of your soul.

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father. By doing this, the mind awakens from its sleep, and the Soul remembers its Creator. All sense of Separation disappears, and level confusion vanishes."

"Separation" does not mean that which allows there to be many. It means that which keeps many things from sharing anything.

"God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."

We are all permanent beings in the heart of God.

In all encounters with people, you have basically two ways of relating. Either you will give love, or you will withhold love. When you give love, you are in alignment with the Golden Rule, and recognize that the only strategy that will work without hurting yourself is to love the person. In so doing, you become empowered by that love, become invulnerable to attack, and gain a boost in confidence due to the absence of fear that it induces. This is a natural "extension" of love and is the healthy way to relate to people. To teach only love.

But learning to be this way and to do this, in actual encounters, is not always easy and for me used to be far from what I thought would "work". For a large portion of my life I was extremely painfully shy, socially anxious, and really not liking people in general. There was so much fear and worry about interacting, and everyone seemed to be a powerful stranger. It was a very isolated and lonely state of being, very fragile, weak and filled with suffering. I would people please all the time and never felt seen or acknowledged, as if I had no right to be equal to anyone.

Usually my way of dealing with people was to shut them out, avoid them, deny them, and try to escape them. They all seemed to be threatening and I was very dis-empowered. I lacked confidence and felt insecure all the time. I dreaded social situations and when I was forced into them it was excruciating. My perception of and belief that everyone was judging me made me profoundly embarrassed and this inflicted the most horrendously negative, deep emotional pain, not because they actually judged but because I believed they were. I had no idea what I was doing to myself. What I felt as a result of my self attack was 10 times worse than any other emotional upset I've ever experienced resulting from what anyone else ever did.

The strategy I had, which is entirely an ego strategy, was that in order to become safe or better off in any way, I needed to separate myself from people. I didn't see a possibility of feeling calm and happy and confident in any situation, only afraid, and just wanted to escape. It seemed as if escaping would work, and so I had trust in it. But all that escaping did was isolate me more and make me withdrawn from society. This also actually led to years of depression in my late teens and a sense that my life was so stuck that it was coming to an end.

It was around that time also though that I started to get into spiritual things and there was this strange period of mystical experiences at the same time as being mixed in with a lot of fear and inadequacy. I started to work on healing myself in whatever way seemed to work, although at first that was very haphazard and flawed. It was about that time that I suddenly met my wife, whose spiritual light and strength was so bright and filled with unconditional love, that I thought she was literally an angel. It wasn't until my late 20's that I found A Course in Miracles and everything continued to spiral upwards from there.

So for me the idea that in a situation, when I perhaps don't even feel like interacting, trying to push people away doesn't really work. It has a side effect of attacking myself. Whatever I try to make apply to others applies to me. An alternative approach has been gradually revealing itself, and it's one where I realize that I need to extend love, and that by doing so I'm not only going to be healed but the love will also shine away my fears, strengthen me and make my more invulnerable. The love gives me what seemed lacking when I wasn't extending it, and then I feel that I have what is needed to genuinely relate to the person. And then I don't feel like escaping, because the love is there.

It's a strange flipflop but it's like you spend your whole life using this one strategy of separating yourself from others, to "deal with" the way the world seems to be when you have that perspective/perception, only to find that there is another totally opposite alternative whereby you deliberately decide to bring the love and stay put, knowing that it's really the only approach that is going to work in your favor. This is "new" to me as I guess it is to most people but I'm finding out quickly just how beneficial it is to broadcast, radiate, transmit, extend love, in situations that previously I might have wanted to "stop".

I can testify that when you psychologically try to make people go away, stop, you resist them in any way, wish the wouldn't do what they're doing etc, it attacks you and induces sickness and pain. Physically. Very quickly. You can believe that what you're doing is just an attempt to defend yourself in which it does something to them and does nothing to you, but it's not true. It's double-sided and you both get attacked. You are attacked by your own defenses, and never was that more true that "my defenses are attacking my invulnerability". Only by letting the defenses down and shining love instead, exposing yourself, being open and accessible, paradoxically makes you completely invulnerable and strong and unattackable. You can in a sense "hide in plain sight" that way. The light protects you.

It kind of feels like breaking out of a shell or coming out of an egg. Holy Spirit's guidance to me lately has been to "bring" the love to the world that seems to be lacking in it, and to "extend" love in order to work miracles. It's through expressions of love, which is its natural extension, that miracles occur. They are "given" this way. And for sure, living in fear is totally anti-miraculous and more like being a psychic black hole. And it's not merely enough to ask God or Holy Spirit to send love to someone. You yourself have to actually feel and express and extend the love, if you want to benefit from it.

It's actually for our highest good and in our own best interest, and a shared interest, to "only love". The extending of love to others has a profound affect on your OWN mind. But at first it seems unnatural. Like some kind of "new trick" that you need to practice more. To be able to actually muster some love, and really feel it. It's been through all these years of trying to forgive and healing and releasing old pains and so on that I've very gradually "shifted" to being "able" to find this new "mode" of relationship. And it's for the most part still quite spotty. But there's a sort of underlying "more loving" baseline that's there all the time, which was not there in years past, and that's thanks to the course.

I suppose you could correctly call it being the light of the world, it's like you choose to shine and love comes out of you, even if the world itself is so severely lacking in love (which it is). It gives you the protection you were lacking when you were afraid, and it strengthens and empowers you. It solves all of the problems that the ego's remedies never really solved. And it gives you a whole new sense of purpose in life. Not forgetting how much happier it feels :-) It provides strength and confidence. It empowers you and puts you in a position where you can be truly helpful, rather than completely useless.

All it takes is seemingly a change of direction. Rather than being so withdrawing, it is more of a confronting. Instead of being escaping, it's a willingness to be present. Instead of running away in fear, it gives you the power to stand your ground and assert yourself in a healthy way. It's taken a long time to learn this and I'm still learning. But if you could put who I am now alongside who I used to be 20 years ago, you would probably think we're not even the same person. And thank God for that!

"The ego is the idea of selfishness."

At the very foundation of the entire ego thought system is the idea of selfishness. But more accurately, it is the idea of not sharing. It's an idea of being exclusive, the ownership of something which is considered "yours alone", and inaccessible to others.

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

God's Kingdom was set up so that everyone has everything. And this goes way beyond the kind of sharing that you experience on a physical level. In Heaven, every being has literally 100% of everything. Everyone has full access, simultaneously, to the totality of all that exists. Even your SELF is shared with everyone, as are all your creations.

This is oneness. And just because one person has full access to everything it does not shut out access to anyone else, there is no limitation, no compromise, no partitioning, no need to only access part of everything, and there is no private ownership. In reality is it possible for everyone to have everything always. You ARE everything always.

The entire idea of the ego is the idea of not sharing in this way. It's the idea of exclusivity. It's an attempt to own some portion of reality that you can call "yours alone", protected and fenced off by some kind of wall (such as the body), so that not only is your prized possession kept isolated inside the walls (such as within the body), but everyone else is also kept outside the walls (such as outside the body).

The desire not to share, is the entire basis of the separation. The ego is built on it. And this means that any attempt to have something for yourself that you want others NOT to have, or anything which is true of you and not true of them, or any sense of inequality of any kind, produces egotism. And this egotism is essentially SELFISHNESS.

The result of this selfishness is that you experience yourself as being fenced into a prison, ie the body. You see yourself as though everything which is "yours" is inside the prison. And everything outside the prison is not yours. In turn, you see that you are the only one allowed access to what is inside the prison walls, meaning that you experience yourself as being entirely alone within its confines.

This leads to the perception of yourself as though you are inside a body, you are the only one inside the body, the body is your private property, no other mind shares your body with you, you are alone and lonely and trapped inside of it, and the body's walls defend your hoard from the rest of the sonship.

This is how most people experience their sense of identity. That they are a single isolated "separated self", living within prison walls, everyone else is "outside" the walls, and nothing is shared across this boundary. The body acts then as a separation device, keeping them out and keeping you in, so that what is yours within is yours alone and your private possession.

"The body is clearly a device for separation"

From here, of course, upon seeing oneself as special, with a deeply rooted selfishness, a desire to be given special favor by God, and seeing oneself as excluded (separated) from sharing the Kingdom (exiled), so-called "relationships" with others take on the form of what we call special relationships. Basically this means that relating to others is always tainted with elements of selfishness, elements of exclusivity, elements of ownership or possession, and attempts to control and manipulate.

You see, a selfish self, ie a self that is "being selfish", has to believe that something is owned by others that it does not have access to. By cutting itself off from sharing it is able to believe in something privately hoarded and exclusive to it, but to do this it MUST also believe that others own something that it is excluded from. So now others are seen as hoarding privately hidden secret "stuff" that the selfish self wants and is jealous of, and so begins the attempts to wrestle it from others through what ultimately becomes attempted control and murder.

This is outlined in the "laws of chaos". Having seen yourself as an excluded, exclusive self, whose value is special and whose importance and truth is unequal to others, you believe other people also have something "special" locked up inside their bodies. And now you will seek to enter into relationship of some manner with them, to try to steal from the inside of their body the secret treasure that you believe should be yours.

So long as you lack what they have, you will feel an emptiness and a compulsion to steal it from them - a sense of "need" or neediness, in which you will make demands of them and place conditions on the relationship. This of course leads to conditional love and various forms of bargaining and betrayal. It can even become violent and lethal if it is strongly perceived that the other has what you significantly lack, is therefore guilty of stealing it from you, that you are justified in any action to retrieve it, and being denied it is a slap in the face that compels revenge.

All elements of this special way of relating stem from the foundation of the whole system of thinking. It all starts with this deeply rooted sense of selfishness, leading to isolation, leading to specialness and special relationships, and ultimately death.

The fundamental ONLY problem therefore is the unwillingness to share. The unwillingness to be equal. The consideration of one's own selfish made-up needs above and beyond the freedom and wishes of others. As you become presented with your own selfishness staring you in the face, you will learn to move past it and to start considering what other people want, on their terms, per their own choice, regardless of any "special interests" that you have. Once their interests become untainted by your selfishness, your interests become shared.

I should comment briefly that being "not selfish" does not in any way mean having no self, nor does it mean self sacrifice, or putting others first and you last, or any other form of inequality. It does not mean getting rid of your identity or individuality. All it means is changing your attitude, so that you are now SHARING EQUALLY with everyone, rather than isolating, excluding, or seeing to "get" something of special value "just for yourself".

"You cannot enter into real relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all AND equally."

Essentially our entire journey to undo the ego is simply to undo our selfishness. We have to look at this. We may be far more selfish than we want to admit to, or in ways that we had not realized. We may be more controlling than we'd like to admit. We may be claiming to put the interests of others first while secretly having needs or wants that depend on others fulfilling us in order for us to be satisfied.

To be not selfish might be what some (with ego thinking) would call the opposite - selflessness - but this can be misleading. We are not aiming here to have no self. We are aiming to SHARE, which some would refer to as joining in holy relationship. To truly think of others interests is to acknowledge that you have no needs that are interfering with being of service to them.

It means allowing and letting go and giving up controlling them. It means seeing them free from the tyranny of your control, dominance, interference, manipulation, selfish neediness, inferiority, superiority, judgement and specialness. The relinquishment of specialness is the relinquishment of selfishness.

