The ego makes a problem seem real, gets intense about it, magnifies it, and then tries to do something about it.

The ego can put on a mask of being a 'problem solver' or 'fixer' or 'doer' or 'seeker', claiming that it is innocently trying to solve the problem.

But the ego has made the problem in the first place. And for it to then turn around and claim to be working on solving it, is a complete farce.

The ego cannot, and does not really want to, solve the problems it has created. But it loves to SEEM like it is doing so.

It loves to think it not only has the purpose and innocent function of being the fixer and solver and savior in the situation, but that it actually is capable of finding the perfect answer, which is always elusive.

As the ego works on its solution to a problem, it really compounds the problem. So this is the ego's version of healing. The ego seeks to heal the problems it has made real.

It wants them to go away, while secretly sustaining and reinforcing them. And therefore the ego's form of healing is in fact an ATTACK, which damages and makes the problem worse.

The ego's mantra is that salvation can be achieved through attack.

Responding to an illusory problem that doesn't even really exist and can't be happening in God's Kingdom, means you are deceived and deluded.

True Forgiveness is needed.

For a long time I thought that if I would just SAY what the truth is, or 'get it intellectually', or be able to describe it, or have the right insight to put some pieces of the puzzle together, then I would .... achieve some kind of goal.

But, really... this never achieved anything other than worshipping metaphysical logic and becoming 'right' about it.

How many times do we really need to explain how and why this illusion all happened, or how the ego operates?

Being able to understand The Course doesn't mean I am now experiencing God. In fact it's quite the opposite.

Understanding the course maybe paved the way to realizing that... understanding the course doesn't bring peace, or God, or love. Knowing what it SAYS isn't the same as experiencing what it points to.

I've had some pretty lofty states of 'consciousness' or at least, high states of very abstract thinking, which I always thought were the way to access the truth. But it's not. Because this is just the ego mind trying to reach up to Holy Spirit's mind to get a taste of it... and because ideas return to their source there is an inevitable 'snapping back' out of it and back into mundane thinking.

What has to happen is this intellectual ego mind has to give way and be seen for the limited device that it is. It cannot and will not ever accomplish an experience of truth. It can only comment about it. It is removed from truth, because it is based in .... at the very least, symbols, if not a further layer of symbolism layered on top of that as words.

Thoughts and words don't make you be with God.

Transcending this ego-intellectual mind and going to be in a different mind, the mind of God/Holy Spirit, is what gets you to experience God.

You have to get out of the ego mind, out of the intellect/intelligence of the ego, out of the ego's thinking ... even if it seems to be very lofty course-focussed thinking. Ego thinking about the Course is NOT an experience of the truth!

We need to let go of this ego mind and all its activities and open up instead to a different mind, level 2 mind - the Holy Spirit's mind, shared with God.

Sometimes Jesus will say that both your positive and your negative feelings about the body or the world are detrimental. This can seem confusing because you might think only the negative stuff is a problem. And most people focus on trying to undo only the negative.

But the real issue here is that the body and the world are nothing, which makes them in a sense neutral, or devoid of any inherent attributes. If they are nothing, and you start saying they are something, you are losing touch with reality.

If you start to say the body or world are anything at all, you are becoming confused. Even if that means that you're saying the world is positive, or you love it, or you value objects, or you want to keep possessions, or you value special relationships or whatever. Special love and special hate are both illusions.

We are deceived by ANY belief we have that this world is anything other than nothing at all. Its nothingness guarantees your freedom. Making it into ANYTHING, imprisons you. This is why both the positive and negative seeming attributes of the world have to be undone and disbelieved, if you are to not be deceived. Pain AND pleasure are both deceptive.

You're not dealing with a positive world, you're dealing with a nothingness that pretends to be a world, and that's a whole different matter than just seeing the good in it. ALL of your judgements about the world, good or bad, right or wrong, favorable or displeased, are ALL incorrect. The world is not anything at all, and only the recognition of its nothingness can free you from it.

"Include all of the ego-based attributes which you ascribe to yourself, positive or negative, desirable or undesirable, grandiose or debased. All of them are equally unreal because you do not look upon yourself through the eyes of holiness."

"As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth."

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house?"

"Pleasure and pain are EQUALLY unreal, because their purpose CANNOT be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning."

"Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false or good or bad; of every thought it judges worthy and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

When something dies, it fails. The body fails. Organs fails. Tissues fail. It depicts failure on a physical level. The final failure of the body is what we call death. It is when everything fails. Total failure is death.

Which means that if you go toward death of the body, you are going towards failure. Which means you are failing to accomplish something. And accomplishing death is really an act of doing nothing whatsoever. Which means there is something to SUCCEED at, which is NOT death, which you are supposed to be succeeding at.

So to die is to fail at the thing you are supposed to succeed at. And the thing you are supposed to succeed at is the surmounting of death, the overcoming of death, the total cancellation of death, and the demonstration of eternal life symbolically through the body.