This actually restores you to the fullness of your self, because by sharing everything you also share in all of yourself, and share all of yourself with others. You literally tried to steal yourself from God and keep it hidden. We have to open back up to allow God in and to let ourselves be visible and accessible to others, sharing fully with them and extending love with them. This is essentially a reunion with your own soul, in which all God's children share.

"The soul is the idea of self fulness."

This really makes no sense. If you are thinking the way most people think most of the time, it makes no sense.

If I give you all my money, I have no money left. If I give you my food, I cannot have the food. If I give you myself, I sacrifice myself. If I give you my time, my time is used up.

Surely this is the real truth? At least this is the truth of THIS WORLD. In this physical world, under the laws of physics, it appears to be true that everything is finite and limited. There is only so much of things.

This is because nothing in the world is whole. Everything in the world is lacking. An apple lacks the materials and properties of a banana. A car lacks the materials and properties of a newborn baby. One thing here is not another thing. What I have, you lack, and what you have, I lack. Therefore there is a finite limit on what there is to have, and who has it.

This is why the law of this world is "do not share anything." When you think you are sharing through the physical ownership transfer of objects, you are not really sharing. If I give you half of the pizza, believing I'm sharing it with you, I'm really not. I'm sacrificing and losing half the pizza and cannot have what you have.

The part you have is not the part I have. We do not really share the same part. We have separate and competing parts, and we are both losing and sacrificing in a "compromise" in order to have anything at all. Sharing in this world is based on loss and exclusion. The only way we can appear to share anything is to not share it, but instead to restrict what is shared. This is not true sharing.

A Course in Miracles makes a claim which many people might just accept as if it makes sense, but in terms of how this world functions and how people think, it makes no sense at all. It says that giving and receiving are one. It also says that what you give away you will receive. It also says that in order to have "all", ie everything, you must give everything to everyone. This makes NO sense. How can I still have everything if I've given everything away? And why, if I were to give nothing away, would I HAVE nothing? Surely I'd still have everything? It makes no sense.

You see, the people of the world have been so accustomed to living in spacetime, which is is a realm of illusions. It's a realm of laws which are OPPOSITE to the laws of God. Here it only seems to "make sense" to say that "If I give, I lose". If I give you something, I must lack it. If I give you everything, I will have nothing. And therefore giving is self-destructive and self-denial and not in my best interests. Which means that being selfish and hoarding and possessing exclusive ownership rights is entirely "natural" in this world. But that's not remotely spiritual.

If what Jesus says is true, that giving and receiving are one, and that I must give in order to receive, and that when I give I will receive, and that when I give I will RETAIN what I have - and yet the other person will have it AS WELL, he is teaching a principle which completely transcends the nature of this world. He is saying that when there is true giving, I will KEEP what I have, AND YET at the same time the other person will ALSO have it. Which means that we both now have the WHOLE of what has been given. Not that we compromise, not that we "share" by splitting it in half, not that we each can only have part of it.

He is saying that we can in fact BOTH have ALL of what there is, AT the same time, WITHOUT lack and without sacrifice and without limitation. That does NOT compute in terms of the physical laws. It is totally against the laws of this world. It does not make ANY sense at all in terms of how physical objects function and interact.

Jesus is not only suggesting that when you give, you will receive all of what you have given, and will still have all of it, and that the other person will ALSO have all of it, but he's even saying that therefore when you give to another, and you both share in it simultaneously and fully, there is now an INCREASE. How can anything which has been given away cause an increase in what you have? Yet this is heaven's law, that BECAUSE everything is given fully, it is received fully, and is shared fully, and now more people have it and there has been an increase in what is had.

He presents this also in terms of the idea that "ideas can be shared" and that "ideas increase by being shared". This is to clarify that physicality cannot be shared in this way, but mind-content can. When mind gives all, it still has all to give, and yet has shared all, and now all have all, and everything belongs to everyone all at once. Ideas increase by being "given away", because in truth, when you give something real away you still have it, because you also receive it. Because giving and receiving are the same thing.

So this teaching is really telling you something important. The LAWS of reality, of god, of the Kingdom of Heaven, ARE NOT the same as the laws of space or time or planet Earth. The functioning of reality does not correspond to how physical objects are "shared". The nature of God's mind does not operate according to finite laws of "either I have it or you do". And all real relationship operates on this basis that "everything is fully accessible to everyone always." Even YOU are shared with others, and everyone has full access to you as even part of themselves.

This is the nature of oneness, a system in which what belongs to one belong to another. What is mine is yours. What is me is you. And yet there IS sharing, because there ARE many to share WITH. Without there being ANOTHER, there cannot be anyone TO share with. This is why in reality in God's system of sharing, in which everything MUST be shared ("Nothing real can be increased except by sharing"), THERE MUST BE multiple recipients TO share in what exists. And this again further supports the fact that God has many sons.

So if you think that somehow ACIM is non-duality or that God only has one son or that God can't have many creations, etc, you should really take a good hard look at this idea of giving and receiving being one. Because it is clearly a law and a dynamic which utterly defies what you have come to expect of spacetime and its contents, it completely transcends all notions of things being "separated off" and compartmentalized, and really completely destroys the idea that in oneness there is nothing to share WITH.

You cannot accept the idea that giving and receiving are one, while simultaneously claiming that ACIM is a non-dualistic teaching, that there are no brothers to share with, or that reality is just one thing. If Jesus is correct in his teaching, then the oneness of giving and receiving automatically implies that God's Kingdom MUST entail the sharing, and the giving, and the receiving, of everything by everything, and thus the creation of many sharers who must share in everything together and in unison. Indeed this uni-son is the one son, who IN unison is the sharing by many sons, all of whom God created TO share in everything, together, forever.

"Here are both giving and receiving seen as different aspects of one Thought Whose truth does not depend on which is seen as first, nor which appears to be in second place. Here it is understood that both occur together, that the Thought remains complete. And in this understanding is the base on which all opposites are reconciled, because they are perceived from the same frame of reference which unifies this Thought."

"Father, I must return Your Love for me. For giving and receiving are the same, and You have given all Your Love to me."

"For giving and receiving ARE the same. And to ACCEPT the limits of a body is to IMPOSE these limits on each brother that you see. For you MUST see him as you see yourself."

"The unforgiving mind does not believe that giving and receiving are the same."

"The interval you think lies in between the giving and receiving of the gift SEEMS to be one in which you sacrifice, and suffer loss."

"It is this joining that we undertake to recognize today. We will not seek to keep our minds apart from Him Who speaks for us, for it is but our voice we hear as we attend Him. He alone can speak to us and for us, joining in One Voice the getting and the giving of God's Word; the giving and receiving of His Will."

"It IS awareness that giving and receiving ARE the same. BECAUSE it does not make the same unlike, it sees no differences where none exist. And thus it is the SAME for everyone, because it sees no differences in THEM. Its offering is universal, and it teaches but one message. What is God's BELONGS to everyone, and IS his due."

"If paying is associated with giving, IT CANNOT BE PERCEIVED AS LOSS, and the RECIPROCAL relationship of giving and RECEIVING will be recognized."

After some recent insights, I have a theory... that God's Kingdom actually has locality and non-locality, meaning there is a kind of timeless time, and spaceless space. Whereas 'spacetime' is the idea of locality only.

God's whole system runs on a BOTH/AND kind of logic. Something true of me is true of you - golden rule, etc.

God is both personal and impersonal. He's personal because he gives 100% full attention to each individual being, yet he is impersonal because he treats all beings the same.

Similarly there has to be locality in order to have a creation distinct from God - "separate beings", souls that God created. It requires some sense of multitudes and some way to say "I'm here, you're there" sort of thing. But at the same time, non-local as in - we're both overlapping at one everywhere.

I think what happened in the separation is we denied the non-locality shared qualities of reality and tried to emphasise just the local ones, which produced space and time. Space is this idea of being isolated to one location, similarly with time being isolated to one moment.

If true, this suggests that in heaven there is a kind of "space" but it's not the same as the space of spacetime... its simultaneously locations but also the presence of everything everywhere all at once. That God is in everything still. Both local and non-local.

This would go on to allow there to be multiple creations, and for example the course makes reference to things like "you too have a kingdom your soul has created" and "your mind has the power to create worlds" etc. Why have the power to create worlds, if we haven't created worlds somewhere? And he says we basically have created kingdoms somewhere.

It requires a kind of 'space' but it's like... the things in the space are so shared and so one that everything is also everywhere. And it could imply that there is an enormous amount of universes of 'stuff' up there in reality. Not PHYSICAL forms, but forms of some kind that are also formless.

Another important property of reality is that everything is always open and fully accessible to everyone. And nothing real can be threatened. This means there's no hard surfaces, no walls, no impacts, no possibility of destruction or attack, nothing firm or solid, no things that can reject or repel or resist.

There could be for example some kind of 'thought creation' or 'idea' of a thing, perhaps a place, a gathering, a created world/environment or structure perhaps .... but its not made of of things which "keep people out" or "keep people in". You can't attack it because it's made of spirit. You go to touch it and you become one with it, overlap it, pass through it. No-one is denied any access ever.

So I think its possible on this basis that heaven could have "stuff in it", made of spirit/light, but the stuff doesn't have the repelling hard surfaces of spacetime matter, and because everyone IS everything nothing can sort of "block you" or "attack you" or anything like we see with physical objects. There could be spirit forms, ideas, thought-creations ("miracles are thought creations"), which we can merge with, pass through, overlap with, share, be one with.

Our experience there would be quite different than in the physical realm. In physicality, it's all made of walls, blocks, resistance, attack, denial, imprisonment, impacts, rebounds, forces keeping things separate, damage, decay, etc.... all these physics things all require a 'barrier' of some kind that says "keep out". Those barriers don't exist in heaven - you can pass right through it and be one with it. Total freedom to come and go anywhere and everywhere.

This is also why spacetime and the physical are illusions because they're basically formed from the idea of saying "no" to something, not allowing freedom, not allowing access, pushing away, forcing, etc.... a world of walls and blocks and solid lies and prison cells. This is how spacetime is fundamentally different from heaven. And also is why the physical world is a total illusion, formed from ideas of separations between everything rather than shared unity. And without separateness there can be no solid matter.

Also an interesting part of this is the non-locality of time. In 'time' we have localised time but not non-local time. So it's all sort of like one moment of 'now' but the things in it come and go (die), there is no sense of "always and forever". In heaven there could be local time - which is actually necessary in order to allow for example "the kingdom to increase", and for you to "add to the kingdom". And for God to create the holy spirit in response to the separation, and being in our right minds before the separation etc, and there being an "after the atonement".

All that creation requires is essentially a kind of causal chain which requires a kind of linear progression - a sort of time. But at the same time, heaven has total non-locality so it has non-local time everywhere as well, meaning, the now moment ie every moment in which we "live and move" through local/non-local space, also features a sense of this being always and forever, that all times exist at once as one thing, transcending 'local time' as we know it.

Cus there's some things about heaven's reality, creation, God's nature, which really need to have the presence of some kind of progression or time or sequence, as well as some kind of order or sort of places to create kingdoms and such. It has to have a 'kind of spacetime', it's just that it's not purely spacetime - it's spacetime + non-localised space and non-localised time. It's BOTH, eternal and time, unlimited and local.

Space is the local+non-local space of heaven stripped of its non-local shared nature. Time is the local+non-local time of heaven stripped of its non-local eternal nature. Separate spaces, separate times, instead of 'oneness spaces' and 'all times'. This idea at least seems to, for me, clean up some loose ends and open some doors to some possibilities that were overlooked.

Talking out loud to flesh this out... might be right, might not. But it's interesting.

"When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and SEEN it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and WATCHED them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need PERSUADE you to accept the gift of vision?" UrT20I12

"You are wholly lovely. A perfect shaft of pure light." UrT1B30W

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky." UrT30D8

"When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was." UrW167L9 "If you created GOD and He created you, the KINGDOM could not increase through its OWN creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would NOT be co-creators WITH God. As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations. In this way only can ALL creative power EXTEND OUTWARD. God's accomplishments are NOT yours. But yours are LIKE His. HE created the Sonship, and YOU increase it. You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom." UrT7A2

"it was forever created TO increase. If you perceive it as NOT increasing, you do not know what it IS." URT7B5

"And His Sons, who create LIKE Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the INCREASE of the Kingdom depends on it, just as THEIR creation did." UrT7C7

"We have spoken often of the INCREASE of the Kingdom by YOUR creations, which can only BE created as YOU were." UrT7F12

"You, too, have a Kingdom which your Soul has created. It has not ceased to create because your ego has set you on the road of perception." URT4D3

"A co-creator with the Father must have a Son. Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. A perfect Being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken FROM; not born of size nor weight nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of ANY kind." UrT24H7

"Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order." UrT9A2

Mind in its natural state, experiences a sense of safety. This safety is based on the fact that the mind doesn't see itself as at the effect of anything external. It does not believe in being caused against its will. It does not have backwards/false perception. It also does not position itself as a victim or at the effect of the world.

This produces a kind of internally supported strength, in which the mind is not undermining itself and it recognizes it has nothing to fear. It feels "self contained", whole, and undivided. This internal unity is experienced as protection and as immortality. The mind doesn't see itself as vulnerable to anything because it recognizes it cannot be attacked or threatened.

Reality cannot be attacked because reality is permanent truth. It is inherently immortal and exists forever. Anything real, which includes you and your mind, has eternal life. Permanence is your natural condition. And the mind in its sane state is in touch with this permanence, and so recognizes it can never be altered by anything, rendering it invulnerable.

If the mind decides to move into ego, it is moving into positioning itself as a victim. It begins to see itself as at the effect of external forces, and made to suffer against its will. Perception reverses because cause is seen as coming from the world towards the self rather than the other way around. And this brings with it all manner of threat and danger, based on the idea that causes outside of you can do something to you against your will.

This then results in a change in the internal experience of the sense of safety and invulnerability. It's as though the mind "breaks open" its shell of protection, and develops a "wound". The wound seems open and bleeding, psychologically. This wounded part of the mind feels exposed, raw, accessible, attackable and threatened.

When this happens you feel like you are vulnerable. It's as though you open up a doorway and take off your protective armor, and now it seems possible that the things of the world can come into you, past your boundaries, and directly attack the core of your being. This is because your sense of identity has shifted from immortal spirit to the mortal body.

Your sense of self sees itself as self conscious and descended onto the battlefield, identified with a body, viewing itself as frail and weak and limited and incapable, and it now seems as if others have power over you. This produces a feeling like your insides are opening up, have become brittle and thin. And you'll feel like people have direct access to who and what you are as an attackable thing.

This feeling of being vulnerable to attack, living in fear, feels like being very exposed and unsafe. It's as though you, who are supposed to be walking around inside a perfect suit of protection, have lost your armor and are now a weak helpless thing that anyone can attack at will. This makes you afraid and threatened and there is a constant feeling of dread and stress. And the ego is in this state all the time.

You may also find that you then conflict with someone or they try to attack you. Because of your identification with that which can be attacked, as a victim, your mind actually believes in horizontal cause and effect. Out of the exposed vulnerable wound in the mind, you form a kind of psychological artificial "bridge" to the other person. Or maybe better described as a "bond" or "cords of fear." It's as if by believing that the other person is the cause of you, you are "tied to" their will power, causally and psychologically.

By believing that someone else has power to attack and affect you, your mind sees itself as being controlled by, caused by, influenced by, some external power. And that produces a sense that you are being tossed around on the waves. You'll try to forget about the encounter but you won't be able to drop it, because you haven't forgiven it. And fear thoughts about it will keep being generated by your mind in response to the perceptual belief that you are being attacked by them.

These fear cords will feel like areas of exposure within yourself, as though you have opened up a direct line to the person and they can cross that bridge and attack your insides directly. By hanging onto the belief in their ability to cause you, you maintain this bridge across which flows attack and keeps you in a constant state of fear.

These bridges of fear are dismantled through a correction process of forgiveness, in which you recognize and affirm that you are NOT at the effect of that person. They are not causing you, cannot attack you, have no power over you, and are not guilty of anything. This actually psychologically dismantles these horizontal cause-effect fear cords and you can feel them disappearing or "closing off".

The removal of this psychological "funnel of attack" seems to "close off" your mind to this idea of external causes. It's like sealing up a wound or fixing a mental leak. And as the sense of exposure and threat is closed up, the closing up feels like the formation of a barrier of protection. And then you feel safer because you are no longer "bleeding mind", and no longer believe that something external has direct access to your innermost self.

Through forgiveness then, the undoing of false beliefs in being caused by things outside of you, you gradually "close up" the exposed wounds, and the mind stops "bulging out" and returns to a "deflated" state, where you feel much safer and more protected. Fear diminishes and you feel like external things can no longer come into you. They can't access you because you are not on the battlefield, you are not an illusion or a body or an attackable thing.

Eventually with practice this should result in a "sealing up" of those psychological woulds, breaking down of those bridges of horizontal causation, and a growing sense of being surrounded by naturally protective walls of truth. Invulnerability increases and you feel more like you are "out of reach" of illusory attacks. You no longer believe the world CAN do anything to you, not even death or sickness.

You sort of, reabsorb into heaven, into God's womb, into a deeply immersive sense of safety, protection, harmlessness, integration, wholeness, peace and fearlessness. Because in spirit identification, in truth, you are actually unattackable and immortal. You resume your sense of being invulnerable because you see yourself as innocent and harmless. And the more you can feel this sense of innocence and safety, the less you feel like the world can even get anywhere near to what you are. And where there is perfect safety there is perfect peace.

"As long as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by ANY doubts in your minds, His perfect Accomplishment is NOT apparent to you. This is why you MUST be vigilant ON GOD'S BEHALF."

"It is only your awareness that NEEDS protection, because your BEING cannot be assailed. But a real sense of being CANNOT be yours while you are doubtful of what you ARE. THIS IS WHY VIGILANCE IS ESSENTIAL. Doubts ABOUT being MUST not enter your mind, or you CANNOT know what you are with certainty."

"The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen"

"Now are the lilies of his innocence untouched by guilt, and perfectly protected from the cold chill of fear and withering blight of sin alike."

"You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you."

"The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions."

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible. ... Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself: "I have forgotten what I really am, For I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defence against the truth, But I am not a body. And my mind Cannot attack. So I can not be sick."

It's difficult to put this into words, but here goes.

To understand letting go, you have to first understand what it means to "hold on". What is it you are doing with your mind?

Before the separation, you knew you were love. After the separation, you believed you were not love, and that your self/love was separate from you. You perceived this as outside of you, disassociated and projected onto others.

You believed other people had stolen your love/self and locked it up inside themselves. You simultaneously valued what seemed to be in them, but wanted to steal it back. You see this as "specialness" which you value highly and is what gives value or reality to illusions - you believe in them. This is all described is "the laws of chaos."

The ego mind then "makes illusions real" and assigns special value to external, separate things. This is idol worship, and part of "seek and do not find." An emphasis on external salvation, believing the body, objects and the world are important, valuing special relationships and so on.

If you place "reality" and "value" outside yourself, you will put something on a pedestal and worship it. For example if you associate a person with their body, you will think their body is part of what's valuable about the person. If you value a car and have a psychological "need" for it, you become attached to and dependent on it as your savior. You see it as having power to do something to or for you, which makes it capable of saving you, makes it able to affect you, and makes you *dependent* on it.

Perceiving an external "cause" of you puts you at the "effect" of that cause. This happens in level confusion and reversal of cause-effect. This external cause now represents your "creator". If it is lost, the cause of you is lost and your savior is lost, and that's symbolic of the idea that God has died.

Your mind in a state of believing in special value, or the reality of external things and people, shifts some of its own sense of identity onto those things. You displace your "self" externally and see it as value/meaning within people and objects. If there were to be a perceived "loss" of those objects or people, you experience it as the loss of your own self.

Now, let's say that you mis-identified that you are a body, and thus saw other people as bodies, and valued them as body-people, and then one of these bodies dies. Because you made the body seem real/valuable, you cannot help but perceive there has been a "real loss" or loss of value. In what you think is reality. This will be experienced as "loss". And this kicks in all kinds of layers of denial, which show up as "stages of grief."

At first, you may not even be able to accept that a loss has happened. It seems pretend, impossible, unreal. You may be what they describe as in shock, but really it's that your mind is still psychologically attached to this external value and even though the valued thing is gone, it still believes in it strongly being there. There is a mismatch between expectation and reality. Really strong belief in specialness can produce very strong denial that a loss has even occurred, and denial that the person died.

If a person can `process` the fact that the person died, they might start to shift perception towards at least acknowledging that "it happened". However, this will at first be a cross between acceptance and denial. The mind still does not WANT to let go of the specialness. It's like the mind forms a "bridge" that connects its psyche to something external like a cord of attachment, which is like "holding on" - like you would with a hand, but using a psychic hand. The mind latches onto the external special thing and doesn't want to let go of it. You can actually FEEL this sense of "attachment" and external connectedness if you are observant.

Acknowledging that a death "happened" is a step in the right direction because it at least admits that, to some degree, the person/value doesn't seem to be there any more. But this also is met with another layer of denial. The denial says, "I do not want to let go". This is partly because the mind in its "belief in" things believes it gives reality TO things, and makes them be there, and gives them value, and so if it will just keep believing in those things, it will "keep them alive". There will be active resistance to actually letting go, and reducing your belief in their specialness means you are trying to destroy them or contribute to the perception that they are lost. To let go, to the ego, seems murderous, which induces guilt.

The mind in this state is not fully conscious because, by projecting specialness outward, it made itself unconscious. To "let go" would have to mean stepping backwards in the mind and getting "behind" the attachment and projection and becoming more aware. This seems insurmountable to a mind that is sleeping, that it needs to somehow tap into a greater awareness that underlies where it's "at". The only way to do that is to actually let go of projection of specialness. But the mind doesn't want to do that yet.

It takes a lot of willingness to "admit the truth" that you do not want to let go. This is because you think, if you let go, the thing will stop existing. If you let go, it will be your responsibility that the thing is lost. If you let go, you will have to admit that there HAS been a loss and that the person isn't there any more. You won't be able to delude yourself that you are maintaining their existence with your belief in them. Admitting that you do not WANT to let go is good because it at least lets in some truth. This is one step away from looking deeper at WHY you don't want to let go.