ACIM does not end in death, it ends only in resurrection. In the resurrection our curriculum ends. Nowhere else does it end. It does not end in failure. Therefore it does not end when you attain death. Attaining death is achieving nothing worth anything. Only by achieving LIFE are you a living example of the resurrection and the life.

"Swear not to die you holy son of God. You've made a bargain that you cannot keep."

"A dream of death cannot be left by death but by truth."

"What is the resurrection?":

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being THE ASSERTION OF LIFE. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. **LIFE** IS NOW RECOGNIZED AS SALVATION, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared, but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ's face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness, apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it."

"Here the curriculum ends. From here on, no directions are needed. Vision is wholly corrected and all mistakes undone. Attack is meaningless and peace has come. The goal of the curriculum has been achieved. Thoughts turn to Heaven and away from hell. All longings are satisfied, for what remains unanswered or incomplete? The last illusion spreads across the world, forgiving all things and replacing all attack. The whole reversal is accomplished. Nothing is left to contradict the Word of God. There is no opposition to the truth. And now the truth can come at last."

In the assertion of LIFE, all death is snuffed out. The attraction to death is ended. The desire for death is cancelled. The end of death has arrived, and it is blotted out by a decision to LIVE. The will to live represents the willingness to regain the total freedom of the will, which means the complete embracing of eternal life in God. Only through LIFE can this course be completed. Death is never an accomplishment of anything useful. Only through a realignment with your IMMORTALITY can to finally return home to the LIVING WORLD OF LIGHT, where everything lives forever. Heaven's doorway is made of life, and you must be alive to enter.

Often when you're having emotional reactions to situations, you can't for the life of you remember how to forgive or where to start.

There could be so much unconsciousness going on that all you are aware of are the intense feelings you're having and all the stress that's unfolding.

If you remember to forgive at all, it will probably seem like a stupid idea, that it won't be helpful and there isn't even anything to forgive here.

If you're particularly convinced that someone or something other than you is the problem, and are all caught up in the drama of it, you may even refuse to forgive, or it may not even pop into your mind until you've had time to cool off.

The ranting, vicious, violent ego can be hell-bent on finding someone else guilty, and in those times it seems completely justified in holding its viewpoint, convinced that what it's seeing is completely true and obvious.

When I get into these kind of mindsets I don't even know where to start with forgiveness. It's like my mind is just all numb and forgetful. My awareness has become blocked and I can't even remember how to forgive at all.

To forgive, I find myself starting with some really basic and probably not very effective statements, to just try to start *somewhere*. Like, "I remember I'm dreaming". Like, sometimes you just need to START even if you can't remember what the truth is at all. Just start saying something even remotely forgiving with at least a tiny bit of truth to it - A LITTLE WILLINGNESS - and gradually it will chisel away at the psychological insanity and begin to reveal and remind you of a greater awareness.

As that awareness then starts to return to you, you will start to remember a bit more solidly the learning that you've achieved long-term, and you'll start to remember greater truths, become more confident in your clarity, and be able to get toward what the "real" problem is, is what you're doing to yourself. As your forgiveness process progresses, it actually opens you up more to reveal a greater awareness of HOW to forgive more effectively and with more truth and certainty.

A willingness to just go on this forgiving adventure at all is all you need to get the motor started. It will be all sloppy and vague and seemingly in effective at first, but keep going. All will be revealed. And you can come all the way back to peace through surrender.

In ACIM chapter 27 "The Healing of the Dream", section about "fear of healing", Jesus describes forgiveness as REQUIRING physical healing in order to PROVE that forgiveness has been accomplished.

Jesus is LITERALLY saying that if there is really a true forgiveness of someone injuring you, any symptoms in your body MUST be healed in order to make the forgiveness real and to prove that there has truly been a forgiveness. If you retain the symptoms but claim the other person is pardoned, it is NOT a full forgiveness. It indicates you do not FULLY believe that it is forgiven. Forgiveness might well be happening in the mind, but it MUST reflect in the body also! Forgiveness without a miracle is incomplete! Forgiveness that keeps symptoms and retains real sickness is NOT complete forgiveness!!!!!

Quotes below:

"Yet no one can forgive a sin that he believes is real."

"To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox that reason cannot see."

"And by giving it, you grant your brother mercy but retain the proof he is not really innocent."

"The sick remain accusers."

"For no one in whom true forgiveness rests can suffer. "

"He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes."

"Forgiveness cannot be for one and not the other. Who forgives is healed."

"And in his healing lies the proof that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing."

"Forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to your brother and yourself. "

"You must attest his sins have no effect on you to demonstrate they are not real. How else could he be guiltless?"

"And how could his innocence be justified unless his sins have no effect to warrant guilt?"