Not wanting to let go is really a layer of denial which covers up the "fact" that the thing HAS GONE. That there HAS been loss. I struggled with this step a lot in relation to grieving for the loss of someone because I didn't want to admit that I didn't WANT to let go of them. I wanted them to NOT be gone, because I wanted to keep what I valued as special. My letting go would somehow mean they are "even more lost". To admit it removes denial. Once I admitted I wanted to keep them, I was able to move past that to admitting what's underneath - an actual sense of loss - that something HAS been lost and isn't coming back. The ego doesn't like this.

Now, this sense of something being "really lost" is still actually another form of denial, and a layer of delusion, because in truth nothing real can be lost. Real value is not lost. Nothing real can be threatened or die. So if the body dies, it's only a body that is "lost", not the person's immortal spirit. Confusing the two things makes you think there has been a loss of something important. Valuing the body makes you believe ITS loss is important. It's nothing. So in truth, although you have to process the sense of loss, underneath the loss there is a deeper truth: you cannot lose what never existed.

And so at some point you have to realize, the thing you think you couldn't let go of, wasn't even REALLY there to begin with. You were actually letting go of NOTHING, and you stood to GAIN EVERYTHING by letting it go. You thought you'd lost real value, but in the BELIEF in its loss was an illusion of it being lost. Real value isn't special value. And so the loss of the specialness was not actually loss of anything REAL. So there hasn't REALLY been a loss. Getting to that point is what allows you to enter into the "acceptance" state and truly the LETTING GO, which is a state of allowing, surrendering, accepting the truth, and finally "detaching" your mind from its dependence on the illusory external thing. Nothing real can be threatened.

So this letting go thing, it's a process typically, and you go through stages and gradually come to accept that the thing you thought was lost is not really something worth losing. It was not even really valuable to begin with. That's where you become set free from grief and loss and have no more need to grieve. An unwillingness to let go is only based on the belief that you're letting go of something you need, letting go of something special, or letting go of the part of your self/love/salvation that you see as separate from you. All experiences of loss are really experiences reflecting your belief that you have lost yourself and God, which you cannot really do.

You won't let go of something while you think it has special value, or while you think it's real or important. And if it should happen that your ego mind is still valuing it WHILE it is being denied to you - such as when someone dies - your mind WILL experience loss and grief. This is because the mind is still trying to depend on that thing as its salvation and truth, something it values as real, and its absence is experienced as "loss". This loss will induce grieving. Grieving and loss are not NATURAL. You do not need them. But they are generated by a sick mind that believes love is outside of itself and can be threatened.

So it's really all about letting go of psychological attachment, which means your "belief in" the special value of things which don't really exist. Ultimately you are letting go of something that never even existed. You're letting go of holding onto an illusion, which never really had any value other than what you gave it. And in that relinquishing, you are shifting to what is really valuable and accessible - inner love. The re-integration of your self. Letting go of false beliefs by learning to recognize that they ARE false, recognizing them as illusions, and thus giving them no value or credit. Illusions recognized must disappear.

Quite often Jesus says to me, "let them". He is telling me to let go - to allow, to let other people be free, and to stop controlling. That means accepting that they are free to do whatever they want, and it doesn't matter because it's an illusion. They can't really hurt their real self. He has also been telling me "let go" through various waves of grief recently and I just couldn't see to gain the awareness to let go. Not until I could admit that I didn't want to, which opened up the door to a sense of loss, which eventually cleared away to reveal that nothing real had been lost, and thus acceptance and peace returned. Letting go, especially at an emotional level, is hard. It takes willingness, acceptance, admittance, letting go of fake values, removing dependencies, detaching and setting yourself free.

"Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."

Some people don't believe in miracles. Some don't think A Course in Miracles is about the kind of miracles Jesus was known for, and some are quite convinced they have nothing to do with healing the body or being able to cure all forms of suffering.

Mainly this is because of sin. "The world of bodies is the world of sin", which the body's eyes were made to believe is permanent reality, and this sin is a sense of "irreversibilitly". It's the apparent nature of this world that all roads lead to death, all things seem to degrade and get worse, there is entropy and it all seems to be built into the laws of physics, as if there is no escape.

The whole world in its conditions and maladies seems to attest that all these things cannot be undone, cannot be changed or healed or reversed. That sin is real and permanent and there is nothing you can do to stop it's march toward death. The seeming inevitability of death is founded as the logical outcome of the belief in sin, and all the universe seems to testify that sin is real and its effects are permanent.

But in the Course we are actually being taught to believe that this is completely untrue, that sin is NOT irreversible, and that in fact all the laws of this world can be completely broken by miracles. That things are POSSIBLE that this world would suggest simply cannot happen or is highly unlikely. That in fact, miracles are completely capable of reversing, undoing and healing every single thing you can find in this world that seems to be permanent or "too difficult" to heal.

For example, even the things that medical science has no ability to cure, such as deadly cancers, heart attacks, stroke and brain damage, alzheimers and parkinsons, paralysis, kidney failure, aging, death - all these really serious seeming problems that seem to just get worse. The world in its expression suggests this is simply all too difficult, all too permanent, you just have to live with it and die. That all these things lead eventually to total destruction and that this is "natural". Yet it could not be more unnatural or unalike the nature of the Kingdom. The course says:

"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."

So what is this saying? It's literally saying that when you are operating from the laws of God, which are not of this world, there is nothing you cannot do, and as a miracle worker you should not believe in orders of difficulty. You should not "buy" the appearance of permanence in this world, or the suggestion of something being so far gone there is no hope of reversal. You should not have to tolerate or live with any kind of sickness or death, and there is literally no law of this universe that cannot be broken by miracles.

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His results, you will understand where He must be, and finally KNOW what He is."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."

So on the one hand we have this world of death in which the entire system is set up to testify that sin is real and cannot be undone, glaring us in the face, with our own body sensing it and making it seem real and full of difficulty. And then on the other hand we have this light, this power, the Holy Spirit in our mind, which believes the TOTAL OPPOSITE, completely denies that anything of this world is permanent or real, CAN REVERSE AND UNDO anything the world says cannot be undone, and can even reverse death itself.

This is what miracles are about and this is what miracles are capable of. They are not just merely little changes in how you see things that influence how the world looks to you. They are a power, from an entirely different level of reality, a spark of life from God, which fall like drops of healing rain from heaven, which are capable of resurrecting that which seems to be death and reversing ALL the effects of sin. There is literally not even ONE single thing in all this universe which has a power STRONGER than OR equal to the Power of God, which demonstrates that ANYTHING can be changed, BECAUSE it is an illusory world.

So we're not just talking here about having a different view of this world. We're talking about adopting a TOTALLY OPPOSITE viewpoint, which completely disregards everything the world seems to suggest is true, real, permanent, or a given. And that includes the overthrowing and cancellation and reversal of death in all its forms. Every form of sickness, every "extremely serious disease", every damage, every effect of war, all conflict, all hurt, all seeming effects of sin and attack, even to overcome gravity and walk on water, not one thing is beyond being shown to be reversible, healable or changeable to a miracle.

"The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds. The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be CHANGED. This demonstrates that it was never real, and could not stem from his reality. For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

And it would indeed BE miraculous to witness such a thing, because it literally would break and defy all the laws of space and time. It would show you that what you thought could never be possible, is possible. What you thought could never be healed or undone CAN be. The bodily conditions that seemed so hopeless you had resigned yourself to accept inevitable death, is NOT the only way. And in fact it is ridiculous to think that death IS the only way.

And so now you will find that you are torn between what this world seems to demonstrate as "natural and likely", versus what the Word of God is expressing as a supernatural miraculous nature completely in defiance of every law of space time, which breaks every seeming limitation, and completely ignores any "claim" the world makes about what is impossible. "It is the world you see that is impossible". And possibility is of God. When you are under no laws BUT God's, you are NOT under the laws of the ego. And then anything is possible for you as a miracle worker.

So you'll find this tug of war going on between, do I believe what the world and body are suggesting can never be solved, do I believe these inescapable problems, do I buy into this hierarchy of difficulty, do I just accept that there is no hope for a cure, OR .... do I put my faith in this quirky book which is telling me that through the Power of Love, through miracle impulses, and through the Holy Spirit, even LITERAL mountains can be moved? That the dead can be raised, and every sign or symptom or effect of damage or attack in any form can be completely obliterated and disappeared? Who do you trust? The world the ego made, or the Power and Word of God?

This is why we have to hang onto the hope of healing, recovery, miracles and possibilities, which regardless of a lack of faith, remain always accessible. This is why we have to HAVE faith and trust and develop our relationship with the very power God gave TO enable such miraculous demonstrations. We're asked to really dig deep and go beyond the world's dirge of death and put our faith in possibilities not of this world. Potentials and capabilities that defy and go against everything even your own senses suggest can be possible.

If you are willing, and if you will receive healing, you too can perform the miracles that Jesus demonstrated are possible through the Power of God in this world. This is what A Course in Miracles is about. It's about learning to be a miracle worker, to never believe orders of difficulty, to overcome the laws of space time, and to become a master over this world.

"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."

"My Self is ruler of the universe. It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

"Unless the healer heals HIMSELF, he does NOT believe that there is no order in miracles. "

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do. I have called and you will answer. I KNOW that miracles are natural, because they are expressions of love. My calling you is as natural as your answer and as inevitable."

The world in and of itself is completely hopeless. You think it isn't. You think there are ways it can work out. You think there is hope to be had. And most likely you have confused a more positive hopeful outlook with the world. Which makes you believe it's the world that has some hope. So let's separate it out VERY clearly and carefully.

The world ITSELF, physical form, the laws of physics, spacetime, all of it, IS HOPELESS. 100% hopeless. Occasionally things seem to go a little better than others, but eventually it all turns to shit. This it the absolute fact of it. Time is death and anything that changes will die. All things in the world will be destroyed. It all ends in death because it begins in death.

"The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

"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."

This has absolutely NOTHING to do with perception. It has nothing to do with your beliefs or values or interpretations or how you see the world or what you use it for. The world itself is hopeless. There cannot be hope in it because everything in it ends in death. Everything is destroyed. The very same seeming force of "time" that seems to allow flowers to grow and bloom is the very same force that kills them off.

ALL the world's roads lead to death. Sometimes there is a temporary illusions of peace in which the "thorns are not felt" at once, but later it settles in and takes everything away from you. The world was made SO THAT problems could not BE escaped. That means there is NO END to problems, no matter how much you are in denial or how ingeniously you keep insisting they can all be solved. You wilL NEVER solve them. It was made TO disappoint. It HAS disappointed you since time began.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

So let's be completely clear. The world in and of itself has NO hope. What hope can there be when everything you do, everything you try to build, everything you make, everything you achieve, it is all going to eventually be DESTROYED by time. All the cities will fall. All the bodies will die. It is a BLEAK outlook because the world IS bleak. In and of itself has nothing to offer and nothing to give and nothing of value.

The people of the world are hell-bent in DENIAL, trying to find ways to constantly turn the world into a better place. A better place in terms of trying to civilize it. This is in effect an attempt to tame hell. It's a form of denial where we keep trying to take something which STILL will be destroyed, EVEN from the outset of making shiny new things, in one more futile attempt to get the dead world to live. To be renewed, refreshed, worth staying in. Until it dies. Until a supernova blows it all to shit and renders the human race totally irrelevant.

You should not look to the world FOR your hope. You should not look to the world for your salvation. You should not look to it for things to value and treasure and keep. It should not hold out hope to you, because it WILL take it away. This is the way of the world itself. This has nothing to do with the people or what the people think or how they perceive. It does this even WITHOUT any people around. It destroys and takes away and reduces and decays and rots. That is its nature.

"Death is the 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. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life."

Those poor worms. They thought they had a chance, living off the rotting fetid flesh of death, but they too were doomed to die even since they were born. This is the world's FUNCTION. This is what it was DESIGNED to to. It cannot function any other way because it was made to BE an opposite to how God functions. It was made to attack his function and be the opposite of life. It cannot succeed, it cannot work, it cannot provide, it cannot protect, it cannot produce life, it cannot save you, and it cannot love you. The world wants you dead.

You have to become very clear about this, because so long as you keep confusing your "trying to look on the bright side" with the world itself, you'll think the world itself has hope in it. You have to sort out the fact of what the world IS from your USE of it. Then you will realize that regardless of perceptions, the world ITSELF is just a piece of trash not worth anything. It is NOTHINGNESS pretending to be something.

So long as you believe that the world itself is SOMETHING, and can therefore GIVE you something, make you something, cause you something you prefer, and provide for you, you will WANT it. You will idolize it and treasure it and want to keep it. And the COST of this is that you will REJECT GOD. The price of choosing to believe in a made-up world is the DENIAL of the Kingdom, which is inherently the denial of life and happiness and real hope.

This is what people do not want to look at. You cannot get to realizing that you WANT heaven, until you realize that the world IS NOT heaven. So long as you think the world IS heaven, which all insane people do, you will want to keep it. You will seek and not find salvation and solutions IN AND OF the world which will always disappoint you. They will fail and will only partly work. And if you keep trusting them you will not be able to trust God.

Only when you can admit and accept that the world just fundamentally SUCKS, that it was made to BE broken and NEVER work, only then will you realize the inner stirring that happens. The sense that, surely, given how horrendously stupid the world is, this CAN'T BE THE WORLD GOD CREATED. It just can't be reality. It can't be true. It can't be how the laws of existence really function. it can't be where you're supposed to be living. And it can't really exist.

THEN.... you will be willing to turn around and look for A REAL ALTERNATIVE. The real alternative comes from the inner insistence that there MUST BE A BETTER WAY. There must be some kind of world or reality where all of this shite does not happen. There MUST be a reality where sickness and death don't exist. There MUST be a way to see that doesn't make hell seem like a nightmare. And there MUST be a whole different mindset that WORKS AND NEVER FAILS.

This is the opening up of the spiritual eye. This is where the physical sight begins to be not believed. Because you now realize that nothing in OR OF the world can show you reality.

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

"Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

So you now start to realize that there MUST BE another world, another light, a higher mind, another thought system, another POSSIBILITY, and a REAL HOPE, that comes from BEYOND THIS WORLD. It is the light of heaven, the REAL potential of happiness that lasts and is never disappointed, and the actual accessible possibility of eternal life. It is what God has GIVEN, and is opposite to everything in the world. It is completely alien to everything everyone in the world thinks, and it reveals that the world holds NOTHING that you want.

Only by not wanting the world can you want God. You can't want both because they are opposites. Only be realizing there IS NO HOPE in the world can you open up to the fact that there must be a world where there IS HOPE. There has to be a real hope, rather than the false idle wishful thinking and fake denial and pretense that you've used your whole life to RESIST HELL and to try to make the world stop falling apart. Let the world fall apart and realize that's all it CAN do. And then bring the light of ANOTHER world where things do NOT fall apart, to this world, to perform miracles.

This higher healthier saner attitude of optimism and true hope and possibility must be rooted in God. It must be founded on the real truth and the DENIAL OF THE WORLD. To ACCEPT the other world at all is the acceptance of atonement. It's to accept that you are under no laws but God's and there is no truth but God's. That salvation is OF ANOTHER WORLD. That the only hope you have is God's HELP. That the only POWER there is, the only POSSIBILITY without limits, is the power of God - a power not of this world, which ENABLES YOU instead of disabling you.

The world has no hope whatsoever. It is already made of the idea of death.

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

Your false perceptions OF the world emphasize its hopelessness and pull out its pictures of hate and put borders around its scenes of crime and sickness and decay. Your true perceptions reinterpret these hopeless scenes and GIVE them hope from another world. Not a hope the world HAS, or is made of, but a hope that you find only by giving it, through projection onto it. An invitation TO those in the world, a signpost which points to ANOTHER world, which says "this way to happiness." This is the road out of hell, a road which the world itself will never offer.

"Fear not to cross to the abode of peace and perfect holiness. Only there is the completion of God and of His Son established forever. Seek not for this in the bleak world of illusion, where nothing is certain, and where everything fails to satisfy."

"The holy instant is your invitation to love, to enter into your bleak and joyless kingdom, and transform it into a garden of peace and welcome."

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the presence of God."

For me I want a course that can be learned, is accessible, easy enough to understand, and can be applied without too much hassle. I think A Course in Miracles does this, and that Jesus is an excellent teacher. I think he knows what he's talking bout.

I think he is very masterful and wise and has taken huge efforts in the writing of ACIM to try to be as clear and obvious and relatable as possible, so that as many people as possible can learn the course and use it correctly. After all, it would be a pretty awful course if it was so obscure and difficult and hard to fathom that no-one could actually succeed at it.

"Contradictions in MY word mean lack of understanding, or scribal failures, which I make every effort to correct."

"...a host of related fallacies, including the misbelief that God rejected man and forced him out of the Garden of Eden, or that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to use words which are ALMOST impossible to distort, but man is very inventive when it comes to twisting symbols around."

For me, I recognize that Jesus makes some VERY SIMPLE straightforward statements. He states facts, in the clearest way possible. He uses words which are familiar to us, and which have associations with things in our world that we recognize. He isn't speaking some foreign gobbledygook language, or trying to make things obscure. He is very direct, factual, honest, obvious and clear.

So for example in the course he uses some terms such as "Earth". I think we ALL recognize that a reference to Earth is talking about the physical planet that we're on, the ball of rock, which is floating in space. Planet Earth. I think 100% of readers should agree that Earth refers to that object. If you think that it DOES NOT refer to that object, or that "Earth is NOT really a physical planet and has some other kind of reality", something is wrong.

Similarly he talks often about the body. Even already as I write this sentence you have an association in your mind which recognizes I just mentioned the human flesh-and-bones body. That's what the body is. My human body, your biological body, the bodies of people walking down the street.

This isn't rocket science. This does not have to be difficult or hard to understand. And it especially shouldn't call for us to have to perform massive mental gymnastics, get subtle nuances, re-word things, redefine meanings, shift things around, or have massive long debates about what it means. For fucks's sake, the body is just the body!

So for example if he gives a simple statement such as: "At no time does the body exist", we're supposed to learn that he really does mean that literally. The human flesh and bones body that we're used to walking around in, does not really exist. That's the teaching. That's the fact. That's his intention.

When he then also tells us for example that "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist", the most obvious thing to learn is that once again, this human flesh and bones body does not really exist. Everything about it is geared towards separation, and it DOES NOT EXIST. NOTHING about it exists, in any way, to any degree, anywhere.

He goes on to reiterate the same simple truths in many ways, in many forms, in many statements. e.g. "As nothing, which it is, the body cannot be meaningfully endowed with the attributes of Christ." or "The body's nothingness", or "God did not create the body." etc. All of these tell us the same exact thing. The body is nothing, it doesn't exist, it's not really there. There is NOTHING ELSE to learn from this. There is NO OTHER MEANING.

You SHOULD be learning therefore that because of the many times Jesus has reiterated this simple teaching, one of many, you should be trying to learn and accept that "your body" is not really there, the bodies that you see around you don't really exist, and there are no real bodies. You should NOT be attempting to SKEW this, or to find loopholes, or ways to keep the body.

You should not be trying to explain how there is some VERSION of the body that is going to be kept. Or how references to the body are NOT really referring to the body. Or how the body is "not really physical" but is something else. Or how when he talks of the body he is only talking about it "as the ego sees it", or "as you perceive it". We have to stop tacking on all these extra clauses and exceptions and ways of DISTORTING the very basic most obvious teaching. The body is NOTHING. It's not there.

This means that all of the atoms, do not exist. It means that, the flesh and bones and organs and eyeballs and hands and feet, do not exist. Not one single part of its energy exists. None of its fluids or chemicals, none of the gut bacteria, none of the cells, nothing that gives it space, or takes up space, or is made of matter, or energy, or thought, or ANYTHING, none of it is there. That we should not be attempting to redefine it, keep it, view it differently in order to have it still exist somehow, or anything else. We need to learn to accept, THERE IS NO BODY. Zero. Totally non-existent in all places at all times in every way forever.

This is a simple teaching. It's not hard. It's not meant to be hard. You aren't required to study this course deeply for decades in an attempt to fathom the deeper mysteries of what these simple statements mean. It does not take for you to do the workbook lessons. It does not require for you too read the text 100 times. You should get it as soon as you read it the first time. The body is nothing and does not exist. It's not that hard. Jesus is not being obscure or clever or mystical or difficult or trying to tell us something in a very obscure context which only advanced students can ever get. This course is for YOU. ANYONE. To learn easily.

Statements about the body have implications. If the body is nothing, then it stands to normal sane reasoning, that anything the body is "made of" does not exist. For example if the body has carbon atoms in it, which it does, then carbon does not exist. And this by extension means, that trees which are also made of carbon, do not exist. Any if the skin cells fall from the body and become dust and contribute to the soil of the earth, then also the soil of the earth does not exist. And if the body breathes the air and depends on it, then so too is the air not real either. And as you take foods into the body and digest them and they BECOME the body, this must indicate that those foods, and their original forms, and the plants and trees and sources they came from, ALSO must not exist.

This is very simple reasoning, it's not rocket science. It's simple common sense. If your body doesn't exist as Jesus spells out clearly and easily, then it also MUST mean that anything around the body does not exist, the body's environment does not exist, and the entire cosmos does not exist. This is a very sensible and sane and rational conclusion. It's all made of the same stuff, so it applies to all of it. That means therefore that planet earth, does not exist. We could rephrase Jesus's statements to EASILY mean the same thing. e.g. "At no time does the planet Earth exist. It is either anticipated or remembered, but never exists just now." "The planet earth is a dream." "The planet earth's nothingness." "As nothing, which it is, planet earth cannot be meaningfully invested with the attributes of christ." "God did not create the planet earth."

The course is NOT meant to be ANY more complicated than this. All readers should be coming to the same conclusions. In fact there shouldn't even really be much of a process involved in "drawing conclusions". You should be seeing that Jesus has already done most of the work for you. He's already EXPLICITLY telling you outright, LITERALLY, that the body is nothing and does not exist. And he extends that in many ways to include the world as well.

"There is no world. "Earth, the other's sorry outcome, which is heaven's opposite in every way." "The place where it is reflected is not real." "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." etc. Very simple, the course teaches normal everyday readers that planet earth does not really exist. Which is a very profound teaching. And it's our job to ACCEPT this and recognize it. But it becomes incredible at times the lengths that some students will go to, to avoid this. It is driven in part by the STRONG belief that people bring with them TO the course, based on prior experiences, that the planet seems to them to be real. All the pain, all the misery, all the experiences, the memories, all the bodies, all the relationships, all the events, which all seem to contribute in our minds to suggesting that Earth really does exist. But ALL of that is FLYING IN THE FACE of what Jesus is telling us, and so we have a lot to learn, or rather a lot to UNLEARN. Because we've taught ourselves a lot of stuff that is NOT TRUE, and is NOT what the course is teaching us.