Jesus apparently isn't just asking us to achieve forgiveness in our minds, but to also demonstrate the truth by removing all sickness from the body.

"A broken body shows the mind has not been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect. What you would prove to him you will believe. 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 of his innocence. It is this testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness proved to him."

If we're doing forgiveness processes that don't result in FULL forgiveness, and which don't produce a miraculous undoing of ALL SYMPTOMS and side effects, then you have NOT fully achieved forgiveness!!!!!!!!! You can't just be in a state of "still being sick" and believing that you're done forgiving. We need to take it all the way! 100% undoing!!!!!!

You might be trying to deny that God exists because you believe that you can ACTUALLY pull it off. You think you can actually get rid of God.

God is permanent and will always exist. But you attempt to prove that God is impermanent.

This can absolutely never work. God is permanent. God will never be impermanent.

This is what your entire life in the world is about. Your every effort to be separate. Your whole campaign against God. Your attempt to deny Him and everything He created (which includes you). This is all because you think one day, somehow, you will prove once and for all, that death of permanence CAN be accomplished, and that you actually HAVE sinned.

Sorry to tell you this, but, .... what is permanent cannot, by definition, ever be impermanent, and can never, ever, ever, ever die. And what is innocent CANNOT SIN.

The ego might've forgotten to tell you that one little technicality.

So go ahead and keep trying to die, all you like. You won't achieve it.

At best you might experience what looks like death, which will be just a temporary transition.

Since it's not possible to die, the ego HAS to have you whisked away to some other dimension when you die to create the illusion that 'you're gone', which is all smoke and mirrors, because it's not actually capable of killing you. Ever. Because you're permanent.

The game is up.

It is futile.

You cannot win.

You cannot make God be dead.

You cannot destroy yourself.

Maybe it's time to surrender and give up this fight? And... why not just stop denying that God loves you and actually LET HIM love you? Why not RECEIVE what is being offered? You'll be far happier.

Maybe it's time to drop the whole charade of trying to prove you can't be loved. It will never work. Nothing can act against the will of God and it's Gods will that you be lovable forever.

You CAN'T make death real.

You CAN'T be separate from God.

You CAN'T succeed in what you are trying to do, ever.

So maybe its time to give up and let go of all of this effort to destroy yourself, which will never work, and just let God love the heck out of you. I know I know... that would be like, something you have to suffer through and do begrudgingly right? Like being kissed by your grandma? lol

You can be loved. There is NO POINT denying it.

But will you admit it and let it happen or just keep stubbornly refusing - insanely refusing - trying to keep asserting that it's actually possible to be dead?

You are permanent.

Here is a perfect ACIM quote: "Failure is all about you while you seek for goals that cannot be achieved. You look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death. Who could succeed where contradiction is the setting of his searching, and the place to which he comes to find stability?"

A lot is said about fear. Less is said about guilt. Even less is said about sin. And less still is said about separation.

It is hard enough to get people to talk about unconscious guilt, and once they do they somewhat fixate on it as being 'the real problem'. But the only way it's even possible to believe in guilt is if you believe in sin, which came before guilt. Behind unconscious guilt there is unconscious sin.

Sin also isn't the end of the road, or rather the start of it, because the only way you can believe in sin is if you believe you are separate from God. The tiny mad idea had to happen before sin could happen, otherwise sin would have nothing to 'make real'.

Sin says that the separation has actually happened and gives 'reality' to that sense of separation, stating that it has happened so much that it is irreversible. It is only after sin has established that separation produced "real consequences", which are irreversible/un-healable, that you even get to the affirmation of guilt.

By being guilty you are acknowledging that sin has happened, and therefore YOU were the one who made it happen, and so you are the guilty one. You are responsible for all of the consequences that sin indicates has occurred. And so you are guilty. And it's not until after you accept guilt into your mind that you can even become afraid of punishment.

Fear of punishment enters into it by you believing you are the one who sinned, you are guilty of it, and because of this there is going to be a punishment. In other words, sin has a price - God has been lost - and you are the one who did it, so you are responsible for 'paying' for this loss. Sin established what you really did happened, guilt pointed the finger at you, and fear results because YOU really want to claim responsibility for having successfully achieved the separation. You will have to pay for being guilty because sin and guilt DEMAND punishment. So now you're afraid of punishment because you believe you're guilty.

And we could even say that fear isn't the end of the road either. Fear comes from believing you are guilty, and fear governs most of what happens in the world. The physical world was a denial-projection mechanism made to COVER UP unconscious guilt, to make it palatable. So now we are in a world of FEAR. And fear says that punishment is coming. Fear therefore BRINGS that punishment. The punishment is death. You may be afraid of death but nevertheless fear leads to death. And so the tiny mad idea leads to death through all of these stages.