That means we have to be willing to be mistaken, we have to be willing to question our beliefs, we have to be open minded to consider an alternative, and we have to also keep sight of THE PLAIN AND OBVIOUS. And of what makes simple logical sense. When we are reading something like the body being nothing and not existing, and we can't quite bring ourselves to accept it is true, because of our commitment to identifying with the body, we will DEFEND AGAINST what Jesus is saying. And then even a simple statement such as "the body does not exist" will be met with doubt, suspicion, questioning, deception, distortion and attempts to have it NOT mean what it means. Our egos will try to CHANGE its meaning and NOT SEE the obvious.

"We will use this simple lesson in the obvious because it has results we cannot miss."

Even the most obviously, BLATANT statements can be distorted if the mind is not ready or willing to listen to it. We can quite easily project onto the course a vast array of false perceptions. We can mangle it out of all recognition. We can take even the simplest clearest statements and FIND WAYS in which we can try to justify that they DO NOT mean what they mean. We can even take statements and give them completely OPPOSITE meanings, and feel "okay with that", as if it makes sense to us. As if it doesn't seem to contradict OTHER things we believe, because in our arrogance we think we already know what is true and don't want to question it.

To accept even the most simple truths in the course sometimes may require us to go through a tremendous purification process, letting go of faulty beliefs and backgrounds, discarding old baggage and world views, even questioning our most deeply held beliefs about who and what we are. And we do not WANT to do that. So we will resist it, and will instead NOT SEE the most simply obvious truths in front of us. Because we don't want to. We want the truth to be something else. And we do not TRUST it, because we trust something else.

So we have to sort through and sort out ALL of our other beliefs and find out if they line up with what Jesus is telling us. And that's going to be some rough territory because we COULD start trying to educate ourselves as to "what he means", and teach ourselves things that he DOES NOT mean. After all, if we don't even really know what is true, and are supposed to learn from him, then we need to really be willing to put aside out OWN teaching of ourselves and open up to BEING TAUGHT and actually learning something new. Otherwise we're not really being students, we're just being spewers and projectors of what we already decided is true.

Not that it takes rocket science to grasp the basic facts. Many things in ACIM are NOT supposed to be difficult. It's just that sometimes the truth is so profound and deep and intense that we do not LIKE it and do not WANT it. So we avoid it with an incredible array of creative means. An incredible arsenal of distortions, twists, defenses, manipulations, bandaids, and all manner of other strategies to not directly see or recognize or accept the simplest facts. No one with an ego wants to accept "there is no world" at its fullest intensity. And no one who believes they are a body REALLY wants to accept fully that their bodies don't exist.

But even with all these obstacles, even with learning disabilities, self inflicted filters, and all manner of unwillingness and denial, there are STILL some very, VERY basic aspects to Jesus's teaching that we all should really learn and agree to. The SIMPLEST of truths. Such as that the human physical biological body has absolutely no reality, value, existence, or meaning. It is NOT THERE. And also by extension, that this planet, the physical world, which is like the body and of the body, also is NOT THERE. These are fundamentally two cornerstone principles of ACIM. To not at LEAST accept them intellectually is going to produce a huge array of distortions of the course's teachings, and it has already done so.

"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power." - ACIM"There is nothing my holiness cannot do." - ACIMI want to be clear about this, because this is an often misunderstood matter. It's a question of who does what, who has the power, and who should get the credit. Is God the miracle worker? Are we? Both?First of all, let's tackle this term "of myself". Of yourself, you have and are nothing. This does not mean you do not exist. It means that what you are, YOU did not put there. You did not create yourself. What you have did not come from you. You did not originate it - it wasn't "of" (from) you. But this DOES NOT in any way mean that you HAVE NOTHING or that you can do nothing. Far from it.For example, children do not create themselves. Of themselves, they did not give themselves life. But they have life. They have life because their creator SHARED their life with them. Their parent EXTENDED life and GAVE life to them, creating them as a standalone life joined with the parent's life. The child is not devoid of life or incapable, but what they have was inherited.God extended his own will to us to create us. He shares the Kingdom with us. He put everything he HAS into us. He invested us with HIS POWER. His light is our light. His love and joy are shared with us. It's in us. We didn't put it there, but you sure as heck HAVE it. We are HOST TO GOD but this doesn't mean "only God exists and we do not".

God does not create weak beings who can do nothing. God creates POWERFUL beings of light. In fact, unlimited, holy beings who can do literally ANYTHING. They are fully equipped to CREATE. They are unlimited. They have been GIVEN the ABILITY to accomplish anything.

In fact, God has established his children as CO-CREATORS, which does NOT mean that God is the only one doing the creative act. It's not just God sitting there creating "through His children with His children doing nothing at all. His children MUST collaborate, MUST be included, MUST share, MUST exercise free will, and MUST CHOOSE to co-create with and like the father. BOTH of them produce creative ACTS together in collaboration.

God created the sonship, and the sonship is fully equipped with the ability to ADD TO the Kingdom. They create additional beings - "children of my will". But they create them WITH their brothers, AND with God. This doesn't mean any individual part of the Kingdom "does all the work". EVERY part of the Kingdom does all the work. Even the Holy Spirit participates in co-creation. So who gets credit? They all do.

So when we say that of ourselves we can do nothing, we have to be very careful not to imply that we do the OPPOSITE of doing something. Because it is absolutely NOT TRUE that we "do nothing" or that God is "the doer" through us, excluding us from the process. Without us God CANNOT act through us.

This is why ACIM says "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin" and why "Love cannot enter where it's not welcome." YOU have to participate, not merely in an act of getting out of the way and allowing, but ACTIVELY WILLING in accord with God's will.

God has GIVEN YOU His power, making you a powerful co-creator with a powerful mind. That means there is stuff you can do. Not only is there stuff you can do, there is nothing you cannot do. You are unlimited in your power. YOUR power. But YOUR power is ALSO HIS. You don't OWN it exclusively, but you DO own it.

The point Jesus is making is not that you can't do anything or that God does everything. He's making the point that your symbiotic relationship with God means that anything you CAN do is BECAUSE you and God are working TOGETHER in unison. You are sharing in God's power. You are extending HIS love, AS your own. How could you even experience the ability to love another if you could not YOURSELF be capable of loving? YOU love others, along with God.

We need to be careful, indeed, not to believe that our power is "of ourself". This is an ego belief that everything we are and can do is because we independently have superpowers that do NOT depend on God, or that are not shared or accessible to all. It would be egoic and arrogant to claim that everything we do, we do WITHOUT God. We would be merely bragging at our prowess with our limited "skills."

This is why Jesus deferred "ownership" of miraculous acts to the Power of God through Him. But he did not mean that HE Himself had no power or did not participate or merely sat on the sideline and watched. Jesus's mind was powerful. HE was a powerful miracle worker. It's just that in terms of WHO does the act or WHO makes it possible, ownership is SHARED with God. Of Himself Jesus HAD nothing and WAS nothing. He was not OF Himself, He was an extended creation of God. But he definitely HAD power and DID acts. HIS mind was miraculous.

Here for example, Jesus explains that ownership to God does not mean "God gets all the credit and we get none". To Him, ownership is about SHARING, meaning that ALL created beings HAVE the power to USE as they see fit. And while God DOES deserve "full" credit, He is not the ONLY one who deserves credit. Omitting credit from yourself omits it from one of God's extensions, which in turn omits it from God.

"It is yours BECAUSE it belongs to Him, for ownership is sharing to Him."

This makes sense because anything created is FULLY given EVERYTHING that its creator has. Through extension, what is God's IS YOURS. This is YOUR INHERITANCE!!! Which means you are a divine, holy, powerful, creative being, because God has created you to be this. It's just that your power isn't yours ALONE, exclusive to you, special, different, or something that God doesn't ALSO SHARE. God has equipped and enabled to you to be miraculous WITH him.

So what we need to say more clearly perhaps is, what we have did not come from ourselves. Of (from) ourselves, we have and are nothing. There is nothing IN us that WE put there. We didn't create ourselves. God made everything that WE can do possible. God gave us the power TO perform miracles, because HE is miraculous and is involved in the miracle. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God". Yet WE are powerful miracle workers as well.

We should be very careful not to transition from the ego position of "everything I have is mine alone", to "I have and do nothing. And we should be careful not to transition from "I believe I am powerful" to "I have no power". It is in fact the EGO that thinks this way, jumping to what seem to be opposites. To go from one state of exclusivity to another, because it does not understand inclusive thinking.

It is NOT an improvement to switch from the ego position of "I exclusively have power" to "God exclusively has the power". That is NOT correct. That's an ego conclusion. God does not think this way. God thinks INCLUSIVELY. We need to transition from "I exclusively have power" to "WE SHARE ALL POWER WITH GOD."

It would be ridiculous to say Jesus, a Son of God, had NO power. Jesus was immensely powerful and strong minded with an undivided constructive will, aligned with God's will, working in unison with the Holy Spirit. His own mind was miraculous BECAUSE he shared His mind with God. It's fine to have the humility to not "claim exclusive ownership" of miracle working, but this does NOT mean Jesus himself had no power or ability.

In order for a "separate God" to work through us, and for us to be a passive conduit, which is also NOT how it works, you'd have to be NOTHING. You are not nothing. You become loving in order that love can move through you. This means still that YOU have to be loving. This is why you are NEEDED by love so that it can go out. On its own it is blocked if you do not cooperate. God sends the love, you must RELAY it by ALSO loving like and with God, amplifying the signal. Your will must ACT and be INCLUDED, FREELY.

"Miracles are expressions of love" and "All expressions of love are maximal" and "Miracles are everyone's right but purification is necessary first" is telling us that miracle can only function "through you" with YOU being miracle minded and miraculous, by YOU entering a state of WILLING TO LOVE in a maximal and powerful way, SO THAT you are OPEN to RECEIVE love from God, acknowledge the love that is IN you because God put it there, and in turn willingly EXPRESS it as miracles. YOU have to be miraculously minded AND maximally loving in order to perform them. If YOU are not, YOU are not "doing your part", and then the miracles do not happen because "something has gone wrong" (ie you are blocking love).

We need to drop the idea that we merely "step aside". Yes we need to get our EGO out of the way, but not our SELF. We need to get our selfishness out of the way, but not our soul. We need to BE very loving in order to BE miraculous. And WE MUST have miracle mindedness in order to perform miracles. But miracle mindedness does not mean "a mind that cannot do anything." It means a mind that cannot do anything WITHOUT God, and CAN do EVERYTHING WITH God.

By being open to receive and admit and aknowledge and allow God to work THROUGH us, it does not mean that WE aren't doing something. That again is ego exclusive thinking. "God or me" is EGO thinking. "God AND me" is divine thinking. "God does it all" is TRUE, but NOT if you make that exclusive. "God does it all and no one else does anything" is an ego conclusion. You are a CO-CREATOR, not just a medium.

We need to acknowledge that we didn't give ourselves the power to heal. But we do have it, and we need to acknowledge that also. We need to admit we cannot heal WITHOUT God, but this does not mean that WE do not do anything. Our function is to SHARE in the state of power. And that means WE have to be powerful, healed, whole beings of love and light, which in their own right are very capable.

"Teachers of God will take over the world because of their strength."

"Now must you share His function" "You share His function only by judging as HE does"

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest ***THROUGH you***. ***Do His work, for you SHARE in His function.*** As your function in Heaven is creation, so ***your*** function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit ***shares His*** with you on earth."

Your function is not "be passive". It's not to "just let God work through you". God CAN'T work through you unless YOU DO SOMETHING AS WELL. Your function is to be a miracle worker, a DOER, to DO HIS work WITH Him. To SHARE His function, not to have Him do all the function. Your mind's condition is VITAL and IMPORTANT in the equation of how miracles happen. Your WILLINGNESS is absolutely required. Your power to love is mandatory. You choosing to DO miracles WITH Him makes them possible.

This is not about giving God 100% credit and giving us zero. That is false humility and false thinking. We must give God 100% credit AND give ourselves 100% credit. This flies against ego thinking. What we can do did not come from us, but we nevertheless are powerful beings. Thinking it is ours exclusively IS ego. Thinking we have NO power is ALSO ego and is NOT true humility. The children of God are not puppets. YOUR strength, shared with Him, enables miracles to happen. Miracles express from YOUR mind. YOU are the miracle worker.

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world." (a shared state of collaboration)

"The creative power of both God AND His Creations is limitless" (God's children have unlimited power)

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF." (Each of us HAS all of the power of heaven to use as we see fit)

"All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His." (YOU deserve glory, not just God. The ONLY problem is you claiming the glory without sharing it)

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS." (see, ALL power is yours. YOU are powerful - it's just that it's not ONLY you that's powerful)

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: ***All power is given unto you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do.***" (There is nothing YOU cannot do because all power has been GIVEN to you).

"Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and ***MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE*** to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and ***DO***." This means:

Listen to MY Voice, Learn to undo the error, and ***DO something*** to correct it.

***The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers.***

***The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you.*** I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But ***you must be ready and willing to do*** them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ***ability***. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE (shared function). Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

EGO: I have the power, God does nothing. I gave myself this power, it's special and exclusive.

HOLY: God and I share all power and together we can do anything. What I have God has, and we perform miracles together.

It's important to realize that the Kingdom of God cannot be even remotely encroached upon. What you are in reality, it utterly BEYOND the reach of the ego and death and all forms of attack. Nothing illusory can even TOUCH what you are.

You live in a realm of light which is far beyond the world of Earth and beyond anywhere that any kind of illusion can exist. It is so protected and so intensely powerful that not a single speck of unreality can even approach it.

This is why you are safe in God. This is why you cannot be hurt. This is why your immortality is permanent. This is why you cannot be changed or redefined or affected by the world. This is why nothing in this world has any power over you. This is why you are invulnerable and cannot be attacked, made to be sick, or die.

You are not of this world. You are from and in another world. You are heaven's child, safe in the womb of God, utterly unexposed to hell, and completely distant from every little scrap of attack this world can muster.

It's not even a matter of two distinct worlds butting up against each other, of or them making contact, overlapping, sharing something, or the "outside surface" of heaven being accessible to the realm of the ego. They do NOT meet. And they do NOT communicate. And illusion cannot even get close to the children of God.

"The Thought of God created you. It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from It an instant. It belongs to you. By It you live. It is your Source of life, holding you one with It, and everything is one with you because It left you not. The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. Eternity and Everlasting Life shine in your mind because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you."

With this in mind, you can get a sense of the fact that this whole world is like a surface "layer" or coating covering over reality, like an old crust, which has broken away and is floating by itself. And you are deeper than this. Your are within and beyond and above.

You are not made of anything of this world. No part of the physical body is your self, or yours, nor does it make contact with what you are. Not one single physical object has ever touched your soul. Not one sexual act or hug or high-five or physical smile has ever in fact influenced your spirit in any way.

What you are cannot be changed, cannot be affected, cannot be hurt, cannot be attacked, cannot be damaged, cannot be sick, cannot die, cannot be blown around by the wind, cannot suffer in any way, cannot lose anything, cannot have anything taken from it, and cannot be encroached upon.

What you are is utterly safe from the world, beyond the world, above the world. So far beyond that the world doesn't even really know your real self exists. So high in heaven that you are more than a trillion light years from the slightest particle of matter. And so embedded in God's heart that you not one beam of real light can ever fail to shine on you and keep you safe.

The reality of the Kingdom is a SAFE PLACE TO BE. And nothing can hurt you there. It is your sacred space. It is perfectly protected forever by God Himself, and identifying with BEING THERE NOW you are safe from all danger. You cannot be hurt because you are immortal, and this God guarantees forever. "It is only your awareness that NEEDS protection, because your BEING cannot be assailed."

"Rather teach your own perfect immunity, which IS the Truth in you, and KNOW that it cannot be assailed. Do not protect it yourselves, or you have believed that it IS assailable." "Now are the lilies of his innocence untouched by guilt, and perfectly protected from the cold chill of fear and withering blight of sin alike."

"Your ego and your Soul will never be co-creators, but your Soul and YOUR Creator will ALWAYS be. Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen."

"The Father keeps what HE created safe. YOU cannot touch it with the false ideas you made, BECAUSE it was created not by you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect."

"It is God's Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything. The world about him shines with love, because God placed him in Himself where pain is not, and love surrounds him without end or flaw. Disturbance of his peace can never be. In perfect sanity he looks on love, for it is all about him, and within him."

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father. By doing this, the mind awakens from its sleep, and the Soul remembers its Creator." "Knowledge is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet."

"NOTHING can reach the Soul from the ego, and nothing FROM the Soul can strengthen the ego, or reduce the conflict within it. The ego IS a contradiction. Man's self and God's Self ARE in opposition. They are opposed in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive, and the ego cannot know. They are therefore NOT IN COMMUNICATION, and can never BE in communication."

"Do not let your ego dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you are."

"Against our united strength, the ego CANNOT prevail."

"The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free, because you WILL NOT LISTEN TO IT. It is NOT your will to be imprisoned, BECAUSE your will is free."

"The ego cannot prevail against a totality which includes God, and any totality MUST include God. Everything He created is given ALL His power because it is part of Him and shares His Being WITH Him."

"The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit"

"The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation NEVER OCCURRED. The ego CANNOT prevail against this, because it is an explicit statement that the EGO never occurred."

"The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for ANYTHING, because there is COMPLETE COMMUNICATION FAILURE between them."

"The union of the Sonship IS its protection. The ego cannot prevail against the Kingdom BECAUSE it is united, and the ego fades away and is undone in the presence of the attraction of the parts of the Sonship which hear the call of the Holy Spirit to be as One."

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there. No instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols CANNOT know this star is there."

"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt, APART from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly."

"You CANNOT join with anything EXCEPT reality. God's glory and His Son's BELONG to you in truth. They HAVE no opposite, and nothing else CAN you bestow upon yourselves."

"The past is over. It can touch me not."

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Over and over this must be repeated until it is accepted. It is true. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, nor can change what God created as eternal."

"Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

"No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ. For the Host is as holy as the Perfect Innocence that He protects, and Whose Power protects HIM."

"The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond."

"Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it."

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

"There is a Light in you Which cannot die, Whose Presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you."

"His holiness gives life to you, who CANNOT die because his sinlessness is known to God, and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not."

"It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."

"Now do we live, for now we cannot die."

"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life."

"What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die."

"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die."

"Your peace is with me, Father. I am safe."

"I am safe today because there is no will but God's."

"The miracle restores the Soul to its fullness. By atoning for lack, it establishes perfect protection. The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions. The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return. It is the duty of the released to release their brothers."

"That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son."

"Today we will again give thanks for our identity in God. Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. We can fail in nothing. Everything we touch takes on a shining light which blesses and which heals. At one with God and with the universe, we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us.

"Today we will not doubt His Love for us, nor question His protection and His care."

"Your defenses will not work, but you are not in danger. You have no need of them. Recognize this and they will disappear. And only then will you accept your real protection."

"How simply and how easily does time slip by for the teacher of God who has accepted His protection!"

"God is your safety in every circumstance. His Voice speaks for Him in all situations and in every aspect of all situations, telling you exactly what to do to call upon His strength and His protection. There are no exceptions because God has no exceptions."

"Concentrate on the holiness which they imply about you; on the unfailing companionship which is yours; on the complete protection that surrounds you."

"The protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever."

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time."

"The peace He laid, deep within BOTH of you, will quietly extend to EVERY aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you with glowing happiness, and the calm awareness of COMPLETE protection."

"God's Son is as safe as his Father, for the Son knows his Father's protection and CANNOT fear. His Father's love holds him in perfect peace, and needing nothing, he asks for nothing."

"When you have experienced the protection of God, the making of idols becomes inconceivable."

"And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us that it is real."

"Only the Love of God will protect you in all circumstances. It will lift you out of every trial, and raise you high above all the perceived dangers of this world into a climate of perfect peace and safety. It will transport you into a state of mind which nothing can threaten, nothing can disturb, and nothing can intrude upon the eternal calm of the Son of God."

"Now he has learned that no one frightens him, and nothing can endanger him. He has no enemies, and he is safe from all external things."

"NOTHING can come BETWEEN what God has joined, and what the Holy Spirit sees as one."

"Once I have accepted my holiness, nothing can make me afraid."

"Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient; God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep you FROM it, or IT from you."

"Nothing can disturb me. My will is God's."

"Try to believe, however briefly, that nothing can harm you in any way."

"Nothing can destroy your peace of mind because God goes with you wherever you go."

"Can anything EXCEED the love of God? Can anything, then, exceed YOUR will? Nothing can reach you from BEYOND it, because being in God, YOU encompass everything."

"When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you, He CANNOT answer, because NOTHING can hurt you and SO YOU ARE ASKING FOR NOTHING."

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, nor can change what God created as eternal."

"Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's."

"Communication here is perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally without strain, because nothing discordant EVER enters. That is why it IS the Kingdom of God. It belongs to Him and is therefore LIKE Him. That IS its reality, and nothing CAN assail it."

"Nothing can hurt you, unless you give it the power to do so."

"NOTHING can oppose the will of God's Son"

"The truly helpful are invulnerable, because they are NOT protecting their egos, so that nothing CAN hurt them."

"You did not ESTABLISH your value, and it needs no defense. NOTHING can attack it, or prevail over it. It does not vary. It merely IS."

"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness."

"Do not let your hatred stand in the way of love, for NOTHING can withstand the love of Christ for His Father, or His Father's love for Him."

"NOTHING can shake God's conviction of the perfect purity of everything that He created, for it IS wholly pure."

"In my defenselessness my safety lies."

"Your safety lies in truth and not in lies. Love is your safety. Fear does not exist. Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self."

"There IS no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above, and NOT be touched. But, from within it, you can find NO safety."

"He is my home, wherein I live and move; the Spirit Which directs my actions, offers me Its Thoughts, and guarantees my safety from all pain."

"My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever from all thought of loss; complete deliverance from suffering."

"Safety is the COMPLETE RELINQUISHMENT OF ATTACK. No compromise is possible in this."

"Here is your home, and here your safety is. Here is your peace, and here there is no fear. Here is salvation. Here is rest at last."