So yes it's important to undo our belief in death. It's important to undo all fear. And it's also important to undo the unconscious guilt with the help of Holy Spirit. But it's ALSO important to undo the belief in sin, otherwise 'what has happened' cannot be undone. Just undoing the idea that we're guilty for what happened, may allow us to see a guiltless world, but it will still be a world where things happen and go wrong. Things going wrong is sin. Things happening is sin. If a world is happening, it is proving that separation has happened.

So unconscious sin has to be undone, which entails the further healing of the separation, and the reversal of the laws of the physical world - the laws of 'whats happened'. This is where cause and effect are reversed back to their proper order. This could perhaps be called the level of our higher selves, or of our 'individual' son self as part of the sonship. And this still isn't the end of it. Having mastery over the world and able to change the world still allows the world to exist.

The final undoing is the undoing of the IDEA of separation in its entirety, in which there is a total oneness of the sonship as the ONE son, on the level of Christ. And it's here that all separation is healed and the entire universe disappears. This is the idea of 'separation' being undone. Sin is undone, proving the separation has not happened, and demonstrating that it has had no effects. And so without sin there is no proof of separation. But it's still an idea. And now this idea must be let go and God takes the final step to return us to total union - awakening into Heaven.

There are two approaches to ACIM. One is to learn the theory about what is true or false. The other is to actually change your mind and transform your awareness so that you wake up to experiencing it.

Theory is learned on a horizontal level. It involves the intellect. It involves trying to understand what ACIM says and means. It's analytical and it studies the words, the levels, the structures, the relationships of things, the definitions of words and the "description" of the truth. it dwells on the form and the word choices and so on.

Some people have an easier time learning the theory than others. Some people are not as intellectually able to get their heads around the intricate depths and nuances of Jesus's genius. For some the theory seems complex and off-putting. And many people get the theory profoundly wrong, while others are very accurate in their discernment of it.

Sometimes there are debates and fights about what the course says and means. This is all to do with the horizontal approach. It's an intellectual battle in which sides try to convince each other that their understanding of the course is the correct one. And in many cases some people may well be correct while others are very lost. There are some people who are so incredibly lost on the theoretical level that they are practically learning a totally different belief system. They think they're heading toward reality while heading away from it.

Then there is a vertical movement away from hell toward heaven, away from darkness toward light, away from ego towards the Holy Spirit, away from the body towards the soul, and away from the world towards the Kingdom of God. This is a transformational movement which does actually require a vertical change of mind, an awakening, a willingness, an opening, and a trust.

In the vertical learning we actually have to apply the theory. The mind has to be transformed. Beliefs have to be undone. Healing has to take place. Your life and your curriculum presents you with challenges and lessons which you have to learn. Your relationships have to change and your sense of identity has to alter. This is not achieved through theory.

Some people struggle to accurately understand the course's theories on the horizontal level, and turn a blind eye to this fact by trying to focus on something more experiential. They may focus on love or feeling. This can produce progress upwards to some extent, but then the faults in the theory hold them back.

It can hold them back such as, for example, someone believing that Earth is God's Kingdom, which is going to pull the person in the completely wrong direction. So while they're trying to go up, faults in the theory are pulling them down. It's like a handicap. There are some quite loving-seeming people doing ACIM who nevertheless say things which are profoundly wrong and delusional.

On the flip side, there are also people who become expert at the horizontal theory. Great intellects and scholars and theologians who are very good at discerning accurately the logical structures and relationships of things. Of realizing how everything fits together and correctly putting everything in its proper place. Some people are very good at this. But at the same time, those same people can at times become lost in this understanding and fail to apply the course to move vertically. The "study" of the course then becomes a handicap that keeps them from opening their minds and actually encountering reality.

I think for the most part the ideal is to be proficient at both. We need theory in order to help us to make sense of things, to guide us in the right direction, to clarify meanings, to have a proper framework so that you know what you're supposed to be doing and why. But to also then take that and use it, apply it, live it, look at how it works in your life, use it to change your mind, to develop trust, to actually open up to reality, to a different kind of vision, and to shift your sense of identity away from the body. As the workbook begins:

"A theoretical foundation such as the Text is necessary as a background to make these exercises meaningful. Yet it is the exercises which will make the goal possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth."

So yes you need to be pretty accurate with the theory, but the purpose of that is so that you can be more effective and efficient in your application of it to your life. Your living curriculum of lessons, holy relationships and life events is where you will be having to apply the principles.

"The miracle is the means, the Atonement the principle, and the healing is the result."

It's not enough to be excellent at the theory and not apply it to change yourself. It's not enough to try to change yourself while being absolutely all over the place on the theory. If you really want to shoot for the stars you need to understand the course in principle, and apply it in practice. The two work together to atone your mind correctly, heading in the appropriate direction for the appropriate reasons. Otherwise it's like sailing your boat in the wrong direction.

As Jesus once said to me, "you understand it, now you just need to apply it."