"It is an ark of safety, resting on God's promise, that His Son is safe forever in Himself. What gap can interpose itself between the safety of this shelter and its Source?"

"What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?"

"For they can NOT attack, and they REJOICE that this is so, seeing their safety in this happy fact."

"The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from

all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds." "But you cannot be safe FROM truth, but only IN it. Reality is the ONLY safety."

"You will be free of the insane belief that to attack a brother saves yourself. And you will understand his safety is your own, and in his healing you are healed."

"Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety, and have NOT attacked yourself."

"The innocent see safety, and the pure see God within His Son, and look unto the Son to lead them to the Father."

"The Atonement is the GUARANTEE of the safety of the Kingdom. Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore CANNOT be protected. "

"It is not danger that comes when defenses are laid down. It is safety. It is peace. It is joy. And it is God."

"Who stands before a lifeless image when a step away the Holy of the Holies opens up an ancient door that leads beyond the world?"

"How better could your OWN mistakes be brought to truth than by your willingness to bring the light of Heaven with you, as you walk BEYOND the world of darkness into light?"

"The Word of God has no exceptions. It is this that makes It holy and beyond the world. It is Its holiness that points to God. It is Its holiness that makes you safe."

"You will not remember change and shift in Heaven."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs."

"My Father placed me safe in Heaven, watching over me. "

"Those who offer peace to everyone have found a home in Heaven the world can NOT destroy."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin. And as he is in Heaven, so MUST he be eternally and everywhere."

"Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE."

"Neither justice nor injustice exists in Heaven, for error is impossible and correction meaningless."

"For it IS your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete and quiet, in such sure and loving relationships, that ANY limits are impossible."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."

"Who, awake in Heaven, COULD dream that there could ever be NEED of salvation?"

"In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh, if idols could intrude upon his peace."

"Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien, and can no more enter than can their source."

"There is no change in Heaven, because THERE IS NO CHANGE IN GOD."

"Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough NOT to return to earth. For this relationship HAS Heaven's holiness."

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality."

Sickness in your own body is an attempt to accuse others of sin. It is part of the process of projection. "You but accuse your brother of your own sins" "Sick bodies are accusers".

This is entirely to do with cause and effect. In your natural state you are purely causal. You are not at the effect of anything external. But when you believe in your own sinfulness, you go into denial and disown the sin, projecting it outwards.

In other words, you take the causality from within yourself and hand it over to something outside of you. You now see cause as outside you, and effects as inside of you. Your mind believes both, that someone else is the cause of you, and you are being affected by them. That you have effects in you.

Due to believing in being affected, your mind powerfully manufacture signs and symptoms in your body as a reflection of your own belief, that you are having effects. It puts them through THROUGH its belief in the CAUSES that it sees itself as subject to. This is entirely based on the belief that there is a cause outside of you with power over you, dictating what you are, changing you against your will, and thus that there SHOULD BE effects in you correlating to the hierarchy of illusions.

Your mind itself creates the effects in you, and through believing that you are affected, invents weakness, suffering, sickness and death in the body. This manifests in the body as a symbolic representation of this attitude and thus the body becomes sick. The sickness of the body is entirely a PART OF the process of the projection of sin onto others. As you project mentally, the body communicates the attack by taking on the form of the message.

By using the body to accuse rather than to extend love, the body BECOMES accused, depicts accusation, turns into a form of attack, and is distorted by the mind's belief in its own affectedness. Essentially, "toxic harmful messages" passing through it affect it negatively. The body out-pictures the mind's sick attitude about itself and its brothers. The body now shows what the mind is believing and being used for, as symptoms of sickness and malfunction materialize by the power of the mind.

So there is this thing happening on a mental level where the mind is believing in sin and projecting it outward onto others. Your brother is being accused of sin and is being attacked by your mind. This belief simultaneously affects your PERCEPTION, which is now backwards (false perception), whereby you now see your brother as sinning against you and is the cause of your suffering. He is made into the real sinner who has power over you, as a false perception.

Then at the same time, on the physical level, the body is entirely caught up in this psychological process, is swept up in the attack and is distorted at the level of form to depict the attacking attitude. It becomes a "picture of crucifixion" which testifies and shows PROOF to your brother that HE must have been the CAUSE of you, and here are the EFFECTS to prove it. You show him the effects as part of your accusation and projection, to try to convince him of its wrongfulness. This all happens at once, mentally and physically.

So now the body becomes a physical accuser, demonstrating that there must have been a sin against you, because the body is under attack against your will (so it seem), and symptoms are providing fake evidence to show for it. As your brother looks upon this sick body, even if he has absolutely nothing to actually do with the situation, if he beholds your accusatory body he does not see his forgiveness there. And instead seems himself standing condemned, which weakens his mind.

Unless he is able to forgive himself, and thus completely overlook your demonstration of blame, which would allow him to be unaffected, his own belief in his own sinfulness will be compounded by your demonstration. If he can overlook it and not buy it, he can potentially offer healing to you. If he fails to overlook it, he will merely add to your sickness and compound it, taking the opportunity to rebel and project his own sin onto you in a joint ego encounter of mutual unconsciousness.

Your sick body does nothing at all to help him heal and is an attempt to infect him. It shows this on physical levels such as through infection and disease and contagion. Such sickness show up AS contagious because the mind TRYING to transfer sin to the other person.. I'm not sharing this to make anyone feel guilty. This is just something that we need to look honestly at if we are to move towards healing. But beware that Jesus holds absolutely nothing back when he presents this idea

"***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."

So Jesus is saying here, YOUR sickness, even your physical sickness, is part of an attempt by your ego's belief in sin, to project or give away the sin to others through accusation and projection. And as your body becomes sick, through your OWN indirect causality, as part of your sinful USE of the body, you get to show everyone why someone ELSE caused it.

It even goes as far as to say, that if you cause your body to DIE, in physical death, you are WILLING to do so because it assuages your guilt, portrays you as the innocent helpless victim, allows everyone else to be accused of causing it (external causes of death), and is thus the ego's attempt to exonerate you. This is why we have a belief that people die "against their will", "unchosen", "unfairly", and feel sorry for the whole episode. It's all part of the ego's worship of death as salvation.

This means you would be literally **willing to die**, to pay the price of death, IF it means you can be considered innocent and not the cause of sin. If the world can be considered the cause of it, YOU get off as the innocent party. And so death "saves you" from having sinned. This is what happens upon EVERY death. This is the CAUSE of every single physical death. "No one dies without their own consent". And this is why death of the body PROVES a complete failure to choose against sin and accusation. Death is a state of total disownership of self, life, will, power and responsibility and is an attempt to destroy the Son of God.

So it kind of boils down to this. When your mind believes in sin, it will project that sin onto others, see cause as external, experience backwards/false perception, and induce deliberate illness in the body to correspond to "what effects likely wold be produced" by such a cause. The body then shows proof that your brother is sinful because effects remain in the body. And as you literally SHOW him this sick body, you remain accusing him. And you will not REMOVE the effects from your body, because you want to CONTINUE accusing him.

"For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can NEVER be denied."

"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."

"The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the CONSEQUENCES of the guilt they overlook. Yet no-one CAN forgive a sin which he believes is real. And what has consequences MUST be real, because what it has DONE is there to see."

The important thing is, there is a flip side. What happens when you choose NOT to believe in sin? What happens when your mind decides to be holy and healed and loving towards others? With no sin to project, the entire projective process stops. That means the mind stops believing causality is external. It takes causality off the shoulders of your brother. It stops seeing itself as a victim at the effect of anyone else. Perception reverses along with cause and effect, such that you now see yourself as the cause, not the effect. And thus all "effects" in you, and in the body, literally disappear. Because without an externalized cause, they cannot remain.

The result of this is that your body is not USED to accuse, or to attack, but to HEAL. Because the mind MADE the symptoms as "effects" in the body as fake evidence to accuse your brother with, the mind ALSO has the power to UNDO those symptoms. "You made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both." By TAKING BACK YOUR POWER from externally projected "cause", you reclaim causality internally and stop seeing yourself as "having effects". The effects cannot stay WITHOUT projected causality, because you now see yourself as ONLY CAUSAL. "I am not at the effect of the world I see" is healing.

By extending love and healing through the body, the body DEPICTS harmlessness, holiness, innocence and the ABSENCE of sin. Just as the mind invented the symptoms of sickness due to its belief in "being affected", it also UN-INVENTS the symptoms as a result of believing "I am NOT at the effect of the world." Through believing "my brother is NOT the cause of me", the body is healed. By NOT using the body to communicate attack or blame, the body stops SHOWING symbolic signs of attack or blame. All sickness is lifted away from it BY the mind and it is healed through mind power Because you are the CAUSE of all of this. Sickness and death is a CHOICE.

There are NO exceptions or loopholes to this dynamic. When the mind is healed, it heals the body and forces the body to NOT show any signs of attack. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." "Now is the body healed by miracles." When the mind is in a state of sin, it attacks the body and makes it sick. "Sickness is anger taken out upon the body." "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt (by others)." The body SHOWS what the mind's attitude towards itself and its brothers is. "A broken body SHOWS the mind HAS NOT been healed." Always.

It boils down to, healthy mind, healthy body. Sick mind, sick body. Sin and projection, body depicts attack. Forgiveness and healing, body depicts the absence of attack. Loving shows up as a divinely healed lovely body devoid of all signs of suffering, and symbolizes Christ and eternal life.

"This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. 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."

"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. ... He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him."

Jesus is absolutely NOT saying that the body "sometimes" heals. He is not saying "it might, it might not." He is saying IT HAS TO symbolize the mind at all times. The body is an EFFECT, not a cause. The body is not AT the effect of the world. It does not "become sick" through external causes. Those are fake. It becomes sick only if the mind approves of the sickness for its purposes of projection. The body is being USED, it does hot have a say in it. Effects do not cause anything.

Nor is there such a thing as "death happens against my will." This is entirely a fictional ego belief. Death happens when your mind chooses to attack your brother. Your attempted murder of him, kills your body. When you love and forgive all people, your body CANNOT BE SICK OR DIE. Sickness and death literally become impossible. And this is the resurrection, in which death is surmounted and has NO POWER over you.

Giving and receiving are one. If you give ONLY LIFE, you will receive only life. If you give sin and death, you will receive sin and death. This is also the golden rule. If you believe you brother is sinful and you attack him for it with your body image, you WILL attack yourself and believe you are sinful. This will make you sick, mentally and physically. If you give him healing, you will be healed. "I will heal as I let him teach me to heal."

This is A Course in Miracles. A central teaching. The Holy Spirit has a perfectly healed body and mind to offer you to use in the world as a teaching device. But it is only accessible by not sinning against yourself and others. It IS possible to REVERSE, UNDO, and HEAL, all forms of sickness and death. Not only in yourself, but also in others. This is what it mean to be miraculous.

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.""

"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."

"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.""

Such a healed body HEALS YOUR BROTHER through its example.

"Correction IS the function given both, but neither one alone. And when it is fulfilled as SHARED, it MUST correct mistakes in both of you. It CANNOT leave mistakes in one unhealed, and make the other free. THAT is DIVIDED purpose, which cannot BE shared, and so it CANNOT be the function which the Holy Spirit sees as His."

"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."

"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. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.

How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys"