The ego in each of us acts like a gatekeeper, or controller, who decides what will be accepted or rejected. Everything has to go through it and meet its approval. It acts like "the boss" who has authority and who gets to decide whether something is true or false.

We feed everyting through this "opinion maker", and if we decide not to agree with something we’ll push it away. This really is the ego’s arrogance in trying to be that which decides what the truth is. If it decides something is false, it is false, and will not be acceptable.

So with regards to ACIM, Jesus has written various things and all of them are true. It is our job to actually trust Jesus and trust what He has said is true. But our ego is not happy about that. It wants to decide whether it is true or not, or what it means. It will accept some things, and reject others. It will only "approve" certain things that meet its criteria.

But what we’re supposed to be doing is to trust that Jesus is being truthful, which means, instead of asking ourselves whether what he says is true or not, to put aside the function of deciding if Jesus can be believed, to "blindly accept it" through FAITH, and to THEN spend time figuring out how it MUST be true.

Do we trust Jesus? Is he always telling the truth? Does he lie? Does he contradict himself? Do we have faith in his word? Do we put aside "trying to be right" or "being the decider", and let Him be the authority? This is part of surrendering our ego role of defensiveness and reluctance and having a heartfelt trust and willingness to accept the truth. To accept it not because we even necessarily understand it, but because it’s coming from Jesus.

I trust that what Jesus is saying is true, and then try to learn how and why it is true. I accept it first, and explain it later. And where I fail to trust and want to decide what the truth is myself, those are my lessons in trust.

Jesus is the man.

One of Jesus's big teachings is. ... love your enemies. But I'm finding that a lot of people (largely less spiritual people) have a MAJOR issue with this.

Particularly around issues of abuse, victimhood, trauma, rape, child abuse, torture, those sorts of things. Things where it seems like the victim has been unfairly treated, where there has been violence and trauma and great difficulty. In amongst these unhealed wounds it is very hard to look upon the 'sinner' as sinless.

Jesus' teaching IS clear, that regardless, EVERYONE IS SUPPOSED TO LOVE EVERYONE.

That means loving your enemies, loving criminals, loving hateful people, loving bullies, loving rapists and murderers, loving hitler, loving terrorists, loving serial killers, all of it. Jesus loves all of them and is asking us to do the same. How many people are going to CRINGE at the thought of that?

Just because someone acts out from ego and does something stupid or crazy like hurting another, does not mean they are sinful. It does not mean they aren't calling for love and help. VERY likely the person is themselves a "victim" of some form of "un-love" from themselves and others, which has led to their current state, with which they need help and healing.

MANY people in this world would not say that they are willing to love someone who has done something horrendous. This is a DIFFICULT area for even seasoned forgivers. It's easier to forgiven friends and family and coworkers, much harder to forgive those figures who seem to represent tyranny and murder and horror.

The thing is, if we don't love these people, we are just as bad. What is our alternative, to hate them? But this is what many of us do. We hate the people that we think deserve it because of their crimes and behaviours. We don't want to love them, we think they don't deserve it. We want to see them dead. Well, what does that say about us, murderous hateful vengeful people? Do we want to be that?

It will take a lot to step up and be willing to forgive what appear to be sins and crimes and terrible acts. It will take a lot to forgive them because "they know not what they do", and to RECOGNIZE in them a call for love. To be able to discern, there is far more to the person than just this particular area of behaviour or egotism.

There is some good in everyone. No-one is purely evil. Everyone is welcomed by God. I'm often reminded that God loves ALL the people that I don't love, which is humbling. If God is loving them, why aren't I? I have to be willing to love everyone unconditionally and without reservation otherwise I am NOT BEING LOVING, which places me entirely into a category of a nasty hateful person. I don't want to be that and hopefully you don't either.

Jesus essentially teaches in the cours the difficult truth - that what is not love is murder. If you do not LOVE the murderers, you are murderous yourself. That's a tough pill to swallow because now it renders victims and sufferers as just as much murderous if they don't love their victimisers. A difficult lesson for sure. But we HAVE TO TRY to find a way to love everyone if WE want to experience love.

If you don't love them, you don't love yourself, because they are part of you.

"What is NOT love IS murder. What is not loving MUST be an attack." UrT23E2

"The prayer for enemies thus becomes a prayer for your own freedom." UrS1C5

"And happily your brother will perceive the many friends he thought were enemies." UrT27F6

"Do I DESIRE a world in which I have NO enemies, and CANNOT sin?" UrT21H6

He did this by appearing to go through death of the body, and yet being not that body was able to make that body disappear, and then re-materialized another body image which looked and felt just as "real" as before, to SHOW that what He was is beyond and has mastery over the body and over death.

Can you imagine being there as Jesus "as a body", who was just crucified and supposedly killed, which you saw with your own eyes and believed, suddenly materializes out of nowhere as though nothing had happened? Imagine how much of an EDUCATION that would be, blowing your mind and totally undermining your belief system in which the body is thought to be real and all physical effects are thought to be irreversible. This is why miracles are teaching devices.

Nothing could happen to what He is, because He is Spirit, not body, and He was able to PROVE that this is true by dematerializing and rematerializing the body. Who and what He is MUST be "not a body" if the body is able to be switched on and off at will, and therefore anything the body experiences (such as death) cannot be real or have any power to do anything.

WE are also asked to DEMONSTRATE THE TRUTH through our seemingly miraculous ability to completely defy all laws of the physical world. What Jesus did was miraculous. Miracles are expressions which come from a higher state of awareness/mind/spirit, outside of spacetime, outside of the universe, manipulating what is "inside" the universe, to prove that the world is not real or true. Another word for this is SUPERNATURAL.

Jesus asks us to demonstrate, for example, that we are not sick in the body, and that our brother has not done anying to us to cause us harm. We can only do this supernaturally. We have to have the power of God working with us to defy the ego's laws of biology, physics, chemistry etc, to show that even if someone tries to harm us, we cannot be harmed. We demonstrate this USING the body as a teaching device, just as Jesus did.

Miracles in A Course in Miracles are supernatural ACTS, effects or results which are considered IMPOSSIBLE in the ego's thought system. Their "shifts into invisibility" are shifts away from the level of form (physical world) and towards the One Mind. They transcend the worldly laws and enable you to do LITERALLY ANYTHING. There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do! NOTHING!

Miracles are not shifts in perception or mere changes of mind. Miracles are possible AFTER mind has been restored to its natural state of miracle-mindedness. And the miracle-working ability remains a PERMANENT FEATURE of the Son of God, NOT a temporary measure of restoration with no power to do anything.

If you are to truly learn A Course in Miracles and recognize and prove what miracles are, you MUST become a supernatural miracle worker, OTHERWISE you will remain confined to the body and subject to death, determined to prove and demonstrate that the world has power over you and there is nothing you can do about it. That is nothing short of a state of victimhood and unconsciousness.

We need to becoming open to, and capable of, performing miracles to demonstrate and prove that God's truth is true, by defying the laws of the world, right here in the dream. If you are not willing to ACT on your belief that God's truth is true, then it is not true for you. Your miraculous acts will demonstrate that the truth is true, and destroy the ego's illusions that the body has power over the mind.

"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS."

"Miracles are ENERGIZING."

"What you share you STRENGTHEN."

"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack."

"A miracle is a universal blessing from God"

"..he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received."

"I give the miracles I have received"

"But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"By lending you his strength, he strengthens himself."

"And both are strengthened by their union with each other."

"They will strengthen him and stabilize you."

"KNOWING this perfection is shared, it RECOGNIZES it in others, thus strengthening it in both. "

"A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by ME. It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception and snapping it into place."

"The miracle dissolves error"

"See the point about miracles as a perception corrector before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

Nothing happens without someone's mind deliberately willing it to happen. There are no exceptions to this. Separation did not happen without someone choosing it. Atonement does not happen without someone choosing it. Sickness does not happen without someone choosing it. Healing does not happen without someone choosing it.

Everything thus serves a PURPOSE. Everything is being USED. Everything has a FUNCTION. You make a choice, and if its a poor choice you will produce suffering and negative consequences. "I made the decision myself." You will need to "decide otherwise" if you want the result to be different. Whatever your mind sets up as a PREMISE, produces a logical OUTCOME. This it true all the way from God to the ego.

While there may be an ILLUSION of accidents, chaos, lack of order, unintentional outcomes, slip-ups, mis-haps, things that you did not will, stuff happening that you did not choose, random acts of nature, and all the other bullshit illusions of unintentionality, ALL of this is a lie. There is ALWAYS intention and deliberation and choice behind everything because you have free will. Nothing CAN happen without you willing it. And anything that does not happen is because you did not will it.

You move with utter deliberation. You make a choice and you execute it and it produces the EXACT result you intended. The only time you seem to produce results you did not intent is when you ACTUALLY DID intend it but believed that you were intending something else, because you had a split mind. This ties into the secret of salvation, which is the recognition that whatever you are experiencing you are choosing and there are NO other causes of your suffering, sickness, or death, other than YOUR deliberate decision to make them happen.

Nothing is accidental. Everything is planned. All acts are intentional. Everyone is always deliberate at all levels. What happens is what is being chosen to happen. If you do not like what you get you need to change your mind. Your mind has creative POWER. It causes effects. If you do not like the effects your mind made a wrong decision. Make the right decision and you will have salvation. Creating unconsciously is mis-creation only because you keep using your own toolset against itself, which hurts you, seemingly by mistake, but actually on purpose. If you don't want to hurt, stop hurting yourself.

There ARE no victims or victimizers. There are only choosers and consenters. You are a powerful creative force. Creations or illusions come out of you. Whatever you decide to produce will be produced. If you are producing a shit life it is because you are making shit choices. You HAVE the power to will in line with God's will, to seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, which WILL make the way straight and bring total healing. If you will ONLY to heal, you will ONLY be healed.

This is single-mindedness, the opposite of split mindedness. This is an un-divided will, the opposite of a split will. This is being of one mind, the opposite of being in two minds. Nothing can oppose you because you are free.

Some years ago I had a dream of angels. In a pretty courtyard, a portal of light opened up, a few feet above the ground. There then floated through beautiful white-light angels. They all looked alike. They floated and then stopped, until deciding to move. When they moved they moved entirely deliberately. They floated to a new position and stopped mid-air. When they decided to move again, they moved and then stopped. It was completely intentional. Nothing happened that they did not choose. Every motion and action was on purpose. It was beautiful to behold.

"There are no accidents in salvation."

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

"Non one dies without their own consent."

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible. But if you are AFRAID of healing, then it cannot come through you. The ONLY thing that is required for a healing is a lack of fear. The fearful are NOT healed, and cannot heal."

"Sickness is not an accident" .... "Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done."

"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. "

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

This means, you need to get into a really unconditionally loving place within yourself, and feel that love in your heart. It is NATURAL for miracles to occur when you do so, like they are practically effortless.

But when the Course talks about love it doesn't just mean the degree of love you can experience as a separate ego self. It means GOD, all of God, as all the love there is. The power of love. Which is beyond all other powers. That love inspires miracles. And those miracles MUST entail sharing and extending love to another.

It's not something that occurs because you stand on the opposite side of the street to someone and think fondly of them, or decide to lift your sins off their shoulders in an act of forgiveness.

Miracles EXPRESS love, which is a power, which is directed by intelligent Spirit, and which heal every aspect of existence. Miracles are ACTS OF GOD. Mind, body, emotions, finances, relationships, employment, social unrest, war, you name it, all healable.

This all comes naturally when there is love being extended.

A miracle is then like a kind of 'glow' of spiritual power, of unconditional love, which expresses and radiates and shines with such intensity that it has authority over all darkness and illusions and literally corrects all faults and errors, restoring a divine order.

God is involved in miracles because God is love.

This has nothing to do with your mental somersaults or thought-therapy. It only has to do with love.

This world only exists within the space-time belief. Space time IS a belief, and it is a false belief. All beliefs will end. Earth cannot exist without space or time. Spacetime is what holds it apart from itself and animates it. When there is no space - as in infinite reality/heaven, and there is no time, as in eternity, there can be no Earth! Unless you prefer your planet to be like a bowl of cosmic soup. ;-) Anything based on spacetime (such as planets, starts, etc) DOES NOT EXIST.

"Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love. Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge."

"Acts were not necessary before the Separation, because the time-space belief did not exist."

"The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete. The Atonement IS the final lesson."

"Healing was an ability which was lent to man after the Separation, before which it was completely unnecessary. Like all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability is temporary. However, as long as time persists, healing remains among the stronger human protections. This is because healing always rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the true perfection of another, even if he cannot perceive it himself."

1. We had the idea we could be separate from God.

2. We invested the idea with belief, even though it was impossible. We believed in a total opposite to God.

3. This mad idea was projected outward and formed the physical universe including the Earth as a picture of crucifixion, sin and death - ie heaven's opposite.

4. Since this was an idea of the opposite of meaning, it was a meaningless idea which projected a meaningless world.

5. Because the world has no meaning, it acts like an empty shell or screen onto which meaning can be projected.

6. You then project a second time, putting your ideas of either ego or God onto the meaningless world, to give it all the meaning it has.

7. False ideas about yourself become false perception, which highlight the temptations and lies of the meaningless world and makes it seem real.

8. True ideas about yourself become true perception, which overlook the forms and separations of the meaningless world and look beyond the body to the light.

9. When you project only love onto the meaningless world, you see the clear reflection of heaven/God/love in the mirror of the world. The world is the mirror because it has no truth of its own, and the reflection seen in it is not the mirror itself.

10. When recognized as a meaningless world, the mirror is regarded as "the forgiven world" and the reflection IN the mirror which points beyond the mirror is "the real world." The physical universe now disappears from sight and you wake up in heaven.

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by OTHER bodies, born into the world OUTSIDE the body, lives a little while, and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies, dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different, and CAN be told apart."

You can see from statements like this, that the body is clearly identified as being PART OF A DREAM. Now, if you're considering whether or not the world ITSELF is a dream, or whether it's just your thoughts ABOUT the world that is a dream... consider what this says.

Firstly there is no dream without the body. That's a strong tie.Then we're told the body acts, within the dream, as if it were a person. So this places the body INSIDE a dream and its actions are INSIDE a dream.

It takes the central place IN every dream. INSIDE the dream.It tells a story of being made (childbirth, which is physical) by the dream. Meaning the body AND physicality are part of the dream.To be united in the dust (death) with other bodies, tells you that the dream comprises sickness and death of bodies along with graveyards and cemeteries.

Other bodies dying like itself tells you the physical conditions of things is part of the dream as well.

It seeks for other bodies as friends and enemies, as part of the dream, so all relationships in the world are also part of a dream.It seeks for comfort and pleasure, so now all comforts, all pleasures, sex, hobbies, etc, are all part of dreaming. And many of these are quite physical.

All of this is providing evidence that a dream is not merely a dream about the world, but that the dream ITSELF comprises the world, the body, other bodies, childbirth, relationships, physical sickness and death, comforts and pleasures, etc.... this is all dream.

As confirmed by "The body is a dream."

It's not merely that your perception of the body/world is a dream, or that your interpretation or thoughts about the world/body are a dream. But that the world ITSELF, fundamentally physical matter, IS a dream. It's a dream world, not a real world.

The whole planet is a dream. The whole galaxy is a dream. The whole universe is a dream. All the bodies and animals and plants and all matter is a dream. And dreams are not reality.

"The world IS perception" also tells you that the world ITSELF is perception, not just "seen by" perception.

"The world is false perception" also tells you that the world is utterly bound as part of falsely perceiving ITSELF. That mind is projecting a false world TO see, in the mind, as part of perception. This doesn't mean you perceive the world in terms of "I look at the world" like it's a separate thing. What it tells you is that your mind MAKES the world IN ITS PROJECTING, and then perceives it, and believes it's there and solid and real, when in fact it is just a PART OF perception itself. In your mind.

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

"Both heaven and earth are in your mind."

That makes your mind pretty big and pretty powerful, given it houses an entire universe of galaxies. This is all dream stuff, and you are the dreamer of a universe of dreams. And dreams only happen while you sleep. After that, they go bye bye.

"As the world spins into the nothingness from which it came."

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"The stars will disappear in light."

"There is no world."

Effectively the "sonship" or Kingdom God created, is really a kind of "collective consciousness". Yes it's not what ACIM would officially refer to as consciousness, having nothing to do with perception etc, but we do SHARE mind. There is this one mind which houses many minds. It's similar to the Borg on Star Trek in that sense. Everyone is plugged into everyone, and indeed also acts "as one" in a giant collaborative way.

This also means that you are not just some separate chunk of the collective. Whereby other people are separate chunks, as if there are then wires connecting you together. But moreso you actually are everywhere and in everyone. And your brother IS part of you literally. You share your actual self with their self so fully they are basically one, yet two. You really are the whole collective, and are also part of it. The whole, and the part, as in a hologram.

What we call ego or separation, is what you get when you take someone who is part of AND all of this collective, and you try to "fence them off". To isolate them in a little prison with a wall around it, so that you can sort of say, this collective unit is now divorced from the collective, disconnected from the "hive mind", isn't sharing anything, can't "hear" the thoughts of the other brothers any more, and has now become "alone" or orphaned.

This self which was, and still is, part of the whole, sees itself as lacking the sense of relationship and sharing that unites it with the "rest" of the collective, which is also the rest of itself. And so it is kind of like a split off part of the whole, which was part of the whole, but has forgotten that it was whole. So now it sees itself as only a part, and only partial. Such a sense of identity is alone and lonely, isolated and like on a desert island, cut off and unable to relate or share.

To "undo the ego" is really a matter of reintegrating the rest of yourself, which means plugging yourself back into the whole sonship, to share everything with everyone, to have real relationship with all equally. That is really just a matter of taking away the separations - the walls - that seemed to imprison that part of the mind, so that that part of the mind is able to reconnect and integrate with the whole again.

We're not here in the business of exterminating parts of mind, we're actually in the business of setting them free from imprisonment. An imprisoned mind acts like an ego because it has limited itself. But when that same mind lets go its sense of selfishness, specialness, or exclusivity, it expands to return to the whole mind. This isn't really a destruction of your self, it's just a removal of the sense of separation which gave you a false sense of being small and limited.

In that sense, the part of your mind that believes it is an ego, lifts itself away from the "egotism" that imprisons it, the walls are transcended, the sense of self expands to be more inclusive, you become more than "just yourself", and all of this sense of isolation, loneliness, abandonment, fear, hiding, darkness, being trapped, being lost, etc, all that stuff goes, because the mind opens up to freedom and joining again.

You are returning to the family of God. The chains that bind you and keep you in a hellish prison are what need to be undone, not your "self". But while you live in the chains, you will see yourself as small and selfish because of what the chains imply about you. If you identify with the prison you become the prisoner. But you are more than the prison, you are only imprisoned by it if you give it the power to do so. The ego is a prison cell, not a self. It's like a trap that you've become stuck in, and all you need is to be set free.

"You may wonder how you, who are still bound to judgment, can be asked to do that which requires no judgement of your own. The answer is very simple. The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you. That is the reason that the miracle gives EQUAL blessing to ALL who share in it, and that is also why EVERYONE shares in it. The power of God IS limitless. And, being always maximal, it offers EVERYTHING to EVERY call from ANYONE. There is no order here. A call for help is GIVEN help. The only judgment involved at all is in the Holy Spirit's one division into two categories; one of love, and the other, the call for love."

- ACIM

Here (urtext) Jesus is talking about how God is the origin of miracles and how God's POWER is unlimited, how the power of God produces miracles through you and how they extend to everyone not just yourself. "A call for help is GIVEN help".

Again this has nothing to do with a so-called "shift in perception", because the power of God acts above and beyond our own limitations, and beyond perception entirely. Miracles, sourced in and BY God, transcend perception entirely and cannot have anything to do with perceptual changes or small corrections of thought.

In a previous section Jesus also speaks of how a miracle is evidence that an entirely other 'world' is being brought to this one, as evidenced by the complete lack of respect for the order of difficulty or ego hierarchies.

I haven't been focusing on miracles for a while, but kind of accidentally lately I've been finding myself exposed to some statements about miracles. I seem to be seeing them in a different light. Which is funny because "seeing in the light" is a big part of it.

There is one thing ACIM says fairly clearly and it's that miracles are ONLY seen in light. It also says miracles and vision are completely connected to each other. At times it also suggests miracles are so high in terms of states of consciousness, as to be right up at the christ level. Such as that the eyes of christ deliver them to all they look upon.

It also tells us that miracles, seen in light, are all over the place. A miracle stands next to what seemed to be a false perception, and these miracles are even there when we don't see them. We can block awareness of the miracles but that doesn't mean they're not there. And that suggests they are "ways of seeing."

I also found in experience recently that in one instance where I was driving behind a car and was about to scapegoat and then chose not to, kind of "holding back" the projection of guilt, Jesus called it a miracle. So then that got me thinking, what is a miracle really? We're also told that miracles and grievances are opposites. Also that ego-projection and miracles are opposites. So that tells us a bit about the state of mind or the activities of mind.

We're also told that miracles don't "do" anything, although we're also told they UNDO the interference that the ego was DOING. They "correct" the mind and sort of straighten out perceptions. They're also described as the translation of denial into truth. Also that miracles merely remind the mind of who the dreamer is, ie putting your awareness back in touch with you being causal and not seeing yourself as a victim or as in a position to scapegoat.

Miracles appear to be tied into true perceptions, as though they are glimpses of an accurate perception of something. But we're also told that they are thought creations, that they can energize others, that they can supply a lack. And that they are expressions of love. In prayer love is received, and in miracles love is expressed.

The impression I'm getting is that the love is coming down from a higher level ie heaven, and we are the open door who has to extend them. This is a sort of cause-effect chain, where God gives us the miracles and then we transfer them to others. As in "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."

If we are in a state of christ mind where we're fully open to the truth, then we are fully able to extend and pass on these miracles, these parcels of love. It's almost like they reflect the idea of creations, in which we are co-creating with God, extending God and paying forward what we've received. This is why you can only give the miracles you've received.

On the one hand it seems that a miracle is like a gift of love, a form of healing, which corrects the mind and lifts it up out of false perceptions into true perception. As stated in terms of miracles "entailing" a sudden shift into vertical perception. At the same time this gift of love has power and healing in it, as all love does, and so while it corrects your sight and you "see with the miracle" or through the miracle-sight, you also extend that love and power and it can cause things to happen.

Jesus also refers to them as examples of right thinking. Right thinking is sanity and true perception. Accuracy of thought and mind. These moments of clarity and non-attack and non-judgement and non-projection, recognize sinlessness ie as in forgiveness, and broadcast that wholeness of mind to the whole sonship. They are thus also expressions of holy relationship ie total unconditional relationship.

Since Jesus refers to them as thought-creations, and that thoughts can create higher or lower realities, these miracles are clearly a function of mind and thought, which includes power and love, as kind of acts of "higher dreaming". These miracles lift up the mind and heal it, as in "interceding for your holiness". And as a result you see correctly, and your correct seeing has corrective properties which can shine light into other minds and correct them.

Thinking of someone like Jesus in a state of christ-mind, or near to it, he was so sided with heaven's laws that he could constantly radiate and pass on that miraculousness at will. He could use the mind, in combination of thought and belief, and with the power of God behind it, to cause things to happen. And each of these were love-based expressions. Including raising the dead and healing the sick and moving mountains. The mind is just naturally miraculous and powerful when it's in its healed state.

So miracles are definitely tied to mind, and to seeing, and to light, and to forgiveness, and to giving and receiving, and to extension of God and love. They are acts, performances, expressions, doings, which emit out of the mind and are given and shared, as part of the natural outgoing of love and its unlimitedness. Someone miraculous has the light of God in their eyes and just sees everything with sparkling light and can effortlessly bestow blessings of supernatural transformation everywhere they go.

"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."

If a miracle can be as simple as a right-minded non-attacking non-scapegoating non-projecting opposite to a grievance, where you "look and wait and judge not", in which you are being closer in alignment to how the Holy Spirit sees, then we're asked to basically get our mind-seeing into the light where it can bestow miracles all the time. Seeing forgiveness given to everything. Meeting all things with heavenly blessing.

Or something like that.

Everything that we consider to be a sin, is nothing more than being mistaken. Being mistaken means you are making an error in judgement. You've come to a false conclusion. It means you are incorrect. You have faulty reasoning. You are not recognizing what is true.

Sin is also the idea of insanity, and insanity really is nothing more than confusion about what is true and real. Believing that something is true which is not, is simply a state of being mistaken. You have simply made an error, and now you are confused.

While you are in the confusion, believing that your false truth is true, you ARE mistaken, but you do not recognize that you are mistaken. You believe that you have actually sinned, pulled off the impossible, and accomplished something that can never happen in reality.

To believe this IS, nevertheless, being very mistaken. Just as denial hides the truth from you. Just as framing all acts as sins is a failure to recognize they are JUST mistakes. God knows that his children as simply mistaken, and can never be sinners, and all they need is to recognize their error and accept the truth.

In fact let's put it this way. You should reframe EVERY sin, as nothing more than being mistaken. Every single thing which you consider sinful, evil, wrong, bad, negative, etc should be recognized for what it IS and not for what you think it is.

If someone is trying to attack another, they are simply mistaken. They are mistaken about who they are. They are mistaken in believing the other person is not one with them. They are mistaken for believing they are guilty, and they are mistaken in believing that projecting that guilt onto someone else is going to make it leave their mind. Even if they go through with this, they are still simply making a sequence of mistakes.

Even serious attack such as murder is a state of being mistaken. The person is obviously insane, which means they are confused and do not recognize what is true. They are very much mistaken about what the truth is. They believe that they are justified in the attack, when in fact they aren't, and so they are mistaken. They believe that the death of the other will allow them to gain something, which isn't true, and so they are mistaken. And by finding the other person to be deserving of death, is a totally mistaken notion, since no-one deserves death.

No matter how you look at it, if you look at the big picture and recognize what is true - the immortal innocence and perfection of all beings, it becomes very clear that we can simply be MISTAKEN, but we cannot sin. All evil acts are mistakes. All scapegoating is a mistake. All belief in your own unworthiness is a mistake. Every abuse, torture, rape, killing, destruction, is all to do with people being very mistaken. Even the causation of horrible events is a mis-creation, a mistaken choice in what to cause.

No one in their right mind is mistaken. Being sane means recognizing reality and knowing what is true. If you know what is really true, you are not mistaken about what is true. If you are in touch with reality, you are not mistaken about what is possible. No one in their right mind would even try to sin or attack anyone, because they recognize that they would have to be VERY mistaken to believe it could a) be accomplished and b) be justified.

If you feel guilty, you are simply incorrect about being guilty. You cannot be guilty in God's eyes, because He created you to be innocent forever. So your belief that you are guilty is an error. You are incorrect. You are confused about what is true. You might be insisting that you are RIGHT, but it's not going to make you HAPPY, because being right about something which is false is a state of the denial of happiness.

Forgiveness, in the purest sense, is nothing more than recognizing what is true. It's a state of NOT being mistaken. It's a state of recognition, sanity, and having the whole story. It lacks no information and is not deceived. It simply looks and notices that everything ego or evil is simply false, impossible, untrue, unreal, has no consequences, and does not prove anything. It also recognizes that to believe in such things as possible would be a mistake.

It's kind of like, a question of whether or not you have the facts. If you have all the facts, you are in touch with reality. You know what the whole picture is. But if some facts (information) are missing, you probably are going to start drawing some false conclusions. And now you are entering into illusions, into temptation and deception, because something now appears to be something it isn't.

So let's put it this way. Right now this instant, there is no sin anywhere. There is no evil anywhere. All there is, is a bunch of people who are, temporarily, very mistaken. That is all. They're not evil. They're not sinners. They're just confused. They are out of touch with who they are. They don't recognize their brothers. They believe things are true which aren't. They are just temporarily insane. And insanity is nothing but being mistaken.

Mistakes can always be corrected. They are just temporary errors that you are making. Kind of an "oops". You concluded something which was incorrect. You decided that something means something that it doesn't. You reasoned with faults and ended up confused. You are perhaps unwilling to accept the truth and are in denial of it, which is just a desire to stay mistaken, due to not recognizing that you are.

Those who are insane therefore don't recognize they are simply mistaken, and believe their beliefs are completely true. Those who are in denial do not recognize that they are in denial, they believe they are fully aware of everything and are accepting all of the truth. They aren't, and so they are mistaken. But they believe they are not mistaken.

This then ends up being the key to the turning point in the mind. It's a matter of having to have that "little willingness", to be open to the possibility, that what you believe MIGHT simply be a mistake that you've made. Not like having to admit to being in sin, or that you really are guilty, but just that you are somehow "technically" incorrect. This doesn't have to entail shame or guilt or other rebounds related to being "wrong". It's just a simple fact.

If, while you are in the midst of believing you are completely right, and are not mistaken, and are not recognizing why you are mistaken, you become at least a little willing to consider with some humility that you MIGHT not be "correct", then you start to open up to CORRECTION. You have to be able to get some larger truth into your mind. You need a miracle to shine in the mind and remind you of what is true. To correct your level confusion. Being CORRECT has nothing to do with being RIGHTEOUS.

Correction, which is provided by the Holy Spirit and the truth he represents, is simple the radiant fact of "the miracle", the truth, reflecting the truth of God. It acts as a light of sanity, correctness, accuracy, truth, recognition and reason. You need correction, having made ERRORS, so that you will become "corrected". When you are corrected, you are sane. When you are corrected, you are happy.

So really it all boils down to a simple matter of whether you are correct or whether you are mistaken. Sin never really enters into it, nor does guilt or fear. Those are all the seeming side effects of being mistaken, coupled with the rejection of correction. The rejection of forgiveness. Forgiveness is really just a matter of diffusing the drama of "sin guilt and punishment" and looking at the facts. Looking with sight, with reason, at what things ACTUALLY are. Recognizing that ALL you are right now is in a mistaken state, you've made an error somewhere along the lines, and now all you need is to correct it.

"CORRECTION of the error brings release."

"The term "right-mindedness" is properly used as the correction for wrong- mindedness, and applies to the state of mind which induces accurate perception."

ALL sin must be re-framed as nothing more than being mistaken. Every person you hate, is just mistaken. And you are just mistaken for hating them. Anyone who ever hurt you, was simply mistaken for hurting you, because they made an error. And any hurt you experienced was simply you being mistaken, believing you can be hurt at all, given you are immortal. So now you, and the other person, are just mutually mistaken. And that is all.

And what that tells you is that if someone's attack upon you was merely a consequence of them being MISTAKEN about yourself and themselves, they DID NOT REALLY MEAN IT. They were NOT in their right mind when they expressed this action, based on a mistaken state of mind. They did not realize what they were doing. They THOUGHT they were right and correct and true, but they were mistaken. They were CONFUSED. And they attacked you BY MISTAKE. Since what they did was out of a state of mind of being mistaken and in error, an error which they THEMSELVES did not even realize they were making, you cannot hold it against them.

To forgive someone, therefore, for sin or abuse or attack or harm of any kind, for any kind of upset or broken relating or outright onslaught, is merely to RECOGNIZE that they are NOT in their right mind, they ARE very mistaken. And if you buy into it, into the belief that they are TOTALLY sane in all their decisions and are acting against you ON PURPOSE knowing exactly what they are doing, deliberately, YOU are very mistaken as well. There's just got all these people making mistakes all over the place, NOT sinning, NOT being truly guilty.

The world is just a world of insanity. A mad world, within a mad idea. Even the tiny mad idea that you can do the impossible, was simply a mistaken conclusion. It was an effort to assert something that can NEVER be true. It was an attempt to claim that God can be attacked or opposed. That is not possible. Anyone who believes in that is SIMPLY MISTAKEN. And any belief in sin or separation or bodies or spacetime is SIMPLY a mistaken belief. These things are all false, untrue and impossible.

It utterly boils down to nothing more than a question of accuracy. Are you correct, or are you mistaken? Are you really in touch with what is true, or are you confused and mistaken? Are your beliefs lined up with God's will and truth, or have you invented some MISTAKEN truth which contracts the truth and is therefore mistaken? Do you recognize you are mistaken and are you willing to accept correction?

When Jesus says (biblically) "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do", this encapsulates the whole thing. If you were to recognize what people are doing, or what their state of mind is being driven by, you'd recognize they simply DO NOT KNOW what they are doing. They are MISTAKEN, in a mistaken state of mind, a state of insanity. They aren't even aware of what they're doing. They think they are doing something else. And if they do not love you they don't even recognize you.

By recognizing that all "sinful behavior" is simply by confused, temporarily mentally ill people acting out from states of mistakenness, not realizing what they are doing, not really knowing why they are doing it, how can you accuse them or hold it against them? All they're doing is making a mistake and being in error, doing something by mistake, believing it was something else, not REALLY intending to. No-one REALLY wants to hurt anyone. No one REALLY in a right-minded sane state WANTS to induce suffering.

Let's say that simply, when someone's mind goes into a state of confusion, they lose touch with reality. How they act or express themselves then is going to be coming from a kind of unconsciousness, a lack of awareness, not really knowing what they are doing. They are going to act in error. They BELIEVE they know what is true, but they don't. And everyone simply acts on what they believe is true. It's not possible to do otherwise. So now you've got people seeming to exhibit insane evil behavior, justifying it, but who are only acting WITHIN the confines of their thought system - within the confines of their truth.

When their truth is not true, when they are mistaken and confused, they are LOST. And when they are lost they are out of touch with themselves and with others. And all their actions now become ACCIDENTAL. They keep making mistakes. They keep justifying things based on mistakes. They keep being motivated by mistakes. Compelled by mistakes. Urged into certain reactions based on mistakes. Because they are not awake. And the whole time they don't even know they are doing this because their conscious mind is disconnected from reality and everything they do they believe is totally justified.

There is no sin. There is only a temporary error. And all errors can be corrected. And making a mistake does not call for PUNISHMENT of any kind. If someone is taking a math test and makes a mis-calculation and comes up with a confused result, which they think is accurate, and which they will defend, they hardly deserve to be punished, hit, abused, damaged or destroyed. Because those are not the things that the person NEEDS, and those things are NOT CORRECTION. It does not provide them with the CORRECT ANSWER in any way.

PUNISHMENT DOES NOT CORRECT MISTAKES. THOSE WHO PUNISH ARE MAKING MISTAKES.

In fact, punishment is itself a mistake. It's based on a false perception that the error was a SIN, and not just a mistake, and that a person can undo their temporary insanity by experiencing pain and suffering, to "motivate" them towards the truth. This is utterly ridiculous. All that punishment does is cover up the mistake, turn it into a sin, solidify it, lock it in, and add to the mental illness in the mind by adding more confusion-inducing pain and suffering. It does not work. All it does is lead to even more resentment and mistaken conclusions later.

If someone has made an error on their math test, what it really calls for is proper correction of the mistake. The person needs to be SHOWN, by example, what the CORRECT truth is, and why it is true. The MISTAKE needs to be identified and pointed out, not as a sin, but simply to bring awareness and recognition. Then the student recognizes WHY it was a mistake, because the true truth makes more sense, and automatically justifies alignment with it because it is OBVIOUS. The student than "takes on" the greater truth and receives it and is now corrected, such that in future they will not be mistaken again. They have become the truth. This is the true correction of errors without punishment ever entering into it.

A belief in sin calls for punishment and death. A belief that a mistake is NOT merely a harmless correctable mistake, is a belief that it deserves to be punished. Evaluating that all mistakes CAN'T be corrected, due to severity or consequences, is still a further mistake, which justifies punishment. Oops sorry, your mistake was TOO BIG, so it's overflowed into sin territory, so now we're going to attack you and take something from you so that you suffer, to "atone for it". Punishment then becomes atonement.

Yet even murder is JUST A MISTAKE, and through miracles all the consequences of that wrong decision can be undone by the holy spirit. "He will correct all the consequences of my wrong (mistaken) decision IF I will let Him."

Real atonement, the undoing of error, which is forgiving, and which always recognizing that we're all JUST mistaken, not sinners, is a gentle correction, a loving correction, a harmless correction, which merely makes you aware of what the truth really is and shines a light so that you can see. And then in that light the mistake is recognized for what it is, its underpinnings are exposed, the steps are retraced, and it is undone at its source. Now is the mind corrected and correct, accurate and truthful. And now forgiveness has brought a healing and life instead of death.

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus speaks of the face of innocence. This is an aspect of the ego identity which tends to side with "positivity" and "being good" and "people pleasing" and trying to portray itself as innocent, harmless, even weak and frail. This face of innocence is "the innocent victim", and sides with victims. The illusion of innocence is there to cover up secret hidden desires to attack and victimize. And the innocent face is a way to pretend you are not the cause of anything that happens.

In psychological terms the face of innocence is what we also call "the persona". It's part of the split mind. It's a device we use to only accept that which appears to be acceptable, positive, good, desirable, etc. But it also acts like a knife, splitting the mind and rejecting parts that it finds not good enough. It is in fact a way that the mind attacks itself by identifying aspects which are unacceptable and dissociating from them. This places them into the "shadow" behind walls of denial (blocks to awareness). It is perfectionistic, because it always asserts that you are not perfect enough.

Jesus: "The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears, at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good."

"This aspect NEVER makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse."

He goes on to describe how this face of innocence covers up a terrible secret. That behind this "special love" there is "special hate". Underlying the face of innocence and the innocent victim, is an attack and judgement and condemnation. And in it, others stand accused of sinning against you. The face becomes a way to portray oneself as "at the effect of the world", such that if it appears to be the innocent party, then others must stand accused at the slightest provocation. It is a device for scapegoating.

"Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand condemned, because of what I am." On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them will not escape."

Behind the innocent face therefore, there is a hidden accusation that others are sinful, and the face is held up as a mask ready to "receive" their attack, like a trap. The face is easily offended and easily upset by the world and the acts of others, as it was designed to be. It is produced by the condemnation of oneself, the partitioning off of parts of self as "evil", hiding this from ones own awareness (in the shadow) and then projecting it onto others. Thus behind the face of innocence there is judgement and condemnation, unforgiveness and victimization of others.

"Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what YOU are has now become his sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved, and kept in darkness, where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. "

False innocence is not real innocence. It's a mask that people wear to pretend to be spiritual or holier than thou. It is not authentic and isn't your self. It's a disguise, designed to make you look like the innocent one so that you are not identified as the source of guilt. Always the ego takes steps to DENY what it does, to deny your soul, to deny even that you sinned, to deny that you are even guilty, resulting in the production of a facade which hides your own guilt from you. You will then "look" innocent but only in appearance, and no-one would suspect you are the one who is attacking.

The persona and the shadow - the accepted parts of self and the rejected parts of self, are the two halves of the split mind. You keep the rejected parts in darkness because, if they were brought into the light, you would see that the mind is one, not two. And this would heal and undo the split, removing both the persona and the shadow. And it is this the persona avoids at all costs.

"Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking, whereby two systems of belief, which CANNOT coexist, are BOTH MAINTAINED. It HAS BEEN recognized that, if they were BROUGHT TOGETHER, their joint acceptance WOULD become impossible. But, if one is kept in darkness FROM THE OTHER, their SEPARATION seems to keep them both alive, and equal in their reality. Their JOINING thus becomes the source of fear, for, if they meet, acceptance MUST be withdrawn from one of them."

"The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are BROUGHT TOGETHER, the truth of one MUST make the falsity of its OPPOSITE perfectly clear. "

"WHAT DO YOU WANT? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together, and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as YOU are. In union, everything that is not real MUST disappear, for truth IS union. As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns."

It is not possible to be angry at another person and see the other person correctly.

If you are in any way experiencing the other person as anything other than PURE LOVE, there must be some kind of negative attitude in your own mind with which you are seeing them. This negative attitude acts as a BLOCK to awareness, a filter, which is skewing perception. It is showing you something that is not really IN the other person, but is in fact in your own mind. Its your judgement. Your hate.

While you are perceiving others through this filter of hate, it is impossible for you to see them correctly. So if you are not seeing them correctly, how are you able to completely objectively evaluate whether they deserve to be hated or not? You can't. Therefore your hate is always unjustified and in error, and for all you know, underneath a world that SEEMS like it is filled with hate, there could be a world filled with LOVE, that you just don't SEE because you are too busy hating it.

Again the ego has lied, to tell us that its possible to objectively perceive the world at the same time as evaluating that people are enemies or are unworthy or are to be hated or are guilty in some way. If we see this in them, we are NOT seeing them clearly, and we are not being shown a clear view of reality, and our evaluation is now in ERROR. We have become blind to what is actually there.

Only when you look with unconditional love can you have TRUE VISION and SEE what is really there. Otherwise, you are looking with the ego and you will not be able to see.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light" - ACIM

"Actions activate God's power." - Mel Bond, miracle worker.

A willingness to fulfill your function as healer, channel for God, invites and brings forth God's power.

But it's not until you ACT, that a flow can be established and God can help.

Taking an action can also happen when someone has prayed for a miracle and Holy Spirit has moved and now the person needs to take a moment of faith to ACT, by moving their body part in a way that was difficult or impossible before, to EXPLORE the POSSIBILITY that healing is present. And in that act of faith, in that "I wonder if I might be healed", that open-mindedness, ONLY WHEN YOU THEN MOVE the body part might the power of God actually come in and back up your actions with HIS healing power.

This is one of the keys in working miracles. You will not act on what you do not believe in. If you trust God and have faith and take an ACTION step, Heaven will back you up and provide the healing support and strength.

That moment of willingness, where you do not know if you are healed, but you act as if you are, expecting it, open to it, trusting it, like a child who is discovering something innocently for the first time, that brings the power of God.

After praying for someone and extending Holy Spirit to them, believing in the truth of their healing, get the person to MOVE. Not to focus on finding out "If it is still a problem", but to focus on, "HOW MUCH BETTER IS IT?". ... look for the betterness, look for the improvement, look for the help. This invites it to work.

Actions activate God's miracle-healing power, because they are acts of faith.

If you are upset by the world or offended by what people do, you will turn yourself into a false savior. You will make yourself look like you care, and you will become upset and reactionary about what happened. You'll seem to save the world from this "real sin" or sinner, and you'll want some form of revenge which you call justice. You'll position yourself as saving everyone from these injustices and that you're doing so out of the kindness of your heart.

But what's really happening is that you are attacking the world by believing in real sin, you are failing to actually undo the problem, you are using the opportunity to make your own ego bigger, you're not honestly being a representative of real truth, and you're basically using this as justification for denial. You're denying that you have attacked yourself, you're denying that you believe in sin punishable by death, you're denying that you deserve unconditional love, and you're denying that the world IS saved because it doesn't exist.

The ego's version of salvation looks great on paper. It acts great in appearance. But it is completely full of holes. It is a lie. It is fake. It is false. You cannot be upset and be the salvation of the world. You cannot be offended and be helpful. You cannot be hurt by the world and claim that you are making the world better by keeping the hurt and acting based on it. Salvation doesn't come from pain and suffering.

Salvation comes from the truth, which is that nothing can be threatened, nothing real has been threatened, nothing real will ever be threatened, so any offense or upset to the contrary is a denial of the truth and an inability to recognize what is true and thus what is false. Not being able to recognize the illusion that something false is true is the sole reason why anyone would ever justify being upset, or see it as making sense that they should be upset based on what happened.

This is a failure to recognize or see past illusions, believing that something unreal is real, something untrue is true, and therefore something true and real has been damaged. This secretly is an attempt to assert that God has been damaged by separation, which the ego will be glad to believe even if it covers it up with facades of innocently helping or caring or wanting to stop suffering. There is a big difference between wanting to stop suffering and to ACTUALLY stop it by stopping being the cause of it. And it takes a lot of honesty to admit that you are the only cause of suffering, because all suffering is self-attack.

The ego is simply a state of split mindedness in which your will has started to will against itself.

This is the result of you attempting to will against God's will.

It now seems that something is attacking you, and that you are also an attacker. This makes you both a victim and a victimizer simultaneously.

The ego is not "that which is against you". That's only HALF.

The part of your mind which is split off from the rest, typically is made unconscious and projected and labeled an enemy, while the other part of your split mind is retained in conscious awareness and thought to be "your self".

To that limited conscious self, the rest of the mind/will seems to be opposed to it. To suggest that only the opposing alienated/unconscious will is "the ego" is an error, and it's how the ego keeps itself intact by blaming the other part of yourself for all sin.

That which seems to be against you is simply your own will, or part of it, which seems to be against the rest of your will. You are BOTH of them, and you are playing both sides of the war!

It is actually the SEPARATION BETWEEN the two parts of will, which needs to be undone. So that some part of your will is not willing against the other part. Undoing separation between your split wills will restore your will to the will of God.

If you can realize that therefore what you think of as the ego - this other alienated will that acts against you, your "enemy" - is in fact part of YOUR OWN WILL, acting against YOURSELF, that's the key to withdrawing all power from the idea of the "ego". It is not a separate thing that wills against you. It is YOU willing against YOU.

And that means, if you can realize you are literally doing this to yourself, that you can simply decide NOT TO will against yourself, and then, where is the separation? It's gone. This is why there IS NO EGO. There is only a conflicted will, and it's YOURS, and you can own it, and absolutely have all power to choose NOT to will against yourself. It's only you willing against yourself that is causing all your problems, not an "ego".

Here in ACIM Jesus talks about the devil. He describes it is another other than our own self denial and what we do to ourselves. He makes it clear, it is not an external power. It is nothing other than our own egotism. By this reasoning, "the devil" as a distinct entity does not exist. It is another word for your own denial of God, which you have full power to undo.

This is in direct contradiction to Christianity.

"The devil is a frightening concept ONLY because he is thought of as extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of Souls. He deceives by lies, and builds kingdoms of his own, in which everything is in direct opposition to God. Yet, he ATTRACTS men rather than repels them, and they are perceived as willing to "sell" him their Souls in return for gifts they KNOW are of no real worth at all.

This makes absolutely no sense. The whole picture is one in which man acts in a way he HIMSELF realizes is self destructive, but which he does NOT WILL to correct, and therefore perceives the cause as beyond his control."

-&-

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made. But KNOW that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation IS a lie."

-&-

"Attacking misidentification errors is neither MY function nor YOURS. Destroying the devil is a meaningless undertaking. "

-&-

"Lucifer" could be literally translated "Light Bearer". He literally PROJECTED himself from Heaven. Projection still has this "hurling" connotation, because it involves hurling something you DO NOT want, and regard as dangerous and frightening, to someone else. This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically."

-&-

"After all, Lucifer fell, but he was still an angel. He is thus the symbol for man. Atonement is the knowledge that the belief that angels can fall is false. It is true that mind can create projections as well as miracles, but it's NOT true that projections are REAL."

-&-

"The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit."

Here's a ... strange and unexpected post that kind of just channeled out of me..... hmmmm...

Causing without receptivity to love has been associated with "male".

Receptivity without the power to cause has been associated with "female".

The male "egocentric" causality and forcefulness and so on, has played out as attempts to suppress, control, belittle and abuse women, making them an "effect" or victim.

In the bigger mind, this is really the dynamic between minds which have become tyrannical and arrogant and have an authority problem, vs mind which is open to receive love and to be an effect of God.

This is because this world represents a split mind, in which the two aspects of mind have seemingly been separated into "genders".

Mind is supposed to contain BOTH aspects - the ability to cause, and the ability to receive as an effect of God. When both of these aspects are fully balanced/equalized, where giving and receiving are one, causality becomes a loving act and not an act of aggression or domination.

This also means that in truth, no-one is male or female, gender is an illusion of separation, and we are all IDENTICAL.

Male domination, or a bias toward "output without input", also produces the sacrificial belief in "working hard" or being the "breadwinner" or having to be the one who goes out and hunts and gathers.

Female submission, or a bias toward "input without output", has produced "women being housewives" or "women should stay at home" or "women shouldn't get equal pay" or "women are more nurturing" etc.

This is all because our minds have become skewed in our belief in separation from God, producing an authority problem which has played out on the world stage as a huge dream of dominance vs submission in various ways.

The balance of this is swinging back the other way at the moment with women's rights and so on, which has been an extremely long time coming due to the general "dominance" of the male expression, but I think it highly likely that this will at some point mean that the women of the world will "take over" the role that men were taking and it will become skewed in the other direction, with men becoming more identified with submission.

This has been going on back and forth and back and forth for millenia. It's nothing new. The ego is not very original. But over time, perhaps, the difference between the two will smooth out, and gradually men and women will become truly equal, and in so doing, become either androgenous on a physical level, or will simply disappear from this universe of duality and return to perfect oneness in God. In God's eyes, we are all exactly the same.

The end of the human race then ends in laugher and equal holiness and WHOLENESS of all individuals, not imbalance or dominance or submission. This represents minds who have elected to place themselves under perfect authority of Christ, while also extending that authority, so that all acts of causality are equally as receptive to Authority of Spirit.

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

It can be difficult letting people suffer. Although that said, suffering is an illusion. The thing is.... we have lessons to learn and this is a classroom. Merely having an attitude of "take the suffering away" could also remove form someone a "painful lesson" they might need to learn.

If you remove the challenges or the limitations or the form that the lesson has taken, the person might not rise to the occasion. They might not question certain strongly held beliefs, they might not have a breakthrough, they might not learn to see their life differently, they might not change their priorities. Not to say that people should suffer, because God does not will that anyone suffers, but we've placed ourselves in a difficult situation where we believe all kinds of stuff that's mistaken.

And so we need to learn, which means we need scenarios to learn in. So if we were to seek to just "have it easy" all the time and have no seeming stimulation for growth or awakening, we might just linger in a lack of progress for longer. You could say perhaps that since people consent to everything, those who are suffering perhaps have agreed to go through something because they'll in the long run benefit from it.

When the soul knows that the ultimate goal is awakening and reunion with God, they can be prepared to take on tremendous challenges to help them move toward that. A person having a particularly hard life may well be making a lot more progress spiritually than someone who has it easy.

Not that you can't be a "happy learner" who learns without severe suffering but, it seems to be often the case that when people are mistaken about the truth they tend to mis-create some pretty bad-seeming scenarios because they haven't learned, and now the scenario acts as a way to help them learn. Perhaps a repurposing of the suffering they've consented to. The ultimate goal of course is learning that you cannot suffer and choosing not to, which does mean there is a way out when the lesson is learned.

Not long ago I had a dream in which I had to go through an extraordinarily arduous obstacle course, riddled with difficult terrain and hurdles and dangers and all manner of suffering. As I got to the end and emerged into the open, exhausted and strung out and weak, a guide appeared and asked me "What would be so important that you'd be willing to go through all that, if it meant that you could achieve a goal?" The revelation that suddenly came to my awareness was that this was all designed to serve a very big long-term goal of returning to God. No matter what it takes to learn the curriculum.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

Fear is like this little box inside of which there is fear, and the fear keeps trying to get out.

It wants to get out and point fingers at all kinds of things outside of the box, so that it can explain why the fear exists.

If you let it, fear will project outside of the box and you'll believe the fear in the box is put there by things outside of it.

But fear never leaves the box.

And everything fear says and does inside the box, stays in the box (stays in Vegas? lol)

If you can look at the fear and not at what the fear is pointing to, and not at what it is insinuating is the cause of it outside the box, and instead realize the presence of the fear ITSELF is the problem, then you're on your way.

The fear itself is the problem because it's ACTIVELY attempting to attack your invulnerability, destroy your innocence, threaten your immortality and stop you from realizing something very important...

There is no fear outside the box. There is no cause for fear outside the box.

Outside the box, everything is perfectly alright. Everything is God. Everything is safe. Everything is lovely. There's no fear there.

This is what the fear does not want you to see, and it is a defense against seeing this by telling lies about what's outside the box.

It's kind of like this nasty little shitty little liar that tells nothing but lies and it really can't be believed. You have to realize not to listen to it at all because it's entirely false.

Don't buy into the projections that try to justify it, those are NOT the problem. All the 'causes' of the fear, that is NOT the problem.

The problem is merely the presence of the fear itself which acts as a reality filter and tries to destroy what would otherwise be a perfectly excellent situation. A Holy Instant.

Once you recognize fear as a dirty rotten liar that tells no truth and which is always confined to its box, and you don't allow it to project or listen to the projections, then something should occur to you...

There is no OTHER reason outside the box to be afraid, and if the fear is kept in the box and then REMOVED entirely, the situation you're in is actually really really really good. Things are working out. Everything's flowing. God is loving. Everyone is ok. You're totally safe. That's the truth fear tries to mess with.

So then your mind can take a little leap and realize, hey, this fear isn't telling me what's right, it's lying to me, and the situation ISN'T terrible, and people AREN'T threatened, and I AM safe and loved. And in that realization you can now confidently march forward, access the power of God, walk in confidence and reassurance, and wield miracles.

I suspect that miracle impulses are not mere "urges" or "compulsions" to love, but rather I suspect they are actual "pulses" of an energetic expression, like a ball of light or a little spark of life force which a person transmits. And I think these pulses can be expressed/created by loving minds and transfer to others, causing instant healing.

I had one experience of this. My wife was very angry about something and yet, the night before I had been sending her a lot of love. So I was in a very open loving space. And as I looked at her and loved her, I felt a little pulse of concentrated energy shoot out of me and go into her. Instantaneously she went into laughter, the angry mood was immediately gone, and she said "don’t make me laugh!". I hadn’t done anything but shine love and it seemed the "impulse" that shot out of me had a miraculous healing effect on her mind.

ACIM says:

"Miracles are a spark of life."

"Miracles are energizers."

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

"Miracles are *expressions* of love."

"Miracles are thought creations."

"Miracles are thoughts."

"The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles."

"Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind."

These to me suggest that "a miracle", an impulse, is a kind of created "spark of life", like a ball of energy or life force, which is created by a loving mind and transfers to others. Upon receipt, this acts like a drop of detergent. As Jesus says it "breaks up erroneous thought". This "miracle" pulse is like a droplet of healing.

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain" is, I think, NOT metaphoric. They are actual droplets of healing power. Drops of life, which supply the lack of life and thus produce resurrection and reversal of sickness and all symptoms of love’s absence.

As expressions of love, it is not enough to say a person is simply radiating love. Rather, that the love literally generates a force that "travels" in the "form" of a love spark, which induces instant healing upon receipt. The eyes of Christ give birth to them. They are many in number and unlimited in supply. They are a power surge.

I have only experienced this impulse once. One time that I was loving enough - really pushing the envelope. I imagine that these impulses just naturally erupt like extraneous sparks from a light-filled person. I could be wrong but I have no other explanation.

As ACIM says, miracles cause healing, they are not the healing itself. They are a remedy. Meaning they are applied to something to cause effects. They entail a GIVER and a RECEIVER, which means something goes out of you into another. They happen naturally when you are loving. You emit them, like little thought creations, little ideas of love and healing. They are transmitted and render a service to another upon receipt.

"God did not create the body."

"The ego’s fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone; and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it."

"Love did not create the body."

"A mind and body cannot both exist."

"You CANNOT make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will NEVER be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love's condemnation."

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

"For minds need not the body to communicate."

"How can a body be extended to hold the universe? Can it create, and BE what it creates? And can it offer its creation all that it is, and never suffer loss? God does not share His function with a body."

"I am not of this world." "I am not a body I am free."

"Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having created them for eternity."

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed."

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."

"That this is all the BODY does is true, for it IS but a figure in a dream. But who REACTS to figures in a dream UNLESS he sees them as if they were real?"

"And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real. But God would not be loving."

"Yet could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form?"

"(Pain) Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means TO MAKE THE BODY REAL."

"It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured."

"The Great Rays would establish the total LACK of value of the special relationship, IF THEY WERE SEEN. For, in seeing THEM, the body WOULD disappear, BECAUSE ITS VALUE WOULD BE LOST. And so your whole INVESTMENT in seeing it would be WITHDRAWN from it."

"It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and NOT find pain."

"A miracle reawakens the awareness that the spirit, and not the body, is the altar of Truth."

"All separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. They are not there. Love s enemy has made them up."

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

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

"Perception involves the body even in its most spiritualized form."

"Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real."

"(The body) Leave it behind, it cannot enter Heaven."

"The mind that made the body can make another because all form is illusion."

If I find anyone to be "wrong" in ANY WAY, for ANY reason, I am scapegoating.

It doesn't even matter what the reasons are. Even if the reasons are valid.

If someone is making a wrong decision... if I identify they are wrong to make that decision, I am scapegoating.

If someone is behaving a certain way, and I identify it as a wrong behavior in any way, I am scapegoating.

If someone is being egotistical or selfish or arrogant or whatever, and if I identify that they are wrong to be this way, that THEY are clearly "the one who is wrong", I am scapegoating.

It's a very subtle trap to fall into. ACIM refers to it as the "obstacles to peace" which your BROTHER puts in front of you. ie, HIS assertions of error, HIS mistakes, HIS sins, HIS lacks, HIS false beliefs acting out. .... presented to you, as temptations.

If you agree with this wrongfulness, if you identify it as wrong, or they are guilty of anything, YOU must be getting a benefit from it.This is tough to admit to because it pretty much encompasses EVERYTHING PEOPLE DO without exception.

If they are wrong for ANY of it.... you are scapegoating.It doesn't matter what it is. There are no exceptions or special categories. If you are finding them to be wrong, mistaken, guilty, sinful, incorrect, you ARE in a scapegoating mode. You ARE projecting your own sin and guilt.

Which means that, every single time you think someone is doing something wrong, even "if they are" ... even if "its obvious" that it's ENTIRELY their fault, and ESPECIALLY then, you MUST be involved in a scapegoating mechanism.

Since "you but accuse your brother of your own sins", what that means is that WHATEVER you accuse your brother of, and EVERY TIME that you accuse him, YOU ARE scapegoating. Without exception.

It doesn't matter the severity of their acts, it doesn't matter how mistaken they are, how many times they do it, whether it's important or not. If you find it to be wrong, you are scapegoating and are trying to get rid of some of your own guilt.

And every single time that you scapegoat, you are attempting to get rid of guilt that is in YOUR mind that YOU put there. You are USING the person's "temptation" of "doing something wrong" as an OPPORTUNITY, to compound THEIR mistake, by adding yours TO it, to DISGUISE your mistake and mix it in with theirs, so that it is lost in their mistake and associated with them.

It's like saying, well, this person was already sinning, so I thought I'd just throw some of my sin onto the pile with them so that no-one would notice there was some of my sin mixed in there. Then I can get away with it and be the innocent one. Then they get to be the fall guy.

Every .... single.... time..... Every.... single.... person..... Every..... single.... judgement....... is scapegoating.

Finding ANYONE to be wrong, guilty, sinful, or even in error, means you are trying to project your own guilt and sin. Even if the other person seems to be VERY sinful. Even if they are evil. You still are using them.

Because the only truth is that you and your brother are totally innocent at all times. So anything else is a mistake.

"The final judgement on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and ***wholly purposeless***. Without a cause, and now ***without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness.**** There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. ***Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away***, because the Son of God is limitless."

"The ultimate purpose of the body is to ***render itself unnecessary.*** Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation."

"And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the ***last perception of the world without a purpose*** and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"The ego made the world as IT perceives it, but the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made, sees it ***only as a teaching device for bringing you home.***"

"God created (Holy Spirit made) time so that man could use it creatively, and convince himself of his own ability to create. Time is a teaching device, and ***a means to an end. It will cease when it is no longer useful*** for facilitating learning."

"Acts were not necessary before the Separation, because the time-space belief did not exist." "The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to ***set a limit on the need for the belief***, and ultimately to make learning complete. The Atonement IS the final lesson."

Simply, everything you made, the world, all bodies, perception, time, under the USE of the Holy Spirit, has the ONLY PURPOSE of being used to BRING YOU HOME, rendering all of these things eventually TOTALLY UNNECESSARY. The ONLY purpose of the world is to END THE WORLD. The only purpose of the body is to NOT NEED BODIES. The only purpose of perception is to OVERCOME PERCEPTION ENTIRELY. The only purpose of time is to NOT NEED TIME. The only purpose of SPACETIME is to use it for the curriculum to bring you home so that the SPACE-TIME BELIEF CAN END.

Once the purpose of these things is reached, per the Holy Spirit's use of them, THEY HAVE NO MORE USE, and simply are let go, vanish, disappear, end. They disappear into the NOTHINGNESS from which they came.

It needs war in order to exist, because the ego is a state of conflict.

On the one hand, it would intensify the sense of trying to get rid of a perceived enemy completely, but on the other hand, if it were to actually have "no enemies" the entire ego thought system would disappear.

The ego is in need of "unresolvable war", which stems from a state of separation which can never be resolved.

It needs a split mind and it needs the mind to be against itself. It will encourage an increase in the split, which means an increase in how much two sets of enemies seem to be at war with each other, but at the same time this separation between them acts to keep them apart.

They become like vicious animals barking at each other from behind a fence.

The ego doesn't want to use war in order to destroy its enemies. It is its own enemy, and its war is taking place within itself, by itself, to itself. But it does want "constant war without end", which requires that in some way, it wants to NOT destroy its enemies.

War without end does NOT mean it wants the total 100% destruction of the opposition, it means it wants to PRETEND that it does, only to hold back just enough to maintain the separation and keep the war going. It would even allow concessions to its enemies in secret to allow them to gain an upper hand at times, in order to preserve the split mind.

For the ego to attempt to destroy its enemies at the same time as keeping them, is testament to how IMPOSSIBLE the ego is and how INSANE it is. It is trying to achieve two completely opposite goals at once. That is because the ego is a belief in an opposite to love - the possibility of real love and real death existing simultaneously.

While the ego fixates on death, and death seems to be an end, it is but a way to continue illusions and is quickly followed up with birth. If the ego really wanted death to be "the end" there would be no births.

The ego simply wants to always be in a state of conflict, a tug of war, where it is complete confused about what it wants, where it believes that two completely opposite goals are coexisting and achievable, and wants to keep its enemies as much as it wants to get rid of them, meaning, it wants to keep SUFFERING for as long as possible.

This is also why in special relationships, where there is special hate and special love, where you attempt to steal love from the other and destroy them because of what they have which you lack, and yet you want them to keep that special something so you can idol worship them. Impossible opposing goals.

This is why the world is just spinning its wheels. A little death here, a little birth there, and generally lots of suffering, tension and conflict all the time. Perpetual war without end, a war not too severe as to wipe out the ego entirely, but just enough to make it seem like this is what the ego wants. It's no wonder this world is insane and disappears up its own arse.

"The body is a dream". "The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream"

The dream is coming from the mind of a dreamer. The dreamer is dreaming of a world, and a body within that world. The dreamer puts the body there and puts the environment there and moves it all around, making it seem alive.

If the dreamer forgets that they are dreaming it, they will lose the perspective of who and what they are. They will cease to know themselves as the dreamer of the dream. And now they will forget that they are the one dreaming it.

"Thus are you NOT the dreamer, but the DREAM. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that IT contrives.""Like to a dream of punishment, in which the dreamer is unconscious of what brought on the attack against himself, he sees himself attacked unjustly, and by something NOT himself."

And now the world will seem to be being dreamed by someone else, happening by some other will, and doing things to the dream body against its will. And now instead of believing you are the dreamer you will believe your are the dream, at its effect.

"He CANNOT doubt his dreams' reality BECAUSE he does not see the part he plays in MAKING them, and MAKING them seem real. No-one can waken from a dream the world is dreaming FOR him. He becomes a part of someone ELSE'S dream. He CANNOT choose to waken from a dream he did not make."

This identifies you with being the very dream body which you are dreaming of. And now you think that you are not dreaming of a body, but that the body is real. And that it is your self. And now you seem to walk around within the dream as if the body is your mind.And then things in the dream seem to happen to the dream body and this seems to threat you, as a dream body. And now you seek escape from these threats, and ways to adjust to the dream. And you live in fear and are in states of unconsciousness, ending in sickness and death.

All of this suffering seems to befall you not because it is happening against your will, but because you have forgotten that you are the dreamer of the dream. You have lost sight of the fact the entire dream environment is happening inside your mind. And you have forgotten that you cannot possible be a mere tiny part of the dream, or any of it.

Your sense of identity has to shift back to the recognition of the reality of yourself, as the dreamer, in order to acknowledge your freedom from the dream itself. This must entail you dis-identifying from the dream body, not mistaking it for your self, not believing anything it seems to experience, and not losing track of your true nature as spirit.

"Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream as SEPARATE from himself, and done to HIM.""You share NO evil dreams, if you forgive the dreamer, and perceive that he is NOT the dream he made. And so he CANNOT be a part of YOURS, from which you BOTH are free. Forgiveness SEPARATES the dreamer from the evil dream, and thus releases him."

By lifting yourself above the battlefield and outside of the context of the dream contents, you can now see that it really is just a dream, in your mind, and not really a world. And anything happening in the dream is merely part of what you decide must happen. Because you are the ruler of the dream universe.

"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."

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes.

A world forgiven is a world recognized as not being responsible for what it seems to do. Because the world is merely the effect of your causality, your mind's dreaming. You are the one putting it there and making it move. Your mind makes the world turn. You make the bodies move. You make bad things happen. And both sickness and death are simply of your making.

"Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead." "You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

You are the maker of the world. The dreamer of the dream. The causer of its events. The source of its illusions. The reason why it acts as it acts. The beginning of its nature. And the end of its suffering.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs.""I am not at the effect of the world I see."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

"Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has terrified God's Son, and made him think that he has lost his innocence, denied his Father, and made war upon himself. So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awaking, and allowed his calmer mind to welcome, NOT to fear, the Voice that called with love to waken him."

"The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different from the dreams of the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. The dreams forgiveness lets the mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep, so that the dreamer dreams another dream. His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon the mind. They lead from sleep to gentle waking, so that dreams are gone. And thus they cure for all eternity."

I’ve come to realize the Course refers to miracles on three distinct levels.

1. Everything in Heaven is miraculous. All expressions of love, in reality, are miraculous. The soul is miraculous. Creation is miraculous. Everything real has a miraculous nature. You are miraculous. You are a miracle. Miraculousness is permanent, natural, and the way God’s thought system always functions. Miracles give LIFE. At this level miracles defy every ego limitation and law. Life itself is a miracle.

2. After the separation, God blessed the Sonship with a miracle. The miracle was the answer to the separation, a healing thought, designed to fully heal the separation. This produced the Holy Spirit. References to "the miracle" are referring to the Holy Spirit. He is the "mechanism of miracles" because He is the way by which miracles (on level 3) are produced. This "one miracle" contains all individual (level 3) miracles. Accepting "the miracle" is accepting the atonement.

3. Within the realm of perception, there are many seemingly individual miracles. Course references to "miracles" in plural refer to this. E.g. "Miracles make minds one in God." "Miracles unite you with your brother" etc. These miracles are holographic, in that each of them contains wholeness and maximal love. They are all reflections of the one miracle, all support each other, are all equal, and all transcend orders of difficulty. These are the "miracles" that you perform IN the world as a miracle worker. These miracles can heal the sick, raise the dead, change perception, and repair the separations between brothers. As a subset, these may also include "shifts in perception" which are not "what a miracle is", but are one of their results. "A miracle is a correction introduced into wrong-minded thinking etc". Here the aim of miracles is to heal the separation between the sonship and induce revelation.

These are all tied together by statements such as "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers." Similarly, miracles extend through Christ as their source, as in "miracles express from an inner awareness of Christ and the acceptance of His atonement."

Miracles do NOT originate at the ego level. They do not originate in your attempts to correct perception. YOU do not do them without God/Christ. Miracles require the absence of fear (ie maximal love), and express FROM a state of miracle mindedness, which is equivalent to true perception. Blocks to awareness must be removed, extensively, before FULL love is allowed to express with enough wholeness to perform a miracle. "The perceptual content of miracles is WHOLENESS." They require vertical perception which is a recognition of mind over matter cause-effect, in which the world is recognized as an EFFECT only, containing no causes, and transcends all ego laws and breaks every law of this world. Miracles are supernatural.

Miracles can correct perception. They can even correct the mind of your brother. However, "the world IS perception" and so additionally, miracles can correct the world. They have power over all forms. Earth is a world of tremendous limitation. Miracles demonstrate that this world is an illusion by changing its forms to show that they are not real. Mind is stronger than the body, and every miracle demonstrates this. Miracles can literally move mountains.

You as a miracle worker become MORE miraculous as you remove blocks to love. When you are done shifting perception, miracles do not come to a stop. Instead, you perform miracles ALL THE TIME. Miraculousness is your God-given NATURE. It is completely natural to your spirit, which is omnipresent and beyond ego laws. Your soul is permanently miraculous. To extend God’s love as LIFE is miraculous. Miracles are life-giving creative acts. They supply a lack. Death is lack of life, so miracles can raise the dead.

There is no sin and nothing impossible that miracles cannot reverse and undo. Believing otherwise is believing the hierarchy of illusions, which is a belief in orders of difficulty. Miracles are all the same. They ignore difficulty. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do." You cannot be loving without being miraculous. Atonement, which includes miracle working, is the natural profession of the Children of God.

Jesus's redefinition of terms continues to amaze me. When you suddenly realize that he has a whole different MEANING to a term, it suddenly opens up a whole box of insights.

For example "The world of bodies is the world of sin. For only if there were a body is sin possible." Jesus says that bodies are needed for sin. But you might think, sin came before guilt and made the world. But no. He's saying that sin is more like an all encompassing term describing ALL illusions and the ENTIRE ego world of death. Wherein everything was designed to BE sin. ie, sin is like a way of proving that illusions are real. And ALL illusions, by their seeming reality, proven by laws of physics and by "evidence", testify against reality.

A better definition of SIN might be, that "twisting" or "distorting" of reality and truth, which results in what is true and false being swapped, and what is real and unreal being confused. It is "the evil" that seems to turn reality into illusions, and make illusions seem real.

"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where truth should be, and where it really is."

Here he says that sin is insanity, and so the whole ego thought system can be said to be sin. It's the way by which there is a distortion in what is true, where true and false are confused, and real and unreal are confused. So it's not just that you commit a crime and call it a sin, it's actually that the entire physical world is deeply rooted in sin - the attempt to prove that illusion are real. The whole world is an attempt to do this. Even the rocks and grains of sand. This is because:

"The world is false perception"

And all false perception, ie distortion of mind, inaccurate perception, believing that illusions are real, thinking that death is life, thinking that what is false is true, is what the physical world is composed of. It's laws are literally the laws of sin and death.

"Sin is the home of all illusions, which but stand for things imagined, issuing from thoughts which are untrue. They are the "proof " that what has no reality is real."

Here he tells us that ALL illusions are rooted in sin. And so "the world of bodies (the illusory world) is the world of sin." The WHOLE thing is sin. Which is why Jesus refers to the physical world, the veil across the face of Christ, as "the granite block of sin". By its laws, it acts as a mechanism for manufacturing "proof", through "physical evidence", which is maintained in order to testify that sin is real and has happened. All of the worlds happenings, seen through unforgiving eyes and insanity, are sin.

"Sin "proves" God's Son is evil; timelessness must have an end; Eternal life must die."

What this means is that, the fact that ANYTHING can seem to die, is A SIN. It's sin embodied as proof of death. Dead carcasses, dead flies, dead humans, dead planets. It was all made to try to make sin, ie "separation from God", or "that hell is real and heaven is not" be the new truth.

"A madman's dreams are frightening, and sin appears indeed to terrify. And yet what sin perceives is but a childish game."

So all dreams, the whole dream world, is made of sin.

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

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

Sin, or, the physicalized material laws of the ego thought system, resulted in the eyeballs.

"Except for God's teachers there would be little hope of salvation, for the world of sin would seem forever real."

"And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack."

"It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely."

To be aware of dreaming, is to be aware that this entire world, all bodies, this whole seeming universe, space and time, it is all a dream.

But this awareness also includes the important awareness that only the Kingdom of God - which is not of this world - is real and true.

This sounds like a simple distinction but awareness of dreaming can only FULLY arise when we are 100% clear that this world IS NOT reality, and that God's kingdom IS. It is the awareness that only the truth is true and nothing else is true. Anything not of God is unreal.

This awareness of dreaming also entails the full appreciation of the fact that this world DOES NOTHING at all to the Kingdom of God. Bodies coming and going has no effect. Death does nothing. Sickness doesn't change anything. Not one single thing in this world has the slightest influence on God's creation.

And this also entails a recognition therefore that YOUR IDENTITY, is fully aligned with and aware of being "as God created you", as a perfect innocent soul in heaven. In which you have fully released all traces of EGO, and all sense of body-identification, and all belief that the bodies in this world are people.

Everything your eyes behold here must be recognised as A DREAM, and thus is unreal. A false dream, a fiction, an empty world, a nothingness. Something you are just dreaming in a state of seeming sleep, with absolutely NO CAUSAL POWER, and no consequence upon anything in the reality of the waking Kingdom of God.

Nothing you see here means anything. Nothing in the world can bring oppression. Nothing can make you suffer or be sick or die. You are immortal and eternal. The entire world is fake and unreal. Nothing that happens in the world or that has ever seemed to happen has any real meaning or value whatsoever. You are safe in God, at home in God, dreaming of exile.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams, once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs." UrM13A6

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed." UrT27I1

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real." UrT27I2

"No-one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-one believes there really was a time when he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real." UrT27I5

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." UrT27I10

"Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreaming of a world OUTSIDE yourself. And leading finally beyond ALL dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life." UrT27F9

Bodies are incredibly separating. They are like anchors, and little prison cells. One body is over here, the other is over there, separated by a gap of space and time. If you are in and as your body, and if the other person is in and as their body, you are not connected, you have no relationship, and are kept apart.

This separation gap will fester with sin and attack and specialness and selfishness. Identifying that you, who are you and your brother, are only located in and as your separate body, rips you away from them and separates your mind.

Part of your mind is in and as their mind, which you have located as separated off and bound to their body, out of reach to you. Given they are separate, if they so much as flinch in the wrong way, you will take it as an act of war, inflicted by a separate will against your will. Being bodies is an act of war. There can be no undoing of specialness while you believe your brother is anchored to a physical object.

Both of you are supposed to share everything, join entirely, be in psychological union as one, and overlap with each other. Your brother is part of yourself, and ONLY by recognizing and identifying your sense of self WITH them, including them on who and what you are, can you enter into love. Without this joining, love is absent and separation has taken hold, and conflict will not be far behind.

"You" (separate body) "did this to me" (separate body) "and I" (separate body) "did not do this to you" (separate body) "and therefore you are guilty." It is the entire basis of scapegoating and all sense of victimhood. If you are NOT your brother, there are two sides and there is war. You have excluded him by associating him with a body. You do not see him, because his body blocks your vision, a wall of flesh around his mind, locking him into darkness.

Bodies literally are in the way. They are completely opposite to the nature of the mind. They are separation devices. Your whole life you have identified people AS a separate body, not a part of you, kept away from you, responsible for their own acts and not yours, and whose interests are not your own. And every body-identified (egoic) mind sees themselves as separated off and held apart by the body. This is completely unnatural.

No one is a body. Bodies are designed to keep apart what God has put together as one. Your brother is literally you. Your minds are one. Your self is shared. You are both the whole Kingdom. What many people don't realize is that Jesus recognized that he IS EVERYONE, and that is why he united the will of the whole sonship with the father, and why you were with him when he ascended.

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."

"The sonship is your soul."

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"No one can remember God alone."

"In a split mind, identity MUST seem to be divided. Nor can anyone perceive a function unified which has conflicting purposes and different ends. Correction, to a mind so split, MUST be a way to punish sins you think are YOURS in someone else. And thus does he become your victim, NOT your brother, DIFFERENT from you in that he is MORE GUILTY, thus in need of your correction, as the one MORE INNOCENT than he. This splits HIS function off from yours, and gives you both a DIFFERENT role. And so you CANNOT be perceived as one, and with a single function that would MEAN a shared identity with but ONE end."

You know sometimes when you're doing something on a computer and there's a progress bar, and sometimes there are actually two progress bars - overall progress and the progress of one of many smaller tasks? Well I think it's kind of like that with forgiveness too.

There is an overall progress which slowly evolves along similar steps to how each individual forgiveness progresses, but it goes a lot slower. This means that in general, you will start out really strongly believing that forgiveness has something to do with other people, that it's their fault, that you have to forgive them in some way.

Then gradually you will pull away from that and start to realize that it's not really about other people, it's about you. Each time something happens, over time you are a little less convinced that you're starting out with someone else being the problem. So you sort of start a little further along the process.

Each time you do a small forgiveness, each time you tackle some individual issue, and you take it all the way to it being forgiven, you are sort of practicing. You wear away at the rock of sin. And then you do another one, and another one.

What I've seen is that as a result of all these practices, all these forgiveness of individual events and people and situations, in the big long-term picture my mind seems to be gradually moving its 'starting position' away from others and more toward myself.

Instead of falling for some of the more obvious ego traps that convince and tempt me to believe that it's all someone else's fault, there's been a progression where I at least don't fall for those basic starting illusions as easily. I start my forgivenesses a bit further along the process.

Lately I've been encroaching more closely on the idea that forgiveness has nothing at all to do with other people. Instead I'm seeing that there is stuff going on in my own mind, a conflict between two parts of my own split mind, and that I play both the role of victim and victimizer. Whatever way I am using my mind to judge or attack others, I see that this is just my own mind content playing out, there's activity in my own mind about myself, and I'm doing this to myself. I am sort of learning that I can completely ignore any suggestion that this upset has anything to do with other people.

So I think gradually we erode this overall attitude of unforgiveness, we gradually chop down trees and the forest starts to clear. We keep winning little battles and gradually we're winning the war, so to speak. I am much quicker now to recognize that my issues have nothing to do with other people, and can quickly jump over the whole emotional drama tangle of "they are doing this to me", "I'm a victim of them", "I don't want this etc". I've had to take that illusion, that perceptual fault, so many times that I guess I've learned, overall, or have become able to generalize that learning, so that I just kind of 'know it' now.

I think this is really how things progress. I can well imagine that as time continues to unfold I will just keep having fewer reactions, less belief in victimhood, less fear, that I will fall for illusions less, that I will inevitably gradually be sustaining a certain level of 'awareness' and 'wakefulness' which acts as the starting point for any further corrections that are needed.

We wake up gradually. We make progress. And once we've done enough of the undoing of the grosser, more ego-extreme aspects of our mistaken perceptions, we will learn and won't be so easily fooled by them. Then it will come down to the subtler aspects of what's happening, what I'm doing to myself, how my mind is functioning, as we gradually 'home in' on revealing to our awareness what the simple truth really is about us.

And someday we'll realize, there is nothing left to forgive, and forgiveness isn't even needed, because now we are in a permanently forgiving attitude with Holy Spirit that shows us a forgiven world all the time. Ultimately there is nothing to forgive when you get to that point because you're seeing clearly, and really you were only ever forgiving your mistaken belief that there was something wrong that needed to be undone. Nothing has really happened. We're all doing fine. Congratulations on your progress.

On the surface, it seems that fighting against something is a noble attempt to bring about change.

But what's really happening is that the ego has split the mind in two, one part is now opposed to the other part, and the two parts are at war with each other.

That means one part is positioning itself as this righteous savior or hero or protestor or fixer or helper who has come to "correct" the wrongs done by the other part. And the other part has been positioned as the evil enemy who must be overthrown and stopped.

The part which acts as the savior of the world appears on the surface to be doing everything to care about what is right, to fight for rights, to uphold some kind of ideal, BUT.... and this is a big but.... that role DEPENDS entirely on KEEPING the enemy separate, attacking them, stopping them, disallowing them, rejecting them and therefore maintaining their position of power.

It is ineffective and inefficient to protest in this way. And it is dishonest.

Your mind when whole is powerful enough to directly dissolve all concepts of enemies and wars and opposition. It undoes all illusions of separation. It simply would extend and create peace and love. It wouldn't be engaged in this INDIRECT attempt at getting the opposition to change, which really is a belief that you do not have the power to change things directly.

Indirect confrontation always shows up AS IF it is direct confrontation. It always shows an illusion of people marching and signs being held and things being shouted. It always involves a lot of offense and defense and people being offended and outraged. It's a good show, by the ego.

But it doesn't really work very well because it's a state of war, which is the ego's attempt to prolong separation. The mind can only be acting against itself with a split will, fighting with itself, making an enemy of itself, and therefore struggling to make any headway whatsoever because it keeps working against itself.

Trying to get "someone else" to change when, in truth, that someone else IS YOU, simply means you're are fighting with yourself and not realizing it. One part of you is willing one thing and another part of you is willing another. You think you have no way to influence the other, so you make a big stinking war against them to try to convince them or defeat them. But they are you, their will is your own, and it's really YOU fighting with your own will. This is what happens in a split mind. Anyone with an ego does this. To realize this and to become singular and whole in your will will show you that there IS no enemy and there IS no opposing will and therefore there IS nothing to stop you bringing about peace and love.

Enemies are not outside you. You are making an enemy of your own self, inside you. You are fighting against your own will. You are split in your interests and have conflicting simultaneous goals. You are the one who has offended you, and it is you that you are outraged against. It is you that you are trying to stop. And that's really going to ramp up the frustration and anger, which is highly ineffective and weak.

Those who thus protest seem to be those who are making the most effort to bring about a "positive change", but secretly, their egos are actually the ones who are attempting to make the LEAST amount of change by seeing themselves as disempowered, making disempowerment real, using separation to attack opponents and keep them separate, using hate as a weapon against hate, and basically this just leads to a stalemate, or in extreme cases, violence.

All attack is self-attack. All protests are against yourself. All opposition is within your own mind. When your mind is made whole and is undivided against itself, it will admit that it was its own self that it was fighting with. It will realize how FUTILE it is to be split against yourself, trying to bring about one thing while another part is bringing about something else. When your will becomes ONE, singular, and whole, you then are much more POWERFUL because now you have no opposition at all. You are not canceling out your own efforts, and you do not see enemies. And thus are all your problems solved and there can be peace.

YOU are the cause of everything you think your enemies are doing to you, and you WANT them to keep doing it to you, and your attempt to portray yourself as believing otherwise is a stay of pure DENIAL.

"Any split in mind must involve a rejection of part of it, and this is the belief in separation."

What is a WHOLE mind? A whole mind is at least as large as the universe. As Jesus states, "both heaven and earth are in your mind" and "you maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts". Realize that your mind has to be LARGER than planet Earth in order for Earth to be in your mind. It's not appropriate to try to imagine that your tiny little self inside your body is projecting this entire world. In fact, "the world" is this entire universe, and so let's say a WHOLE mind is large enough to contain THE WHOLE of everything.

A SPLIT mind, is a mind which believes in separation. The split is like a division, which literally seems to divide your mind into TWO halves. The division is upheld by some kind of "wall of sin", which comes between the two halves. This wall is made of illusions. This wall IS THE WORLD YOU SEE and the world you made. It is the physical matter of this universe. "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

So if your whole mind is larger than the universe, what does a split mind mean? It means you place a wall WITHIN the universe, to separate off one part of your mind from another. What is that wall? It's all physical matter, actually, but more symbolically it is your BODY. Your body is the wall of flesh that you surround a part of your mind with.

The body is a device for separation. It has two functions. It keeps part of your mind INSIDE, and keeps the other part of your mind OUTSIDE. Remember you were WHOLE before, you were unlimited in size, and now you've SECTIONED OFF only a PART of your mind and placed it "inside the body", so all the stuff outside the body is THE REST OF YOUR MIND. You, who seem to be in a body, are only PART OF YOURSELF.

You're used to thinking in terms of everything applying only to the mind that seems to be inside the body, as if that is "you". And as if everything outside the body is "not you". And THEN you think that the whole of ACIM applies only to this "is me" that's inside the body. But it DOES NOT! THAT is part of the illusion of the split. It's a state of massive disassociation. In fact this is also part of how you pretend to be a figure in a dream.

When you dream, you dream an entire ENVIRONMENT. A world. But then you divide up that world, you fence off part of it as a body, and then place a fragment of the mind seemingly INSIDE that body. That part of mind now peers out through the body's eyes upon the environment, but because it is a DISASSOCIATED part, it does not believe that the environment is part of ITSELF. It thinks it is "not me". And it also does not believe it PUT IT THERE.

It doesn't see itself as the DREAMING mind, only as PART of the dream. And you in your human body right now experience exactly the same disassociation - you do not believe or perceive that this ENTIRE WORLD is inside your mind, or that you are dreaming it from a larger mind. You think you are ONLY the thing "inside" the body. This is part of being a split mind.

When you have a split mind, one half of your mind disassociates from the other. The ego splits off some parts of you and labels them as sinful, guilty, wrong, bad, and tries to destroy them. It does this in order to try to only preserve the appearance of being "good" and successful and perfect and innocent. In psychology terms, this is the PERSONA, which is ONE HALF of your mind and yet believes it is ALL of yourself. This is to do with where the course talks about the sunbeam believing it is the sun. This split off part of mind thinks it is ALL of you.

The parts of your mind that it disassociates FROM, and keeps believing is "not myself", it sees as "outside of me". Separate from me. And the wall of flesh that is the body acts as the divider between your persona and the REST of you. The rest of you is OUTSIDE the body. Due to disassociation you do not believe that the outside world is you AT ALL, or has anything to do with you. That you didn't put it there nor is it the location of your SELF. But it is, and you did put it there. You needed to make a world outside the body in order to be able to have a world to disassociate from.

What then happens is, within your mind, within the whole of your mind, there are now two seeming selves. There is the part that you think is all of you, and there is another part that you think is not you at all. That "not me" part is hidden behind a wall of denial, which is a block to awareness, which makes the REST of your mind unconscious. Since your persona self sees the REST of your mind as "outside of me", or separate from itself, it regards the "shadow" as OUTSIDE the persona. Now, the BODY IS the persona. Within the dream, it represents this fake "face of innocence", and everything OUTSIDE the body is YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND.

Within your mind, then, since "ideas leave not their source", everything that your mind can ever experience HAS to be within your mind, otherwise the mind cannot be aware of it. So that means your "inside self" is in your mind, your BODY is in your mind, and the outside WORLD is in your mind. And your mind is larger than all of them.

Within your mind, you will experience that there is war happening between one half of you and the other half. There will be a perception of "your self" (one half) as "the innocent victim", and it will seem that "the not me" self (outside "you") is the sinful victimizer. Your will is going to be divided against itself, because both parts of your mind are not in agreement. They conflict. And so the inner you, your persona, believes that it is under attack by "an alien will", that it THINKS is "outside of it", but which really is just another part of the mind.

You have this fully INTERNAL war with yourself, between these two parts, but because of the disassociation, your inner part BELIEVES that the "other me" is OUTSIDE the body. That your enemy is out there and is "not myself". So it is seen as "beyond yourself". And since your idea of yourself is confined within the body, that means you think it's outside the body. Even though it's in your mind.

It then becomes very EASY, to "project" or map this dynamic of a split mind, ONTO The world. Whereby you seem to "project" your sin onto your brother. But it's not really projection as such. It's more like, your mind actually believes that YOUR sinful parts are separated off from your "self" and are SEEN outside of you, beyond the body, and so you see them IN the world as if they are external. Your mind locates them externally because that seems to make sense in terms of them being disassociated from what's inside your body.

And so if you're believing/perceiving that the sinful part of YOUR mind, your "inner enemy", the "not me self", is OUTSIDE of your body, it's VERY VERY easy to assign or associate that with OTHER BROTHERS in the dream, whose bodies are walking around the same environment having split minds. Since you already believe "the sin is not in me, it's outside me", and since you believe" I am inside the body", you'll easily believe "the sinners are outside the body". And so there's a very small step from there to actually being deluded that some actual OTHER brother is the separate self who is sinful. And so you attach your split mind TO him and accuse him of your sins.

But in truth, all of this is really taking place inside your larger mind. Both what is inside your body and what is outside your body is WITHIN the confines of your larger mind. The innocent seeming victim that you see your PARTIAL self as, and the external victimizer evil sinful menace, are BOTH parts of YOUR mind. And this is what the secret of salvation is designed to show you. To merely look and realize that your brother has NOTHING to do with you being attacked, there is actually ANOTHER PART OF YOUR MIND ATTACKING THIS PART OF YOUR MIND. You are at war with yourself, and you literally are your enemy.

ACIM: "The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true." - that external attacker IS PART OF YOUR MIND.

So that means you are ACTING the part of being the victim, AND you are acting the part of the victimizer. You are BOTH. You are the inside and the outside. And until you can recognize that what you see in another is part of your own larger mind, you won't stop projecting it onto them. When you own it, and take responsibility for it, that means realizing that this "separate enemy" is actually a character IN your larger mind, seeming to interact with this other persona character IN your mind, and BOTH of them are like puppets that your LARGER mind is operating. Your larger mind is pitting parts of ITSELF against each other.

What makes it SEEM as if there are two identities or characters, is illusions. Illusions present a picture of images and appearances and behaviors that SEEM to make it look like there are TWO distinct persons, two wills, two minds, to selves. But the challenge you have, is to OVERLOOK (forgive) those illusions. When you do so, you should come to realize that your larger mind is responsible for playing the roles of BOTH of those two characters. That who YOU are, as a whole, is WITHIN BOTH of them. If you can see that YOU are literally playing BOTH sides and ARE both of them, that "unity" will transcend the illusions, and it will dissolve the split.

You won't be able to believe in the split, or in being only one of the two halves of the split, if you can see how your WHOLE mind is in BOTH sides. It's like owning up to being one who has been pulling all the strings, MAKING THE DREAM ENVIRONMENT, and causing all things to happen. That means moving UPWARDS, from a position of "I am only this little self in a body" to " I am the whole of everything everywhere". And it is from that larger WHOLE mind that you are the DREAMER OF THE WORLD.

ACIM: "For you would not react at all to figures in a dream (as a smaller part of mind) you knew that YOU (your larger mind) were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you (your larger self), unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR (whole mind's) dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." - this is a shift in identity from "I am a PART of mind in a body" to " I am ALL of mind everywhere."

If your mind transcends the separation, ie you stop believing illusions of separation, you will become aware of your wholeness. That's a transition from being two selves on a lower level, to being one unified self on a higher level.

What that also means in terms of the fact that your mind is the size of the universe, is that you should eventually heal the separation that is DIVIDING THE WORLD, which means removing the WALLS that the world is made of, which means undoing physical matter which is the illusion of separation, and that also means ERASING THE BODY. The body IS the device that acts to implement the split mind, WITHIN the larger scope of what you are.

In order NOT to have a split mind, your body HAS to be undone. It acts like a wall that is literally keeping part of you inside it and the rest of you outside it. It is made of illusions. "The body cannot stay without illusions". That means without the idea of being PART OF the world and not ALL of it, there cannot be a body there, representing the split in the mind and dividing and separating your universe-sized mind into two parts.

The body must vanish. It must be transcended and it must disappear. It is made of the illusion of separtion. "The body is a dream." And it is also the way by which the whole dream is maintained. There is no dream WITHOUT the body, because you have to MAKE a separation - a split in your larger mind, in order to go INTO dreaming. A split mind is a dreaming mind. And MAKING that split in your mind MAKES a body. It puts a wall there. Therefore when this dream of "opposition" and "competition" and "taking sides" is ironed out and ends, so too does the body wall disappear, and so too does the dream disappear, and that includes the Earth.

In effect, the undoing of the belief in separation is the undoing of the WALL within your split mind which IS the body, and this cancels out the differences between the inner and outer parts of mind, makes the mind WHOLE, and a whole mind CANNOT BE ASLEEP DREAMING. A whole mind cannot have a body. And a whole mind cannot be IN a dream world. The dream world only lasts so long as there is an illusion of separation, which depends ENTIRELY on having a split in your universe-sized mind. And this is also why "you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge." Knowledge collapses spacetime.

As you return to being whole, you will also return to a state of mind where what is inside you is also seen outside you. ie it is everywhere the same. That means seeing the holy spirit in all your brothers because he is in your mind. Seeing God "in the world" because God is in your mind. Your wholeness reunites you with THE REST OF YOURSELF WHICH IS IN YOUR BROTHER. Your wholeness rejoins and reconnects YOUR mind, to the REST of your mind, which is currently believed to be "not inside you". Your sense of SELF, therefore, has to expand from "I am that which is inside the body" to "I AM EVERYWHERE". That results in oneness with all brothers.

To be whole is to be restored to an awareness that YOU are everywhere, you are larger than the universe, you are unlimited and infinite and immortal, you are not partial, you are not located in space or time, and you are beyond the dream of death. You are beyond the world. The world was merely YOUR SPLIT MIND, while you were dreaming. It's forms were YOUR SPLITS. Its walls were your illusions of disassociation. Without you having a split mind there can be no dream world. Waking up is waking up to WHOLENESS. Wholeness is reality. In wholeness, there is no world and there are no bodies and no walls.

You are unlimited. You made this entire world as a result of splitting your mind. When your mind is whole, the world will disappear. You are a huge, unlimited, spiritual being and this TINY world is nothing against your magnitude.

It's important for us to be willing to look at the world and recognize that it HAS NO MEANING. The world ITSELF is utterly meaningless. It was made as a projected idea of the opposite of God. God is entirely meaningful, so his opposite means nothing at all.

A meaningless world is not necessarily therefore an upsetting world, or lacking world, or a world that can't reflect positivity. It can't of ITSELF be positive, or holy, because it is nothing. But it CAN act like a completely neutral mirror in which holiness can be reflected.

And meaninglessness does NOT necessarily mean depression, darkness, boredom, despair, suicidal tendencies, or lack of purpose. These are in fact all MEANINGS of the ego which it projects onto the world. True meaninglessness is devoid of ANY meaning, either positive OR negative.

The world is therefore really nothing, or you might think of it as neutral. It has no meaning of its own and can only act to symbolize something GIVEN to it. You therefore have to give or project meaning ONTO it to make it mean something at all.

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real."

The world thus acts like an empty mirror. You can project egoic ideas of hell onto it, or ideas of heaven and love. You can project God onto it. Since the world HAS no meaning, the ego rushes in to try to give it a hellish meaning. It projects meaning of sin and fear and attack and death. But this only happens when you don't recognize that the world is meaningless. If you don't regard the world as a MIRROR, in which a REFLECTION is seen, because it has no real image of its own, you mistakenly associate the reflection FOR the mirror itself. And now you think that what you projected ONTO it is what it inherently IS.

The world is kind of like a void, or am empty shell. It is nothing in itself. So you give it meaning. You ego gives it the meaning of hell, while the Holy Spirit helps you to give it a the meaning of heaven. Whatever meaning you give it, it REFLECTS back to you. It reflects rather than IS anything, because it is meaningless and so does not have ITS OWN meaning to give you. This makes it act like a mirror.

This reflection IS an image, and is not heaven itself, but is a reflection of heaven. God can be seen reflected IN the world (because he's in your mind), because the world ITSELF is NOT God. Being NOT God, or God's opposite, it has NO meaning of its own, and so CAN reflect HIS. The challenge then is to put aside the projections of hell that you have GIVEN to the world, the meanings you have given to everything, and allow yourself to RECOGNIZE that the world IS meaningless. Without your projections of hell, it is NOT hell, OR heaven. It is just a blank canvas.

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."

The thing is that when the mirror is crowded with egoic images, dreams you project onto it and perceive, it becomes dark. And now you are looking at a reflection of darkness IN the mirror, and mistake the darkness FOR the mirror. And now the world seems like hell, and the darkness makes it impossible to see God's reflection.

When you are willing to recognize that the world is a neutral meaningless mirror, really NOTHING, with no meaning of ITS OWN, this is in fact a good thing, and not a depressing thing. It means you are willing to stop projecting FALSE images onto it, or to give it a meaning it DOES NOT have, or to try to MAKE it mean hell. By not putting images of hell onto it, you do not see hell IN it. Recognizing it AS a mirror opens your mind to NOT KNOW what it is, and to instead allow the Holy Spirit to project the real world's reflection for you to see.

When the mirror is spotless and clean and devoid of ego projections, this LACK of meaning acts like a shiny surface in which EVERYTHINGNESS is reflected, rather than like a dirty dark mirror which filters OUT the reflection.

In the true reflection of God's meaning IN the mirror of the world, God's reflection is seen IN the world, and now the world appears to REFLECT heaven. It now appears to share heaven's MEANING, because heaven's meaning (love etc) is projected ONTO it, an so reflects BACK to you through perception. "Projection makes perception." "Perception is a result not a cause."

By being open to acknowledging that the world it NOTHING in itself, and is MEANINGLESS in itself, you are in fact becoming open to allowing God to put HIS meaning there. And thus is the world redeemed and saved from projections of hell onto it. And in an empty space, devoid of ego attack and sin ideas, the world can now reflect heaven.

And thus doing this can make you HAPPY because you can recognize that hell does not really exist when you don't GIVE hell to the world. And the world can now seem to turn into a happy dream, where heaven is reflected and God is seen IN everything (as a reflected IMAGE of God). Such a world is the forgiven world, in which everything seems sparkling and bright and new and lovely. And in this state the body is healed and incapable of sickness. And now you are ready to go home.

"In the world you can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

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

"It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize the meaningless, and accept it without fear. If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes which it does not possess, and crowd it with images that do not exist. To the ego illusions are safety devices, as they must also be to you who equate yourself with the ego."

"You think that what upsets you is a frightening world, or a sad world, or a violent world, or an insane world. All these attributes are given it by you. The world is meaningless in itself."

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy. But because it is meaningless, you are impelled to write upon it what you would have it be. It is this you see in it. It is this that is meaningless in truth. Beneath your words is written the Word of God. The truth upsets you now, but when your words have been erased, you will see His. That is the ultimate purpose of these exercises."

"Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right guidance, for learning is invisible, and what has been learned can be recognized only by its RESULTS."

Which means miracles are supposed to produce EFFECTS and CHANGES in things tangible or seen, which DEMONSTRATE learning has occurred. Without the demonstration, the learning has obviously not occurred, because the person is still teaching something else through physical proof. Miracles have visible RESULTS.

"Everyone in the world must play his part in the redemption of the world, to recognize that the world HAS BEEN redeemed." Redeem it with miracles!

"You cannot see the invisible. But if you see its effects, you KNOW it must be there. By perceiving what it DOES, you recognize its being. And by WHAT it does, you learn what it IS."

You MUST be able to see the EFFECTS of miracles in order to know their source is real. You PERCEIVE the effects, in order to recognize the Holy Spirit is real. And by what the miracles DO, IN THE WORLD, PHYSICALLY, you learn about what this power is. You develop your miracle working ABILITY thus:

"You cannot SEE your abilities, but you gain confidence in their EXISTENCE as they enable you to ACT. And the results, of your actions you CAN see."

You do MIRACULOUS ACTS IN THE WORLD. And the effects you produce help you to gain confidence in the ABILITY of miracle working.

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there."

You can SEE... visually, in the world, the RESULTS of the Holy Spirit’s presence. Through the RESULTS, 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."

Let’s just be clear, that your little shifts in perception ARE NOT miracles and have nothing to do with breaking the laws of physics. Miracles VIOLATE the laws of physics. Laws about how big something is, how heavy it must be, the way it must be manipulated, thi is all ignored and trampled upon by the Holy Spirit’s manifestations IN THE WORLD.

"Perceiving His results, you will understand where He must be, and finally KNOW what He is."

You perceive his results not inside your head but in the world. In your body, and beyond it. And the results speak volumes for what He must BE - a power far greater than anything in the world. And clearly NOT OF THIS WORLD, due to his world breaking, law defying capabilities.

"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."

Miracles are WITNESSES to the power of the Holy Spirit. They testify that HE has DONE SOMETHING supernatural. These witnesses CAN BE SEEN with your eyes. They are changes to physical forms, energy, matter, space and time.

"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."

Manifest? We’re talking about things happening in the world here. Manifestations. Forms changing. Bodies being healed. The dead being raised. Mountains moving.

And here is clear instruction from Jesus about what you are supposed to be DOING in the world as a miracle worker:

"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."

"You will see miracles through your hands through me. You should begin each day with the prayer "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today."

"15. Each day should be devoted to miracles."

DO HIS WORKS!

The ego loves to tell you that when such-and-such happens, you MUST have a reaction.

It acts like it's a given. This is because it believes that a 'cause' outside of you has the power to affect you. This so-called cause DEMANDS that you be affected by it.

This is also to do with the hierarchy of illusions, which means that apparently different severities of problems seem to demand different kinds of reactions.

The ego had this set up so that, for example, when you blow your nose you don't have a significant reaction, but when someone tells you you have a disease, you freak out. Or when someone stubs their toe you have a slight response but when they fall on their face and hurt themselves you have a much bigger response.

We've become conditioned by what seems to be 'called for' in different situations, largely based on how things *appear* physically, causing us to develop a conditional response. Situation A calls for response A. Situation B calls for response B. This way we have learned to be conditional and to be reactive and affected by what happens.

We need to BREAK this connection between external causes and given levels of reaction, if we are to become unconditional.

I was talking to Jesus last night and was imagining this scenario where a person might die and how I would feel, and already just with the imagining of it I noticed I felt upset, and Jesus stopped me. I looked at it and realized, I am actually giving energy to this idea and I'm the one who is imagining it. So really, it's nothing to do with the situation happening, I am literally doing it to myself right now. So I stopped, I stopped buying into my own prediction, and laughed.

What this showed me is that we do not HAVE to suffer. Just because something supposedly 'bad' might happen around us, it doesn't HAVE to mean that we have a given reaction. We don't HAVE to have a meltdown. We don't HAVE to completely lose it and become seriously upset.

What we have to learn to see is that it is our own perception that shows us a belief in external causes being real, in being powerless, threatened or victimized. It's our own mind that is CHOOSING to suffer. Suffering is a choice, brought on by a perceptual mistake. We can choose not to have this reaction by choosing not to to see the situation this way.

So this breaks the ego's strangle-hold and the hierarchy of illusions, by breaking the connection between external causes and internal reactions. We do not have to suffer. We do not have to be upset. We do not have to have reactions. We are literally choosing to suffer on our own by how we're using our mind and perception. If something 'bad' happens, if something 'serious' happens, those are judgements by ego, that seem to demand serious reactions. We don't have to play that game. We don't have to lose our peace.

All is choice.

Ego is a device for separation. It is like a stained glass window made of many fragments and different types of filters. Each colored panel obscures and distorts the light behind it and changes it, filtering out what it does not want to see.

When the ego attempts to hold itself up to the light of God, to heaven, to creation, and attempts to look at it, it looks through this stained glass window. It CAN ONLY see separations. It is INCAPABLE of seeing unity. It thinks it is objective and impartial and unbiased but it is absolutely incapable of ever seeing and recognizing the nature of Oneness correctly.

All it sees are separations, partial truths, information which is left out and distortions that have been added. It is literally impossible for it see oneness, wholeness, truth, or consistency.

When the truth of Heaven is that God creates and has many sons and they each have individual free will, the ego looks at this through its stained glass window. All it sees is, oh look, there seems to be a correlation between the different pieces of glass and the idea of "many sons".

You can be sure that, if the ego ever looks at Oneness and sees something CORRELATING to its way of looking, that it is seeing separations, you know that something is UNTRUE. The ego cannot see God and understand it. If it is seeing something "in" God and saying, that it matches up to how the ego sees in fragments, IT IS NOT SEEING the truth.

All we can say for sure is, the ego can never see God correctly, cannot understand Oneness correctly, cannot comprehend how God has many sons without it being a separation, and therefore we need to TRUST and have FAITH that God's many sons is a truth the ego will never accept.

We are to accept the truth as it is presented. The course is telling us God has many Sons. Jesus is not a liar. Therefore, it's telling the truth. And somehow, all of those sons are "one", yet still distinct with individual free will. We have to simply accept this is true even if our egos don't understand how.

"To know reality is not to see the ego and its thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in it entails."

"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God’s Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"

"The denial of God is the ego's religion."

At the soul level, everyone is immortal and holy. There is no problem, no unhappiness, no sickness, no death.

At the mind level, which is part of the soul, and perhaps only part of the mind at that, there is denial present.

This denial is the rejection of reality, God, truth, sanity, Self, health and holiness.

So in effect you've got holy immortal beings whose minds are experiencing temporary insanity, who are pretending to be mortal and want to die.

They are actively denying God. Denying love. Denying health. Denying life. Denying who they are.

All sickness is simply denial of health. And this comes about purely as denial of the truth.

"Sickness is a defense (denial) against the truth"

It is our job as miracle workers, as healers, as not-denyers, to primarily NOT deny what the deniers are denying. Rather to accept God, health, happiness, life, immortality, etc.

We do this by in turn denying the denial of the truth. We deny that God IS denied. We deny that there is no health. We deny that sickness and death exist. We reject everything not of God.

"It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way. This is the PROPER use of denial."

"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you."

Once you have denied the denial of God, you have stepped out of the ego's religion. The ego's religion is one of death, being the denial of life. It worships the God of sickness.

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

By denying the denial of God, and thus ASSERTING the support and acceptance of LIFE, you become miraculous. You refuse to accept that the denial of truth is true, or that the unreality of sickness is in fact real. You remember God's religion of life.

Those who deny themselves are blocking their own identity and their own health and happiness. This denial is the sole cause of all sickness. It is a repression of life, a resistance against immortality, a defense against truth, and a rejection of divine order.

Thus your task as a miracle worker now becomes to not buy into the denial, reject the denial, reverse the denial, and thus shine a light of the truth into the mind of those who are in denial, to undo their denial for them.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick.

The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

Denying health is a denial of light, placing you in darkness. Denying God denies innocence and asserts sin, producing guilt, which gives rise to sickness. Without the denial of God there can be no sin, no evil, no guilt, and no death.

The denial of death is the acceptance of eternal life. It is as simple as that. Resurrection and atonement are simply acts of accepting and extending God's Will. By being raised from the dead you become able to raise the dead. There is nothing more complicated to it.

Deny death by asserting that only immortality is real. No one can truly be sick. There is no real death. No one is really suffering. All of this can be undone because what is not life does not exist.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere."

Since change is death, and changelessness is life, notice how the ego has arranged the world so that when there is a lack of change, death seems to occur. For example if you were to stop breathing and have no change in the breath, there would be death. And yet this is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the truth. Because in truth that which never changes is alive forever, and any change indicates that an END has come.

The ego's idea of death is the idea of life. The ego's idea of life is the idea of death. What appears to be life is not alive. And what appears to be only indicated by death is eternity. The entire dream world portrays this inversion of the truth, and has expressed it in PHYSICAL FORM, as a PICTURE of the TOTAL INVERSION of reality.

Death attempts to steer you away from stillness, while "life" disrupts all stillness with its constant modifications and interruptions. Eternity is a constant state of perfectly sustained perfection forever, in which nothing changes because it is constantly perfect. Nothing happens to it, there is no sickness, decay, suffering or death. It goes on forever, because it DOESN'T change, nor does it need to change to be what it is or to last.

All things which change, from the very beginning, have the mark of death upon them. They are inherently forms of death because of the very fact they are born in a moment of the denial of what came before. The fact that "life begins" with non-existence tells you that it cannot have eternal life, nor last forever. And so from its very inception it is doomed to create illusions of life, through growth and progression and morphic alternatives, but inevitably must fail to succeed indefinitely, because it was conceived in the moment of death which we like to call "birth".

This world is back to front, inside out, and upside down. Its pictures represent an attempt to oppose the truth. Every form testifies to the opposite of what it is and thereby acts as a decoy, distraction and temptation to believe anything other than reality. Life is death, and death is believed to be the doorway to life. Cessation of movement is considered lifelessness, and yet total stillness is the fullness of eternal life.

The dream of death, the illusion of life, couldn't be more of a lie in this respect. Its signposts all point away from the truth, using images of guilt, sin, death and fear to warn you off, that if you would pursue anything beyond them, you might discover their lies and instead uncover eternal reality. Be not deceived by what this world shows to you, it was made to tempt you away from your home, not to be your home. Your home is with God, where changelessness and perfection are forever guaranteed. And where everything lives forever.

"Nothing there but shines and shines forever."

The thought system of the ego has directly produced this physical universe.

The thought system of God has directly produced heaven.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other’s sorry outcome which is Heaven’s opposite in every way."

It's not just that Heaven is "another place" that you can think about in the same way you think about Earth or this universe. Heaven THINKS DIFFERENTLY from how this world thinks, it reasons differently, it draws conclusions differently, and its logic does not operate like the ego's logic.

This world represents and is part of or inside of, the ego mind. Anything this side of the separation from God IS the ego thought system, including this universe. The ego mind's THINKING has produced this universe and all forms of matter reflect the idea of EXCLUSION.

Heaven represents and is part of or inside of, God's mind. Anything THAT side of the separation from God is the Holy Spirit's thought system, including Heaven. Heaven proceeds according to entirely different THINKING and its nature, it structure, is nothing like the ego predicts.

The two thought systems are so extremely opposite to each other, as to be nothing alike. The two "worlds" are unalike in EVERY way, and Earth being totally unlike God's nature cannot possibly have been created BY him because it is not LIKE Him at all.

The problem arises when, unfortunately, we USE the ego's thought system to attempt to look at or understand the nature of God's thought system. Extraordinary misunderstandings arise from this, because the ego's way of thinking and reasoning fundamentally *requires* seeing things in a certain way. When looking at something unlike itself, it literally cannot see it correctly without major distortions.

This is why we have to be extremely careful about the conclusions we come to about Heaven, God, Sonship, Creation etc, because in just about every case, we are USING the ego to think about it. And this has unfortunately led to a huge list of false conclusions about the nature of Heaven.

We may not realize it, but we actually THINK WITH the ego, and all of our thought processes follow ego laws and proceed according to ego rules. The way that we reason things out, the way that we "make sense" of anything, it all stays INSIDE OF the ego's thought system. When we try to use the ego to make sense of heaven, therefore, we don't actually LEAVE the ego's thought system to go TO heaven to THINK LIKE GOD, instead we look upon it from afar and make false judgements about it.

Jesus says that we need to learn to THINK LIKE GOD, and that means learning a whole different way of reasoning and thinking and concluding. A whole different way of "making sense", if we are to have any hope of comprehending WHY God acts a certain way or WHY it's possible for Him to have created individuals with free will. Or WHY He could not possibly have created this physical universe. Or HOW the nature of this world is fundamentally IMPRISONING right down to the atom.

We literally are living INSIDE the tiny mad idea, which is an idea of "separation thought" and all of our thinking follows exclusive, separating rules. These rules split things apart and make them different and pit them against each other, because it is a murderous thought system. The result of using the ego's thinking processes to evaluate God's creation is that it results in MURDER of God's creation. And yet the ego will evaluate that it has merely "made sense". When the ego makes sense of something, it makes NONSENSE.

While the Course largely focuses on USING the ego's thought system and its way of thinking, to lead you OUT of its way of thinking, this is only because it's how you DO think for the most part and so He is trying to speak our "language" and to use how WE think and reason to help us to make conclusions AGAINST the ego. But the truth remains that the way the ego thinks is fundamentally false and excluding and separating, so at some point we have to move past this to learn to think like God.

When you think like God, which is holographic INCLUSIVE logic, it becomes clear that the conclusions the ego came to about God's Creation are simply false.

"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.

The separation HAS occurred.

Denying this is an improper use of the mind.

The separation is the BELIEF, that it is possible to separate from God. This BELIEF has produced what this belief WANTS to see, which is spacetime, a world of bodies and objects. This is "the separation."

This is not ACTUAL separation because we cannot separate from God. The separation, and separation from God, are two different things.

We HAVE believed in being separate and we are now living INSIDE of that belief. The tiny mad idea has turned into a universe.

To DENY that we have done this, which actually IS something we've done, because we've HAD the thought, AND believed it - two acts which have in fact occurred in the mind and are NOT fiction, is an improper use of denial.

The mind IS dreaming of spacetime. The mind IS making a world. It IS calling out for love and for help and needs correction. It's a mis-creation, in an attempt to "create destructively", but it is still something we're "doing" nevertheless. Denying this is pointless and denies the power of the mind.

We are told in fact to ACKNOWLEDGE that we have done this, SO THAT we can thus stop being in denial, and THEN having acknowledged what we'e made, moving toward atonement in the mind to 'fix' this mental state that's causing the world.

There is no point in denying the world that we made. In fact to do so is to deny the power in the mind that makes the world. If we deny what we mis-created we are denying HOW we mis-created. It takes IMMENSE power to make planets and galaxies.

Instead, as a pathway towards awakening, we are asked to find a different way to LOOK AT what we made, in a more forgiving light, so that we can change what it means to us and how we use it. Or toward what goal. Re-purposing it is the way of TRANSLATING our experience of it.

No amount of asseting "its not real, its a dream its an illusion, it's not happening" etc is going to actually undo it. We're asked to develop a different attitude about it and to find a way to see heaven reflected in it FIRST, as a necessary step toward a HAPPY DREAM, so that our mind can be ready to stop dreaming.

Attempting to jump all the way to "its nothing, its not real" is a spiritual bypass which is trying to jump to the end condition without doing the work, without healing in the world, without performing miracles, without finding the forgiven world or the real world. And it produces a lot of level confusion.

We have to deal with where we are at and how we're going to use where we're at for a higher purpose, rather than attempting to escape off to live on a cloud in ignorance of what our mind is experiencing here and what other minds are experiencing here. People are in great need of help - that's not fictional because minds HAVE become insane.

We DO have to find a way to love the world and forgive the world and to help heal others IN ORDER TO heal ourselves, BEFORE we can wake up to the truth that "there is no world". We DO have to become miracle workers, serving in the atonement plan, BEFORE we can accept atonement fully.

There are steps to be taken in time, BEFORE we can be ready to fully embrace eternity. There is a curriculum. There are lessons to learn. God's plan does not ential you bypassing the curriculum and not living your life.

To deny God, in attempting to stop Creation/Life, you are choosing death. You want God's Life to die. To deny God is to deny what God IS, which is Life, so is an assertion that God is death.

But God Created YOU as Life, so to deny Creation/Life MUST entail you bringing an end to YOUR life as well. You cannot deny God without denying yourself. Therefore, denial of God is SUICIDE.

Since all choices to end Life are a choice for death, and since you ARE Life, and since death can only happen if you CHOOSE to deny Life, ALL DEATH IS DELIBERATE SUICIDE.

There is no such thing as people dying from 'accidents', or people dying from 'sickness', or people dying from 'attack by others', or people dying from 'acts of nature' or 'old age' or 'time', or people dying from 'unknown causes', or people dying from 'it was their time'. These are just the WAY you chose to die - the FORM of death - it has nothing to do with WHETHER you have to die.

You can ONLY die by committing suicide, which you bring about by REFUSING TO CHOOSE LIFE - which literally means, by CHOOSING DEATH. You refuse to choose Life when you refuse to accept God, and denial of God brings death because God is Life.

Death is never brought about by any other means or for any other reason than to deny God/Life.

Since YOU are the one choosing to deny God, all death is a CHOICE.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DIE.

Death is NOT inevitable.

ACIM lesson 152 - the power of decision is my own - "No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. AND NO ONE DIES WITHOUT HIS OWN CONSENT." - Jesus

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DIE.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DIE.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DIE.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DIE.

You can choose God. God is Life. You are Life. It is only when you deny your Eternal Self that you experience an ILLUSION of death, and it is NEVER more than an illusion. Death only appears to happen in a DREAM of death, which is a dream of 'what would be like if God could be denied?' - an impossible fiction.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DIE.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DIE.

YOU CAN CHOOSE TO LIVE.

Denial of Life is NOT its removal - it is a refusal to ACCEPT that LIFE IS THERE. This does not change Life or stop it, but merely HIDES it from you. Thus death is HIDING from Life, and it has no power to STOP Life.

Since you can deny Creation but cannot REMOVE Creation, and since YOU are Creation, YOU *CANNOT* DIE! You can deny yourself but you cannot die. "Death" as we are familiar with it, in the world, is nothing other than a state of denial. It is UNTRUE. It is covering up life, NOT getting rid of it.

YOU CANNOT DIE!

YOU CANNOT DIE!

YOU CANNOT DIE!

God ALREADY chose for you to live forever. All you have to do is fully accept this and remove absolutely all efforts to prevent it. Thus you will return/resurrect to ABSOLUTE LIFE and PERMANENT EXISTENCE, which cannot BE prevented no matter how much you try to deny it. "You can deny reality, but you cannot change it." - Jesus

YOU ARE IMMORTAL SPIRIT, you will live forever.

My note: I love it when everything becomes totally clear and logically consistent and can't be denied

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

When something has an end. .. just that fact alone... makes it NOT ETERNAL. Because very simply, ETERNAL means WITHOUT END! God ONLY creates that which is eternal because HE is eternal and creates in his own likeness. He can't even CONCEIVE OF anything "ending" or being "not forever." You have eternal life, because God does.

Now if you look around you at this world you made, planet Earth. Look at it. Look for a while and notice that things end. Things come and go. There are seasons. There is birth and death. Things change. There is no sign of permanence anywhere. Not even the solid rocks last forever. Not even planets and stars. It all ends. So how can we sit here and claim that this is ETERNAL? That this is ETERNITY?

Think about this also. In the linear timescale of things, planet Earth came about LONG BEFORE human beings arrived on the planet. The Earth was here before a single soul set foot on it. IF God created it, the world's condition was set up BY GOD, PRIOR to the human race. Think about that for a moment. Because it means that if there was anything going wrong in the world BEFORE human kind came along, it was GOD'S DOING, nor ours.

So take a look at 4 billion years ago. No humans to be seen anywhere on the Earth. What was happening? Well, there were volcanos erupting, causing massive lava flows and killing off all kinds of creatures who were burnt and suffocated to death or destroyed by toxic fumes. There were massive floods the likes of which we haven't seen for millennia, wiping out entire continents of "living creatures", none of whom could do anything to stop it. There were horrendous storms during which all manner of things were zapped to death. There were asteroids impacting the earth and wiping out entire civilizations of animals, dinosaurs and the like. This all was happening before facebook, FYI.

So all that stuff is GOD's DESIGN, right? That was all HIS doing. HE created it. HE put it in place. HE manipulated the weather. He forces the tides to move. By an act of God he struck down an entire continent. If God made it, God SET IT UP, God set the wheels in motion, and it had NOTHING to do with humans.

So what does that mean, it means IF God did that, God is ***EXTREMELY CRUEL***, murderous, malicious, hateful, vengeful, careless, irresponsible, destructive and deadly. Is that REALLY what you think God is like? Is that REALLY how a loving, all powerful, eternal-life giving father acts? Is that REALLY the kind of environment that He would CREATE for his children to live in? Of course it's not. If he created it, he WOULD be *extremely cruel*.

And fortunately, God is NOT cruel. God is loving, kind, gentle, considerate, compassionate, protective, empowering, equal, perfect. He does not go around making death planets or hell words. He does not manufacture suffering. Nor does he calculate the ways that innocent creatures will be made only to be later destroyed. God is not like this. God is life-sustaining, loving, nurturing, holy, peaceful, benevolent.

How can ANYONE go through this Course and come out the other side believing that God made this planet? Are you in denial? I mean... are you just turning a huge blind eye to the things that happen here? And by blind eye I do not mean christ vision. I mean actual DENIAL. It makes NO SENSE to claim that God made a world where this kind of crap happens on a daily basis.

Did you know that over 130,000 human beings DIE every day? And if God made this world, is that not God's fault? YES. He made it possible. He must want it. That's what it means if He made the world. No exceptions. He is all in, and it's not human's fault. Can we really believe this and be sane? There should not be one SINGLE death in God's plan, in God's world. Not one. Yet alone 130,000 a day. I don't know why some people are so in denial of this. Why can't we admit that this world IS VERY CRUEL and because of its cruelty IT CANNOT BE LIKE GOD?

And that perhaps, just maybe... there is ANOTHER WORLD that God DID create which is TOTALLY PERFECT? Our heavenly true natural HOME, where we belong? And perhaps the Course is right when it says we are a STRANGER here in this alien, crumbling, tired old world, which has nothing but the STAMP OF DEATH on it?

"The laws of this world go against your nature"

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state"

When will we wake up and accept that this world is not our home? That we are a fish out of water here? Just visiting, in a dream nightmare. A world which thankfully IS NOT TRUE and will end. Because it's end IS guaranteed, just as it never was begun.

"HOW WILL THE WORLD END?

Can what has no beginning really end? The world will end in an illusion, as it began."

I am grateful for the world GOD created. I am grateful that it is NOT THIS ONE. Because if it was, fucking hell we're all screwed.

Everything about this world points in the direction of death. "All its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death." It was designed to do so. Our job as beings from another world, is to demonstrate that we are not under any of these laws, all of them can be broken, and that it is possible to reconfigure the body to symbolize eternal life here in the dream. A body that shows health and vitality and life, has no scars, has no damage, is perfectly functioning, rejuvenated by the Holy Spirit, and filled with what we'll call "life". Its condition must be completely under the "control" of the mind, requiring not a single belief that there are any other external separate causes of sickness or death.

To overcome death, death MUST be a choice. And the only way to surmount death must entail the ability to choose not to produce death. To choose not to die physically. It has to be possible for the mind to have power over and be stronger than not only the body but all supposed external worldly causes, otherwise the belief remains that something "out there" can come along with an alien will and decide for you against your will that the body should die. The secret of salvation tells us we do EVERYTHING to ourselves, and therefore have the power, should we so choose, to simply choose NOT TO "do death".

The body has to respond, it has no will of its own, no decision of its own, and is ONLY an effect of the mind, not the world. It must line up and obey and correspond to mental health. The belief that the body has its own choice/mind/power to make itself sick or well, or that the world can do the same, IS the belief in death ie the belief in an external separate power that can choose FOR you (the dream choosing for you) that you shall be affected and powerless to stop it. A child of God could never be in a position to be powerless to stop such an attempted attack. God does not will that we be in a position where something can ever happen that we do not ask for. "My self is ruler of the universe" ... "nothing comes to me unbidden by myself" .... "what I want to happen I receive" .... "what I do not want does not occur" etc.

It's a position of tremendous empowerment and causality. Mastery over the world, the body, sickness and death. A living demonstration of life and holiness - wholeness, which is health. Taking a hold of a body of this world, from a vantage point of another world, with a power not of this world, and using it as a tool, a window, through which the light of heaven can extend and shine with healing and love into this world, causing this bodily figure to be animated like a puppet via supernatural power that breaks and defies all the laws of the world. Spirit is in charge, not the dream world. The primary laws of the Kingdom overthrow the secondary laws of spacetime. All laws of physics can be broken by the Spirit. "There is nothing my holiness cannot do." "What the holy spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

Death ultimately is learned to be not even a threat, not even a thing, not even a possibility, to one who recognizes that the only way to die is to choose to do so. "You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No one dies without their own consent" "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself." Ultimately the teaching is that we are IMMORTAL, invulnerable, unassailable, invincible, unlimited beings. Any testifying of any other kind can only result when we, ourselves, consent to misuse our free will to weave what must be lies and illusions and fictions, trying to prove that we are not immortal. "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt." You cannot be hurt if you are immortal.

The body is used by a twisted mind to pretend it is not immortal, to put on a show and to try to convince itself and others that it can die. It cannot. "You are immortal and you cannot die." When we recognize the futility and pointlessness of trying to die when we never can, we'll stop MAKING it happen, and will simply choose to live eternally. The supernatural power of God will protect us and make sickness and death impossible. Nothing can happen against our will. Not even death. There are no "accidents" or "environmental influences" or "acts of nature" or "just old age" creeping in like some kind of unwanted invader. There is only our own mind and what it is doing to itself. When it chooses never again to die, it will make death impossible and raise the dead. "Swear not to die you holy son of God, you've made a bargain that you cannot keep" .... you cannot die, you cannot succeed at it, it does not work, you carry on. You already have eternal life.

Recently I've been noticing a changed feeling inside. It feels like some kind of grievance has been forgiven, and now there is less desire to be at war. It feels like a backing down, dropping weapons, stepping attack and being less interested in separating off.

The best that separating or fighting can accomplish is some fake victory, which leaves you in prison separated off from others and alone. It's a standoff or a stalemate. There is nothing gained there because you lose by winning, and taking sides no longer works.

I feel like somehow there is a gradual closing up of some kind of gap. The rift in the mind is the split mind, which is reinforced by anger and projection of guilt. I see more clearly that these acts increase my separateness, and separateness is the only problem.

Being separate just leads to being separated off, alone, isolated, weakened, licking wounds and plotting revenge. It's not a state of trust. It seems to be becoming more obvious that I should just surrender and let go and stop fighting altogether. That fighting doesn't ever make me win.

In recognition that I can only attack myself, and can only separate myself off, and can only split my own mind, I just have less desire to do so. And there is less need to do so as guilts are undone and are healed away by forgiveness. With forgiveness the woulds are closed up and they leave no scars behind. And what once was sore and sorry and an ancient self-hatred has turned into a present self-love.

Perhaps we need to lay down our weapons and stop the war with ourselves, if we want to be at peace. It isn't anyone else but me that I make to suffer and I can be attacked by nothing but my own thoughts of being separate.

"And those who serve the lord of death have come to worship in a separated world, each with his tiny spear and rusted sword, to keep his ancient promises to die."

"The seeming solace of illusions' gifts are now his armor, and the sword he holds to save himself from waking."

"Now is escape impossible until you see you have responded to your own interpretation, which you have projected on an outside world. Let this grim sword be taken from you now. There is no death. This sword does not exist."

"Returning anger, in whatever form, will drop the heavy curtain once again, and the belief that peace cannot exist will certainly return. War is again accepted as the one reality. Now must you once again lay down your sword, although you will not recognize that you have picked it up again."

"Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head."

"The sword of judgment is the weapon which you give to the illusion of yourself, that it may fight to keep the space that holds your brother off unoccupied by love. Yet while you hold this sword you MUST perceive the body as YOURSELF, for you are bound to separation from the sight of him who holds the mirror to another view of what HE is, and thus what YOU must be."

"Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness."

"specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them, and makes them enemies."

"Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing, and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence."

"How long, oh Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys? How soon will you be ready to come home? Perhaps today? There is no sin. Creation is unchanged. Would you still hold return to Heaven back? How long, oh holy Son of God, how long?"

Murder, death and suicide are not particularly pleasant topics. But they are an important part of the teachings of ACIM.

The ego's thought system of separation claims that you can do something to another without experiencing any effects. This is due to the separation of cause and effect, which also means, separation of Father (cause) and Son (effect). Another way of putting this is getting away with murder. As Jesus says in the Course, "What is not love is murder."

Following separation from God, "sin" was the original idea of murdering God. It was as if to say, you as the Son of God successfully attacked God, affected Him 100%, have destroyed Him, produced irreversible consequences, and now there is absolutely NO HOPE of ever being forgiven.

Sin is an attempt to completely oppose forgiveness and to establish that you MUST be guilty and punished for your sin. Your sin was so black and white, so terrible, so murderous of an idea, that there is just no way it will be undone or forgiven. You seem to remain, but God is dead. And now you might as well die.

This left you in a terrible state of mind where you saw no hope, no way home, no possibility of healing, and that you basically might as well just die. All justification for living or carrying on or staying alive was blotted out. Death became your ONLY option after that. All dreams of sin DEMAND death and lead to death.

Now, you might think this is just theory. But think about this some more. How many people have died in bodies? How many people commit obvious suicide because they can see no hope and believe they deserve to die? And how many people who die from all other methods or reasons are also committing suicide because, somewhere deep inside of them, they believe they murdered God?

Within the dream, the belief in ego IS a belief in murder. Jesus tells us that all of our ego thoughts are murderous regardless of their form or severity. A little annoyance is as murderous as outright rage. All thoughts of separation are attempts to murder. All ways that we find someone else guilty while we seem innocent is a state of murder.

Billions of people are walking this earth with a DEATH WISH. They believe, somewhere in their unconscious mind, that they *deserve to die* because they believe they REALLY DID sin against God - that they really did kill Him. Sooner or later their own unconscious belief that they deserve to die is going to override all others and enforce their punishment.

The "inevitability" of death - this notion that everyone dies and there's no escape, is merely symptomatic of this deeply protected, hidden, secret sin, which everyone is carrying around in their mind. It's buried behind layers of denial and unconsciousness, but it's there. It makes people kill themselves! It ultimately is the ONLY reason, and justification, for why anyone would ever deserve to die, and why anyone would arrange for this to happen to them.

Jesus teaches us, ALL death is suicide. Regardless of how it happens or how long it takes or who does it to whom, it is all suicide. It is all because we have this belief in "real sin" in our mind somewhere. If it is unchecked and unhealed and unforgiven, death is likely going to result.

It is in a way very sad to think of this, but, billions of people keep destroying themselves because they don't realize they have hidden hates and secret sins. They believe they've gotten rid of God and ended up in this stupid world just to hate a while, wither and die. Jesus isn't joking when He says that. This is what most of us are doing here.

If you want eternal life, if you want to LIVE, you're going to have to weed out of your mind every ounce of a belief that you really sinned. Every part of the ego's thought system of death has to go. Every way that you separate out what applies to you from what applies to others, must end. While you continue to use ego and believe ego and keep separation alive, you are continuing to keep the murderous intent of sin against God. And it will justify your death.

I don't mean for this to be guilt inducing or frightening either. I don't mean to "make it real" by talking about it. But if we don't talk about it, people go through the illusory experience of dying, unnecessarily. God wants us to live! God wants us to recognize we are forgiven and DID NOT ACTUALLY KILL GOD. He wants us to see that we were just mistaken for believing we actually pulled this off. We did not really sin, it had no effects, and God is just fine. And he's happy with us, and wants us to be with him in love. He loves us.

For many people, this is no joke. Most will continue to choose to die because they don't believe they are worthy of living. Many will die because they give up the will to live. Many will die because they secretly think they deserve it. Many will die because they have not forgiven themselves for the belief in separation from God. It is an epidemic of suicide.

Then there are people "in the world" who commit what seem to be more obvious acts of murder. They kill people to symbolize what they did to God, then proceed to kill themselves because they can see no hope of escaping the wrath of sin. It is the same dynamic of suicide that all belief in sin produces.

This is not God's will. It is God's will that we have eternal life and never suffer and never die. It is God's will that we be forever happy and innocent and holy. It is God's will that we are immortal and invulnerable and can never be upset or hurt. It is God's will that we LIVE FOREVER. We deserve it, we are worthy of it, God wants it for us, and we need to want it for ourselves. This is important. We have to get rid of this belief in real sin. It is destroying us.

Ultimately this whole thing is illusion. No-one can die, nothing is really happening, and there is no sin. But if you don't want to keep having illusory experiences of death and hopelessness, then forgiveness is in order. "Forgiveness is the way out of hell for you." Recognizing that sin is not true is all it takes. You are not a murderer. You are the innocent child of God.

Miracle working entails the use of PRAYER. "Prayer is the medium of miracles." "Through prayer love is received. Through miracles love is expressed."

Miracles are NOT a shift in perception. The only way perception is involved is that perception must be loving (as close to true perception as possible), and fear must be suspended. "Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles." Wholeness of perception is not a shift. It is miracle mindedness, resting on forgiveness, which sees with MAXIMAL love.

Miracles, in a course in miracles, are expressive acts of power which can heal others. And they are performed through PRAYER. However, this doesn’t mean you have to pray using words. God does not understand words. Prayers are requests made in your HEART, in awareness of LOVE. Love is essential for miracle working. Your heart requests and receives and experiences, in certainty and decisiveness.

Some parts of ACIM speak specifically to "how to perform miracles." Here is one of them:

21. What Is the Role of Words in Healing?

M-21.1. Strictly speaking, words play no part at all in healing. 2 The motivating factor is prayer, or asking. 3 What you ask for you receive. 4 But this refers to the prayer of the heart, not to the words you use in praying. 5 Sometimes the words and the prayer are contradictory; sometimes they agree. 6 It does not matter. 7 God does not understand words, for they were made by separated minds to keep them in the illusion of separation. 8 Words can be helpful, particularly for the beginner, in helping concentration and facilitating the exclusion, or at least the control, of extraneous thoughts. 9 Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. 10 They are thus twice removed from reality.

M-21.2. As symbols, words have quite specific references. 2 Even when they seem most abstract, the picture that comes to mind is apt to be very concrete. 3 Unless a specific referent does occur to the mind in conjunction with the word, the word has little or no practical meaning, and thus cannot help the healing process. 4 The prayer of the heart does not really ask for concrete things. 5 It always requests some kind of experience, the specific things asked for being the bringers of the desired experience in the opinion of the asker. 6 The words, then, are symbols for the things asked for, but the things themselves but stand for the experiences that are hoped for.

M-21.3. The prayer for things of this world will bring experiences of this world. 2 If the prayer of the heart asks for this, this will be given because this will be received. 3 It is impossible that the prayer of the heart remain unanswered in the perception of the one who asks. 4 If he asks for the impossible, if he wants what does not exist or seeks for illusions in his heart, all this becomes his own. 5 The power of his decision offers it to him as he requests. 6 Herein lie hell and Heaven. 7 The sleeping Son of God has but this power left to him. 8 It is enough. 9 His words do not matter. 10 Only the Word of God has any meaning, because it symbolizes that which has no human symbols at all. 11 The Holy Spirit alone understands what this Word stands for. 12 And this, too, is enough.

M-21.4. Is the teacher of God, then, to avoid the use of words in his teaching? 2 No, indeed! 3 There are many who must be reached through words, being as yet unable to hear in silence. 4 The teacher of God must, however, learn to use words in a new way. 5 Gradually, he learns how to let his words be chosen for him by ceasing to decide for himself what he will say. 6 This process is merely a special case of the lesson in the workbook that says, "I will step back and let Him lead the way." 7 The teacher of God accepts the words which are offered him, and gives as he receives. 8 He does not control the direction of his speaking. 9 He listens and hears and speaks.

M-21.5. A major hindrance in this aspect of his learning is the teacher of God's fear about the validity of what he hears. 2 And what he hears may indeed be quite startling. 3 It may also seem to be quite irrelevant to the presented problem as he perceives it, and may, in fact, confront the teacher with a situation that appears to be very embarrassing to him. 4 All these are judgments that have no value. 5 They are his own, coming from a shabby self-perception which he would leave behind. 6 Judge not the words that come to you, but offer them in confidence. 7 They are far wiser than your own. 8 God's teachers have God's Word behind their symbols. 9 And He Himself gives to the words they use the power of His Spirit, raising them from meaningless symbols to the Call of Heaven itself.

Thoughts are attempts to create. They are attempts to give and express. They produce effects. They are not passive or neutral. A negative attacking thought is an attempt to use thought for destructive purposes. That means to "mis-create" or to attempt to "create destruction" or to "not create", ie to create a lack of love (an emptiness/sin).

Let's say that expression/extension is life, and is a matter of thought. As you express anything, you are creating or miscreating. Either way you are producing an effect. Mind, as it thinks, is applying itself. It actually causes something to happen.

When we having loving thoughts, the thoughts we think with God, they have a miraculous healing power because they are thoughts of wholeness, holiness, innocence and harmlessness. They are creative thoughts. They are miracles with the power to affect others.

When we having attack thoughts, thoughts thought with "the ego" or "lacking God", lacking life, we are thinking destructively and are attempting to bring about a less-than-creative outcome. This has an effect just as much as holy thoughts, except holy thoughts are far stronger because innocence is strength.

A thought you have of someone is not just a separated-off commentary, it is an expression and a transmission. It is a creative act. You are trying to give something to them and send it to them. And there are no private thoughts, so they will receive it. This is also how people perform "psychic attack" by thinking negatively or fearfully of others.

Jesus indeed even goes on to say that we curse others through what we might call a "spell", which is an attempt to reinforce the ego beliefs others have already chosen, which further imprisons them. Your thoughts are capable of imprisoning others just as much as setting them free and healing them.

Perhaps we don't want to admit that thought has such a power or influence because we are really afraid of thought and of the responsibility which comes with "thinking well" of ourselves and others. And the fact that this is also the secret of salvation. The ego interprets responsible thinking as a reason for guilt and blame.

The thoughts we have of others aren't merely mental chatter, or a conversation. They are creative acts. You give people your thoughts. You communicate them to them, sharing the thought with them, to either strengthen or weaken them.

If you have high uplifting thoughts of others, you resurrect them with your mind. If you have fearful victimized concerned guilty thoughts about others, you imprison them and attack them. If you feel lovingly toward them to are thinking them into health. Thoughts are powerful, they are not idle.

"If I did not think I would not exist, because life is thought."

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

"ALL thinking produces form at some level. The reason why people are afraid of ESP, and so often react against it, is because they KNOW that thought can hurt them."

"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers"

"And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys"

"It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don't believe it.

People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them." "I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thinking."

""Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains."

"The truth is that you ARE responsible for what you THINK, because it is only at this level that you CAN exercise choice."

"You WOULD be responsible for the effects of all your wrong thinking IF IT COULD NOT BE UNDONE."

"It is pointless to believe that controlling the outcome of mis-Thought can result in real healing. When you are fearful, you have willed wrongly."

A Course in Miracles teaches:

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom."

"Love did not create the body."

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate parts of his Self from other parts."

"The body will not stay."

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love."

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there."

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea."

"Love's answer is inevitable. It will come, because you came WITHOUT the body, and interposed no barriers which would INTERFERE with its glad coming."

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

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

"When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that YOU will last forever"

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom."

"The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

"To be of one mind is meaningful, but to be of one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body IS meaningless. "

"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it. "

"Grace is not given to a BODY, but to a MIND."

"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but NEVER experienced just now."

"The ego is idolatry; the sign of limited and separated self, born in a body, doomed to suffer and to end its life in death."

"You can escape the body if you choose."

"The Christ in you inhabits NOT a body. Yet He IS in you. And thus MUST it be that YOU are not within a body."

"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed!"

"A mind and body cannot both exist."

"If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

"You CANNOT make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will NEVER be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love's condemnation."

"The special relationship is a device for limiting Your self to a body, and for limiting your perception of others to THEIRS."

"Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness."

"The body does not really exist, except as a learning device for the mind"

"It offers nothing, and does not exist."

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person."

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something."

"I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power of the mind, by uniting MY will with that of my Creator, which naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose."

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness."

"I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand."

"Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does. And then-and then-I cannot speak of that. A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death."

In this world, which is 100% the effect of dreaming, there is an ILLUSION of cause and effect.

To recognize how it is an illusion, consider how children play "make-believe" with toys.

1) There is an empty scene.

2) The child grabs his toy car, imagining that it is a real car.

3) He makes car sounds appear, "broom broom" to try to add life to the car

4) He moves the car along to pretend that it is driving by itself

5) He wants to increase the fun so puts a plastic tree in the scene

6) He drives the car toward the tree and just at the point where it's supposed to hit the tree, he grabs the tree and whisks it away up in the air, to simulate being hit by the car

He moved the car, he "gave life" to the car, animated it, controlled it. He moved the tree, "gave life" to the tree, animated it, controlled it. He made the ILLUSION that the car bumped the tree up into the air.

If viewed from within the fantasy, it SEEMS as if a real car causes a real tree to be damaged.

Viewed from outside the fantasy, we see that ONE CAUSE (the child/son of God), is responsible for everything that happens. He is responsible for the car and the tree and everything that both of them show.

The car could not move on its own. The tree could not move on its own. The care DOES NOT cause the tree to move! HIS MIND caused them to seem to produce effects. HIS MIND *pretended* that the car was "a cause" and that the tree was "at the effect" of the car.

We see this stuff happen from inside the dream, inside the fantasy play of the Son of God, and we think, that car really "caused" that damage to the tree, or, that food I ate caused my upset stomach, or, that person hitting me caused a bruise, or, throwing the ball at the window caused the window to break.

ITS NOT TRUE. This is an illusion. An illusion of simultaneous effects pretending to be causes.

When we are in touch with who the dreamer is, who the CAUSE is, the ILLUSION of cause and effect inside the fantasy can be shown to be an illusion. Miracles DEMONSTRATE this.

Miracles are acts by the ONE CAUSE of the entire dream content, to rearrange or change the effects in the dream, ie the objects or people or whatever else is showing up. Because IT is responsible for everything that moves, all side-effects, all consequences, how everything SEEMS to be affected by everything else, when it decides to BREAK the illusion of cause and effect, demonstrating that IT is the only cause and all cause and effects are actually EFFECTS, that's how the miracle defies the laws of the ego.

If the Son of God decides, hey, when that car hits that tree, nothing is going to happen, and the tree shall not have any damage put into it, then SO BE IT... the car will not damage the tree.

If the Son of God decides, hey, when I put that poison into the body, I will not put an effect of sickness into the body, then SO BE IT, the body will not be sick.

If the Son of God decides, hey, when I make that one body throw that one ball towards that window, I will not allow that window to break, SO BE IT, the window will not break.

Those witnessing these things will be probably astonished to see that the "laws" of cause-effect, the EGO's illusory laws, HAVE NOT WORKED. They did not apply. Something OVERRODE THEM. Some higher power somehow managed to manipulate THE LAWS THEMSELVES, to produce a result which "shouldn't be possible".

Illusions of "causes" in this world are entirely that, illusions. The world has NO causes in it, and it does nothing. That's because it is NOT ALIVE. And that's also because it is only an EFFECT of dreaming. All "life forms" here are NOT ALIVE. They are illusions of separate causes. All bodies are fictional. All objects are make-believe. The way they all interact is PRETEND.

Miracles completely bypass the illusion of horizontal/linear cause and effect. They demonstrate that these laws are NOT TRUE, and this is profoundly educational if you witness such a miracle. It PROVES that what you thought was true of this world, IS NOT TRUE. No longer will you be able to believe that "this causes that", because it was clearly demonstrated that this is NOT THE CASE.

Therefore, anything which you think has been caused by something happening in the world, can easily be reversed, changed, undone, or kept, entirely at the will of the mind. There is nothing that cannot be undone. There is nothing that cannot be reversed or healed. There is no sickness nor death which can prevent this higher-level mind from PROVING that it can be EASILY UNDONE. And Jesus demonstrated this at the resurrection.

Death has NO POWER OVER YOU because you literally cannot and will not MAKE DEATH HAPPEN unless you choose to do so, and if you choose that, you will be doing it to yourself, and NOT BECAUSE of any causes in the world whatsoever. You will be pulling all the strings, manipulating all the circumstances, putting all the sickness into your body, adding all the effects, and faking your own death, all deliberately and intentionally. Nothing happens to you against your will!

This is why death is optional and is always a choice. No-one dies without their own consent. No-one needs to die or suffer or be sick or upset or afraid or damaged or hurt in any way.

USE THE MIRACLES!

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. "

"The world you see has nothing to do with reality. "

"The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. " ... This is NOT a statement about how you perceive what's out there.... it's telling you, YOU PUT THE STUFF OUT THERE with your mind. You put that car there. You put that house there. You put those effects there! It Is WHAT YOU GAVE!

"There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad. "

"On confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. "

"Projection makes perception. The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you." ...... !!!!! This actually means that YOU PUT THE WORLD OUT THERE PHYSICALLY! You projected it from your higher-level mind! This is a statement about the Son of God, projecting the universe, literally, it is NOT to do with "how you look at the world"!! You MADE IT, and it can be CHANGED BY YOUR WILL!

Here is today's bombshell of truth.

The entire physical universe is a game, designed by the ego, which is impossible to win. Anyone who plays the game will die. Period.

The game has only one rule. If you believe in the game and try to play it, you will die. There is no way to play it and win.

If you think that you can play the game in some kind of special way, using some kind of special abilities or skills or knowledge or workarounds or talents or aptitude or cleverness or creativity or whatever, you will become delusional, and you will die.

If you think you can play the game in a certain way by taking sides with certain apparent powers, by teaming up with those who seem to be winning, by avoiding certain obstacles or traps, by being at war with enemies and getting rid of them, by being very very careful not to have anything bad happen to you, or any other strategy whatsoever, ALL of those strategies WILL NOT WORK, and you will die.

If you think you can outsmart the game and section off a small part of the environment to protect and defend you, or that having certain behaviors will ensure your safety, or that wearing certain clothes or embarking on certain activities will change your chances, you are delusional, and you will die.

The instruction manual for the ego's game of "life and death", which has a subheading "actually, its just death", reads: "all players will die." That's it. At least it doesn't take 5 hours to learn like some games.

The ego's primary game is a game of separation. It is a game of emphasizing differences. It is a game of attempting to separate out one thing from another in as intense and believable a way as possible. It does not care whatsoever what the qualities of each part are, so long as they seem separate.

The game's primary function is temptation. It is designed to tempt you to believe that the appearance of difference or separation between things is real. If you fall for it, you fall for the trap, and you will die. If you look at two parts of the environment and you find yourself siding with or against either of them, not recognizing that they are BOTH PART OF THE SAME GAME, you will fail, and you will die. The instant you feel sorry for some part, or are against another part, or put one part on a pedestal, or buy into any kind of SPECIALNESS, you will die.

The devious, diabolical fact of the game is, anyone who falls for the illusion of difference and separation WILL SUFFER AND DIE, because they have been tricked into making themselves LESS THAN WHOLE, and therefore have diminished who and what they are, and this is DEATH.

So within the ego's game, it does not matter AT ALL, in any state of war and conflict, who wins or loses, who is right or wrong, good or bad, innocent or guilty, or any of it. If you buy into the belief that the good/innocent/righteous people are correct and the bad/wrong/guilty people are not, YOU FELL FOR IT HOOK LINE AND SINKER AND YOU WILL DIE.

The ego itself is the puppet master which disguises itself in the costume and form of every single thing which shows up in the game. It is secretly the identity behind every individual, every form, every event which happens, and every illusion of difference. It will play both sides against each other, playing itself against itself. It will take the role of savior and fixer and helper and carer and lover JUST SO THAT it can be victimized by someone else, SO THAT you will buy into the illusion that the other person was the sinner and not this one. AND THEN YOU WILL DIE, because you failed the test.

Illusions of better/worse, right/wrong, good/bad, more spiritual/less spiritual, more ego/less ego, are TRAPS. Illusions of people who seem innocent but who are still vulnerable, are traps. Illusions of people suffering and being sick against their will are traps. Illusions of bad things happening are traps. Illusions of unwanted terrible weather events are traps. Illusions of acts of nature, God's wrath, war, disagreement of all kinds, marital tension, sexual tension, hate, violence, condemnation, judgementalism, taking sides in a sports match, liking someone more than another, loving someone more than another, IS A TRAP, AND YOU WILL DIE.

This entire world, everything you see in the world, all people, all objects, all places, all events, all circumstances, all situations, all stories, are all DOOMED to condemn you to death IF you buy into them whatsoever.

No-one wins here. No-one actually pulls off a win, which would be a win against God. No-one achieves the FICTION of getting away with murder, being able to do something to someone else without receiving the effects, being able to have someone else make you die against your will, or suffering without choosing it. There are no winners in any argument or war. To believe in the war itself IS LOSS. To believe in enemies at all MAKES YOU WEAK. To side with the little victims MAKES YOU SUFFER. You cannot escape the game this way. You cannot just shift yourself into one safe-seeming corner of life where you cower and hope that all the bad shit doesn't come your way.

There is only one way to escape the game, one way to overcome its rules, and only one way to play it correctly to your advantage. The ONLY advantage is NOT TO PLAY IT AT ALL. This is what you have to learn. You have to see all illusions for what they are, tools for separation. This includes all "life forms" (death forms) in this world. They are all forms of separation, forms of error, forms of sin. They are not holy. That they appear at all, and that you believe you really see them, is your choice to die.

This entire world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. There is NO PART OF IT which is not an attempt to kill you. Every trap will present itself and you will fall for all of them until you learn to overlook them all and attain Atonement/forgiveness. The world is not escaped by death, or by winning, or by making your best effort to avoid death, or by trying to bend the rules, or by thinking you're so great that you can go outside the lines and succeed on your own terms. YOU WILL FAIL, GUARANTEED, and you will die. The world - the entire ego's game - is only escaped by TRUTH.

Only truth will set you free. Only truth will show you the ego's game in plain sight, with all its diabolical devious designs and all of its traps and purposes and attempts to tempt you into it. Only the truth will allow you to see in the true light, the true nature of the temptation. Only the truth will keep you protected and safe. Only the truth will guide you out of the dream of death. Only the truth will allow you to live forever.

The world, Earth, this universe, was made as an EXACT LOGICAL OPPOSITE to God's Kingdom. It was made on purpose to OPPOSE every possible quality of God's nature, so as to ATTACK God's nature and suggest that since this world is ABSENT of God's nature, God is absent here entirely. And so the world proclaims that God and His son have been crucified, and the world has come to replace immortal reality with a dream of death.

God's Kingdom says, "God is everywhere."

Spacetime says, "God is nowhere."

God's Kingdom says, "Everything is everything."

Spacetime says, "Nothing is everything and everything is nothing."

God's Kingdom says, "Everything is shared."

Spacetime says, "Nothing is shared, everything is separate."

God's Kingdom says, "Everything is always the same."

Spacetime says, "Nothing is ever the same."

God's Kingdom says, "Everything is equal."

Spacetime says, "Nothing is equal, everything is different."

God's Kingdom says, "What existed still exists and exists forever."

Spacetime says, "What used to exist no longer exists and nothing will continue to exist."

God's Kingdom says, "All things are fully everything."

Spacetime says, "Nothing is fully anything."

God's Kingdom says, "Every part is whole and holy."

Spacetime says, "Every part is unwhole, a-part and partial."

God's Kingdom says, "All of God is in all places at once."

Spacetime says, "None of God is in any place ever."

God's Kingdom says, "Everything has eternal life."

Spacetime says, "Nothing lives forever."

God's Kingdom says, "Nothing can be threatened."

Spacetime says, "Everything can be threatened."

God's Kingdom says, "Everything is permanent."

Spacetime says, "Nothing is permanent."

God's Kingdom says, "Everything exists forever."

Spacetime says, "Everything is nothing."

God's Kingdom says, "Self is accepted and loved."

Spacetime says, "Self is denied and hated."

God's Kingdom says, "All things must live forever."

Spacetime says, "All things are dead."

And so you can see that in EVERY way imaginable, the properties and qualities of God's reality were utterly OPPOSED in the making of space and time. Both space and time were ATTACKS on God's nature. They were assertions of a world UN LIKE GOD and not of Him, against His will and made to sin.

Even death is built into spacetime because of how time asserts "nothing lives forever" and "whatever exists will not always exist", in its protest against eternal life. In EVERY WAY, Earth, being fundamentally DEPENDENT ON and MADE WITHIN spacetime, is HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE. It was made to attack God and His Kingdom. And yet it is nothing because there is no world.

Earth is an ILLUSION OF A WORLD, opposite in its NATURE to Heaven in every way. It denies its own existence and contradicts itself. The planet is a lie.

----

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"This is the "natural" condition of the separation, and those who learn that it is not natural at all seem to be the unnatural ones. For this world is the opposite of Heaven, being made to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as union. Here, where the illusion of love is accepted in love's place, love is perceived as separation and exclusion."

"The world is false perception. 2 It is born of error, and it has not left its source."

"The world was made as an attack on God."

"Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."

"This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"If this were the real world, God would be cruel."

"It is a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which means there is no time."

"They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant"

"For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

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

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death."

"Only the creations of Light are real."

"Like all aspects of the belief in space and time, it is temporary."

"This produces what seems to be a wall of flesh around the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death"

"Acts were not necessary before the separation, because belief in space and time did not exist. 5 It was only after the separation that the Atonement and the conditions necessary for its fulfillment were planned."

"The Atonement was built into the space-time belief to set a limit on the need for the belief itself, and ultimately to make learning complete."

"So do the parts of God's Son gradually join in time, and with each joining is the end of timebrought nearer."

"The Holy Spirit stands at the end of time, where you must be because He is with you."

"The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless."

"Today the light has come. And you will see the world that has been promised you since time began, and in which is the end of time ensured."

"Time is a trick, a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic"

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end.

The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

"Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct. Nor at the beginning stages of their functioning as teachers of God, have they yet acquired the deeper characteristics that will establish them as what they are."

Seems to me that the biggest influence on what anyone sees in ACIM, how they relate to it, what they think it's saying, what's important, is PERSONALITY. We all seem to filter it through our human ego personalities.

I've noticed this over and over again. A highly intellectual person has a very different 'view' of the course and how to "do it" than someone who is much more emotional, for example. And there are emotional people who struggle with the metaphysics. And people who get the metaphysics and are emotionally cold.

Some people are very intense about the course, others more laid back. Some are very open minded, others more closed off. Some are highly conservative, others very liberal. Some like the emphasis non-duality views, others find them to be missing something major. Some feel very aligned with the earth and interpret the course as affirming their love of the earth, while others see the world as nothing and want to get the hell out of here. And all of these attitudes were in place BEFORE anyone started the course.

It seems that the personality remains largely unchanged throughout our practice, and is more or less the same after many years of doing the course. And this personality acts like a huge filter, a flavouring, which massively influences preferences, what we resonate with, what seems to feel right to us, etc.

In the case of the course itself, the book, this results in a wide range of disagreements about what it is, what it says, what it means, how to do it etc. Because the course itself remains fixed and thus people's personalities project onto it.

In the case of our lives it's different, because each person's curriculum is very personalised and individualises to suit what their needs are, what their path is, what their background is, what their personality does to relate to things.

The curriculum and what is written in the book are somewhat different things, although leading to the same goal. Our life lessons are highly varied and personal. In that way, what one person needs is highly different to another, and this can also extend to each person USING the course different, seeing different things in it, emphasising different parts of it.

I've noticed how different personalities will tend to relate to certain aspects of the teachings and ignore others, gravitating towards parts that speak to them. This is because of the personality filter.

I'm not sure what we can do to ignore or rise above the personality, it has a strong influence on everything we do. Perhaps in the more advanced stages we are able to see past it and be more unified in our outlook. But it certainly is a very very strong flavouring of our whole experience.

What thus works for one person doesn't work for another, what one person tends to focus on in the course may be very very different to another. Some get heavily into analysis, some into feeling, some into practical everyday applications, some into high lofty abstract theories, etc.

And typically we all defend our viewpoints and opinions, because it's a reflection of our personality. And we all do a pretty poor job of being outside outside our own personality as well.

People gravitate to certain personalities as well, in terms of what videos they will watch, what posts they will read, who they'll agree with, what groups they'll join, whose version of the course they'll listen to, etc. And certain personalities which are more charismatic or outspoken or intense or talkative tend to become content creators and teachers and have followings, and then their personalities become worshipped.

In all my time with this I've rarely seen ANYONE really change their general core attitude about the course, regardless of any amount of attempted persuasion. Because most people are simply using the personality as guidance.

People who have held a general belief and attitude 10 years ago are still holding it now. How they speak to people has hardly changed. Which parts of the course they think affirm their view have not changed. It's all very locked in. And because everyone is so locked into the personality it gives rise to a lot of conflict.

We need to find a way to transcend the individual differences and personal attributes and look outside of our ego selves to see a broader more inclusive picture.

At times I get this sense that when "life lessons" come along, they are not so much "optional lessons" or just painfully difficult trails and struggles,, but rather, that situations and circumstances happen "on purpose" as a kind of "conditioning". A kind of reprogramming.

You are exposed to these conditions and the conditions change you. Rather than that, like, you have to learn by making decisions and picking up facts and figuring something out mentally. You kind of inevitably end up learning something almost as if the situation "forced" you to. But of course, you have free will still.

It seems at times these lessons are more like... corrections... in the form of three dimensional spatial scenarios and interactions and happenings .... as if, some larger being is putting stuff in front of us that it knows will change us in a certain direction. That it is in fact, a form of healing? That you can't really fail to "learn the lesson", you just "go through it" and come out the other side changed.

It seems also that whenever Holy Spirit tells me some difficult situation is a lesson, before I would've thought of that as annoying as hell, and confused about what I have to learn. But lately when He says this, I almost get that this is a clue telling me "it is educating you" "it is correcting you" "it is steering you" "it is prompting you to change your mind in a good way"... almost "it's happening to you, choose God".

Like, this situation and your way of dealing with it and so on WILL lead to you discovering new things and developing more trust and opening up to new truths. Sometimes when I get through a lesson I might've learned something new about working miracles or had some deep insight or it produced a major catharsis or something.... and so when the lesson is "happening", I might more easily consider, "somehow, this is leading to growth and making me better off".

Like, the lesson is a "nudge in the right direction" regardless of how it appears, and you always come out the other end "better off". Because what I see and know now versus what I didn't know at the beginning of a recent "trial" I could never have imagined would be the outcome or insights gained as a result of going through the difficulties.

You could almost think of life situations as little "scenarios", little holographic 3D classrooms, into which you enter and are exposed to, and the classroom itself molds and shapes you and steers you in a certain direction. And generally speaking you will learn whatever you are ready to learn, freely, while passing "through" that chamber of conversion.

It really reminds me of the dream I had just recently where I was going through all kinds of trials, obstacles, escape acts, problems and people chasing after me, running through different rooms and stuff, ending up in an open area where the "host" of a game show (Holy Spirit) showed up as this woman... who asked, "what is it that is so valuable to you that you would be willing to go through all this to attain it"? And the instant answer in my mind was HOME... Heaven... I would be willing go through all these trials and life events IF it would in the very long term picture actually POINT me in the direction of home.

This also ties in with what I've heard about writing our life scripts before we incarnate... we literally choose to go through various things, those who are to meet will meet, we choose our family and major life events etc, even our enemies and people we will clash with. Even our serious illnesses and accidents etc. Even when we are likely to "die" ie leave the classroom. And then we come in and "go through it all" like it's a real "pain in the ass you wish wasn't happening", but in the big picture, somehow, using these difficult scenarios as a way to guide us home to love.

And the only reason the life events SEEM like trials, or difficult, or stressful, or upsetting etc.. is because of our ego. Our egotism and "what we need to learn" or unlearn is what makes the situations into a challenge. It's why we sort of "need" these lessons. So that we can move closer to love and way from ego choices. To that we will will surrender. And sometimes the lessons are so annoyingly fucked up that the only thing you are left able to do is surrender and give up and let go. And that's a good thing. lol

This makes me think of this...

"W-pI.135.18. What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? 2 Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. 3 But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. 4 While you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life."

and

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face, Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again." He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created alters unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you."

WHAT IS SIN?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Many course students believe that the physical world is a kind of heaven-in-disguise, but simply hidden behind their mistaken perceptions. It's as if to say, once they purify their mind of false perceptions, they will see it 'how God intended it' and that this is the same thing as being in heaven.

If you are setting out with the belief that the physical world is reality, and especially if you believe God made it, then that background acts as a 'context' in which you read all of the rest of the Course. There is so much in the course written about undoing false perceptions and becoming able to see the real world or forgiven world etc, that it's possible to read into that to mean the physical world is reality.

For example, the course does say things like.... you must undo your false perceptions.... your false perceptions are clouding your perception of reality.... once you undo false perceptions you will see clearly.... then you'll see you brother as Christ and will see the beautiful forgiven/real world.... etc.... and there isn't specifically anything in those 'pieces' of the Course - if taken out of its total context - to challenge the notion that the physical world is real. So that can lead you to believe that this fundamental idea that the world exists goes unchallenged by the Course.

Another example is that people heavily believe they are bodies. They read things about how they should just accept the world 'as it is' and change their mind, and this leads to this kind of 'separation' between the mind and body. i.e., that we should let the body do whatever because its not real (a level confusion) and we should let the world do whatever because it's not real (a level confusion). And that's really a kind of paralysis, and a lack of responsibility, and a total lack of power (especially over death, which is a key part of the Course).

It is very possible therefore to take most of the course and slot it into an existing belief system and have it seem to mostly make sense. So then in order to bring the truth into the world, instead of bringing the world to the truth (in which it dissolves), people will try to sort of 'glue together' the broken pieces of out-of-context metaphysics, such as to say God made the world, the world is heaven on earth, the body can live forever, God made beautiful stuff in the world and sustains it, etc... none of that is in the course, but those finer points are easy to gloss over and ignore.

As I go back through the ACIM text and read it slowly and really digest it and ask myself what it is saying, how is it consistent, I continually see evidence that it is quite literally saying "there is no world" and that heaven and the world are completely opposed, that God did not create it - we did, that the world is something we 'made' as an attack on God, etc. Its not just our perception OF the attack that is an attack on God. The world ITSELF is fundamentally an attack on God, down to the very fabric of spacetime.

And on the point about perception, it is CLEAR in the text that the only point of having true perception (right mindedness) is that it parallels the One mind and allows us to transition to the one mind, which exists entirely beyond the world. Everything Jesus says clearly indicates this physical world is an ILLUSION and a dream and is not reality and never will be reality. It is VERY difficult for us ego humans to accept this as truth, and that is why the ego is extremely careful to disguise the evidence of this and gloss over the truth.

I guess I'm making this point because I continue to see prominent people 'teaching' other students with statements that seem to exalt the world and make it seem spiritual, but which is in fact the complete OPPOSITE of what the Course is actually teaching. As clearly defined in the Disappearance of the Universe, for example, which IS aligned with the Course's message, the world is basically a giant turd, metaphorically speaking, it holds nothing that we want, it is not our home, it is nothing more than a nightmare or bad dream, and IT WILL DISAPPEAR because it is not eternal.

It is quite a severe distortion of the Course's message when, within the wrong context, it can seem to be saying that the world will transform into heaven or the the world is God's 'movement' or that bodies are a permanent form of identification etc. The idea that the world is exalted and filled with any kind of truth is the absolute opposite of what the Course says and a total misinterpretation of its meaning. Imagine you believe an interpretation of truth that is 100% false. That's what many people are doing. To believe the world is our spiritual home is an absolute farce, and is precisely how the ego wants to INTERFERE with the Course and absolutely distort it to its aims of KEEPING ITSELF GOING.

The world isn't real.

I think one of the things that blocks us from healing others, is that we become deceived by their appearances. We look at the body and think that’s the person. We see signs of sickness. We see the person’s ego and it acts like a wall. We may see them as ONLY a body and ONLY an ego.

All of this is designed to block your sight so that you do NOT see the truth. The truth is really that the person is a perfect immortal being - the Christ - son of God - immaculate and perfect, with no flaws and no sickness. Technically speaking, no one actually needs any healing at all, because we HAVE NOT CHANGED since God created us. But we need to see this before we can help the MIND to come out of its confusion.

That’s hidden “behind” the illusory appearance that there’s something wrong with the person, they’re ill, they’re suffering, they are broken, they need treatment, they are in a dire situation which is threatening their existence, they need rescuing etc.

If we buy into all of these views of seeing their body, their ego, and stopping there, we can’t really be of much healing help. WE need to be able to affirm and reinforce the truth - that they are actually completely NOT sick, that they are absolutely whole and healed already, and that all of these appearances are NOT true.

To do this really requires us to embrace the idea that we ourselves are an immortal being of light with no imperfections, so that we can also then realize that other people must be that as well. By claiming ownership of being Christ, the son of God, flawless and permanent and eternal, we can then extend this to others.

If we haven’t claimed that for ourselves, how can we have it to give it? If we become deceived by beliefs that people are sick bodies, how can we see ourselves as incapable of sickness? Whatever applies to us applies to everyone. If you BELIEVE the sickness is TRUE of someone, you are reinforcing it.

The course says we should BEGIN by perceiving light. What does that mean but to see PAST all of the illusions and lies, past the body, past sickness, past their ego identity, to the truth that someone IS NOT sick at all. To acknowledge they are absolutely a divine perfect radiant being of light that has never changed.

This is seeing them as they really are. By focus on this we can JOIN with their mind at this level, and therefore prevent sickness in the mind. We are asked to extend the truth, the light, the love, the power of God, to another, and to continually keep extending it, so that the other is reminded and enlightened to their own pre-existing truth.

Healing is not about you putting in place the things that are missing, or making up for something lost, or trying to repair something that seems broken. The supposed “evidence” for ”sickness happening” is a deception and a lie in the first place, so why would we react to that? It’s a trap that leads to false empathy and mutual suffering.

It’s more about recognizing that there is no sickness, expressing only LIFE and only the belief in immortality, so that this REPLACES the illusion of “not life” and thus sickness. When we are overflowing with ONLY LIFE and NON-SICKNESS, we can give that life to others and resurrect them.

“The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient.”

“But do not give it power to REPLACE the changeless in him in your sight of him. There is no false appearance but will fade, if you request a miracle instead. There is no pain from which he is not free, if you would have him be but what he is. Why should you fear to see the Christ in him? You but behold yourself in what you see. As he is healed are YOU made free of guilt, and his appearance IS your own to you.”

Check out this epic quote:

”When you heal, that is exactly what you ARE learning (doing). You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by perceiving (knowing) that he could NOT have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is ONLY the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he CAN, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self IS. If YOU see only the changeless in him, you have not really changed him at all. But by changing your mind about HIS FOR him, you help him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him.“

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Immortality.

Originally, God created us and flowed all of His love to us. We were completely open to receive it and we flowed it onward, completely naturally, extending the Kingdom.

When the 'separation' happened, we put various forms of distance between ourselves and God. We closed our heart to God. We shut God out of our lives and out of our minds.

We then found ourselves 'cut off', disconnected, lost, alone, abandoned, as if the 'cord' that connected us to God had been severed. Now of course, this was very upsetting (and still is).

Because of this, it then seemed that we were disconnected from the SOURCE of life. And because we saw ourselves as cut off, what we were left with was the perception that we did not originate IN God. Instead, we believed we must've just come into being spontaneously by some other means as orphans (symbolized by birth).

So now, without a connection to God, we are all alone, desperate, afraid, confused, we don't know what the hell is going on, and we have very limited resources. Our power is hugely diminished, we're hallucinating, we're insane, scrambling around in the darkness trying to make sense of it all.

So without acknowledging that a source (God) is extending/creating us, we come to believe it all seems to start with ourselves as the source - that WE are the source. Thus is born the ego - the starting point of separate existence. And by this token, we have separated the Father and the Son.

What I mean is, in Heaven, God the Father extends His Fatherhood to His Son and His Son also therefore possess a nature of Fatherhood as well, by which the Son also extends Creation. The Son is a Father to the Son's Children.

Get this... When the separation happened, Father and Son were separated, not just in terms of being separate beings but in terms of their shared nature where the Son is also a Father. This now means that the Son does not SEE Himself as the 'Son' of God, he only retains the idea that he is the Father. He sees Himself as retaining fatherhood but of not retaining sonship. He retains 'output', if you will, but shuts off 'input'. So now he thinks of Himself as 'the' Father, since he Himself does not seem to have a father, and this is how the ego believes IT is God. The ego is 'Fatherhood' without 'Sonship'. In a way, you could also think of this as 'giving without receiving', which produces 'making' (creating stuff that didn't come from God) and 'sacrifice' (losing everything and not receiving at all). It is by this method that the ego then MAKES its own Father, out of itself, because it is fatherless, and this newly appointed Father is the ego's OWN version of God - its fake God, a God of hate and death. The ego then idolizes this fake God, who calls for sacrifice, and the ego now both worships and fears this (and all other) substitute for God. It should be apparent how insane that is.

An interesting bit of metaphysics there!

Anyway... So now we see ourselves as the source, which means we think that we have to govern existence, run the universe, obtain power, control everything, force things to be according to our own separate will, and act like God. Classical ego.

So.... what we need to do now... the whole point of doing A Course in Miracles.... is to heal the separation - or at least, all of the belief that it has really happened. But we DO believe it and it does SEEM real. We really do SEEM to be experiencing the horror of being without God, of being Fatherless, of being disconnected from God deep in our hearts, of having been abandoned or rejected, or being absent of REAL LOVE, of not having a SOURCE, of being without unconditional love, of having to do everything ourselves and failing miserably.

We need to HEAL this sense of separation between the Father and the Son, between God and us. And this is a very heartfelt matter. It's not intellectual. It's not just on a mental/mind level. Love is FELT and EXPERIENCED! What we really want is to experience the love of God. Period.

So to do that we need to get back to the kind of relationship, the kind of 'structure' of the relationship that we originally have with God. That means, restoring our CONNECTION to God through communion and healing and openness, being open to RECEIVE guidance and healing and love from God again (which we have been sorely missing and doing terribly without!), becoming able to SHARE in what God is offering, and to then extend it once again through creative acts (miracles), to extend the Kingdom.

Father and Son need to be reunited and set back in their proper place and arrangement where God is the Source of Life, Life has extended itself AS the Son, and the Son extends it further. This is the only NATURAL condition. The physical world's 'nature' is NOT natural. Or perhaps some people refer to this divine holy relationship as SUPERNATURAL. This is what we need to restore, for ourselves, in direct relationship with God, for real.

God loves us. We've denied Him. We need to open to receive His presence.

Jesus tells us that our perception works like a mirror. Whatever we have inside of us, we project outside, and perceive it reflected back. We are doing this all the time, every second of every day.

We first look within, find our own attitude about ourselves there, and then we project that out and see it. This means in effect that we are really blind to seeing anything out there OTHER THAN ourselves.

If we have guilt in our mind, we will see guilt in others and in the world. If we have innocence in our mind, we will see innocence in others and in the world. This is because the world acts like a mirror and reflects back to us whatever we project onto it, including meaning. This is because it follows the Golden Rule, that what is true of you is true of the whole.

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego."

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real."

If you are not seeing innocence in the world, in which you see there is nothing to forgive because everything is innocent, it is because you yourself are not being innocent. You are looking at the result of what you believe is true about yourself and others.

If you want to see and experience the world in a happier way, in a lighter way, in which the world seems beautiful and kind and lovely, then you have to be beautiful and kind and lovely in your mind.

This is the meaning of:

"God is in everything I see because God is in my mind."

When you have an awareness of God in your mind, you will project this out and see it reflected back. Then it will seem as though, in the mirror, you are looking at the reflection of God or heaven, because you are putting it there.

This is a fixed rule of how perception works. You do not ever really see something that is true of others or the world that isn't true of you. As in, "you but accuse your brother of your own sins." The guilts and offences and blames and stuff that you see in the world are yours, projected.

You are always looking at yourself!

If the world seems lacklustre, your mind is lacklustre. If the world seems dark and evil, you are being dark and evil. If the world seems sparkling and new, you are being sparkling and new. If others seem sinful and guilty and hated, you are hating yourself and regarding yourself as sinful and guilty.

As we progress with the course we're meant to be getting to a point where we see the world with so much forgivingness - ONLY because we have forgiven OURSELVES - such that we see the forgiven world. The forgiven world is beautiful and lovely and new, seen in the present FROM a state of mind that is lovely and beautiful and new.

"From my holiness does the perception of the real world come."

Similarly the eyes of christ look out upon the world and SEE christ reflected back. This is because Christ is in the mind FIRST, and then is projected and reflected. By being aware of heaven in your mind within, you see the reflection of heaven on earth. This is STRICTLY how it works - this is the functional mechanics of perception.

What you believe you perceive. It's not about "believing your eyes" or "I will have to see it to believe it." It's the other way around - what you BELIEVE you will SEE. We are meant to see this world and the bodies through beautiful forgiving eyes, which see them as beautiful and forgiven.

We are meant to see from holiness and innocence within, so that we will see holiness and innocence without. So if we're not seeing that, we're not being that and we have work to do within ourselves in our mind healing. You can't see what you're not willing to be.

"Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward. I would bless the world by looking on it through the eyes of Christ."

"How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there. Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness. Now you are holy and perceive it so."

"And the love He feels for us becomes our own as well. This will become the only thing we see reflected in the world and in ourselves."

"By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts."

"The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their innocence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth."

"It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive."

"Projection MAKES perception, and you CANNOT see beyond it."

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes."

"Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world!"

"The teachers of God have trust in the world, because they have learned it is not governed by the laws the world made up. It is governed by a Power which is in them but not of them. It is this Power that keeps all things safe. It is through this Power that the teachers of God look on a forgiven world."

"To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent will you perceive attack cannot BE justified. This is in strict accord with vision's FUNDAMENTAL law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you WANT it there. Perception HAS no other law than this."

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

In ACIM, mistakenness is not the same thing as how the world generally thinks of it. If you go into the women's toilet instead of the men's, it could be a mistake. A mistaken action. If you pick up the wrong set of keys, it could be a mistake. If you leave your lunch box at the workplace, it could be a mistake. Something you intended that sort of went wrong somehow.

You could then try to turn these mistakes into sins and say that the person is guilty for going into the wrong bathroom, or a bad person for forgetting the proper keys, or stupid for leaving their lunch at work. But a "forgiving" reframing of this that says like "oh well they just made a mistake because they were supposed to go into the other toilet", isn't forgiveness. It just recognizes a horizontal worldly error within this system.

Forgiveness is higher than this. True mistakenness is a recognition on a vertical axis. It's a view from above, from a mindset of sanity and truth and light. It looks down and sees something impossible, something which cannot be true, and recognizes it as not true or real. Something false. Like a lie. And because it recognizes it as untrue, it is not attracted to it, and it doesn't turn it into something to be punished for. Instead it recognizes that the error just needs to be corrected. It was just a mistaken view, a mistaken belief, which can't be true, and the mind needs to be restored to the truth.

So if in the world, say, we take something that someone is believing or doing, based on a mistake. Let's say that they're having a sickness and coughing all over everyone. You could take this mistake and turn it into a sin. Sin does the opposite of see correctable errors, and sin doesn't recognize a mistake AS a mistake. Instead it thinks of it as a TRUTH, as something real and valid, and actual. The person really is coughing all over the other real people, how horrible. What a sinner.

To move to forgiveness then, we need to shift away from "it's a sin" to "it's a mistake". But not in worldly terms. Not in social preferences or rules about how to act around people or other made up stuff. True mistakenness would recognize that a) the person is not a body even if they think they are b) they are not really sick because they are immortal c) no-one is really suffering d) contagion is a lie e) nothing real can be threatened etc... that sort of thing. In effect that ... this whole show, this body person, this coughing, this spewing, is all FALSE. It isn't true, it isn't happening, it isn't POSSIBLE in God.

If we can see that this event isn't possible, is false, isn't true of the person, they are not really doing it, its having no effect, etc, then we can recognize that the person is in a sate of insanity and is just simply mistaken about how and what they are. They're showing a lie. They're trying to convince you sin is taking place. It isn't. We recognize there are just a bit insane, a bit mistaken, calling for love, in need of healing and correction. None of what they are doing is possible, none of it is true, none of it is happening but in a dream.

That's the kind of mistakenness that the Holy Spirt recognizes. He sees errors and does not mistaken them for sins. The ego on the other hand tries to take mistakenness and hold it against people, narrows down to focus on it, judges it, makes it out to be TRUE, believe it is HAPPENING, believes it is POSSIBLE, and is HAVING EFFECTS ... and that's all basically a definition of "sin". The idea of an attack which can have real consequences against real things.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects." UrT27I6

It's kind of all about recognition. If you recognize what is possible and true in God, then you recognize when someone is MISTAKEN. Their mistakenness calls for correction not punishment. You recognize what they are presenting is NOT POSSIBLE, and can't be true, so is not actual or real. So you can't hold it against them.

If you FAIL to recognize that the person is just mistaken or "being false", you make another mistake, by mistaking a mistake for NOT a mistake..... you turn the mistake or falseness into a TRUTH, and now because it is true it seems REAL to you. Or like a fact. The person really is coughing all over everyone. The person really did go into the wrong bathroom. The person really did leave their lunch at work for the 5th time.

"The Holy Spirit CANNOT punish sin. Mistakes He recognizes, and would correct them all, as God entrusted Him to do. But SIN He knows not, nor can He RECOGNIZE mistakes that cannot be corrected. For a mistake that cannot be corrected is MEANINGLESS to Him. Mistakes are FOR correction. They call for NOTHING ELSE." UrT19D4

Largely such mistakes are easy to mistake for sins, rooted in physical stuff. All the things we do with the body, all the things in the world, are all IMPOSSIBLE. ... and they present temptations, and illusions that you can do things which CANNOT BE TRUE in God, such as being sick. If you take those illusions AS TRUTH, you believe they are real, and now the physical act is interpreted as a sin. You lock it in place as though it can't be reversed or forgiven. And now in unforgiveness you "accuse" the person of "really doing this", and justifying punishment. Who moved my cheese?!

So basically we have a mind full of illusions and insanity which is just a state of making a lot of mistakes and believing untrue stuff. That only calls for correction. But if you take that stuff and do not recognize it and do not realize it is untrue, you will MISTAKE IT for truth and now it becomes SIN. As though you're really doing it. That's the little shift the ego insanity makes. That little shift from "it's just an illusion" to "taking that illusion seriously because you're actually really doing it." Ego grabs ahold of mistakes and corrupts them into punishable acts of evil. As if you intended it on purpose.

We are just mistaken. And we are mistaken about being mistaken. And when we lift away the mistakenness about being mistaken, we'll recognize we are mistaken, and then stop being mistaken. And that is forgiving.

Let's say that the entire contents of spacetime is sin. It is an idea of sin. Sin is a lack of love. The world was made as an attack on God, as a sin against him. Let's say that sin is the absence of truth, and so is a false world. Let's say that sin is also insanity, in which the true and the false are swapped and nothing means anything.

And let's say that all of spacetime is therefore a realm of sin, a realm in which everything is always attacked. Because sin is attack. And bodies were made to make attack seem possible. Bodies are the idea of sin, and this includes human and animal and vegetable and mineral and planetary bodies.

It is all sin, and it is sinning all the time. Every time it suggests something impossible has happened, which cannot happen in heaven, it is attempting to provide the proof of sin. Physical matter is "the granite block of sin" which the body's eyes look upon and cannot see past. Sin appears to be irreversible and unsealable, like a permanent crime, stepping ever closer to inevitable death. And death is the wages in sin, in a world where all roads lead to death.

Let's then simply say that the physical world is the idea of sin and of evil, of destruction and death. It is a dream of death and a fantasy of sin being possible. The world is false perception. Flesh and bones were made to sin with. Every atom can attack every other atom and sin against it. Destruction of any kind is sin. And if the mind takes all of this world to be true or real, it has believed in sin instead of innocence.

The function of forgiveness is to forgive the ENTIRE world of spacetime, including all of planet earth and every other planet. It has to be forgiven because it constantly sinning. Every part of it is constantly trying to murder. The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son.

Every part of it sins against the rest and holds sins up before your eyes to testify that sin is real. It is a world of sin. It must be forgiven because it has sinned, and it can be forgiven only because it has sinned. It has offended you and your function now is to recognize it as merely a mistake, an error in judgement, and to release it from your belief that sin is the truth.

The world can be seen in another light, which reframes the sin and regards it as a mistake. Which does not hold the world against itself, despite its continued efforts to induce death. You don't merely need to forgive a murderer, you need to forgive an entire planet of death. An entire solar system and galaxy of death. The world is an attempt to tempt you to believe that sin is reality. Your job is to forgive its sinful nature and let it go.

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on."

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see ONLY illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside FORM of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless."

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world"

"Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory, wonderful to see."

"Except for God's teachers there would be no hope of salvation, for the world of sin would be forever real."

"Sin is belief attack can be projected OUTSIDE the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."

"Let us unite in bringing blessing to the world of sin and death."

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely."

"You brand it sinful, and you hate its acts, judging it evil." "The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear, and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

"Sin would maintain you MUST be separate. But REASON tells you that this must be WRONG."

"My body, Father, cannot be Your Son. And what is not created cannot be sinful or sinless; neither good nor bad."

"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."

"All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. All that is false proclaims his sins as real."

"In kind forgiveness will the world sparkle and shine, and everything you once thought sinful now will be re-interpreted as part of Heaven."

"What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. Where is hope while sin is seen as outside?" "Who could see the world as dark and sinful when God's Son has come again at last to set it free?"

"Who but the sinful need to be forgiven?"

Everyone is an immortal being. If they are portraying themselves otherwise, do not listen to their claims. They are trying to deceive themselves and you with a story about being a mortal victim. It is not true.

Everyone you meet is an immortal being. There is nothing that truly can come to them against their will, and nothing has befallen them from which they are not already free.

Every single person is immortal, regardless of their standing in life, occupation, merit or accountability. There is no one who is outside of the scope of immortality and divine right to perfect living.

Each and every brother or sister on your journey should be met as though they are capable of sustaining immortal living, unfettered and distinct from every conceivable form of suffering. They have chosen to pretend to lose the power of God and to suffer at the hands of another.

There is no being who walks this Earth who is truly mortal, because death is a lie. We are all equal in our immortality and we disguise ourselves behind a brick wall of flesh and bones, pretending to go through trials and difficulties at the hands of someone other than ourselves.

The great lie has portrayed the Son of God as a mere mortal, as weak and frail and preparing to die an unnatural death. How can God's infinite Creation give rise to a being whose life can be terminated by circumstances and illusions?

Every person you meet has infinite immortality, cannot die, has never died, will never die, and is truly in divine health. It is only through their own attempt to pretend to be not themselves, and not Life, that they portray a fiction in which they play a starring role as sufferer and loser of Life.

How can that which is immortal ever experience the end of itself? How can that which has eternal life, given by God Himself, ever come to cease to exist? It is not God's Will. The Father knows only the everlasting nature of His Creation and, by His Will alone, has chosen for it to live forever.

So while it is very popular to meet those who believe in dying, who believe in suffering, in sickness, in despair, and those who perceive loss as though it were real, and who think themselves little and mortal and absolutely destined for the grave sooner or later, you should always choose to look beyond the lie they have told and focus your awareness on the living reality which governs them.

While they pretend to die and put on a good show, you know this is not the truth. It is not reality. It is not God's way. Death is a fictional religion of artificial mortality, come to disguise the underlying factual truth that you cannot die, and nor can anyone. Even if a person should lay down their body in attempt at death, they will find themselves out of it and continuing on, having failed to terminate their existence.

And on it goes, around and around, having one more try at overcoming the self-made belief that you can die, taking another lifetime to learn that death is not real, and putting first the priority of the Kingdom of God over all else, such that you do not believe for an instant the sorry tales of despair that befall every believer in death.

The plague of this Earth lies in the illusion that death is real and that dying is inevitable. Death is powerless over the Son of God. It can do nothing to Him whatsoever, and cannot rob Him of his immortality. And it is He alone who is attempting to give death this power to do so, through acts of suicide and a death wish which has no hope of succeeding.

Whether through your current body or another, or ten from now, you will at some point surrender the absolutely futile attempt to prove death is real, and will learn from your mistake that no matter how hard you try, your immortality cannot be extinguished. There is no end to you. And there can be no moment in which you cease to be. Because you are real to God.

There is no real death. You can pretend all you like. You can even make it seem to happen to your body in a thousand ways, but you can never bring an end to the Spirit of Life that constitutes your entire reality. You are safe forever in Heaven with God, incapable of destruction and absolutely free from harm or fear of it. You cannot be genuinely sick, or actually suffer, or truly die for any reason. Your maladies are pretend and make believe.

When will you wake up? How long does it take for you to stop trying to make death real? How much effort will you expend pointlessly trying to bring about an impossible end which can never actually happen? Regardless of your efforts you die, you cannot, and even your death wish to do so will never succeed. It is not God's will that you can possibly die even remotely, and it is impossible for you to overthrow it.

Give up. Surrender your desire for destruction. Stop pretending that you are mortal. There is nothing about you that can be truly terminated. There is no aspect of your immortal being that can suffer in any way. There is nothing you can do to change God's will. And there is absolutely no way you can end Eternal Life. Trying to do so it like banging your head against a wall, which may seem for a time to make your head bloody or even to bring to you a moment of bodily death, and yet still this won't work. It will cease to succeed in isolating you to nothingness.

You can never die. Nobody ever has died. Nobody ever will die. The body is not real. Death is not real. You are immortality itself, set in stone for ever and ever and ever by your Holy Father who loves you with an eternal heart.

To accept this is to stop fighting with the truth, to acknowledge what has always been factual, and to surrender to the effortless never-ending existence which God has given you. You are what He wills you to be, His Shining Light of Holy Creation, and there is nothing you can do to change it.

Put aside your mortal stories of how you have been undermined, attacked, weakened, damaged, offended, hurt or betrayed. How can they be true of someone who is immortal spirit, invulnerable, incapable of suffering and absolutely indestructible? You are absolute, not relative. You do not die. You only live forever.

Peace.

"While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don't really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains." UrT2E10

"Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power." UrT21D3

This is literal. Your mind, has the power, to move an entire physical mountain, from one location to another.

BEFORE DENYING THIS OR WRITING IT OFF ..... look at where your skepticism is coming from. Try to be open minded.

The mind is EXTREMELY POWERFUL.

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will. " URT2E8

Not only can you move a mountain, you can invent entire worlds.

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free." UrT9K9

Your mind has the power to CREATE WORLDS!

In fact, your mind ... YOUR mind .... made this entire universe of space and time and all the galaxies.

That is how powerful your mind is. And this is a small feat for such an INFINITE UNLIMITED POWER.

Because you have the power of God in you.

"Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do." UrW38L1

"The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. " UrT14F7

If the POWER OF GOD, which is unlimited, engenders MIRACLES .... then surely MIRACLES (real ones) MUST be POWERFUL ACTS! A shift in perception is not a demonstration of INIFNITE POWER.

"The power of God IS limitless." UrT14F7

You, have a power in you, which is limiteless, infinite, without measure, so vast and so incredible, that it is capable of creating entire kingdoms. "I have a kingdom I must rule." UrW236L1

"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

You are an incredible powerful being, and the idea of you healing the sick and raising the dead IS A SMALL FEAT for the power that you have in you. It is the power OF God, but it is also given TO YOU TO USE, and IT IS YOURS, beause you SHARE IT with God.

"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. 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." UrM30A4

Why aren't people USING INFINITE POWER? Why are people profoundly skeptical of miracles that can MOVE MOUNTAINS, raise the dead, end physical suffering and heal minds?

"You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it. EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE." UrT14G1

Just because your power is obscured does not mean you do not have it. And the goal here is to uncover and remember and re-access this power so that you can WORK MIRACLES WITH IT.

Because real miracle working - which CAN cause the moving of physical mountains - FOR WHATEVER REASON .... and not knowing the "purpose or sense" as to WHY you would do this is NOT an excuse for writing it off and rendering the power inept ..... is perfectly capable of wielding the unlimited power of God which has been GIVEN YOU in order to GIVE YOU THE POWER to work miracles. Not merely the power to "change your mind a bit" which is a TINY change.

"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." UrT1B23K

Notice that it says that you have a POWER to work miracles. This is not "the power to shift a perception" or "the power to only fix your mind" or "the power to change your thinking a bit". It is a POWER. A power which is potentailly unlimited and vast and unstoppable and capable of having dominion over the entire universe. Especially given that...

"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." UrW253

What happens is what you desire? You desire someone's arm to be healed? It's done. You deesire a mountain to be moved to another location? It is done. You desire to raise the dead or walk on water? It is done. UNLIMITED POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are meant to be becoming EMPOWERED PEOPLE, as miracle workers, as children of God, beings with the power of God in us, a power so vast that it can create entire worlds, create living beings, can stop floods, can end wars, can do ANYTHING AT ALL.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do because the power of God lies in it." UrW38L5

We are playing at being small and little, helpless victims, powerless little self-helpers, studying in a nice quiet corner, disturbing no-one, doing nothing, having no CAUSATION, demonstrating nothing, having no proof of the power of God, no evidenec that the Holy Spirit is working through us, nice and queit and safe and tidy. Where is the POWER? Where are the REAL MIRACLES? We are better than this, bigger than this, mightier than this. We are sons of God!

"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." UrT11h4

"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." UrT28C11

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this. " UrT6F9

"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." UrT11H3

"If you can accept the ONE GENERALIZATION NOW, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons."

Effectively what the Holy Spirit is trying to teach you is ONE LESSON. This one lesson is to learn how to "teach only love", because you are only love. It's to have a single response of love in all situations, to use love's miraculous power to heal all sickness and to solve all problems. To recognize no orders of difficulty or hierarchies of illusion, to see all forms of suffering as the same effect having the same ONE cause. One problem with one solution to rule them all.

Over time, in the application of what may seem like more specific lessons, ultimately what you are LEARNING is really to simply be as God created you. To be loving. To be singular, or ONE. One in character and substance and nature and identity and attitude and response. One single way of always consistently being the same, in complete disregard for any illusions of forms or differences. Completely ignoring orders of magnitude or difficulty or importance or seriousness or size or duration or any other property.

As we gradually "polish" our minds from seeming to be fragmented, with different responses for different people, different relationships with different individuals, different reactions to different objects, different meanings for different things, we gradually GENERALIZE the learning and move into a much more ABSTRACT state of mind. A much more singular state of mind, whole and one and unified and undivided and free from conflicts. Being so one, this state of mind - miracle mindedness, houses the power of love and truth and sees all things from a single perspective.

This is the ONE LESSON which the Holy Spirit is teaching, behind all the lessons in the workbook, behind all the text material and all thoughts and life lessons/trials, behind all relationships and dramas, the simple movement away from complexity and multiplicities of action, towards simple unification, integration, wholeness and oneness. This lays the groundwork for one-mindedness, which is a state of complete abstract purity and wholeness, in which the entirety of everything acts as one with no conflict or difference or adjustment to conditions.

Unconditional love is completely ignorance of conditions. It ignores the form of problems, the shapes of bodies, the types of sickness, the reasons for their supposed causation, the worldly powers, the forces of nature, the laws of physics, the many rules and regulations. It doesn't even care to need to know how something came about, to analyze it or diagnose it or figure out the complicated pathways of cause and effect. It simply APPLIES ITSELF singularly by giving itself and sharing itself, to increase itself and to supply the lack - the lack of love, the lack of unification, or seeming unwholeness, which is the basis for all suffering.

Learn this ONE LESSON, and you are done with the curriculum forever. See past the illusion of separations, which gives rise to countless numbers of bits and pieces. Look to the one vision to show you the one true reality. And you will rise above the fragmented battlefield into the wholeness of light.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF." "This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

"My one lesson, which I must teach as I learned, is that no perception which is out of accord with the judgment of the Holy Spirit CAN be justified." "That is why you must teach only ONE lesson. If you are to be conflict free yourselves, you must learn ONLY from the Holy Spirit, and teach ONLY by Him."

"We said before that the message of the Crucifixion was teach ONLY love, for that is what you ARE. This is the ONE lesson which is perfectly unified, because it is the only lesson which IS one. And only BY teaching it can YOU learn it."

"As the teacher of God advances in his training, he learns one lesson with increasing thoroughness. He does not make his own decisions; he asks his Teacher for His answer, and it is this he follows as his guide for action. This becomes easier and easier, as the teacher of God learns to give up his own judgment."

"But the Holy Spirit teaches one lesson and applies it to ALL individuals in ALL situations. Being conflict free, He maximizes ALL efforts and ALL results. By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS. Its application does not matter. It is ALWAYS maximal."

"Thus is YOUR healing everything the world requires, that it may be healed. It needs ONE lesson that has perfectly been learned."

"As you perceive more and more common elements in ALL situations, the transfer of your training, under the Holy Spirit's guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually, you learn to apply it to everyone and everything, for its applicability IS universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar that they share the unification of the Laws of God. What is One cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the separation IS the reinstatement of knowledge."

"The purpose is to train the mind to generalize the lessons, so that you will understand that each of them is as applicable to one situation as it is to another."

"the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure" "Place cause and effect in their true sequence in one respect, and the learning will generalize and transform the world."

"The specificity of the ego's thinking, then, results in a spurious kind of generalization, which is really not abstract at all. It will respond in certain specific ways to all stimuli which it perceives as related. In contrast, the Soul reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anything else."

"Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right guidance, for learning is invisible, and what has been learned can be recognized ONLY by its RESULTS. Its GENERALIZATION is demonstrated as you use it in more and more situations. You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles, when you have applied them to ALL situations. For there IS no situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them TO all situations, you will gain the REAL world."

"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."

In terms of cause and effect, God who is cause created us as his effect, yet shared his causal ability with us, making us also able to cause. We are an effect of God, but we are also a co-creator and cause of our own creations.

God is cause. We are cause. And nothing can alter what we are or make us an effect, other than God, because we are sustained by God's constant will. We are affected by nothing, having been given eternal life, maintained forever by God himself.

The idea of the separation from God, introduced the idea of a breakdown in cause and effect. That means, a breakdown in the relationship between God and his creation/son. It suggests that causes are separate from their effects.

This also produced the belief that you are not caused by God. And also that you can cause God - which is the authority problem - a denial of the causal power of authorship. And therefore that you can cause what God created, thus changing what God created. And since you were a creation of God's, it began the belief that you could change yourself and redefine yourself, plus make-up a new father.

In this process, your recognition of being a creator was denied, you disowned God as cause and thus disowned causation, and began to see yourself as not causal. You began to see yourself as an effect, or affected by, or changed by. You began to believe thigns could happen to you against God's will and against your will. As the course says...

"Sickness and death entered the mind of God's Son against His Will."

In other words, you began to see yourself as at the effect of something other than God, and other than yourself, as though that which has been created (or dreamed/mis-created) has turned around and has begun to create, cause, define and affect what you are.

This introduces level confusion, as well as the reversal of the true and the false, and the reversal of cause and effect. You now see yourself as an effect and not a cause, and you deny causing anything. This means you are trying to "be affected", and to portray yourself as something that can be affected, so that you can change yourself into what you wish to be.

This produced the body, which is a sort of outside picture of the idea of a self that can be at the effect of its environment, a self that can be an effect and not a cause, with no power to cause at all, and acted upon by the world. This body presents the "face of innocence", which hides the idea that you're trying to be a victim, ie trying to be affected, by the world.

"The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world."

So now there is this artificial you, which looks like a body, and which is "acted upon" by the world, in which the arrows or direction of causation begins out there somewhere, external and beyond the body and the self/mind, and comes in and acts upon the body/self/mind and causes it to change. Causes it to be affected. And thus the face of innocence, the surface of the body, becomes the canvas on which "effects" are painted to make it seem like you are caused by an alien will outside yourself.

Another way to put this is that, as soon as cause and effect were reversed, you introduced the idea of being "affectable" rather than immortal, that you could change and be changed. And this was the beginning of being a victim. And this is also exactly the beginning of the ego thought system.

To be a victim is to be ego. To be a victim is to be at the effect. To be a victim is to be an effect, not a cause. Victimhood is the denial and refusal to admit to being the cause. Victimhood is irresponsibility and a complete displacement of the responsibility for causing anything, portraying itself as helpless and powerless and at the mercy of anyone and anything.

And this shows up as the face of innocence - the innocent victim that seems not to ask for attack but is still attacked and can then justify anger and revenge. A self that won't take responsibility for causing anything, in an attempt to disown responsibility for sinning against God. To deny and disown all responsibility is to displace and project it onto others and the world, so that the guilty self can pretend to be exonerated.

If you are an effect, you are an ego. If you are an effect, you are a victim. If you are an effect, cause and effect have been reversed. This effectively means that if you swap cause and effect back around and claim total responsibility for being the cause of everything you experience, then you can no longer be a victim, and that also means you can no longer be an ego.

Ego is made of effects. It can only exist as a victim. It requires powerlessness and a disowning of causal power. It must see itself as deprived and lacking and less than whole. It cannot survive when you are powerful, it cannot survive when you are responsible, it cannot survive when you are the cause of everything. It depends on you remaining a powerless victim, and depends on cause and effect staying reversed. To be responsible is to own and know yourself as God created you!

Backwards peception or false perception is another name for ego and another name for being at the effect of the world. Backwards perception is the reversal of cause and effect, in which you are always affected by something seemingly against your will, while secretly choosing it. True perception is the restoration of cause and effect into their proper sequence, in which you are now the cause and the dreamer and a victim of nothing, totally invulnerable, incapable of suffering or blame.

So you can see that to put it simply, with the authority problem which is the breakdown and reversal of cause and effect, as soon as you begin to identify with/as being an effect/affected/victimized, as soon as you give away your power, as soon as you regard yourself as not the cause of what you experience, you are producing an egoic thought system and are losing your mind.

To reclaim total responsibility for the power of God and for causation and creative authorship and being absolutely incapable of being caused by anything but God, denying the power of anything not of God any power to affect or hurt you, which is the proper use of denial, you simply need to own up to being the immortal victimless powerful causer and chooser of what you experience. If nothing can happen to you, you cannot be an ego. If you are purely causal, you are the immortal son of God.

"Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its home. I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide, and all Your attributes abide in me because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable. Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in Heaven, so on earth. Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will disappear, and separate things unite in glory as the Son of God."

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. "

I went back and slowly re-read the entire "miracle principles" from a very early urtext version, plus some other sections.

The impression I have of miracles now is different and more cohesive. Whatever our understanding of them is, they must incorporate every single thing Jesus says about them, including the ability to literally move mountains, to heal the sick and raise the dead, and also to correct perception. Here are some key points and new clarity on the subject.

1) Miracles are best understood in a vertical direction. They come down from above and lift upwards, or restore life and reality. "Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from heaven." "performed by those who have more (above) for those who have less (below)". They extend or radiate down into the world from God. They also go out sideways between brothers because brothers are ultimately IN heaven.

2) Every aspect of the "descent" into egotism, separation, degrading reality, becoming insane, unwillingness, unconsciousness, etc which is all an attempt to introduce separation between brother's minds (to split the sonship or divide the Kingdom), to interfere with mind-to-mind communication, is the exact opposite of miracles. Projection is opposite to miracles. Magic is opposite to miracles. Miracles inherently correct level confusion, heal projections, undo magic (which includes sickness), and restores awareness of the truth.

3) Every movement towards restoring communication, reintegrating reality, bringing wholeness to your mind AND your brother's mind, uniting you with your brother, healing relationships, removing separations, all effects resulting from separation and sin (including sickness, illness, suffering, death), and cancelling out the "consequences" of sin, are accomplished by miracles. "Miracles unite you directly with your brother". "The purpose of miracles is to restore reality". "Miracles make brothers one in God" etc. The ultimate aim of miracles is to induce revelation and direct communion with God. This however does not exclude miracles that manipulate forms or move mountains, because mountains are actually also thought-forms in the MIND and are actually BELIEFS which mind can manipulate. "The world IS perception" (in the mind).

4) Miracles originate in the mind of Christ. They require the absence of fear, and an awareness of Christ's presence. Jesus inspires them. While they come FROM the Christ mind, you can be in varying degrees of "miracle mindedness" depending on whether your mind is functioning and responding in an ego-driven way or a love-based way. "Miracles are seen in light" "Miracles reflect an inner awareness of Christ." They are therefore typically requiring quite an advanced state of mind, BUT they also can be performed even by "beginners" who are able to temporarily put fear aside and shift into VERTICAL perception away from the horizontal belief system, which allows them to bring forth a miracle which helps develop "conviction in the ability" by seeing physical appearances change. The ability to make this shift isn't necessarily an act of your own purification but a USE OF the parts of your mind that have already been purified.

5) There are two aspects - miracle-mindedness/readiness, and miracle-working. To be miracle-minded is based on the STATE of your mind. But a mind based on love is not unexpressive or static. It is a mind that extends, gives in order to have, shares, increases, creates. Being miracle-minded/ready emphasizes that you are "ready, willing, and able" to "perform" or "do" miracles. The "action" aspect of miracles should be under Christ control (Jesus) due to the atonement plan and should be "involuntary". You are not supposed to consciously control that part of it yourself, but you ARE responsible for becoming "ready, willing and able".

6) "Miracles are thought-creations". Our mind goes through varying degrees of power to CREATE or project, depending on how much ego there is. We become more able to express creatively as we wake up. The mind can shine INTO and BLESS other minds due to having both been created by the "same spark" of God - being of like kind. Miracles not only unite you with your brother, they also increase your own strength by giving love, and also strengthen your brother. They in a sense "repair" the sense of separation between both of you, increase the level of communication, and therefore UNDO the manifestations of the separation idea (forms of sickness etc). Miracles are tightly associated with CREATION, and therefore are capable of creating. They combine "thought-creation" with belief, in order to produce results, which includes changes to *appearances* - meaning all forms, in a law-defying way (including moving mountains).

7) Miracles are not shifts in perception as such. However they can produce a shift in the perception OF OTHERS. Miracles are inter-personal ACTS. They are something you DO to EXPRESS the state of love that you are. They are an "application" of your holiness, and thus create in the same way that God applies himself to create. Because they can "correct" misperceptions in yourself AND others, they can heal your brother and yourself. They bestow grace and blessing on others. Miracles can correct perception and shift it, but when you yourself "correct thinking" and "change perception" that act itself is not necessarily a miracle. Miracles express from above downwards, changes of mind express from below upwards. You stepping "up" to the miraculous mind can require many steps before you are "high" enough to express "downward" with miracles. In a way though, any movement towards God/truth/love is a step in the right direction. The shifting itself isn't the miracle, the miracle is the love that expresses AFTER the blocks to awareness are removed. Although having said that, when you express a miracle it strengthens you also, increasing your sanity, so....

8) The miracle-mind thought system is totally different to the ego thought system in that it has an omnipresent and holographic nature. This means that the miracle is everywhere. It also means the miracle can express in "a part" of the dream and seem to produce a wide variety of specific results. However all miracles are inherently united and consistent and devoid of any recognition of levels of difficulty or heirarchy or size or any other ego construct. "To God all things are possible." I visualize God as like this ocean of liquid where all aspects are fluidly flowing all over the place and completely defies the entire ego thought system and all of its very rigid, compartmentalizing laws. The miracle-minded are literally miraculous in that they can create anything, can do anything, can heal anything, can produce any changes to any appearance, and there is nothing they cannot do.

9) Miracles collapse time because they introduce sort of a separate "moment" of time in which all of the horizontal laws are defied and a "new state" is directly implemented, instantly, which is almost like taking a tiny clip from "the future" and inserting it into the current timeline "out of the temporal order". Another analogy is a vynil record, as if you suddenly bump the arm and it skips some tracks and resumes playing further along in the song. The interval in-between of the "thousands of years" that were skipped, essentially has collapsed or deleted an entire portion of the timeline. Their purpose IS to collapse time and bring about the end of the need for time. Ultimately they lead to revelation and total wholeness, and then are no longer needed. This is all to do with mind. But this DOES NOT exclude apparent changes to forms, bodies, sickness or death, because all of those things are actually mental states, thought-forms, ideas, images in the mind, which are just as much within the scope of mind-power as anything you would normally consider "inside your mind". You have to realize the entire universe is WITHIN our shared minds, and therefore even physical forms have to be ultimately disappeared and "healed" and "shone away" by our light, in order for the the entire sonship to totally be free from dreaming.

10) Miracles are a maximal service you can render a brother. All expressions of love are maximal. That means they express FROM "total" love, not partial. However, you can be in varying degrees of miracle mindedness depending on how you express or "relate". If in a given situation, you have one possible response which is egotism where you make the problem real and use it for attack etc, and another possible response is that you remain "in love" and affirm the truth of both of you and see your brother as sinless and calling out for love and you "empower" both of you, this is a miracle. You chose to love instead of hate, you chose to express a truthful healing charitable gracious blessing rather than attack.

11) Miracles are also "energizing" in that they give LIFE to others ("all around the signs of life spring up"). They supply a lack. They are given by those who have more to those who have less. Lack is just "lack of love", so by supplying love you bless and remove a curse and energize and shine light onto the "area of separation" which causes it to reintegrate and become whole again. "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness" because you have to be in a mindset of wholeness (miracle readiness) in order to see your brother's holiness and innocence, which strengthens this in both of you and thus energizes and gives life to both of you. When you heal, therefore, BOTH of you receive healing. Separation isn't a "private idea", it's something that "comes between" like a double-sided sword, and removing this sword restores communication in BOTH directions.

12) Miracles can move mountains and raise the dead. Since both of them are illusions and all forms are illusions, and all illusions are based on separation, the miracle-minded have total power OVER these things, either by bringing life to them and healing them, or by demonstrating this power OVER them by changing appearances. A body returning from death and decay to life, or a mounting moving from left to right, are both "changes to appearance". Miracles change appearances to PROVE and demonstrate that the forms themselves ARE illusions BECAUSE they could be changed, and therefore cannot be real because they are so easily manipulated by the mind. The illusion of objects being physical, heavy, large, or that death is too difficult to undo etc, all these illusions crumble to nothing when they are shown to be changeable.

13) Miracles require faith and trust. Having faith in your brother's innocence even when they show up as guilty/sinful/sick, overcomes/overlooks/forgives their illusions and can shine them away. Your mind CAN enter the mind of another and enlighten it. Also certainty (fearlessness) is required (even if temporarily suspended), because miracles occur as thought-acts which are decisive and committal. You don't have to merely have "strong belief" "of your own", you need to also RELY ON or depend on God, trusting HIS power and strength, and knowing what HE is capable of, so that you have TRUST in the certainty of the outcome and KNOWING that it must occur. This goes beyond your "self" as an individual or separate miracle worker. You can do nothing on your own, but you can work WITH God to co-create. Faith/trust also correlates to belief.

14) Miracles also correlate to acceptance/receiving of atonement. They are expressed through PRAYER, which brings about the active "doing" of miracles, because in the prayer you combine thought and belief and faith (key ingredients that are MUST have's), and ask with the heart (not necessary to use words). This "asking" is almost the same thing as "expressing" or "stating" and "seeing" what change you want to occur, as though it has already happened and has been received. "Believe you have received and you shall have it." Miracles EXPRESS FROM the atonement. You have to accept some atonement to accept some "miracle juice", so that you can give it. That means that in some small way, in some part of you, on some issue, you accepted the truth about you as innocent and loved, rather than condemn yourself with sin. This part of you now has received a miracle or has been restored to a more miracle-oriented way of being, and this now can express to others. In a healed part of you, when confronted with another situation like what happened before, you might now "bless" instead of "see sin", and this IS capable of healing others.

15) Overall it seems miracles are essentially HOW the entire illusion of separation is reversed. In all its way, all its appearances, all its consequences. Every form of suffering, all sickness, death, and also demonstrations of the falseness of the ego's laws. Moving a mountain may well demonstrate and violate laws of physics and weight and size and so on, proving that these are not TRUE, that illusory limitations are not true, and this can bring healing to the mind. Miracles can be teaching devices. They remind you and your brother of what is true about you. The entire "lifting up" of all brothers and the "lifting away" of all forms of separation and the "disappearing" of all suffering and forms and illusions and eventually the universe itself, is "the miracle", which is kind of everywhere and omnipresent and comes from God.

16) You are a miracle. This means that God creates miraculously because God is also miraculous. It's natural to be miraculous. You are miraculous in the sense that anything is possible to the holy, and God who is alive has miraculously created the sonship. To the ego, it should not be possible, but it is. A miracle as a "creative expression of thought" is your natural way of creating in heaven. It's how you express love. It's an extension of yourself and increases joy and overcomes lack and restores BOTH you and the thing you create. When you express miracles or miraculously in the world it similarly follows the same laws of GOD and creates wholeness, healing, health, happiness, freedom, love, perfection, holiness, joy, peace, life.

17) Miracles are super-natural. This means they are totally above the ego's "nature", and fly in the face of everything we think of as "the nature" of this universe. This includes all ego laws and physics and time and space. They express from above the battlefield, from heaven, falling like drops of healing rain on the desert (absence of love) below and supply a lack and bring the dead back to life, raising it up towards resurrection. Miracle workers are like angels or holy beings who step inside a dream of death and start expressing themselves, demonstrating all over the place that nothing here is fixed or limiting or has any power over you at all. As beings of light and immortality and creativity, when we express as this kind of identity (christ-aligned) we totally defy every law of the world and therefore literally produce "miraculous" effects. To the ego, miracles are considered un-natural, but to God they are considered completely natural. There is nothing they cannot do and there is nothing your holiness cannot do. You are UNLIMITED, and the sheer degree of limitation of this ego world is shown to be extremely false by every miracle expression.

18) Being miraculous is your natural inheritance and does not require anyone else to choose to be miraculous. It doesn't "require" a holy relationship. BUT, it can IMPLEMENT a holy relationship due to the fact that it heals the separation between brothers. Jesus as the one who woke up can perform them for anyone, and he inspires all miracles which intercede for your holiness, but in so doing, he also unites you with Himself and the two of your minds join and share love, if you are willing. You still have free will and no-one can force anyone to wake up or be healed if they do not want it or if it would frighten them.

19) If you can grasp how God's mind is omnipresent and this means that all of him is in every location FULLY at the same time, which TOTALLY defies the entire ego world and all its forms of matter and space and time, you can get a better sense of how anything is possible in God. And how, in contrast to that, this world and its laws are set up to be extremely limiting, to suggest no two things share anything, forms are things in their own right, nothing is coming from the mind, mind has no power over anything ("the mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this"), and everything is separated off and compartmentalized into boxes and finite objects. This is SO TOTALLY OPPOSITE to God's nature and the nature of anyone who has access the miracle-working mind or the "attitude of love". Love isn't just a finite thing in a box. It is miraculous, life-giving, spacetime defying, and completely ignores all illusory differences. When the world is PROVEN to be NOT separated out, and NOT disconnected from the mind, and NOT a thing in its own right and can easily be changed by the power of the mind, the true nature of God's UNLIMITEDNESS is revealed.

20) Miracles are what happens when an ego-defying, omnipresent, spatially-defying, time-defying, massively potential, unlimited, whole miraculous mind, comes into contact with the ego illusion of limitation and separateness. You can express them and bestow them everywhere, they are unlimited in number, and all support each other forming a "web" of atonement. You have to realize that all physical objects are part of the MIND, and are thoughts, and are perceptions, and are ideas in the mind. Therefore when mind changes and there are actions of expression of miracle-mindedness, this CAN and DOES also change and manipulate the appearance of physical objects. Separating mind from body is an error in this sense. Mind has power OVER the body. "That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind proves the mind must be stronger than the body." Whenever you elect to "be a bit more miraculous" or "be a bit more loving" or "express and stay strong in the truth" or "utilize your creative power" or "bless another" or "repair separation" or "reveal the unreality of an illusion" or "demonstrate that you are not limited" or "join minds with your brother" in any way, you are being miraculous.

This sounds like a tall order, but ACIM is saying we should not in any way be at the effect of the world. It should not do anything to us. We should regard other people as having not done anything to us. That is forgiveness. You are immortal and unchanged.

Forgiveness therefore is being causal and not an effect of the world. In forgiveness nothing happens to you, no-one offends you, nothing upsets you, nothing can hurt you, nothing can be taken from you. The world does absolutely nothing to you at all.

There is a very strong thread through the course that teaches this. It basically means you should be having absolutely no reaction to the world for any reason. You should be in a calm and whole state of mind which is always unconditionally loving, always deliberately acts, always gives the same one response to everything, and never re-acts to anything.

A "re-action" is an indirect action, a response, to a seeming provocation from outside yourself. Something happens first, and then you act, rather than acting first. And the action you perform is determined by what was done to you, rather than by what you truly will to do from love.

Reaction means you are a victim. It happens when you believe that stuff in the world is doing something to you. This happens when you believe it is REAL. This applies to everything physical. Everything the body can see and sense. All physical things are illusions, with a nature that is designed to tempt you all the time.

The world tempts you to believe that bad things are happening, cruelty and injustice, threats and dangers, wars and attacks, sicknesses and suffering. It shows this to you as pictures of crucifixion, pictures of bodies, pictures of things going wrong. It presents this to you as physical images, as physical objects, suggesting to you - look at this, it's true!

All physical things are forms of sin. Even the body is made from the idea of sin and deception. They give rise easily to a sense of guilt and fear, IF you buy into them. If you look at them and you start to buy into it, believe it, trust it, want it, you'll be giving it power over you. And then you'll perceive that it is causing you. Which means you are being affected by it.

This then causes you to be changed BY the world, seemingly. Or rather, you are using the world to pretend you are affected by the world. The result is that your mind will believe the external world is causing it, and it will manufacture effects to correspond to it. Your feelings will change, you will be "made" to feel a certain way, and you'll start having all kinds of effects - reactions, to what you've perceived.

Basically, if you believe that anything in the world is true, you are giving it power and truth and reality, which in your mind will set you up as the victim of it, and that will cause a reaction. If you are reacting in any way, with upset, fear, guilt, anger, anything at all, you have bought into the illusion that the world exists and is truly causing you.

The aim then is that you need to get to where you recognize that the world - which is a dream - is only a dream, which you are dreaming. And because it is only a dream, it is not a cause, and is only an effect. You must withdraw all power from it, all truth, and all reality. You must recognize it as nothing, doing nothing, causing nothing. All of its physical testimonies and states and forms must be recognized as lies - false - untrue.

Anything you see with the body's eyes, do not believe it. if you believe it, you will become deceived. It means you've bought into a temptation, and temptation puts you in hell. Anything that seems to be happening or existing in the physical world is NOT OF GOD and is not true. It must be denied. To deny it you must withdraw all belief in it, not play along with it, not go into false empathy, not join with it or become one with it.

The aim is to reach a state where you recognize that the world does nothing whatsoever, it has no power and no cause over you. You dominate it because you are all-powerful and causal. You are its dreamer. And as a result you cannot react to anything. It means the end of victimhood, the end of being affected or upset, the end of suffering because of anything other than yourself.

It does sound like a tall order - to not react to anything here whatsoever. To not react to a war, or a murder, or an abuse, or a fire, or a loss, or a threat. To be completely calm and still and unmoved and uncaused by anything in the world. But it is the goal we're seeking to achieve. If we are to be forgiving, it means we must be overlooking the world, which means not resting on the world, and not giving the world things it does not have.

In full recognition of being the cause or dreamer of the dream, you no longer can go along with believing that people are really suffering, or that sickness is true, or that death has any power to suppress anyone, or that bad things can make you unhappy, or that anything in the world can take anything away from you by any means.

It means the end of all effects from the world, all shifts to emotion, all fluctuating state and responses. It means being singular and unconditional, with one response to everything. I am not at the effect of the world I see. I will not react to the world I see. The world I see does nothing to me. I am immortal spirit and nothing in the world can change me or do anything to alter me in any way.

"That this is all the BODY does, is true. For it IS but a figure in a dream. But who REACTS to figures in a dream, UNLESS he sees them as if they were real?" UrT27I4

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." UrT27I10

"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within YOU, there is a force which NO illusions can resist." UrT22F5

"Be not deceived by the form of problems today." UrW79L10

"Now it becomes your task to let the illusion be carried to the truth. Be steadfast but in this; be not deceived by the "reality" of any changing form." UrM28A7

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs." UrM13A6

"For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take." UrW140L4

"Be not deceived by forms the "something" takes." UrT29I8

"You have need to use the symbols of the world a while. But be you not deceived by them as well. They do not stand for anything at all, and in your practicing it is this thought which will release you from them." UrW184L4

"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." UrT31D2

"Be not deceived by what appears as many choices." UrT41G14

"Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear." UrT21C2

"He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did." UrM6C3

"for the world will never again appear to rule the mind" UrM6C3

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are." UrW190L5

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power" UrT11C5

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal." UrM9A6

"The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. It is the temptation to abandon God and His Son, taking on a physical appearance. It is this which the body's eyes look upon." UrW64L1

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself." UrW64L2

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach." UrT31H1

"What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive YOURSELF defenseless and in hell. Yield NOT to this" UrT31H6

"For all temptation is nothing more than the attempt to substitute another will for God's." UrM17A9

"Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated." UrT27K4 "The world I see has nothing that I want." UrW128

"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?" UrM14A4

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way." UrW137L7

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other." UrT12G1

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

You may notice that all the times you refer to someone, you refer to their body almost exclusively. You barely have a notion of the person that doesn't in some way involve their body. You might even be surprised to learn that you almost EXCLUSIVELY relate to someone's body.

"Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize."

In ACIM, a special relationship is a relationship with a body. So that means that in all the ways you interact with, refer to people as, and focus on the body of another, you are in specialness. "The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship."

"The special relationship is totally without meaning WITHOUT A BODY. And, if you VALUE it, you must also VALUE THE BODY. And what you value, you WILL keep. The special relationship is a device for limiting YOUR self to a body, and for limiting your perception of others to THEIRS."

A body is not a person. There is much more to people than meets the eye.

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed."

When you think of this, you may realize that you have barely spent any time at all actually relating to the spirit of a person - to their real self. The light-being that is their soul. That's who you have a holy relationship with - your actual brother/sister in christ, the mind-soul that is beyond the body.

And how do mind-souls communicate except THROUGH mind and soul? Not through the body.

"Minds need not bodies to communicate."

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all. The mind is its only source."

Which means in order to have a holy relationship with someone you have to communicate with them, join with them, share with them, relate with them, and recognize them, USING YOUR MIND, TO THEIR MIND. This involves the mind being used as the spiritual eye to see their reality beyond the body. ie in your mind's eye.

"Corrective learning always begins with awakening the spiritual eye, and turning away from belief in physical sight."

"The Spiritual eye is the mechanism of miracles, because what the Spiritual eye perceives IS truth. The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man."

If you want to perceive a "creation of God" ie a brother, you have to use the spiritual eye, not the physical eyes.

You need to develop a relationship of and awareness of your brother using your mind, as they exist on another level. The true spirit of them, the immortal holy self of them, which is their real identity in Christ. To see christ in someone has to be done beyond the beyond and not WITH the body. Their body is not christ.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin."

You need therefore to learn to approach and interact with others on a MIND level, through spiritual sight, in which you communicate with and offer healing to them at the spiritual level. That is where the light is. That's where you ARE the light of the world, and where the light of your mind which you SEE WITH can LOOK INTO and shine into another's mind, offering it light to see.

Then, knowing the person at the spiritual level, you will properly frame their body as NOT THEM, and as nothing but a disguise covering them up. And then you will also recognize any physical state or sickness is not the truth about them, because what they are is not a body.

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

In order to uphold the truth and immortality of another you have to know yourself, so that you will know your brother. If you know yourself as immortal you will recognize that any trace of mortality is an illusion. And this will properly frame your brother's suffering as an illusion, not as true of them. And this will help you to stop focusing on their body or taking it to be who they are.

By not identifying with your own mind, or as a body, and identifying with your immortal spirit, the nature of which is nothing like the body, you will also identify OTHERS as not their bodies, and see them as immortal spirit. It is this sharing of light in the truth of SHARED CHRIST IDENTITY, that envelops your brother in your light and resurrects them.

"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy. His PURPOSE folds the body in His light, and fills it with the holiness that shines from HIM. "

The connection between denying illusions and working miracles...

"The miracle worker is one who accepts my kind of denial and projection, unites his own inherent abilities to deny and project with mine, and imposes them back on himself and others. This establishes the total lack of threat anywhere. Together we can then work for the real time of peace, which is Eternal."

The ego's kind of denial is the denial of God, the denial of truth and reality. It denies heaven and accepts hell.

The proper use of denial does the opposite, accepting God and denying hell. This means that denial itself is not necessarily negative or positive, but you HAVE to always deny something, because you also have to always accept something. Whatever you accept into your mind is reality to you, and whatever you deny is shut out of your mind.

"Whatever you accept INTO your mind has reality for you. It is, however, only the ACCEPTANCE which makes it real."

"Every illusion which you accept into your mind, BY JUDGING IT TO BE ATTAINABLE, removes your own sense of completion, and thus denies the Wholeness of your Father."

Similarly we are to use projection as Jesus would use it, because projection itself is NOT inherently positive or negative.

"WHAT YOU PROJECT YOU BELIEVE. This is an immutable law of mind in this world as well as in the Kingdom."

"We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law of mind."

The ego's use of projection is to attack or deny what's within, and project separation.

The proper use of projection is to accept and see what is within and project wholeness and innocence.

A miracle worker therefore is tasked with using denial and projection appropriately, ie constructively. To deny the denial of the truth.

"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH."

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other." Miracle mindedness is a state in which the world of form - anything not of God - is fully denied. And heaven is fully accepted. And whatever you accept into your mind becomes your reality, while whatever you deny (properly) becomes invisible to you. To see the real world you must accept its truth, which is atonement. And this requires that you DENY the physical world - anything not of God.

"Sickness and separation are not of God, but the Kingdom IS. If you obscure the Kingdom, you are perceiving WHAT IS NOT OF GOD."

"Whatever is revealed to Him that is not of God, is gone."

"Teach no-one he has hurt you, for, if you do, you teach YOURSELF that what is NOT of God, HAS POWER OVER YOU."

"THIS peace is totally incapable of being shaken by human errors of any kind. It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way."

The whole course can be summed up fairly simply as.... accept only the Kingdom of God, and deny the world you made. Refuse to accept anything is true about the world, and do not deny God.

Denial is a powerful defense and tool which acts like a pivot around which your whole perception revolves. Deny reality and you make an illusory world real. Deny all the illusions of the world and heaven becomes real to you again. To accept the atonement is to deny the illusory world and be utterly unphased by the dream, denying it any power over you at all.

To remain in miracle mindedness you must be vigilant for the Kingdom - accepting that only the truth is true and nothing else is true. To accept only that which is of God, wholly and openly, and refuse to accept anything God did not create.

"What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it. The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."

"What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning."

"How can a meaningless world exist if God did not create it?"

"INDIRECT proof of truth is needed in a world made of denial, and without direction."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

"Do not perceive ANYTHING God did not create, or you ARE denying Him."

"But denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as it is of being used destructively. Used negatively, it WILL be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, the law becomes as beneficent as all of the laws of God" "Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth."

"Remember a very early lesson, -- "never underestimate the power of denial." It has no power in ITSELF, but YOU can give it the power of YOUR mind, whose power is without limit of ANY kind. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone FOR YOU. REALITY CANNOT BE PARTLY APPRECIATED. That is why denying any part of it means you have lost awareness of ALL of it."

I'm trying at the moment to get a better handle on how various MIRACLE WORKERS have been able to achieve their states of mind, and gain access to true miracle working power.

Most of these miracle workers are Christians or Catholics, be it Jesus himself or various saints and other notable individuals.

There is something about what they are reading into in the bible that is steering them towards states of saintliness, christ-consciousness, holiness and humility.

I believe there are parallels to some core teachings in A Course in Miracles, and that some of these aspects may not be so readily noticed.

The bible acknowledges that we are in a "fallen state", and have become "sinners."

ACIM would make a small adjustment to say we BELIEVE we are sinners, and as a result a part of our mind has "become evil". This evilness is what we call ego. Many ACIM students do NOT acknowledge that they have this evil ego in their mind and do not want to look at it. But we have to "confess" that we believe evil things, in order to admit to our mistakenness and seek a better way.

The bible would say we are trying to be evil or wicked, and that by doing so we are destined for hell.

ACIM makes a small adjustment to say that we do indeed BELIEVE that we are evil and wicked, which is the "ego" portion of our mind, and by so believing we project and perceive hell. The "devil in us" drives us towards destruction and suffering and death.

The bible would say "the devil" tempts us and plays upon our sins and uses our mistakes against us.

ACIM makes a small adjustment to say our egos produce this temptation, our belief in sin leads to self punishment, and we indeed seem to succumb to ego/devil when we believe in death and destruction. In unforgiveness we demand punishment for sin, and the wages of sin is death. This is because we are unforgiving toward ourselves and others and must purify ourselves of grievances/sin/guilt/fear.

The bible would say that only that which is of God is good and real and true, and ACIM would agree with this.

The bible would also say that we need to purify ourselves of our evil ways, ie repent of sin. ACIM also agrees in the sense that we have to stop believing in separation and sin and guilt. This means we have to own up to the fact that we are "being sinners" by having egos, we WANT to be sinful, and we need have a little willingness "to repent" ie to CHOOSE AGAIN and change our minds. We're not going to do this if we don't have willingness to admit that we WANT to be evil.

In both paths there is an acknowledgement of the fall of man. There is acknowledge that we have entered a state of belief in sin and death. There is acknowledgement that only that which is of God is holy and good. There is acknowledgement that this world is a fallen kingdom and the body is not natural to us. There is acknowledgement that we need to admit to "being sinners" (egos) and be willing to repent (choose again). That we need to become more forgiving and develop faith and trust in God.

In particular, all saints and miracle workers confess to having faith in God, trusting in his power, believing in his laws, and obeying his instructions. There is a great dependency on God, both in terms of carrying out his will, doing the Holy Spirit's work, and also being looked after by God. This is mirrored in ACIM as well in terms of us developing trust, gaining faith, listening to the Holy Spirit, receiving Help and Guidance and Correction etc and learning how to be HEALERS.

Both the bible and ACIM provide a notion of "salvation" from sin and suffering and death. A way to overcome the world. They both focus on resurrection and life. They both lead us toward God and toward spirit and eventually to heaven itself.

I do not see that ultimately, in terms of goals, there is ANY difference whatsoever between the two paths, in terms of their end result. When we become miracle workers we become exactly like this who have gone before us as renowned performers of the acts of God. We become empowered to utilize God's unlimited power, the Holy Spirit works through us, and we simultaneously become purified and holy and innocent and good.

The key to the success of these miracle workers appears to lie mainly in their dedication to the laws and nature of God, their development of faith and trust and dependence on God, their willingness to admit to being nothing without God, their humility and recognition of God as being the source of ALL power, and their great honesty in seeking out and purifying themselves of all devils and egos and evil thoughts within them, and their vigilance for the Kingdom.

A Course in Miracles asks us to do PRECISELY the same, and to become exactly like them.

"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."

Jesus is asking us to be fully responsible for everything we experience.

It means you cannot ever again be a victim in any way.

It means nothing happens to us against our will.

It means if we decide something, it happens. If we don't, it doesn't.

It means the body and its condition are exactly what we asked for and were given.

It means that everything that happens around us is what we explicitly asked for and are given. That all prayers are answered.

It means everything you feel, everything your body is doing, is coming from you. Directly.

It means there is no cause in the world able to do anything to you whatsoever against your will.

It means absolutely everything that you do and experience is 100% deliberate, intentional, on purpose, and there are no flaws, no accidents, no mistakes, and everything is exactly the way you want it.

It means you have freedom of choice, because choosing one thing gives you that one thing, and choosing something else gives that to you also.

It also means that whatever you decide to perceive, you will perceive. Whatever you want to see with your perception, you will project so that you can see it. Literally, projecting objects out of thin air.

It means nothing can attack you and nothing can affect you and you cannot be sick nor can you die and the body can be used to demonstrate this, proving that the Son of God cannot have anything happen to him against his will.

It means you do not ask questions, you express. You create. You create (or make) whatever it is you want to create (with or without God's will). You paint pictures. You do not ask pictures to change, in that they might decide not to. You put there what you want to see. You create what you will experience.

It means projection makes perception because you first project and then you perceive what you have projected. You project whatever you want to see. If you want to see an entire planet you will project an entire planet, "making it" in your dream. But when you are done projecting and perceiving, you will stop doing that, and it will disappear.

It means when you make a decision, the consequences are immediate and permanent, and there is no ifs or buts, no fears or doubts, no uncertainty. God's will BE DONE. What God wills CANNOT BE DENIED.

It means that because you have free will, whatever you ask for you will be given. You will never fail to be given what you ask for. Only what you ask for will be all that is given to you. And nothing that you receive will ever be something you did not ask for.

It also means that the world is not causing you, God is not attacking you, other people are not doing anything to you, no-one can hurt you, you MUST be invulnerable, and you cannot die.

It therefore also means that YOU MADE sickness and death and can therefore ABOLISH both, in yourself and in another IF they are willing to ask for help. This means you do not have to go through death if you do not choose to do so, and you would only choose to do so to attempt to prove you can be hurt against your will, which is a bullshit lie.

It also means other people with free will are 100% responsible for EVERYTHING they experience, there is nothing you can do to them, you cannot hurt them, you cannot attack them, you cannot judge them, you cannot forgive them, and they are absolutely immune to anything you express, other than your sharing of love.

It also means, therefore, that anyone's victimhood or sob story or justifications for revenge or reasons to be right or wrong or ego reactions or upset emotions or pain or suffering or sickness, which are all acts of IRRESPONSIBILITY, are attempts to get rid of ourselves and to disown who we are, denying the ABSOLUTE POWER that we share with God.

It also means, that nothing real can be threatened! Reality could only possibly attempt to threaten itself, and if it does so, it will make only illusions of threat - pretend threat - because reality cannot be threatened, and nothing can happen to it against its will.

Can you sense the absolute explicit deliberateness of this? This is the thought system of a miracle worker. This is the kind of belief about ourselves that we need to have, or rather, to get rid of the belief that things happen for reasons OTHER THAN yourself. This is RIGHT MINDED THINKING.

The secret to salvation is that you are doing this all to yourself. That's because of all of the above. NOTHING can happen to you against your will. No-one can die without choosing to do so. No-one can suffer or be sick without choosing to do so. No-one is a victim of anyone else. No-one can be hurt against their will. No-one can show "effects" caused by anyone or anything else, unless they themselves PUT the effects into their own body to pretend that someone else put them there.

You are not at the effect of the world you see. You are not a victim of the world. No-one can suffer without his own consent. The secret to salvation is that you are doing all of this to yourself, including making your body sick and die, to try to prove you are not doing it to yourself. No-one needs to die. The dream of separation is NOT left by death, only by THIS TRUTH.

Total absolute responsibility for everything makes you IMMORTAL, INNOCENT, INVULNERABLE, and incapable of death.

To put it simply, the nature of the mind is completely opposite to the nature of the body. Mind is of God, bodies are illusions. Mind functions naturally in a state of sharing, union, extension and oneness, driven by God's laws. Bodies function according to unnatural ego laws of separation, as separation devices, designed to imprison mind and completely oppose the mind's natural functioning. This is also why the notion that the mind is "part of the brain" is preposterous.

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for ***one denies the other can be real***. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

"The body IS separate, and therefore CANNOT be part of you. To be of ***one mind is meaningful***, but to be of one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body IS meaningless."

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

"The ego, which always WEAKENS the will, wants to SEPARATE the body from the mind. This IS an attempt to DESTROY it."

"For sin HAS changed creation from an Idea of God to an IDEAL the EGO wants; a world IT rules, made up of bodies, mindless, and capable of COMPLETE corruption and decay."

To attempt to APPLY a body TO a mind, imprisons the mind. Confusing mind and body, to suggest the body is the mind, or that you have no mind at all, leads to the mind identifying with the body. This makes the mind run completely opposite to its nature, and induces all suffering and sickness.

To again put it simply, if the mind in any way associates itself with the body, or allows or uses the body to define itself, the mind becomes sick and attacks the body. Bodies are prisons, and minds are freedom. Bodies are exclusive, and minds are inclusive. Bodies separate, minds join. They function totally differently, so trying to make the mind function LIKE the body, arrests the mind's natural function and induces illness.

"Thus is the JOINING of mind and body an INESCAPABLE belief of those who value sin. And so is sacrifice INVARIABLY a means for limitation."

"Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. 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 (tying it to the body's nature) 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."

"No mind is sick until another mind AGREES that they are separate."

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment 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."

"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed!"

Extension, sharing, union, oneness, equality, transcendence, miraculousness, is the mind's natural function. Mind needs to function according to mind's laws in order to be healthy. But bodies are fundamentally opposite, as separation devices.

If the mind identifies with "being a body", or functioning by physical laws, or obeying physical limitations, the mind becomes sick. It's like something that's supposed to be completely free and open, being shoved inside a completely closed box. Mind and body are not compatible.

"Spirit makes use of mind as means to find Its Self-expression. And the mind that serves the Spirit is at peace and filled with joy. Its power comes from Spirit, and it is fulfilling happily its function here. Yet mind can also see itself divorced from Spirit, and perceive itself within a body it confuses with itself. Without its function then, it has no peace, and happiness is alien to its thoughts."

"Yet mind apart from Spirit cannot think. It has denied its Source of strength, and sees itself as helpless, limited and weak. Dissociated from its function now, it thinks it is alone and separate, attacked by armies massed against itself, and hiding in the body's frail support."

"You also believe the body's brain can think. If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea."

"Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt."

"the underlying fallacy is more likely to be the confusion of mind and brain"

The situation we find ourselves in is therefore very strange. We seem to be isolated and alone inside a body, trapped, as if separated off from other minds, physically unable to truly share or join. Even in intercourse we can't actually get inside of another person's mind, or experience them as ourselves, or really share anything with them.

Everything seems to happen to us alone, and not another. Everything seems to apply to me and not you. Even the form of our bodies suggest we are different, separate, special, and exclusive. That we are separated off by time and space. As if I can have little private thoughts inside a little private world that has no effect on anyone or anything outside of me.

This is not how mind needs to function to be healthy. This is totally opposite to its natural functioning. Mind needs to SHARE, to join, to be one-with, to unify, which is true communication and extension. Mind needs to be open and transcendental beyond limitations and walls and boundaries. Mind spreads out and can have the vision to see beyond physical limits and distances. Mind can be everywhere at once.

So somehow we have to find a way to transcend the body's anchoring, imprisoning, limiting factors, and restore the mind to functioning how it functions in heaven.

"Or would I teach that bodies cannot keep us apart?"

"What does it matter if they then appear in many forms? Their minds are one; their joining is complete. And God works through them now as One, for that is what they are."

"This is the function of your holy relationship. For what ONE thinks, the OTHER will experience WITH him. What can this mean, EXCEPT your minds are one?"

"The body is not capable of understanding. Only the mind KNOWS anything. A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its strength. It cannot attack the body, because it knows EXACTLY what the body IS. This is what "a sane mind in a sane body" really means."

"A PERSON conceives of himself as separate, largely because he perceives OF himself as bounded by a body. ONLY if he perceives as a MIND can he overcome this."

"While you believe that YOUR reality, OR YOUR BROTHER's, is bounded by a body, you will believe in sin. While you believe that BODIES can unite, you will find guilt attractive, and believe that sin is precious. For the belief that bodies LIMIT the mind leads to a perception of the world in which the PROOF of separation seems to be everywhere."

"Sins are beliefs which you impose between your brother and yourself. They limit you to time and place, and give a little space to you; ANOTHER little space to him. This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. Yet what this symbol REPRESENTS is but your wish to BE apart and separate."

"The belief you are a body calls for correction, being a mistake."

"Remember that all sense of weakness is associated with the belief you are a body, a belief that is mistaken and deserves no faith."

"If you are sin you ARE a body, for the mind acts not."

"It IS impossible to see your brother sinless, and yet to look upon him as a body."

"And so the illusion of a brother as a body is quite in keeping with the purpose of unholiness."

"To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body."

"For faithlessness IS the perception of a brother AS a body, and the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union. If, then, you SEE him as a body, YOU have established a condition in which UNITING with him becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to him has separated you FROM him, and kept you BOTH apart from being healed."

"And while you see your brother as a body,APART from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him AND you."

"He Who was always wholly spirit now no longer sees Himself as a body, or even as in a body. Therefore He is limitless. And being limitless, His Thoughts are joined with God's forever and ever."

The thing about the body is that it's a limitation. You as a spirit are unlimited, infinite, everywhere. You are omnipresent like God. To seemingly "enter" a body you have to massively confine yourself to one location, separated off from the rest. It's like having your hands tied. Huge amounts of awareness have to be shut out. Not to mention that your intimate expansive unified relationships with the entire Sonship are shut out.

You are squeezed into this tiny little space that you then seem to inhabit. The body forms this fence around a part of the mind and seems to keep it inside, protected and separate from the rest of the mind which is outside. Large distances are placed between bodies to ensure they are kept separate. This is all the ego's design for isolating and imprisoning God's children.

Then the ego goes one step further and says, ok, now that you are in this body, wouldn't it be great if you could connect with other people? How about we bring your body closer to other bodies? How about we have your bodies try to join with other bodies? Maybe you'll feel wonderful things as you merge and feel close to others. And the usual response to this temptation is that is sounds great, it seems like an improvement, we don't have to be so alone and isolated.

The problem here is that we're accepting a massive artificial limitation as though it can never be changed, we're deliberately confining ourselves to being trapped in a little body, acting from littleness. We're handicapping ourselves, and then pretending that to bring bodies together is going to somehow "undo" this. But so long as the handicapping nature of the body is maintained, so long as we are isolated in space and time, anything the ego offers as a special relationship is a ridiculous substitute for true joining.

Two spirits should share, join, merge, connect, be one, and access each other fully and completely and in a truly unlimited way. You are in your brother's minds. You share everything with them. To do that, you need to not be restricted and limited. Trying to first accept massive limitation and to then try to continue to join, is like two people with a ball and chain around their ankles, chained up to separate prison cells, trying to reach out to be closer to each other. They can't leave the prisons or get past the bars.

It's also a simple fact that nothing in spacetime can truly join. Quantum particles are designed to be separated off. If atoms were to truly occupy the same space they would annihilate each other in a nuclear explosion. Forces repel the particles and keep them separated. Even what seems to be a physical collision or sensation of touch is really what it feels like to bump up against these force fields. Atoms don't ever really touch each other at all. So right off the bat the ego has made this scenario where even if it looks as though you are as physically close to something as possible, you still aren't actually making real contact. All sensations of touch are sensations of two forcefields repelling each other.

To try to join with another spirit while having a body is next to impossible. Someone who knows they are spirit would also find it pointless and very limiting to try to make this connection via the body. Why, when you can experience direct mind-to-mind communication ("minds need not bodies to communicate"), would you first filter all communication through your body, then through another body, in attempting to share something? Why not just go mind-to-mind?

When two bodies attempt to join in sexual acts it also really is an attempt to identify with your own body, to identify the other person with their body, to bring the two bodies together in an attempt to believe that the two persons/spirits are actually joining. This is a body delusion. The physical bodies are all that are coming together, and even their sensations of contact are illusions. Forms, matter, energy, keep individuals separated off at all levels and at all times.

Trying to relate to another brother, a spirit, by trying to relate TO or WITH the body, is almost like you're having a relationship with someone's clothing. If you were to fall in love with someone's jacket and trousers and completely ignore the person wearing them, this would indeed be very strange and somewhat insane. But this is what we do when we relate to people as bodies, completely failing to overlook the illusion of the body, failing to see the real person beyond it.

The ego first established a state of massive lack and deprivation. Its isolating of us made us lonely and in need. It built compulsions to try to join physically, not in an effort to bring us closer together, but in an effort to reinforce and emphasize the reality of the body. Pleasure and pain accomplish the same goal of making the body and illusions of sensations the primary focus. "To sense is not to know", and by focusing on sensations we become blinded by perception of form.

In efforts to bring two bodies together in a special, body-worshipping relationship, we actually necessarily exclude vast quantities of individuals. More is left out than is taken in. Due to the separating and localizing nature of spacetime, bringing 2 bodies together must entail excluding billions. The attempt to make two bodies extra special, psychologically, requires the downplaying and attack upon other bodies. A special body cannot be elevated and idol worshipped without condemning all the rest.

"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

What appears on the surface to be an attempt to join, is ACTUALLY an attempt to separate. And so the ego's promise of body union in fact leads to an increase in separation, unconsciousness, loss, lack, loneliness, isolation and imprisonment. The supposed freedom produced by sexual union actually produces an increased state of exclusion and illness. With the body as the main focus, the mind is shut out and true joining based in real love becomes impossible.

You could say, in fact, that the attempt of two bodies to come together to join to make a baby, is actual a death ritual. The bodies celebrate their triumph over all other bodies, they worship the idol of death, separation ensues and now there are three bodies. Illusions have given birth to illusions. And while this is much celebrated in the world, the ego does have these underpinnings in its mechanics of what is actually happening.

It's possible, for a time, to still use the body for a holier purpose. Love can be extended through it to others, it can be used to teach, to make the body less real, and to overlook form. To the Holy Spirit, the body actually is seen as having NO function.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself."

"When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."

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

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

Trying to make bodies real, to use them as exclusion devices, emphasizing and believing in and falling into the temptation of the flesh, being deceived by physical sensations not recognized as illusions, believing your brother is a body, etc are all ways that the ego uses the body to keep you from what it promises will be the outcome. The ego guarantees separation, while the Holy Spirit guarantees union.

For a time we can use the body with the Holy Spirit, but not to emphasize bodies. Not to use it as a way to focus on the body or believe it can give us anything. Not to use it to get from others. And not to use it as a symbolic act of exclusion. We are to love everyone equally, and this is impossible at the physical level.

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

"Think not that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

The entire world of bodies has to be more or less "overlooked". "To forgive is to OVERLOOK." To overlook means to "bypass seeing", to see past and beyond. If we stop to dwell on the physical, our sight is blinded. If we stop to focus on the body, the mind stops extending past it. This produces various forms of illness. If we truly want to have a real relationship with anyone, it has to be a real relationship with everyone, at the level of unconditional love, through mind and spirit.

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.

The purpose of sickness is to make you and the body seem to be "one".

The ultimate goal of sickness, which is "death", is the attempt to fully unite who you really are with the body, so that when the body is destroyed, it is claimed that "you" are destroyed.

The whole point of this happening is our attempt to destroy the Son of God - Christ, by associating His identity with something which CAN appear to be attacked, like tying a metal ball to His ankle and throwing Him in the ocean.

Sickness therefore is the way that we attempt to destroy ourselves, to try to prove that we are not God's Son. The closer that we can get to achieving this, the more it would seem we have become "the ego" - a fully separate self, which is symbolized by the BODY. If we are the body, and if the body is destroyed, then we would seem to be destroyed along with it. This is the illusion of death.

Forms of sickness vary, but pain in particular is a good example. Pain screams for your attention, day and night. It blasts your awareness with such a loud signal in the body that all of your waking moments are consumed with it. It is a particularly effective way to associate you with the body, because it leaves very little room for ignoring it.

Similarly, other "severe" diseases and so-called accidents can produce such intense long-term suffering such that the body is thoroughly identified with, and believed to be the Self. When the body is challenging you constantly with reminders about how sick you are, how disabled you are, how suffering you are, and how much pain you are in on many levels, it acts as a device for shutting out God. And it can lead to hopelessness, and eventually to death.

In the ego's glorious moment of triumph, it *seems* to achieve the death of the Son of God, through destruction of the body. The body can ONLY be destroyed IF the Son of God has fully granted permission for this to occur, i.e. has done it to Himself, and therefore has chosen to die. (Or at least to seem to, because He is immortal.)

Sickness then is only there as a way to bind you to the body, so that you will seem to be pulled away from God. God is the truth, and sickness puts distance between you and God. Therefore, "sickness is a defense against the truth" because it seems to allow you to escape "into" the body, in effort to find a way to move closer to death, because death is seen as the opposite of Life. Life is God, so death is an escape from God.

If the only purpose of sickness, in defense against truth, is to SEPARATE YOU from God through intimacy with the body, then the HEALING of sickness MUST entail a movement TOWARDS God and away from "body reality". The person must dis-identify from the body, and recognize that they are not physical.

Another way to express this, is that you must realize that the truth of who and what you are is not "form". The only way this can be true, is IF form itself is NOT truth. While the body and its experiences remain true or real to you, you will believe that YOU are those truths. That you are physical and that you can be hurt.

Withdrawal of "reality" from the body, and therefore from all form, is the path to healing sickness and death. In other words, withdrawing a sense of truth from what is actually an ILLUSION, and placing that sense of truth back where it belongs, aligned with the REAL TRUTH which is of God.

If you believe that the body is ever "really sick", or that what you're witnessing is a "real sickness", or that something is "really happening" to you or others, as evidenced by all of the signs and sensations of suffering, then you will be stuck. You must shift your perception to recognize that what you're SEEING is actually an ILLUSION OF SICKNESS. It is not real sickness, because there is no such thing.

What you're seeing, what you're experiencing, as sickness, is actually just an ILLUSORY IMAGE which is PRETENDING to be sickness. It is not really there. It is not really happening. No matter how it appears, no matter the severity or mildness, no matter the form or how long it's been present, it cannot be reality. Otherwise YOU will become the sickness, and the body, and you will die.

Either God's truth is the truth, or the ILLUSION is the truth.

Either God's truth is real, or sickness is real.

Either God's truth is the only truth, or the body has truth to it.

God did not create the body because the body is not real.

Learn then that when you perceive sickness, IF there is a measure of reality to your experience of what you're perceiving, you are MISTAKEN, and you are actually seeing an illusion, but are thinking that it is reality. You have GIVEN truth to it "I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me". Because you GAVE it truth, you can withdraw the truth from it. To do this you have to PLACE the truth somewhere else, and recognize where it really is. Shift the truth to be God's truth, and the truth will be removed from the sickness.

The truth is true and nothing else is true. The body is not the truth. Sickness is not the truth.

Work on this until you can literally look at the sickness and NOT BELIEVE IT. Recognize it is an ILLUSION. It's like a three-dimensional fake hologram being projected by a Spirit that is floating around in space pretending to be physical. It is not a REAL sickness, it is make-believe!

When you can look at sickness as NOT REAL, you will find yourself feeling HAPPY. You will be happy because you are not making errors, you are being forgiving, you are not falling for the illusion (it's a mind trick!), and you're not buying into it. You will find yourself smiling as you affirm and see "this is not real".

Recognizing that illusions are not real, lifts FEAR from you, because fear is a reaction to perceiving a real illusion. You could only be afraid IF what you see is really happening and IF what you see was not designed by God. Only real illusions can frighten! If illusions are NOT real, they cannot frighten. But you must BELIEVE that they are not reality. You're seeing something that isn't really there, it isn't really happening, and it is quite literally.... NOTHING.

Sickness is nothing. Death is nothing.

This "collapsing" of the illusion, this stripping it of its illusory reality, this taking away of belief in it, this withdrawing of the conviction that it is true and therefore suffering with reactions, is all part of forgiveness. Overlooking the error. Overlooking sin. Overlooking an illusion that you always thought was reality, but is in fact smoke and mirrors.

Your body's eyes will show you sickness. But your MIND's EYE will show you the truth - that the sickness is an illusion. The mind then is shining a light of truth - God's truth - and this has POWER to disperse and undo and correct what appears to be the sickness. IT MUST GO! Jesus has said, "illusions that are understood to BE illusions MUST disappear".

When someone is upset, it isn't real.

When someone is sick and suffering terribly, it isn't real.

When war is happening, it isn't real.

When someone is dying, it isn't real.

If this stuff were real, we would HAVE to be very upset! We would have an extremely hard time not being upset by this, because our mind is actually convinced that it's reality and will react to it with fear and suffering.

But imagine that these things are NOT real? This is just a dream, an illusion. You could see these things and NOT BELIEVE THEM, and LAUGH!!!!!!!!!

Too radical? Too ridiculously crazily outside the box of normal thinking? Too wild to be true?

This world is not your home.

To transmit large amounts of love to someone, supplies a lack and heals them. All suffering is simply the illusion of a lack of love, ie belief in sin and fear.

But the ego will believe that this undertaking of exprsesion will exhaust you, threaten you, deplete you and will take a great effort to push this love outward. It believes that all expression is a SACRIFICE AND A LOSS. That you will have to burn yourself out to help anyone, expending great effort above and beyond what you are capable of. And that you will have to do all of this yourself without divine help.

The solution to this is the recognition that your proper function in the machinery of love, is in its EXTENSION, not its sourcing. All love is of God. You should ALLOW HIM to extend love through you, and your "effort" should mainly be in stepping back, opening the door to the light, and being a CONDUIT, THROUGH which the love expresses. This requires your own mind to be open to love.

If you think that you are the one giving this, you will become an unhealed healer and deplete yourself, because you are really trying to force there to be a power. And you who see yourself as finite and limited will see this power as limited, requriing you to force it more The power has to be acknoweldged as being OF GOD, and via the Holy Spirit, so that you ALLOW HIM to be the therapist.

"To acknowledge that all power is of God is to gain all power."

"The thereapist merely lets healing be." "The Holy Spirit is the only therapist."

Our healing function is therefore to act as a PORTAL, open and free from fear or restriction or limit, which acts as a LENS, to allow the light of God to shine THROUGH. To broadcast and transmit to and be shared with another. To be this portal YOU DO have to be in a loving, spiritual, purified state yourself, not simply so that you do not interfere but so that you can reflect and RELAY what is being given TO and THROUGH you.

If you repeat something along the lines of "I extend God's love to you", this is a good place to start. You reach within or above, find the light, love and power of God, tune into the Holy Spirit, and with great willingness act as a RELAY STATION to extend HIS love to the patient. "I give God's love to you" would be another way to look at this. "I extend God's love to you".

"Through prayer love is received. Through miracles love is expressed." You receive the love by giving it and through your own healing. You express the love by extending it in which giving and receiving are one.

It is also true that if you believe you are currently lacking in love, which is highly likely if you are still working on your own atonement, you will recognize yourself as NOT having what it takes to heal anyone. You will fear healing. You will feel inadequate and weak and incapable. And you will try to depend on your own knowledge to make something happen, even though you have NO CLUE how to heal anything. This will make you feel TENTATIVE and HESITANT about even trying to heal.

But what you will find is that, as you step aside and plug yourself into the power source, and start to "get the ball rolling" by STIMULATING the flow of love through you, simultaneously your openness to the love will increase. As will its effectiveness.

The ego would say, if you start out with hardly any love, you have nothing to give. And it would say that because you lack love, there is no way to increase the love, and so giving it risks your own depravation. But you will in fact find that if you simply TRY, and start from wherever you are AT, and you start to "talk yourself into it", by at least efforting to extend God's love, you will find that your rusty pipes will open up, the flow of love will increase, it will BENEFIT YOU as it increases, and this benefit to you will also raise your own light and increase your ability to flow it.

"I will heal (myself) as I let Him teach me to heal (others)."From a stationary starting point, you can simply assert, "I love you [person]" or "I feel and extend God's love to you" or whatever. And as you repeat this over and over, you WILL start to tune into love, and feel it, and this will begin to heal you, and raise you up, and plug you in even more strongly. "Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver".

By giving, you affirm that you have it. By giving, you open up to receive even more. The more you give, the more it FLOWS abundantly. Giving even when you believe you have nothing TO give, starts the process and gets things moving. Your natural function here is to SHINE BRIGHTLY, to emit a large amount of intense light. And you can only do this by EXTENDING the power of God through the Holy Spirit. Not by "burning out" of your own resources.

Ultimately when your mind is very loving and giving and receptive to love, it shines brightly and the light shining THROUGH you from God shines INTO the other person's mind and energy field. This lifts them up as well as you. You will feel not only lighter but stronger, your energy will feel more intense, and you will feel more powerful. And you will feel noticeably happier. And if you had stuff to be healed as well, you will find YOU receive a healing as you attempt to heal others.

We fear to begin this process only on a basis of the apparent LACK of love that we currently experience. We think we are are just too WEAK to even get off the starting blocks. That we don't have enough to give. Or just feel too unloving, honestly, to really want to help anyone, because we sense that giving a lot of love to someone is going to bring healing to ourselves also, and that is going to entail a challenge to our ego and our own suffering. We literally stand in the way of healing until we have some willingness to TRUST and to OPEN UP and at least TRY, from whatever our starting point is. And to do what we have to be willing to BE healed as well.

This is why it is vital to be willing to at least ATTEMPT to perform miracles, to express love, even if you yourself are lacking, and even if you are not enlightened yet, because it is this OFFERING of love that UNLOCKS your own receipt of help and healing. And it is through this GIVING that you accelerate your own RECEIVING of illumination.

You can of course take your sweet time and simply wait until you are "naturally" expressing love consistently all the time, but being willing to EXPERIMENT with this and TRY to heal, even as an unhealed healer, will help you to move forward on your own path faster, AND begin to show you RESULTS through your efforts with others. And by these results you will see PROOF that you have the power of God in you.

Miracle working is an ABILITY to be practiced. "Doing them brings conviction in the ability". You are not yet convinced that they can even be done, because you doubt your natural function as light of the world and as co-healer with the Holy Spirit. But by ATTEMPTING to perform them you will learn and hone the ability, learn from your egoic interference and failure, and move more rapidly towards consistent miracle working.

Say you have some illusions. Something that isn't true. It could be a physical thing, or some belief or whatever.

If your mind is open, it is open to the possibility of being mistaken, the possibility of not knowing, the possibility that the thing could be true or false. The mind isn't locked into some position or defending some viewpoint or prior belief. It's open to considering possibilities.

This openness allows you to "see" all of what is there, without filtering anything out with some kind of bias. It lets you recognize what things are, without distortions and without preferences. It's just sort of a way of saying, "tell me what you are", "what is this really?". it requires honesty and a willingness to be mistaken.

Open mindedness can allow you to see a mistake, recognize it as a mistake, and recognize that it needs correcting. It is a light which is open to everything, so it can see all sides and all angles, all perspectives. Including being able to see from a perspective of wholeness, which holds things in its light and in its true perspective to reveal what things really are.

Open-mindedness could be said to be the same thing as forgiveness. It's a mind that is willing to accept the truth regardless of what the truth is, and is not deceived by appearances. It's open to questioning what it sees and considering that it may or may not be true or real. It's the same thing as true perception - openness to the whole truth.

Sin on the other hand is a state of close-mindedness, which we could call false perception. You could call it narrow-mindedness as well. The mind narrows down and instead of being open to the whole, to everything, it becomes very focused and specific. It shuts out the peripheral vision, so to speak, and focuses only on what things appear to be on the surface.

A closed mind is not open to considering that anything is mistaken, or to questioning the reality or truth of anything at all. It takes everything at face value. Illusions are taken to be reality, lies are considered truth. Whatever seems to happen is believed to be really happening.

A closed mind also narrows down and homes in on specific things, so will focus on "what someone did" to the exclusion of all else. Even if the person has merit or does good dees in addition to their mistakes, sin focuses only on the mistakes and shuts out the good deeds.

Thus a closed mind becomes a darkened mind, focusing only on what people are doing wrong - given that everything in form is basically a mistake it turns everything into a sin. It mistakes illusions for truth and believes that whatever appears to be happening is permanently irreversibly true.

Sin has no openness to correction, to healing, to another viewpoint. It is very rigid and stuck and fixated on nothingness. It will not budge or allow any change to its viewpoint, or any way by which anything can be questioned. It takes everything as gospel and without question at all, accepting illusions into the mind without any sense of real perspective.

A sinful false perception therefore, a closed mind, does not see that there is even a possibility of mistakenness, a possibility of unintentionally, or of a need for gentle correction. It sees only deliberate evil acts, which appear to be utterly unforgivable, and sees that there is no other way to look at anything. It does not allow any openness to consider its position being flawed, or to register any sense of sin itself being a mistaken view.

As such a closed mind is an unforgiving mind, a mind which will not allow forgiveness because it will not question whether or not what happens is really happening. Whether that it sees is really there to see, or the truth at all. It believes it knows everything already, has all of the truth already, cannot be told anything new, and will not listen to reason. It won't consider the possibility of any alternative viewpoint, because to sin there is only one factual truth - you sinned and you should die for it.

As we awaken, we are moving from the viewpoint of sin - or closed-mindedness, and are opening up the mind and expanding our viewpoint so that we are more inclusive, more open, considerate, willing to question, willing to be mistaken, and willing to recognize that other people's choices are mistakes and not sins. This requires broadening the focal point and expanding it out to see the whole picture. To reframe everything in the light of the whole.

In forgiveness, everything false is recognised as false, without judgement. And everything true is recognised as true without distortion. It recognizes that all illusions are just mistakes, and there is no sin, because there is nothing closed off from the light of truth. The whole is recognised, perception is open to wholeness, and the whole informs everything. To forgive, you must open your mind and question illusions and let go of trying to make everything into a sin. There is no sin.

"What is forgiveness, but a willingness that truth be true? What can remain unhealed and broken from a Unity Which holds all things within Itself? There is NO sin. And EVERY miracle is possible the INSTANT that the Son of God perceives his wishes and the Will of God are One." UrT26H9

"Our lessons now are geared specifically to widening horizons, and direct approaches to the special blocks which keep your vision narrow, and too limited to let you see the value of our goal." UrW180 "Only by doing this is it possible to transcend the narrow boundaries the ego would impose upon the self." UrP3C8

"And if I need but stillness and a tranquil, open mind, these are the gifts I will receive of Him." UrW365

"It is therefore essential that you keep a perfectly open mind, unhampered by judgment, in selecting the things to which the idea for the day is to be applied." UrW3L2

"Accept atonement with an open mind which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son." UrW101

"Dwell not upon the past today. Keep a completely open mind, washed of all past ideas and clean of every concept you have made." UrW75L5

"An open mind is more honest than this." UrT12D3

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings." UrW136L16

"The Savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts and prepared to look on ONLY what the present holds." UrT31G13

"It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is." UrT31E16

Suffering is really in the mind. It is not really in the physical universe, in the world, or in the body. What is physical does not really suffer. The experience of suffering is psychological only.

The world and the body are a projection in the mind. The law of projection is one of giving, or of pushing outward, based on what is within. In its pure form this is the extension of the Kingdom of God. In its distorted ego form, it is the pushing outward of an inner state of sin, guilt, fear and denial.

The ego thought system in the mind therefore tries to deny and "get rid of" what it does not want, which ultimately it YOU, by first attacking you and then projecting the attack. The projection of attack, in an attempt to give without receiving, which is murderous, is an way the mind "hides from" its own content. The physical world and the body arise as make-believe images and now act to disguise what the real problem is.

This means really that it is your psyche that suffers, and your mind that is hurt, and it is the mind that needs healing. It is your beliefs that twist your thoughts, and distort your perceptions. And it is really only the mind that can seem to be sick.

But when the mind IS sick, it has entered into denial and separation. And as the law of projection now functions, the mind tries to dissociate (separate) from its own suffering. It tries to push "separateness" outside of itself, to create distance and delay between itself and the problem. This produces spacetime. And the whole physical world and body arise to SYMBOLIZE and represent the inner state of mind, as if the mind itself has become physical form.

This means that if the mind is sick, it WILL attack the body and render the body as a sickened image, a broken body, showing up as if deformed or malfunctioning or damaged. And this body now acts to testify that IT has been attacked. And since the cause of the attack is not SEEN, because it is in the mind, we instead look to the world to explain HOW it came to suffer.

We even look to the body itself to ask how the body could make itself sick, and also look to the body to make itself well. But the body cannot attack itself, or heal itself, because ONLY THE MIND puts the body there. And only the mind attacks the body. And only the mind heals the body.

Or to put it in a better way... if the mind attacks itself first, it will project an image of an attacked body in an attacking world. If the mind heals itself first, it will project an image of a healed body in a healed world. There are many statements in ACIM that support this. And it means that the only true way to heal the body is to heal the mind, so that IF the body is projected, its form will symbolize and represent and point towards its origins - as a mirror of a sane and harmless mind.

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

"And it grows old and dies, because that mind is sick within ITSELF."

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment 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."

"Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as NOT within the body, and its innocence is quite APART from it, and where ALL healing IS."

"The lesson is the MIND was sick that thought the body COULD be sick; projecting OUT its guilt caused NOTHING, and had NO effects."

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that IT will suffer pain. It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret"

"The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience."

"For your beliefs converge upon the body"

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. 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."

"Your PERCEPTION of the body can clearly be sick, but project this not upon the body."

"Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source."

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

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

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

Freedom of Choice > Responsibility > Power > Causation > Effects.

To simplify, think of cause and effect. You are either the cause, or the effect. If you see yourself as the cause, you cannot be an effect. Your casual outpouring is so strong nothing can come at you. If you see yourself as not the cause, you MUST see yourself as being highly affected and therefore ARE an effect of something.

When you project responsibility outside yourself, onto another or the world, you are disowning and giving away your power. You are giving power TO them. You are framing them in your mind as having the power to CAUSE YOU, and to make you have effects. And it will seem these effects are against your will - something you did not choose.

But you are choosing it, because you are using your power to PRETEND to disown your power, you are still using your power to frame someone as having power over you, and the power that you see IN them acting against you IS YOUR POWER. You just are seeing it as though it belongs to someone else and is not a part of you.

You've separated yourself from your power and now your power is seeming to turn around 180 degrees and come back at you in the form of "an alien will", causing you, changing you, defining you, altering you without your choosing. Or so it seems. Because you ARE choosing this. You are choosing to see your power as against yourself, doing things to you. Even if it seems to be being done "through" others vicariously.

This means you're in a position which is rather strange, where you are FIGHTING YOURSELF. Like literally you are taking your power, moving it away from you, turning it around, and then launching it at yourself in an attack mode, causing you to have effects.

Your mind believes the power is out there against you. Your mind ALSO must believe therefore that since you are NOT having the power, you are NOT the cause, you are NOT responsible, you MUST BE AN EFFECT. The belief in being not the cause and being affected go hand in hand.

This means that your mind is putting in place both the framing of something external as "attacking you", AND it is putting in place the SYMPTOMS, physically mentally or emotionally, that you would expect to occur IF that power were acting upon you. Your mind ITSELF, makes up effects, that correspond to the perceived cause.

This literally means your mind makes symptoms in the body, makes up sickness and disease and even death, makes up wounds and heartache, makes up emotional reactions and loss and sadness and anger and hurt, to correspond to the perceived external cause. Not just imagining it, but actually MAKING IT, producing it, putting it into your experience, changing your feelings, changing your body.

This especially happens when you project guilt, in which you are basically projecting responsibility, which is cause. You are saying, I am not the cause of this, you are, and are pointing a finger and hurling guilt at another to try to make it stick to them. But moreso what you are doing is you are trying to give them power and responsibility and will and freedom and choice and causation to have these things INSTEAD of you.

It's rather bizarre then that we literally give power to people, to frame them as capable of attacking us, threatening us, making us afraid, upsetting us, doing things to us. We effectively WANT THEM TO. Even if on the surface we are claiming to be innocent, even if we are feeling that feeling of "I didn't choose this, I don't want this, I didn't ask for it."

You see, that victim perspective in which you feel like you are being unfairly treated, that's the feeling you get when you are becoming "an effect". It's the recognition that you have indeed projected power, cause, responsibility etc, and so see yourself as NOT responsible, NOT the cause, NOT the one using power to make something happen.

In victimhood (ego) you perceive that you are not the cause of what's happening, and you are in denial of this, and having denied it you are projecting it. So now you see cause as outside of you, in someone else, acting upon you, at the same time as NOT seeing that you are causing anything yourself. The denial acts as a barrier blocking awareness of what YOU are doing, that YOU are using power, that YOU are responsible, that YOU are causing this.

It's understandable then that as the victimhood role strengthens, the denial and disownership of power, causation and responsibility increases. You believe less and less that "it's your fault" (guilt-related). You believe less and less that you chose it, wanted it, made it happen, or had anything to do with it. Almost as if you were just minding your own business doing nothing at all and someone came out of the blue and attacked you for no good reason. As if you were just completely innocent (the face of innocence).

And that's simply because the power has been projected. The power has been given away, disowned, you don't want it, and you WANT the other to have it. So you simultaneously have this experience of "I didn't ask for this, how could you do this to me", and "that person is having power over me and is the cause of me." You can't have one part without the other. Just as you can't have a belief in an external cause WITHOUT a belief in having effects as well. "I want you to have my power, please use it against me, and I will pretend I don't want you to."

So we quite literally use the power of our mind to dissociate from our power, we hand it over to all kinds of things out there that HAVE NO POWER, other than us giving it to it in our minds. And then having given it to them, they seem to loom over us and we now fear them and feel powerless and weak and feeble. Unable to go up against such a power, as though we have no power at all. And now we are tempted to see ourselves as unfairly treated.

What we have to recognize of course is the secret of salvation - that we are doing this to ourselves. We have to recognize and own the power and responsibility. We have to take back the power of decision and use it to choose otherwise with the Holy Spirit. We have to stop believing that ANYTHING outside of us HAS OUR POWER, and indeed need to recognize that the power we THOUGHT was theirs is in fact our own. It only seemed like theirs because we disowned it and didn't want it.

So we take our power back. We claim responsibility for causing everything we are experiencing. We acknowledge, I have caused this thing, I have done this to myself, it is not being done by this other person or something in the body or the world, I am not a victim of this, I am not being affected by them, they have no power over me. I own and take back and reclaim my own power which I gave away, and take full responsibility for it. Which means that I must be CHOOSING what happens, I must be CAUSING what happens, and I MUST have caused all of my own suffering.

All my symptoms I put in place myself. All my upset emotions I put in place myself. All my despair and loss and shame and guilt I did to myself. All sense that I'd been attacked or mistreated or shamed or attacked by anyone else was MY MISTAKE in perceiving this wrongly. I did not recognize that I was using my power to pretend to disown my power, and using it to set up others to attack me for me. I didn't realize I was fighting against myself with a divided will. I have been using my power to try to destroy myself, attacking myself, using others to do my bidding, and then blaming them for it.

Ultimately you need to resume your role and position as ruler of the universe. You are the CAUSE of everything you see and feel and think and experience. You are the co-creator with God with unlimited power. What you say happens, what you do not want does not happen. You articulate reality. You CREATE. You cause what happens and you WANT what happens because you chose it. Everything that happens YOU MUST BE CHOOSING. And by the power of your decision you choose NOT TO SUFFER AND TO STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF LIKE THIS.

Indeed, when you realize that nothing at all has been attacking you OTHER THAN YOURSELF, through your mis-use of your power and will, you can find relief in knowing that if you would just stop hurting your own self, stop giving away your power so that you can be indirectly attacked by yourself, stop disowning responsibility for CAUSING, for CHOOSING, you would stop suffering entirely, and forever. Because NO ONE HAS POWER OVER YOU OTHER THAN YOURSELF! And no-one and nothing can ever cause you to suffer, to be sick, or to die without your consent.

"For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning." UrW132L4

Some people regard this world as something negative, some as something positive. But the course regards it as NOT SOMETHING AT ALL. It acknowledges that the world is NOTHING, and the body is NOTHING.

It also acknowledges that when we think that it is SOMETHING, we will give it attributes and meaning that it does NOT have, and believe that it does have them inherently. This means we are deceived, because we are PROJECTING things onto a nothingness and seeing the projection AS IF it is there.

It's important to understand what NOTHINGNESS means. It does not mean negative, or positive. It does not mean meaningful, or meaningless as in the sense of it being a something that is depressing. It is not good or evil. It is not holy or corrupt. It is not really anything. It has NO ATTRIBUTES, no labels, no categories, no types, nothing. Like a void.

"Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality. And on this alone it is correct." UrW132L2

The world, the physical world, matter, spacetime, all flesh and bones bodies, the whole system, is NOTHINGNESS, pretending to be something. It's only seeming to be something because we keep projecting stuff onto it.

"What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something." UrU3A2

It is also true then that a "nothing world" acts like a mirror. A mirror is something which has NO ATTRIBUTES of its own. It has no inherent image, no inherent meaning, no inherent anything. It just REFLECTS, indirectly, seeming images and forms and meanings PROJECTED ONTO it from something once removed from it. In other words, what it seen in the mirror is not first hand reality, it is second-hand.

And then that projecting thing sees the REFLECTION of what was projected in the mirror, as feedback in consciousness, and thinks it is THERE. As if it is "in the mirror", part of the mirror. But confusing what is seen in a mirror for the THING that is reflected there, is a mistake.

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego." UrE14E5

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth." UrT18B3

Earth - spacetime, physical matter, bodies etc. ... can REFLECT, because these things are NOTHING IN THEMSELVES. They can reflect whatever you put ONTO them. You can project hellish ideas of sin and guilt onto them, and will then see that IN the mirror, as though part of the mirror. You can project heavenly ideas of love and peace onto them, and you will see that reflected in the mirror also, as though part of the mirror.

But when we confuse what is REFLECTED with the fact that we require a MIRROR in order to have a reflection, and the reflected thing is confused for BEING the mirror, we are lost in the mirror of perception. And now we think that the world IS this, or IS that. That if we project sin onto it is IS sinful. And if we project love onto it it IS love. And if we give it reality it IS real. This is a mistake. This is someone not recognising that they are looking in a mirror, and NOT at an objective reality. Whatever they PUT there to see, they see, and there is nothing else to see. If they walk away, the world is gone.

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that." UrT21A1

"The world can give you ONLY what you gave it, for being nothing but your own projection, it HAS no meaning apart from what you found in it, and placed your faith in." UrT13C3

"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. YOU CAN DECIDE TO SEE IT RIGHT. What you MADE of it is NOT its reality, for its reality is only what you GAVE it." UrT11H10

"Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward." UrW304L1

So what we have to realize is, whether you're seeming to work with an evil hateful dangerous nasty world, or you're seeming to work with what seem like a benevolent lovely forgiven world, you are working with a REFLECTION IN A MIRROR, not an ACTUAL FACT.

The truth is, that there is no world there. There is ONLY your projection. You are seeing what you put there to see. That is hardly objective. In fact it is completely subjective, and the world has NO objective reality or truth of its own.

This means that in order to awaken from it, we have to learn to project "happier things" onto the mirror, so that it seems to reflect a "happier dream" to us, and we can seem to pull out of it aspects which seem to REFLECT heaven's nature. So that we'll be more prepared psychologically to move on to a realm of heaven where what we experience is NOT a reflection but an ACTUAL reality.

"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the ACTUAL CONDITION of what was but reflected TO them here." UrT14E8

So fundamentally, planet earth, every particle of matter, all energies, all of space and time, the whole galaxy and 'universe', is all part of a MIRROR. It is a mirror because it is NOTHING REAL and is a meaningless world. We PROJECT ONTO this world what we want to see IN it, and see it reflected. This is ONLY possible because the world HAS NOTHING OF ITS OWN, because it is nothing at all and doesn't really exist.

Recognising that the mirror reflects only what you put there to see, leads to the recognition that the world IS a mirror, and IS NOT a thing in its own right. That there is no world there other than your wishes projected outward from within. You are having a dream, making up a subjective "reality", hallucinating what you want to see, and are inventing meanings for a world that isn't there.

The ultimate teaching therefore is that THERE IS NO WORLD. Not that the world is transformed, or kept, or ascended, or turned into heaven, or made to be ANYTHING. IT cannot BE anything because it is a NOTHING. Mirrors don't have identities. Mirrors don't have their own nature. Mirrors have no substance of their own, no attributes, nothing. You thought you saw a world in a mirror for a while, and were deceived. It is not there. Only heaven exists.

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly." UrW132L4

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. 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." UrT20H4

"The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with power IN ITSELF. As something, it CAN be perceived, and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. And it CAN fail to be what you demanded it to be. And you WILL hate it for its littleness, unmindful that the failure does not lie in that it is not MORE than it should be, but ONLY in YOUR failure to perceive that it is nothing. Yet its nothingness IS your salvation, from which you would flee." UrT29C9

"The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment. The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be." UrM15A2

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came." UrU5A4

The physical world was made as a projection of a false idea. Everything in it is false, untrue and unreal. It therefore depicts a lie, a deception, an illusion, and an attempt to ASSERT that something false is true. That something impossible is possible. That everything which CAN go wrong HAS gone wrong, or is about to.

Everything it does and says and expresses is fiction and make-believe. This is because you made it by WANTING to believe that something untrue was true. And so you produced a world which constantly asserts the idea that an impossible evil exists. And now everything in the world is there to try to convince you that this is true.

If you consider the idea of hell, and you think of a place where everything in it is trying to PULL YOU DOWN, to SUCK YOU IN, to PERSUADE you, to try to get you to BUY into it, to KEEP you there, whispering evil lies in your ear, then you have an idea of what temptation is.

It's like the "devil" telling you things which are utterly untrue and heinous and blasphemous, trying to get you to side with it, so that you'll stay and give it your strength. To talk you into believing it instead of trusting God's word. It wants your soul in exchange for all of hell to be yours forever.

Be not mistaken that this whole world is set up to do this. And the body was made in attempting to deceive yourself thus. And now the world acts as a picture of total utter bullshit and madness, in the hope that you would convince yourself with it and fall for the trap, buying into illusions as if they are real, rendering yourself insane.

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

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself."

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt."

If your mind gives any BELIEF to the world, to the body, to anything physical, then you are falling for temptation and are not in forgiveness. If even a speck of it seems TRUE to you, has validity, is worth listening to, is actually happening, or is anything you WANT, then you are falling for temptation.

"Lead us not into temptation" really means, help us to not believe that anything in the world is true. Help us not to fall for the ego trap of believing in hell. The world we made IS hell, but can only gain our support if we GIVE it our support. And we do that by buying into it, wanting it, believing it, trusting it, having faith in it, valuing it, giving it power, giving it credit, and siding with it. If you side with Earth, you are siding with an illusion of evil and are trying to make sin real.

"your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects." (not both)

"He (Holy Spirit) will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God."

Make no mistake then, in the separation from God we DID attempt to make hell itself. The hell we made, the world we made, including bodies, is the opposite of heaven. Its whole nature was an attack on God and an attempt to deny eternal life. Which is why it has produced a dream of death and corruption.

We may not RECOGNIZE it as "actual hell" because of our silly ideas of fire and brimstone and pitch forks, but earth basically is the opposite of heaven. And heaven's opposite IS hell by definition. You are in hell right now, or so it seems.

"...and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

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

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood."

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

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

Fortunately, your experience of the world of temptation, of a hell which at every turn is blasting you in the face with IMAGES OF SIN, trying to TEMPT YOU to believe that evil really is possible and sickness can happen and death is inevitable, depends entirely on your mind GIVING it power over you.

You give hell power by believing in it, valuing it and wanting it. If there is hell IN YOU, then you are supporting the world of temptation. What you accept as true becomes your reality. Heaven and earth are both in your mind, and you can SIDE WITH one or the other. But you can't have both because they are opposites.

If you side with spirit/heaven, you are denying earth and the body. You are giving up nothing to gain everything. Because hell, ie earth or the world, is really nothing in and of itself. It's just a fiction sitting there doing nothing until you decide that it is more than that. And then you give it all the meaning it has. Changing your mind about is remains entirely possible.

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

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile (hell), but perfectly capable of waking to reality."

So hell - the world - is there to POTENTIALLY tempt you, or to at least very strongly lean in the direction of being a demonstration of "real evil" and impossibilities. A picture of the opposite of God, or the anti-christ. But if you decide not to BELIEVE it, then you stop supporting it, and it loses its seeming power. Because it has no power other than what you give to it. It NEEDS your support in order to even seem to exist at all, because you are dreaming it.

This means the way "out of hell" is to learn to side with God, with heaven. To be vigilant for the Kingdom, ie to put all your focus and value and wanting and trusting onto what is actually real. Which means denying the world and not falling for temptation.

"The world you see must be denied"

"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error (hell) can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it."

As you side with reality/heaven, you side against the illusion of an evil world. You become more identified with spirit and stronger in the truth. You learn that only God's truth is true and learn to better catch yourself when you fall for the potential trap of ego and external salvation.

To NOT believe that the world is REALLY hell, is to be saved from it. Because it in truth is not really anything. It is only an illusion of hell pretending to be hell. And it has no reality or truth or strength or anything at all APART from what you give it. Apart from your wishes. Yet if you choose to believe in it, you will become very confused and lost and deceived.

It's like a world of smoke and mirrors which can do nothing unless you give it your faith. And by doing so you go into it and become confused. To get out of it you literally have to learn to say NO to everything the world says is happening or possible, and say YES to everything that God says is possible. Ultimately, ONLY God is possible, and the world CANNOT exist at all.

The simple recognition that only the truth is true, is the culmination of a process of purification which leads to the atonement, and to enlightenment. It is the simple recognition that hell is nothing and there is nothing in it that you want, and therefore nothing in it can tempt you or hurt you in any way.

You are done with your window shopping for death's costumes and now are ready to move on to reality and to eternal life.

If you did something wrong, if you sinned or committed some crime, damaged something or hurt someone, you won't be able to forgive yourself for it while you believe it actually happened.

Anything that you believe has REALITY, cannot be undone. Reality is a sense of what is ACTUAL, the facts, the irrefutable certain truth.

Reality cannot be questioned or denied. It is blatant and obvious and there is nothing beyond it. It's like the final judgement on something. Whatever is REAL, you will believe is so true it cannot be changed. Reality is rock solid. Reality is permanence.

This applies no matter what it is that you think is real, and no matter where you place reality, or what you categorize as real, and no matter whether in truth it's the real truth or a lie. If you think it has reality, you think it cannot be undone, cannot be reversed, and cannot be denied. You cannot ESCAPE from what you believe is real, and making it real to you is a choice to keep it.

So if you hurt, sin, attack, damage, destroy etc, if you give these things REALITY, you are locking them in. You're saying, they are actual, factual, unavoidably true. And in particular you will point to evidence, consequences, effects and proof, to demonstrate that it really did occur. And so long as this evidence and proof is also given "reality" it will be IRREFUTABLE that you really DID DO what you think you did.

With this belief in the reality of sin, especially backed up by physical real-seeming evidence, you WILL NOT be able to psychologically forgive yourself. It won't matter how much you work on it. It won't matter how you frame it. It won't matter how much you cathart or try to be nice to yourself or justify what you did or blame it on past-life karma or any other way to try to make it disappear. If it's real, you cannot undo it or let it go.

Whatever you decide is real for you, you are giving the power to dictate the truth. Just even the notion that you did something at all, if it is considered real, cannot be undone. You won't be able to let yourself off the hook, because in the back of your mind there'll be this nagging FACT, that you believe... that you REALLY DID IT. That you DID sin. Even if you justify it, that is like a way to run circles around it. Even if you try to explain it away, that's an attempt to pretend you don't believe you did it. If it's real, you did it, because only reality happens. And if you did it, you are responsible for it.

This means that anything you think you did, any sin or crime or attack, CANNOT be forgiven and let go, fully, UNTIL you are willing to question whether or not it was REAL. If it is considered permanently real, you're screwed. There is NO WAY to be exonerated from a sin if it was real. Not even if the other party says they forgive you. Not even if you receive punishment for the crime and "do the time" and suffer extensively to try to "atone" for what you did. Not even if you have punished yourself for decades over it, it's NEVER going to be enough to overcome REALITY.

The only SWITCH, the only variable, which has the power to set you free from all suffering and recognize your INNOCENCE, is the question of whether or not IT IS REAL. And the only way FOR you to be found innocent, truly, and completely forgiven, and able to truly let it go psychologically so that it doesn't keep holding on like a deep rooted belief, is to find what you did WAS UNREAL. Only if it is NOT real can it ever be let go. Because the mind cannot believe in what has no reality.

"Whatever you accept into your mind you make real to you."

You must question therefore the reality of ALL sin, all happenings, all crimes, all attacks, all suffering, all justification for suffering, and even the memory of what you think you did. You must question whether it even HAPPENED IN REALITY. Did it take place inside a real place, where only real things happen? If it did, you are STUCK with it forever. Did it take place in an UNREAL place, where only illusory things happen, and where dreams pretend to be real, and where there is temptation to believe something is possible that isn't? If so, there is hope that you can be FREE from it by recognizing the CONTEXT within which it occurred. And no-one would hold a DREAM against themselves.

If what you did took place IN A DREAM, and not in reality, then NOTHING about it was real. Nothing you did actually happened. Nothing had any consequences against anything real. Nothing real was hurt or threatened. Nothing guilt-inducing occurred. No-one real has been changed or hurt by your actions and choices. And you cannot have really sinned in any way. Only acts which happen IN DREAMS can be forgiven, and only illusions can be truly let go. Reality can never be forgiven or undone because it is permanent.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. ***It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred***, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

So to forgive yourself for what you think you did, you absolutely **HAVE TO** come to the conclusion that it was NOT REAL, and did NOT take place in reality, and did not REALLY happen at all. Regardless even whether you remember it happening. And in complete defiance of even any evidence, proof, consequences or tangible reasons that claim "this is here because of what you did." All of this must be found UNREAL. Otherwise there is no way for your mind to psychologically let it go.

In your mind, whatever it decides has reality, it is deciding to HOLD ONTO AND ACCEPT. Whatever it decides is real, is takes to be TRUTH, and it will defend that truth endlessly. Whatever it thinks is real to it, whatever it accepts as factual reality, is anchors onto and gives validity to and empowers and reinforces and protects. There is no way for the mind to ever let go of what it believes is real, while it believes it is real. To make something real is to give it total authority over everything else. It's the final judgement and irrevocable decision as to whether something is valid or not. And what is real has immortality.

So to forgive yourself fully, to go to the ATONEMENT, to truly atone, which is to undo the unreal, you **MUST** - you have no other choice but to - decide that what seemed to happen WAS NOT REAL, did NOT take place in reality, HAS no real consequences, HAS NOT harmed anyone or anything real, and in truth DID NOT TAKE PLACE AT ALL. It has to be recognized as a DREAM, an illusion, whirling around in a fantasy of fiction, pretending to happen, seeming to occur, but a total lie and delusion. ALL sense of reality has to be stripped from it.

ONLY WHEN your mind has agreed that what you thought happened DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL, which absolutely REQUIRES that you recognize it WAS NOT REAL AT ALL, will your mind give itself permission to LET IT GO. And only when it can fully let go of what is not real, can it FREE ITSELF from imprisonment, from condemnation and from suffering and righteous self punishment. Only when the mind recognizes the TRUTH that what you thought you did YOU DID NOT DO, because THERE IS NO SIN, and SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE IN REALITY, only then can it LOGICALLY conclude that you CANNOT be guilty.

"Only atonement can be said to cure."

This is where true healing occurs. This is where you are CURED FOREVER. This is where the ROOT of evil is ripped out of its bedding. This is where the whole entire "event" is completely expelled from the mind. And this is where you are set free from it in PERMANENT HEALING as you receive a miracle.

Only in true atonement, the recognition that there is no real sin, can you find yourself INNOCENT again. You can only ACCEPT your innocence, ie accept the truth of the atonement, when you can accept that YOU DID NOT SIN IN REALITY. Sin's unreality must be clear, in order to give it no credit or power over you. Otherwise you are simply going to hold onto it and attack yourself with it. You will finally rejoice as you give yourself PERMISSION to let it go, in the recognition that there is really NOTHING REAL to let go of.

You have not sinned. You can never sin. "There is no sin." "Nothing real can be threatened." And "Nothing unreal exists."

"Forgiveness recognizes what you think you brother did has not OCCURRED."

The course appears to say that christ vision (true perception) isn't simply a state in which you "do not see the world". It's a state in which you see the forgiven world - the physical world - the world of bodies still, but through christ's eyes. And at the same time, that this vision is so open and inclusive that it sees ALSO beyond the physical, it sees the real world.

I used to think the course was saying we had to simply "look past bodies" ie not see them at all in order to see christ in people. But here it is saying clearly that we are to use christ vision to still look upon the physical world, while also seeing past it.

Christ vision CAN still see bodies, events, happenings, and the whole world as the forgiven world. It is forgiven because it is overlooked or "looked past", to the light beyond, which christ vision does see, but it also still sees the world below. We see the world as a thin veil which we see mostly THROUGH to a light beyond, but still see the veil - until the final instant in which the veil lifts completely.

I think this tells us that essentially your goal isn't to try "not to see" bodies. As per the quote about how it's almost impossible to deny the body, and trying to do so is an unworthy form of denial. Instead, we are trying to find a way to see that is more inclusive and open that can see the light that is beyond the bodies while ALSO translating the bodies into the forgiven world.

I see this as a vision which goes out and acts sort of like an x-ray vision, which is causing the view of this world to become somewhat "transparent" like an x-ray of a body, where you can see through and beyond it to the light shining behind the x-ray, but this also allows you to see the x-ray image properly. Christ vision is fixated on the light beyond but INDIRECTLY still can see and INCLUDE the physical things in its sight, in a forgiven way.

Only at the very very end of the road might we perhaps completely overlook bodies and physicality to such an extent where the veil LIFTS entirely, we see the face of christ ONLY, and then return to heaven. At this final moment the world is forgotten entirely and not seen. We pierce the veil and go beyond. But this NOT going to happen until the very end of the road.

Before we get there, we definitely are meant to be using christ vision to see THIS world in a forgiven way. What this means is that christ vision INCLUDES EVERYTHING in sight, while strictly false-perception body-like perceptions see EXCLUSIVELY and ONLY see the physical, believing it to be real and all there is. Spiritual sight open up awareness to detect and see the subtler light "between the lines" and "beyond the forms", which physical-only sight cannot see.

"Christ's vision ...has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world."

For a long time I think I bought into the idea of an either/or exclusive approach to this, in which as some people say - if we see the body at all we're not being forgiving. But we're not supposed to not see the body at all until the very end. We are MEANT to see the body, and MEANT to see the forgiven world, THROUGH the eyes of Christ, BEFORE the world disappears from sight. Otherwise we're skipping ahead.

This means that seeing the christ in someone DOES NOT MEAN that we do not still see the body, only that the body is translated in its meaning as a part of the reflection of heaven WHILE also being past it to a light which is growing ever brighter. Seeing with Christ is an expanded more inclusive full-spectrum vision, while seeing through "eyes of fear" ie ego exclusive narrow vision shuts out some of the signal.

This alleviates the rather awkward and seemingly insurmountable "issue" of trying NOT to see bodies at all, or to see only beyond them while excluding them. I don't think Jesus is asking us to NOT see the physical world - until the final moment of ascension. he's asking us to see something ADDITIONAL permeating it and transcending it, in which the physical becomes like a thin veil - still seen but given much less emphasis and belief.

We don't need to be rushing to try to DENY the physical world from our sight. We need to be focusing on seeing it in a different way so that we can arrive at the FORGIVEN WORLD first, which is a more inclusive and whole way of perceiving, prior to the world disappearing from sight entirely.

Trying to "not see the body at all" is an unworthy and unnecessary form of denial, spiritually bypassing the required step of seeing the world forgiven "in another light" first. To just try to "not see bodies" isn't very effective. We need to learn that bodies aren't all there is to see, first, and the strengthen our seeing of the light beyond, AS bodies begin to fade out.

All the bodies ... that the body's eyes see .... are translated into a forgiven world ..... by christ vision ..... seeing the body in a different way.

"Christ's vision ... has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world."

And yet christ vision also overlooks and sees beyond the body, to a light beyond it, at the same time.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created (yet it just got done saying christ's vision sees bodies differently). It beholds a light beyond the body (as well); an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation (does not dwell on making out that each separate object is truly separated). And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events (all physical bodily things!), without the slightest fading of the light it sees (beyond those things)."

"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good."

"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."

"Today I let Christ's vision look upon all things for me and judge them not, but give each one a miracle of love instead."

"Christ's vision looks on everything with love (including this world). Yet even Christ's vision is not His reality. The golden ASPECTS of reality, which spring to light under His loving gaze, are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them."

"For light must come into the darkened world, to make Christ's vision possible even here. (even in the physical)"

"Christ's vision is a miracle. It comes from far beyond itself, for it reflects Eternal Love and the rebirth of love which never dies, but has been kept obscure. Christ's vision pictures Heaven, for it sees a world so like to Heaven (the physical world forgiven) that what God created perfect can be mirrored there."

"Christ's vision is the bridge between the worlds (false and true perceptions), and in its power can you safely trust to carry you from this world (physical seen exclusively) into one made holy by forgiveness (forgiven world)."

"For forgiveness is the only means whereby Christ's vision comes to me."

"Christ's vision looks through me today. His sight shows me all things forgiven and at peace, and offers this same vision to the world."

"Ours are the eyes through which Christ's vision sees a world redeemed from every thought of sin (the forgiven world)."

"RIGHT-MINDEDNESS listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place."

"Christ's vision does not use your eyes, but you can look through His and learn to see like Him."

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it (still sees it) as nothing more than just a fragile veil (transparent), so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant (at the end). It is seen at last for only what it is (a veil of illusions). And now it cannot fail to disappear (AT the end when the physical is faded OUT and christ is faded IN), for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot (the veil lifts, you see ONLY christ, the physical world disappears), with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

Someone who is in their right mind, who is sane, and who is correct, and who is not believing illusions, has a whole mind and recognizes what is true.

Their mind is filled with love because love is the quality of what is natural and correct. A natural mind, or being miracle minded, is a state of correct accurate perception. It's an awareness of the truth and a willingness to accept it.

If a person makes a mistake, produces an error, or slips into a fantasy, in which the truth is mistaken for something else, they go into illusions. Their mind has become incorrect. This is simply a mistake, an error they are making. It is not a sin.

In this state, the "curriculum" now becomes to "learn love" again. The aim is to restore the mind to its wholeness, to return to sanity, to regain right mindedness, and to recognize what is true. The only thing the student needs is the correction of the mistake.

A loving teacher, such as the Holy Spirit, recognizes that the student has simply made a mistake in their understanding or grasp of the truth, or what is real, and therefore needs a simple correction.This loving teacher offers and provides correction in a loving and gentle manner, which does not dwell on the error or make the student out to be sinful for making it, and especially He does not move into inducing guilt for having made a mistake. He is also not deceived by the illusion. He recognizes that all mistakes are simply innocent mistakes which do not call for any kind of punishment.

True correction, to such a teacher, is to restore the sanity of the mind. To return the mind to a loving condition. The curriculum thus is to re-learn love, and to accept what is true. To reintegrate the REAL ANSWER to correct the wrong one. And this real answers corrects the false conclusion which the student came to.

In order for the student to be corrected, they have to move upwards, back into the truth and into love. They have to become the truth and the love in order to BE correct. To be as God intended. To be real. They must become part of the atonement itself.

The movement away from the truth placed the student into a state of mistakenness, and since this seemed to be an investment in LACK of love, the correction is actually the SUPPLY of the lack of love to the student.

In other words, punishing the student for a mistake will not move them into a loving state. It will not correct them. What they need is to be treated with love and gentleness, and healed. The loving teacher needs to show the student a larger truth, a light, which correctly frames the mistake they made AS a mistake and not a true sin, so that they can SEE what the truth really is.

Upon seeing and recognizing the truth, the student can acknowledge it and move into it, accepting atonement. Their mind becomes whole again and they are restored to sanity and to love.

A miracle therefore, is the blessing of love and forgiveness given by the loving teacher, which could be any teacher of God, which recognizes the sinless innocence of the student, the fact they are temporarily mistaken, the recognition of the truth, and the offering of what the truth is. The truth is offered by being GIVEN to the student through an expression of love.

The truth, or love, must actually be GIVEN by the teacher, TO the student, or from the giver to the receiver, so that the student can HAVE what they were missing. The student must RECEIVE the love, the correction, allowing it to heal their mind and perception.

That which transfers from above to below, from "those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less", since "miracles supply a lack", is a blessing of love and life and clarity and power, which corrects the mind of the student and clarifies what is true. In this sense, a miracle falls like a drop fo healing rain from those who are closer to heaven, down, onto those who need resurrection, bring them back to life. We can thus say that ALL miracles raise the dead.

This is why a miracle can correct a mistake in the mind, undo level confusion, resurrect the dead, raise the level of communication, unite brothers, and intervene for their holiness. It is a blessing, an emitting of life and power, which is bestowed upon someone and shone into their mind, so that the person is reminded of what is true and awareness of light increases. Miracles correct the mistakes the student was making by shining a light which enlightens their mind.

"Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

"The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the DREAMER is."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE."

"A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the Atonement principle, where perception is healed."

"undoing fear is an essential part of the miracle.

"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less."

"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love."

"Miracles are a universal blessing from God"

"Miracles bear witness to truth."

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself.""Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels."

"I inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for your holiness and make your perceptions holy.""Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack they establish perfect protection. The spirit's strength leaves no room for intrusions."

"The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears."

"A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack.""Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."

"The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true, and rejecting what is out of accord as false."

If you had NO blocks to awareness, you would be vividly, constantly aware, that anything you attempt to do to others, you do directly and immediately to yourself.

Anything you express towards others, you experience.

Anything you give to others, you receive.

"Giving and receiving are one."

You cannot move an inch in any way towards another without moving that same inch in your own direction.

Anything you do to them you do to yourself.

If you attack them, you are literally going into a state of a split mind in which your mind is under attack.

If you are angry at someone, trying to destroy them through guilt, your destructive hatred towards them is an attempt to destroy yourself.

In awareness, you and your brother have SHARED INTERESTS. It is in both your interest and the interest of another, that the way you treat them IS how you want to be treated. Because it is how YOU are treating yourself.

This is beyond traditional definitions of the Golden Rule. It is not mere wishful thinking or hope that another MIGHT treat you the same. It is in fact metaphysical law, completely inescapable, and applicable to everyone always.

What is true of another is true of you.

You cannot so much as send a tiny little zap of annoyance toward someone without YOU suffering from it.

When your mind IS blocked, and you are not aware of the fact that you ALWAYS have shared interests because you are literally ONE WITH your brother, you start to believe that how you treat others is SEPARATE from how you are treated.

This is the slippery slope of the ego, of inequality, and the breaking of the law of God. In attempted IGNORANCE of the golden rule, the ego claims that you can get away with murder because cause and effect are NOT connected (separation between father and son), allowing you to attack without being attacked.

Believing that you can have harmful attitudes towards others WITHOUT being harmed, is an absolute lie. You may not be AWARE that you are harming yourself, because you are in denial, and your mind is blocked. But you ARE DIRECTLY hurting yourself whenever you in ANY WAY attempt to hurt anyone.As the blocks to awareness become lifted and you can learn to SEE the unity and oneness with others, which is opening to the shared mindset of God and the Holy Spirit, it becomes much easier to see AND FEEL, the fact that when you try to destroy someone, you ARE destroying yourself.

Those who are hurt hurt others. Those who see themselves as abused abuse others. Those who hate feel hated. Those who cannot love do not feel loveable. Those who are sick are trying to prove they should be punished. Those who attack or blame believe they deserve to die.

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts."

"You are doing this to yourself."

Because you are one with your brothers, your MIND is IN THEIR MIND."One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."If you think that another person is NOT ONE WITH YOU, then you make them a "stranger". This is because you have become estranged from yourself. A separation or gap has formed, a SPLIT, in between you and another person. And this gap houses the body which becomes a separation device, keeping you isolated and alone.

Believing you are NOT IN others, you believe you can attack them and NOT attack yourself. This is a lie. It is based entirely in denial and unawareness. Anything you attempt to do to anyone you DO DIRECTLY to the part of you that is SHARED with them.

In every way you can imagine, any measure of inequality in which you and your brother are considered to be NOT ONE, or to not share, or to have different rules apply, or different truths for each, is EGO. Ego simply means inequality.

Believing you are not equal to others, not a brother, not an equal sibling of the same father, you will conceive of the many ways that you can be SPLIT OFF from them and thus from part of yourself. And you can then attack the split off part and believe it is not you. This is nothing other than dissociation in your mind.

"The separation IS the notion of rejection."

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation."

"the separation was and is dissociation"

Dissociating one part of your self from another, is the split mind, and is the ego. It IS the separation! And in this split minded state you are at war with yourself, and yet you belief and experience it as if it is NOT YOU that you are at war with. As if there is a SEPARATE PERSON who is the enemy or attacker or sinner. This is simply part of you which you've split off and disowned.

This means every attack you think is coming from another is coming from this split off part of your own self, and has nothing to do with anyone else. This is why the secret of salvation tells you that EVERY form of attack is self attack. And if you would NOT split your mind through attempts to create a SEPARATION BETWEEN you and others, you would not be sick or suffer or die.

It seems very strange to say this but, shared interests means that you literally are IN your brothers as part of them, and how you treat them IS how you are directly treating yourself. Which means there is NO WIGGLE ROOM or loopholes for how you can have an attitude toward or about someone else "separate from" your self. EVERY expression and every decision you make is to either attack BOTH OF YOU, OR NEITHER.

Having something in common is not a shared interest. It is a mutual agreed-to pair of separation devices which happen to clash the least. A true shared interest requires the recognition that you SHARE ONE MIND.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."This is VERY ALIEN to how the world thinks and acts. Because the world is riddled with divisions, separations and split minded people. Everyone with an ego is living in a state of DISSOCIATION. Every single person is against themselves and trying to kill themselves, but are doing it through such disowning of themselves that they think someone or something ELSE is doing it to them.

Imagine being so divided within yourself that you don't even recognize when you are destroying and attacking yourself, and you think it's someone totally separate from you that is your worst enemy, when all along your mind is split in half and at war with itself. That's what happening in the world.To share interests is to be of ONE interest. With an interest in oneness.

"Miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it."

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

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all."

"The world is but an effect and not a cause at all."

"The mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"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."

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

----- There are two levels -----

1. Higher mind, which is causal and causes everything. It causes the EFFECT of a lower level 3D world, which is entirely governed by what this mind decides to make happen. This is the level of "the dreamer."

2. The world, a 3D projected image which is entirely an EFFECT of the higher level. This level has NO causality and cannot make anything happen on its own. No part of it causes any other part of it to do anything. This is the level of "the dream."

The higher level CAUSES the lower level effects. That means causality is "vertical". It proceeds from above to below.

The lower level of the world itself, has NO CAUSALITY in it. It is 100% pure effect. It is not alive, it has no will, it has no mind, there are no forces or powers, no reactions, no chain of events, nothing. It's like a movie that's been projected onto a screen. The movie cannot DO anything outside of the content that the PROJECTOR has put onto the screen.

However, the higher level mind is capable of creating ILLUSIONS of lower-level causality. For example, it can place an apple in the world, next to an orange. It can then make the orange move (which cannot move by itself). The orange can move towards the apple. However, there are NO lower-level laws that DO anything, not even laws of physics. So the orange moves THROUGH the apple, having no effect on it. It's like it's not even there. It's just an IMAGE. Two images overlapping.

In order to make the orange "collide with" the apple, the higher level mind of causality has to make the apple move, at just the right moment as the orange SEEMS to touch it, so that there is an ILLUSION of a reaction, which makes it look AS IF the orange collided with the apple. There were NO laws on the level of the world causing this reaction. It's entirely fictional, decided upon by the higher level mind.

To an observer who has "bought into the illusion", it SEEMS as if there is some kind of "law" on the lower level, governing what will happen when the orange hits the apple. And the these are described as laws of physics. These laws are based on the idea that stuff on the lower level is capable of CAUSING EFFECTS on the SAME lower level. This is the idea of "horizontal causality". ACIM refers to the illusion of this as "horizontal perception."

The illusion is so convincing that it seems there is a "law" in effect, some kind of universal rule, that ensures the apple and the orange will act AS IF they are colliding. These are then thought to be natural laws or laws of nature. THEY ARE NOT. THEY DO NOT EXIST! The orange NEVER causes anything to happen. The apple NEVER is affected by the orange. BOTH OF THEM are being simultaneously moved and animated BY the higher level mind.

So in the world, it SEEMS as though there are laws of physics which govern how everything interacts, but it's 100% once removed from what ACTUALLY causes everything to occur. The world ITSELF is once removed from reality/causality, which is why it is an EFFECT or illusion and DOES NOT EXIST!

The things in the world that you THINK are "causes" or "causing something", are NOT THE CAUSE. Cause is always in the mind! They are ILLUSIONS of causes, pretending to be causes. Both causes AND effects on the level of the world are BOTH EFFECTS. This is why Jesus says "the world you see DOES NOTHING. It has no effects at all" (it has no causal power at all).

So while there is this horizontal illusion of cause and effect, which is of the ego, since these so-called "laws" are actually fictional and not the REAL cause, when the mind decides to make a change in what it PROJECTS, it is capable of BREAKING THE LAWS. If the mind decides suddenly, that the apple and the orange will combine together to produce a banana, THEN SO BE IT.

Vertical mind will CAUSE a banana to be projected INTO the world as a banana showing up. This will VIOLATE every conceivable "horizontal law" that you can imagine. And THIS IS MIRACULOUS! "Miracles violate every law of reality as the world judges it." The mind has simply decided to CHANGE ITS DREAM, and this breaks all of the FICTIONAL horizontal laws that APPEAR to explain why things are the way they are, or what limits they are restricted by. Mind OVERRIDES the law!

Miracles are also demonstrations. And miracles are also teaching devices. When the higher mind expresses its power OVER the lower level, and shows that it is the AUTHOR of the "fake laws" by breaking those laws, it demonstrates that those laws ARE ILLUSIONS. "Appearances can be changed." And by changing those appearances, it is PROVEN that those appearances MUST have been illusions. This is educational.

Additionally, the "nature" or "natural law" of the horizontal level, which is fake, is BELOW the TRUE NATURE of the higher level mind that causes it all. That means that which CAUSES the lower level effects is ABOVE the NATURE of the lower level. Another word for that is SUPER (above) NATURAL. Supernatural. Miracles are supernatural! They transcend the "nature" of the "ego", which is the illusion that horizontal causality is real. Also the idea that horizontal causality is real, is really the ego idea that there is no God! That there is no HIGHER CAUSE.

This is why it was possible for Jesus to do things like walking on water to defy gravity, multiplying food to defy ideas of limited materials, changing a tree branch into a snake and back again, raising a body from seeming death, etc.

These are all POSSIBLE because the mind that MAKES all this worldly content show up has POWER OVER IT from a higher level. When a person's mind has become VERTICALLY ORIENTED, which relates to "miracles entail a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception", the mind aligned with CAUSALITY can make ANY changes you can possibly conceive of, OUTSIDE of the illusion of "laws that can't be broken." And this is what MIRACLE WORKERS demonstrate. The idea of irreversibility is SIN. Miracles prove sin is not real by CHANGING what the world says cannot be changed.

The distinction between what is CAUSE, and what is its EFFECT, perfectly explains the structure of cause and effect and WHY supernatural miracles are possible and HOW they operate. They are acts of MIND and WILL firmly rooted in causal power, simply electing to produce a different EFFECT. Since "the world is but an effect and not a cause at all", there is nothing in the world or OF the world that cannot be changed, healed, undone, reversed or manipulated by the power of the Mind. This includes bodily sickness and death. "The mind (cause) must be stronger than the body (effect), every miracle demonstrates this!"

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

A Course in Miracles would say no. You always get what you ask for. You only get what you ask for. You never get anything you do not ask for.

There are no victims. There are no accidents. Nothing happens unless it is deliberate. There is no randomness or chaos. Someone somewhere is making decisions all the time.

A leaf does not blow in the wind without someone choosing to make the leaf blow in the wind. The leaf doesn't even appear to exist without someone's mind making it appear to exist.

Where is there any room in this for "might not work" or "not sure if" or "got lost in translation" or "God doesn't always answer" ?

The "Song of Prayer" will tell you that you are always praying and you are always getting precisely what you actually did ask for.

If stuff is happening that you believe was not supposed to happen, or you got results that you seemed to not ask for, or stuff happens that you didn't seem to want.... you need to think again. You DID ask for it, you just didn't realize how you asked for it. You MUST have asked for it otherwise it could not have appeared.

This is the level of certainty that Jesus enjoys. This is how it possible to be completely certain that you are not at the effect of anything. This is the end of victim consciousness.

There is absolutely no room for an idea of being victimized if it is true that you always get what you ask for. The entire fiction of being unfairly treated is absolutely 100% a lie.

You are treating yourself exactly how you wish be treated. You are, right now, experiencing exactly, and ONLY, what you actually did ask to experience. There is nothing happening outside of the script you have written or continue to write.

Nothing happens without your say so. This is how it is true that nobody dies without their own consent. This is how is it true that ALL death is suicide. This is how it is POSSIBLE that if you do not choose death, you will not die, and therefore it is POSSIBLE to be immortal.

Nothing is happening to you that you did not want. So if you do not like it, you need to change your decision. i.e. change your mind and heart.

If you got something you did not want, then you did not realize that you asked for it. It's not a matter of you having not asked for it, it's a matter of you being not AWARE that you asked for it.

Learning to discern HOW the asking happens, is the key to salvation. Recognizing that you ONLY do things to yourself, and nobody else EVER does anything against your will, gives you the key to salvation. Salvation - being saved from all suffering - is possible, because of this.

Every single story about how something happened to someone, some disaster struck out of nowhere, something suddenly went wrong, something occurred that nobody liked, the world went down the toilet, war broke out, there were "acts of nature", "it must be God's will", or any other bullshit, is absolutely a total fictional lie by the ego mind.

Absolutely everything in front of your face right now, you put there. And you wanted it. And not a single thing in your day or your month or your life has ever happened against your will. You have never been victimized.

Nobody has ever died against their will. They were choosing it, wanted it, made it happen, and put every single event in place to cause it to occur, even if those events or causes *appeared* to be coming from something over which they had absolutely no control. They DID choose it. It's just not obvious that they chose it, because of the ILLUSION that they did not, which was part of their cover-up story and part of their way of making it happen.

There has not ever been a victim. There has never been anything happening by accident or out of order or against anyone's will. Nobody has ever suffered a single bit without asking to suffer. No-one has ever been afflicted with sickness without having first put that sickness in place themselves.

Nothing has ever even happened in this world AT ALL, without someone choosing it and making it happen, pulling all the strings and animating all the objects and orchestrating all events. If it were not for minds making such decisions, this world would not even appear to exist at all. It is only here doing its thing because someone somewhere is MAKING IT.

Not one single feeling that you have is caused by anyone other than yourself. They are not caused by events or people or situations or stimuli or any other causes that seem to be separate from your own mind. Any feeling you ever have, you CHOOSE to have. You put it in place.

Not one single physical symptom in your body has ever been caused by any person or object or environmental condition or events seeming to happen against your say-so. Not one single "effect" showing up in your body or your emotional reactions has ever really been put there by anyone or anything other than YOU. You even put in place all of the illusory effects which external causes *allegedly* put in place against your will.

When someone kicks you in the leg, which is you kicking yourself in the leg, YOU put the bruise in the leg. The bruise in the leg is not put there by the person who kicked you, or their physical foot, or anything that happened. You instead conveniently orchestrated and used the situation to attack yourself and make it SEEM as though you have a bruise showing up because of someone else, so that you can project blame for your sin onto them, finding them guilty.

No-one outside of you is guilty of ever doing anything to you ever. Not one single person in this world has ever attacked you or created symptoms or effects in you. There has never been side-effects, symptoms, damage, hurt, pain or suffering occurring in your experience that your own mind didn't put there itself.

When events transpire, by your secret design, to seem to cause something to happen to you, you not only orchestrated the events but you also manifested the causes and the effects all at once, putting them into place in the illusion using your thought.

Nobody ever gets sick. People choose to be sick. Nobody is ever hurt by someone else. They hurt themselves. Nobody ever falls victim to abuse. People abuse themselves. Nobody ever dies of some cause they could not prevent.

People create the illusion that they have no say in the cause, in order to paint this very convincing picture that they are not the one making any choice whatsoever. The denial and displacement of your own mind's decision making, making it look like it has nothing to do with it at all, is an act of irresponsibility and disownership of power.

Nobody is ever weak or suffering or lacking or diminished or limited or disabled or afraid or sick or in poverty or at a loss without having chosen to be so, on purpose, so that it can appear as though they are victims, so that they have a tremendous basis for a huge story about how they do not have any power whatsoever, so that they can fake their own death and blame it on everyone other than themselves.

Death is a choice and death is someone choosing to die. Death is the ultimate cover-up story, all death is fake, there is no real death, every death is a massive illusion orchestrated by the mind to make it look like all power, responsibility, ability to choose and all will to Live have been taken away by someone other than yourself. Not even in death has this been made true.

There is nothing happening in this world, as in, stuff that is just occurring on its own. There are not just events that tick over automatically. There are no forces of nature which just do their own thing like they have their own will. There is no wind that blows on its own or life that grows on its own or cycles of weather that just "happen". Someone somewhere is making it happen.

There is no realm of things which are within control and another realm of things which are outside control. There is only deliberate creation. Either you are making up shit or you are not. Either you are inventing lies or you are being the truth. There is no middle ground where things just occur because of external causes, or alien wills, or fate, or bad luck, or good luck, or any kind of unchosen reason.

You have the power to choose again. You are NOT a victim of the world you see. NOTHING is happening on its own. And nothing CAN happen without you making it happen, wanting it to happen, using it for a purpose, having a fictional need for it, and making it occur in illusions. This whole world is your dream, coming from your mind, coming from your decision making. It is not dreaming itself!

Be free to choose again. Make a better decision. No-one can stop you. You are the immortal unlimited Extension of God, in whom nothing happens without His Will. This is the realm of miracles, where whatever you will, is so.

Whatever you will, will be so. It must. This is your power.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while."

"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?"

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers."

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

"Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

******"The body's eyes will continue to see differences."******

"But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them."

******"There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before."*****

"But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal."

This is a vital teaching because it is the reason why, even with a healed mind, even in true perception, you CAN STILL SEE the various bodily states of other figures in the dream. Sick, suffering, and dying. And the ability to SEE these things, has absolutely nothing to do with YOU BEING SICK. You seeing these things has absolutely NOTHING to do with you projecting sickness, judging, attacking, or believing in sickness.

YOUR mind still SEES the same FORMS, through the body's eyes, but RECOGNIZES that none of these IMAGES are REAL. It recognizes them all as UNREAL. It disregards the differences and does not BELIEVE that they are REAL SICKNESS or REAL DEATH. But the mind NEVERTHELESS, SEES THESE THINGS HAPPENING IN THE DREAM STILL.

This is why you as a miracle worker are then able to RECOGNIZE that some person has a broken leg, or just got hit by a car, and has a NEED for a miracle, which you can SUPPLY.

There HAS to be a potential for inequality between your mind and what is seen, otherwise it violates several miracle principles. For example "Miracles supply a lack" "Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less". It would not be POSSIBLE to supply the lack of love/life to those who have less, IF every single thing you SEE is an EXACT EQUAL MATCH to the content and condition of YOUR MIND.

If you were only seeing the world as a "mirror" of yourself, and if you were the only dreamer, than it would be true that what you see is ONLY what you believe yourself. But the fact is that there are distinct differences between seeing with Christ Vision and seeing with body vision, and both of them happen at once until you reach the atonement.

Many people believe that you only have "one perception" and that this perception gradually shifts and changes and "turns into" true perception. THIS IS NOT TRUE. And when you believe this, you will believe that you simply "cannot see sickness unless you are sick". It disregards the fact that the body has one kind of perception, the spiritual eye has another, and they BOTH happen at once. All the way up to ascension to Heaven you're still going to be receiving signals from the body, into your mind, which you will perceive, ALONG WITH, perceptions you are having of what is BEYOND what the body is showing you, the face of Christ. BEING HEALED, DOES NOT MAKE YOU BLIND TO THE SICKNESS THAT THE BODY CAN STILL SEE.

The body is permanently stuck seeing with false perception. It sees with false perception even if you are 99% done with the curriculum. "These eyes made not to see, will never see". And yet the body, while you have it, WILL continue to send you images of hell, pictures of objects and bodies moving around in various states.

The fact is that you don't JUST have this one kind of perception. You develop Christ Vision AS a SECOND WAY OF PERCEIVING, which occurs initially IN PARALLEL to body eyesight. The development of Christ Vision and your gradual ascension towards true perception WITH it, awakening the spiritual eye, is the perception you TRANSFORM, and which later becomes perfectly healed. Meanwhile, the body is STILL going to send images to the mind. These images will now begin to change in their seeming meaning or "how they strike you", how they register, and will transition from "seeming to be true/real" to "seeming to be false/unreal". YET STILL SEEING THEM.

At this point you still have TWO INPUTS OF PERCEPTION coming into the mind. One is coming from the body senses, the other is coming from the Christ mind. From spirit. The spirit-to-spirit perception is happening at the same time as the false perception of the body. Only when the true/christ perception is perfected, does the body perception become SO "seen through" and disregarded as false, that it starts to disappear, and eventually you ONLY see with Christ Vision. Which means seeing the face of Christ ONLY and NOT SEEING THE WORLD OF FORM OR THE BODY OR WITH THE BODY.

Many people don't seem to understand the mechanism of perception. Jesus explains it in the course. The body's eyes send signals to the mind, which passes through a belief system which filters and changes the meaning or projects meaning onto the images, changing them and then presenting them to the mind which looks upon these filtered images and "sees". The belief system therefore acts as an interpreter of the signals that are coming in from the body.

When the belief system believes in ego and separations, it categorizes the images from the body's eyes in many different conflicting ways and the mind looks upon these categorizations. When the belief system is unified and cleared it becomes empty and transparent, seeing in a correct and truthful way. The body still sends images into the system from "outside" and the belief system now reinterprets (holy spirit) and frames them from a perspective of truth, which causes the images to be recognized as images of unreality and are all false. The mind thus categorizes them all as unreal - that everything the body sees is an illusion.

Here the mind is SEEING the reinterpreted layer of filtration, through the Holy Spirit's corrected perception, and is seeing the truth ABOUT the images coming from the body. The truth about these body signals is that they are false and unreal. The mind at this point is still able to receive these images and look upon them and interpret them as unreal illusions. This is how the mind can still "look upon dreams a while".

Simultaneously, as vision by body eyes is continuing, Christ Vision is developed which does not use the body's eyes at all. It is a "direct seeing", the seeing function of the mind. "Only the mind sees". This seeing initially takes place through true perception, shared with the Holy Spirit, whereby the body signals are OVERLOOKED (forgiveness) and all things physical are *seen through* as if they are a wall of illusions trying to deceive you. Temptation. You look through this, with the mind, literally, and see PAST the surface of objects showing up in these images. BEYOND these images, there is sight of the face of christ which is BEYOND the physical.

As the mind learns to use the spiritual eye and christ vision this strengthens and the signals from the body are labeled as "false" more and more. They are recognized as "false perception". "The world is false perception". It looks past the false perception that IS the world, and sees beyond it to another world, Heaven. The forgiven world is OVERLOOKED. The veil of "matter" becomes thin and transparent and eventually is seen through (not believed) so much that it disappears entirely. This is the state of perfect christ vision, which sees ONLY the face of Christ and does not even see with the body's eyes at all. The body is forgotten, it disappears entirely, and you return to God.

IN Heaven, you now resume mind-to-mind communication which could be considered "the vision of the son of God", where there is "no thing" to see, nothing separate to look at, only God and creation to know and be aware of.

Until you get to perfect pure christ vision you WILL still see with the body's eyes to some degree. And because of this, you WIL be able to still see the forms in this world. Doing whatever they do. Just because you are becoming more spiritually awake it does not change in ANY WAY the free-willed activities of other brothers in their bodies. If they are sick, or well, or alive, or dead, or attacking, or being friendly, all of it can be easily seen and accurately rendered to the mind. The mind has perfectly clarity about it, and can even see more in it than was seen before. It is thus perfectly possible to still SEE someone having a broken leg, without it in any way implying that YOU have a broken leg or a belief in sickness.

For a while, you have this "double vision", two types of perception, two mechanisms for looking. Which is why you are perfectly capable of being wholly truthful in Christ Vision while at the same time SEEING the body's images and recognizing them as wholly false. This is how God's teachers look upon dreams, recognize them as illusions, can recognize anyone in distress, can see sick bodies and healthy bodies, can tell the ways someone is mistaken, can recognize the errors someone is making, can discern correctly what is true and what is false about what they see, and thereby are in a POSITION TO HELP THOSE IN THE DREAM. BY OFFERING THEM MIRACLES.

In times when I am moving into uncertainty about whether it's true that this world is unreal, I refer back to some key statements in the course which seem very clear to me. One of them is "the body is a dream".

This anchors the truth that the body, and therefore everything the body is made of, and therefore by extension anything ELSE in the same environment which is made of similar stuff or is covered by similar laws, MUST ALSO be a dream.

This then implies logically that the whole world and universe is a dream, and the body is merely one part or character within that dream. And the course similarly backs this up. The body is the hero of the dream, and it cannot exist WITHOUT a dream.

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. ****There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream****, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed."

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something."

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

The body IS a dream, and can only exist INSIDE a dream, and DEPENDS ON dreaming, and cannot exist WITHOUT dreaming. Which means that it REQUIRES SLEEP in the mind in order for a DREAM to be taking place in order for a body to show up. It exists WITHIN perception and NOT in knowldge. There can be no body without this sleep, and there can be no dream without this sleep.

Even those who seem to have "awareness of dreaming", who seem more awake than others but still are in bodies, are still having DREAM bodies. And these bodies are STILL dreams. And these people are STILL dreaming. Awareness that you ARE DREAMING is not the end of dreaming, it is merely a point of perspective on the fact that you are NOT AWAKE. And this perspective on being "awake in the dream" is NOT the same as BEING FULLY AWAKE, never again to dream a single dream.

"No-one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-one believes there really was a time when ****he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real.**** He would have seen at once that ****these ideas are one illusion****, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now appear to be!"

The metaphysics of this is very simple and clear. When mind is FULLY AWAKE in heaven's reality, there is NO dreaming, NO sleep, and therefore there CANNOT BE BODIES. Bodies are dreams, and unless you are dreaming you cannot dream of bodies. Bodies are made up in the mind as part of the dreaming process. They are characters in the dream. Just as trees and houses and cars are characters in the dream. And none of them exist when you truly wake up to Reality.

"What seems to be the opposite of life (heaven - "there is no life outside of heaven") is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely ****seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time****; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

It is also very simple and evident, therefore, to realize that WITHOUT SLEEP, you cannot have a body. You cannot BE IN ONE and be fully awake. You CANNOT be in the full awareness of heaven, in which you are FULLY AWAKE, and at the same time claim that "you have a dream body". Dream bodies ONLY seem to exist for those who are asleep and dreaming still. The body cannot enter heaven because heaven is a waking state, not a dreaming state, and the body REQUIRES a dreamer.

This is also why you CANNOT be "Christ in a body", or "God in a body". Or "awake in a body". Or "in heaven in a body." And also why Jesus was NOT "christ in a body."

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there.""Love was never in the world of dreams."

To suggest this is possible, is to suggest that you can be in the full awareness of the Christ WHO IS IN HEAVEN, in the WAKING AND NOT DREAMING state, while simultaneously BEING ASLEEP AND DREAMING and therefore materializing a body. It is simply impossible. If/when Jesus shows up as a body now, to Earth people, it is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. A temporary image within dreaming, used to symbolize something that is BEYOND the dream. Because Jesus is permanently in heaven.

"Christ has never slept."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit"

"I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me, it will be because you have invited Him."

Either you are squarely in heaven 100% in total awareness of God and reality. Or, you are in some way ASLEEP, having perception, dreaming of a world and inventing fake bodies. The only special exception to this is the Holy Spirit who spans the waking and dreaming states as a bridge, temporarily, to offer you a SYMBOL of heaven within the dreaming state - the real world, to prepare you for a full and gentle awakening.

The body is a dream, a fiction, an imagined fantasy, an image, a fake symbol, not an end in itself, a representative, an avatar, a depiction of something it can never truly picture.

"It is a picture of a body still, for what you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

It is not possible for your body, or anyone's body, to FULLY REPRESENT what you are as spirit. You are INVISIBLE to this realm. You cannot be seen by the body's eyes. The body CANNOT SEE REALITY or spirit.

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."So for example if Jesus were to show up here, his body would NOT BE HIM, because he is not body identified. His spirit would NOT be seen. And the body would be nothing but a SYMBOL, vaguely approximating an appearance that you might find appealing or reassuring, for some purpose. And the body that shows up is NOT HIM. It is merely a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Even if it looks just as 3D and real as other bodies. Because Christ cannot "be a body" any more than God can.

"Jesus was a man who remembered his soul." "But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge. "

You will not ever see GOD directly in a dream. He is not a body. He does not have a body. He cannot be IN a body. He is not in your body or in anyone's body. Even the idea that "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" is an idea of seeing the REAL world BEYOND bodies, in which there ARE NO BODIES. God in his unlimited infinite nature will not EVER be reducible to a finite form or shape or appearance. Even "visions" of God are perceptual illusions.

"PROPERLY speaking, a "vision of God" is a miracle rather than a revelation. The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge."

So you see, if you follow what ACIM says, it is very clear and consistent. Bodies are dreams which only exist inside of dreams for those who dream of them during sleep. And while you can become more aware of the dreaming state, this too is only preparation for true awakening FROM the dream state. And to awaken FROM the dream state you CANNOT maintain a body, or be in one, or have one. It cannot go with you to heaven. And as soon as you stop dreaming the DREAM BODY made of DREAM STUFF has to disappear entirely.

"The body is a dream. Like other dreams, it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear. Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it. But we can change the purpose which the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for.

The body is the means by which God's Son returns to sanity. Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell. The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill."

"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. ****And gone are bodies**** in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, ***no bodies***, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

I used to be of the mindset, like most humans, that certain physical things were bad things, and others were good. I would use whatever form the thing took, to tell me what it meant.

Someone falling over and breaking a leg might be considered a bad thing, and someone laughing perhaps a good thing. Tigers are dangerous, butterflies are harmless. You can eat the good bread but don't eat the mouldy bread.

The sense of whether it's right or wrong was always based on what did the thing look like physically, what shape, what color, what behaviours, what forms. As though some physical things are evil, and other physical things are good.

And of course this elevated some physical things to being somehow more spiritual, acceptable, less guilt-laden than others. And other things to being more evil and bad, forms of sin and deserving of guilt. Crimes versus blessings.

But the truth is that looking at and dividing up the world this way, is based on an egoic false perception. The world is in fact not comprised of positives and negatives. It's a neutral world. It's chaotic yes, sometimes cruel, sometimes merciless, sometimes seems to take on an appearance of loveliness etc. But overall it's basically all the same.

Internally, in our minds, our degree of ego - mental illness - determines what we make of the world. Whether we judge some things are hellish, or some things as heavenly. Whether we think that certain acts are crimes while others are not. How much guilt we think something deserves versus how much special attention.

There is a whole internal landscape of meanings and interpretations, judgements and labels, categorisations and evaluations, which become projected onto the world. But they really have nothing to do with the world.

For example we could say that when bodies seem to die, that's very bad, especially if we are projecting the belief that people are entirely physical bodies. The bodies go and then there is loss and horror and crying and misery. But this is because the ego mind is deciding that such events mean this, based on the form that it takes. As though physical deaths are worse than mild headaches or a slight tiredness.

We're got all this meaning that we've put onto everything, binding it to it, and then believing that it is part of it. But the world doesn't inherently have any of this meaning. Physical deaths are not really that important, or any more significant, than someone going to the toilet or eating some cake. It's just another form of the same illusion.

Eventually we end up with an entire hierarchy of illusions in our minds, with things ranked and evaluated as being better and worse in varying degrees, more or less serious, more or less important, more or less harmful, more or less evil etc. But this is entirely all made up.

For sure, our internal egoic experience of the world is an entire layer of suffering induced by ourselves, which really has no actual connection to what goes on physically. We could be watching the very same scene, and either practically kill ourselves over the seeming horror of the form it takes, or laugh at it as another example of nothingness.

It's in this way that the course says "Earth can reflect heaven or hell." Earth itself is neutral, meaningless, and nothing. Just a dream of a world, a pretend world, a world of forms and changes. It has what seem to be some changes we might classify as positive in some way, and others that are not so great. And overall it's a pretty harsh and occasionally pleasant-seeming place.

But whether or not we choose to experience it in a hell-like manner, or a heaven-like manner, is entirely an internal thing. Whether we are coming from ego and mental illness, or coming from Holy Spirit and sanity, makes the entire contribution to whether or not we "read into" the world meaning one thing or another.

All physical forms are illusions, and the differences they take on is itself the illusion that ... being different makes something inherently not the same as something else. A different shape, color, size, style, movement, whatever, all seeming to suggest this is not part of that, there is a separation. Dogs are not cats and houses are not cars and boats are not airplanes and birds are not fish. That's the illusion, that there are many separate things, when in truth it's all one illusion morphing and changing in irrelevant ways.

A dead body, a living body, a broken body, a sick body, a healthy body, it's all still the same illusion. None of those states are better or worse than the others. Symbolically maybe, we'd prefer to see symbols of life and heath and harmlessness. And we'd prefer to not see symbols of death and destruction and murder. But ultimately it's all just spacetime dream-stuff moulded into different shapes.

So really there's no sort of inherent physical sin, or physical evil, or physical good. It's neutral and meaningless in and of itself. It's just stuff. Stuff designed to obscure the wholeness and shared nature of God, to make it seem like God is not fully anywhere and doesn't exist. What you make to it, use it for, see in it, or project onto it, is an entirely mental exercise.

Use it for ego and the ego will happily tell you you're suffering in hell and life is shit and everyone hates you and you might as well be dead. Use it for Holy Spirit and he'll happily tell you you're not of this world, you're safe in God, nothing in the world can affect you, and none of it really matters.

So is a dead body worse than a living one? Does it actually matter is there are crimes or well behaved individuals? Is it worse to murder than to support? Technically no. That doesn't mean it's justified or the kind of behaviour that would emerge from a loving mind. But in the grand scheme of things, life and death, seeming positives and negatives, truths and untruths, it's all the same stuff just in a different shape. And none of it is real.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth." UrM9A6

"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams, once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs." UrM13A6

There is a theme in the miracle principles. Many of them speak of the fact that you as a miracle worker are in a position of greater supply than others. You are DIFFERENT to them. They are lacking something you have and are in need of healing. And it is now your role to GIVE to them, or supply, that which they lack, for them, so that they will be lifted up to a healed state. This means that miracles are a way to HEAL OTHERS. To be truly helpful. To actually CAUSE effects in them whereby they CHANGE, are transformed, and BECOME healed. In mind AND body.

Miracles are not the same thing as the state of miracle mindedness. They arise FROM that state and EXPRESS outward to others.

"Miracles ARISE FROM a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."

"Miracles are an EXPRESSION of love."

They are miracle impulses, sparks of life, divine broadcasts, thought creations, ("miracles are thought creations" "miracles are a spark of life") which EMIT from the mind, travel through you from the holy spirit, to your brother's mind, where they are received. This entails a GIVER and a RECEIVER. They CAUSE HEALING IN OTHERS. In your brother. Because he has placed himself in a position where he is blocking his own healing and so NEEDS the light in you to shine into his mind to heal it, for him. Just as if someone is disabled, you HELP THEM to cross the road.

Having placed himself in a state of sickness, your brother is in a position to NEED HELP. He is not willing to correct the error himself, even though he made it, and even though his mind could heal itself. So now your function is to perform a miracle of healing FOR HIM, as a SERVICE that you provide to help him.

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

A miracle is an intercession. You INTERVENE on his behalf and do FOR him what he is not currently able/willing to do. You CAN do this because your mind has a light in it which is compatible with his mind and is able to shine INTO HIS MIND to enlighten it. The light in you can shine away HIS darkness. Your mind can HEAL another mind. This is not magic, it is miraculous. The love in you can RESURRECT your brother from death!

"Miracles are healing because they ***supply a lack***; they are performed ***by those who temporarily have more FOR THOSE WHO TEMPORARILY HAVE LESS***."

"Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are always miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws. They bring ***more love both to the giver AND THE RECEIVER***."

"Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as to receive. They simultaneously ***increase the strength of the giver and SUPPLY STRENGTH TO THE RECEIVER***."

"The miracle, on the other hand, is an ***ENERGIZER***. It always strengthens, and never depletes. It DOES ***induce peace***, and by establishing tranquillity it enables both giver ***AND RECEIVER*** to enter into a state of Grace. Here his miracle-mindedness, is restored."

"A miracle is a ***SERVICE***. It is the maximal service you can ***render to ANOTHER***. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously."

"Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by ***extending it to OTHERS.***"

"Miracles enable you to ***heal the SICK and raise the DEAD*** because you made sickness and death yourself, and ***can therefore ABOLISH both***. You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator."

"A miracle is a universal ***blessing*** from God through me ***to all my BROTHERS***. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."

"I inspire all miracles, ***which are really INTERCESSIONS***. They ***intercede*** for your holiness"

"A miracle is a ***CORRECTION*** introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly."

"The miracle ***DISSOLVES error*** because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, ***darkness automatically DISAPPEARS***."

"A major contribution of miracles is their ***strength in RELEASING you*** from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack."

"A miracle is never lost. It may touch ***MANY PEOPLE*** you have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware."

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, ***the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs***, because that light IS theirs."

"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. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he ***strengthens*** His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. ***The power of one mind CAN shine into another***, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal."

"Our brothers are forgetful. ***That is why they need*** your remembrance of me and of Him Who created me. Through this remembrance, ***you can change their minds about themselves***, as I can change yours. ***Your mind is so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them***, as I can enlighten yours."

This is not a violation of the person's free will. If they are willing to be helped, a little willingness is all that is required to invite the holy spirit to move and act and heal. It is our role as MIRACLE WORKERS, to GIVE healing to others who need it. We are in a position to do so because of our greater strength, and the Holy Spirit is EAGER to bring as much healing as possible as soon as possible.

"Your function on Earth is healing."

"You share the Holy Spirit's function on earth."

"Do his works."

"You will see miracles through your hands through me."

"If I live in you, you ARE awake. But YOU must see the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have done them unto YOU. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do THROUGH you, or you will not accept what I can do FOR you."

"Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you."

"The truly helpful are God's miracle-workers, whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the kingdom. I will direct you to wherever you can be truly helpful, and to whoever can follow my guidance through you."

Since all things physical are rooted in separation, it is impossible to do ANYTHING in this world without it being in some way connected to being separate.

Eating, breathing, talking, touching, fighting, whatever, everything physical is not God’s nature.

We tend to section off certain physical things as somehow “meaning” that they are good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse, more or less spiritual. But physicality can’t really be said to be selective in terms of what it represents.

A war, a butterfly flapping, people hitting each other, baking a cake, painting a picture, on the physical level it’s all still forms in a dream, images made of ideas of separateness and conflict. But somehow arbitrarily we’ve assigned all kinds of hierarchies and categories to physical things to say that some are better than others.

Given that you can’t DO anything in the world without it being rooted in separation, it then comes down to PURPOSE. And by purpose we have to mean that how it is being USED or toward what ultimate goal. The use of it isn’t inherent to the thing itself, because purpose is about mind and the meaning the mind gives to things.

It is mind that judges murder as bad, or as worse than kissing. It is mind that decides that a dead broken body is more evil or proof of sin that a healthy athlete running a race. It is mind that decides to say that people shooting others with guns is bad while hugging is good.

Ultimately the strange truth is that all things physical cannot be used to determine “what it means”, or whether it is a good thing or not. Our categorizations of stuff comes from judgements, and most of those judgments are rooted in ego. It is technically the ego that says that physical war is ”an ego thing.” Which is kind of a confusion of two levels - mental and physical.

Let’s remember the world is a dream. And the dream is made of symbols. And the symbols can sometimes look what we have decided is nice and other times not nice. Even the death of the body has been artificially endowed with negative meanings, while the non-dead bodies have been endowed with positive meanings. Yet:

“The body cannot be meaningfully invested with attributes of Christ OR the ego.” Because the body is actually “nothing.”

So if we stop completely trying to evaluate whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, spiritual or not, based on its FORM … we might be better off. This means all illusions are equal and there is no hierarchy. Just because something looks like “a big disaster” doesn’t mean it IS actually in truth “worse than” a seemingly small problem. These are DECEPTIONS based on being blinded by perception of form.

A headache or cancer are technically both equally unreal and untrue, and one is NOT technically worse than the other. One is not more serious than the other either. Both are supposed to be regarded as equally meaningless and their forms are meant to be regarded as illusions of deception. We are not supposed to buy into how stuff looks on the physical level, as though differences mean something.

This is a bit radical because it means putting physical war and murder alongside kisses and hugs as equals. And not just categorizing the arbitrarily as opposites. It means that terrorism and abuse are “just another form” of the same illusion as someone throwing a birthday party and giving gifts. Because the FORM something takes is not its real meaning.

As the course teaches, when we look to the form tell us “what it means”, and USE and depend on the form to “describe” its meaning, we are deceived by illusions. A healthy body is not better or worse than a sick body in this sense. But the world is very accustomed to evaluating rightness or goodness based on what form something takes. Technically a nuclear bomb is no more ‘evil’ than a feather falling to the ground lightly.

“Let me not use this as a sign of sin and death, or as an obstacle to peace, but help me to use it to facilitate its coming.” This applies to all the seemingly physical FORMS of “bad things” in this world as much as anything - you should be able to find a way to laugh at it and see it as affirming a mental purpose of peace.

In terms of judgement, meaning, purpose, evaluations of whether its good or bad, judging whether it is spiritual or not, an ego thing or not, more or less ego based, etc…. that’s all mental stuff happening on a separate level from the physical. We have to give stuff all the meaning it has because it has none of its own. It’s a meaningless world. It has many different forms and we seem to prefer some over others, but truly we are not supposed to. The form illusions takes is not supposed to sway us whatsoever.

So then it comes down to the mind’s USE of the form, the PURPOSE it gives it from a higher level. What is it for. What meaning do we give TO it. What goal will we use it to serve? Who are we looking at it with - ego or holy spirit? You could say that a physical war could be used by the holy spirit’s vantage point to welcome laughter and happiness, just as much as you could say that a happy dance with hugs and kisses could be used by the ego as a sign of treachery and betrayal and conflict.

We’re not supposed to be dividing up the world based on what FORM things take, whatever category we put those forms into, or what meanings we give to those categories. Otherwise we start to try to “spiritualize form”, by saying that certain behaviors, acts, physical movements, styles, wardrobe choices, words, whatever, are somehow “more spiritual”. And before long we’re creating an illusion of being “physically spiritual.”

Of course a mind at peace, coming from Holy Spirit, may well tend to be guided to act in a certain way, to avoid certain things, or to do other things. But the things that are done are done for a higher purpose. And the form that these things appear to take may be misunderstood as “not looking spiritual.” There could be a higher purpose at work even if on the surface something does not “look spiritual.” Who are we to judge anything?

Can physical forms of separation and attack be AVOIDED in this world? Probably not. No matter what you eat, no matter how you move, what you do, it’s all still technically unreality and an attack on truth. Forms of sin and weird strange behaviors. You can’t avoid it. The whole system is one of death. But you can change how you look at it, what meaning you give to it, and what you make of it. And that’s all you can do with it. See it differently.

The key to seeing it differently is detaching from HOW IT LOOKS, disregarding the form, not trying to make the form take on a certain shape in order to be more spiritual, and not feeling guilty about what form it does take. Even going to the toilet is technically an act of war on the physical level. Nature’s nature is to devour. Everything you eat requires something else to starve. There is no escape from problems in this world. But you can change your mind about it and how you use it.

"The higher mind thinks according to the laws spirit obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God."

Since spirit obeys only God's laws, and Spirit is love, expressions of love (miracles) are expressions of the laws of spirit. Spirit is beyond the "nature" of the ego, and therefore miracles have a super-natural, spiritual origin. What you may not realize is that this entire world is constructed from the ego's fake laws of nature, even down to the subatomic physics.

The laws of the ego are invented by the ego. The dream, which is an effect of an "invisible" higher-level cause, does not contain any real causes. But it contains illusions of causes. These illusions of causes make it seem like one part of the same level causes effects in other parts of the same level. This is not true. All effects are orchestrated from a higher level, including the illusion that one thing causes another.

So when you study this fictional "world", and you see one object seeming to move and collide with another object to "cause" it to behave differently, this SEEMS like there is some kind of a law involved. Like the laws of physics, suggesting that actions have equal and opposite reactions.

The truth is that actions do NOT have equal and opposite reactions. Actions on this level are not actions. They are all reactions - effects, pretending to be actions. The action, and its effects, are both effects coming from an unseen dimension.

The ego has been very clever to disguise and hide God's nature and the laws of Spirit, by creating FORM, and nothing is so blinding as sight of form. The behavior and interaction of forms creates an illusion of cause and effect happening on this same level. And so on this level it appears that some things cause other things, and that this is "natural". It could not be further from natural.

What it really expresses is the fact that what is not love is murder, and every part of the ego thought system (of which this world is a part) is murderous. The ego thought system believes that what applies to one thing does not apply to another, therefore there are differences, therefore you can cause (attack) without being attacked (affected).

This is why so-called "causes" in this world seem to escape the effects they inflict on other things. It seems possible to throw a brick through a window without damaging the brick. But since what applies to the brick does not apply to the window, this is an illusion based on differences, and is an expression of a murderous idea. The brick "gets away with" (murders) the window because the so-called properties of the brick (the laws applying to it) are "different" to the properties and laws of the window. It is not "natural" to be murderous, and so this "law of nature" that the brick will break the window is NOT being governed by a natural law or the "laws of physics".

The truth about this universe/world/planet is that it is not run by laws of physics, there is no such thing as physics, and in fact it is run by the mind from a higher level. And it doesn't really exist because it is just a dream being projected and dreams are fictional. This is why "there is no world."

Since all true causality is in the mind, and all of the mind is "above" the level of this world and its effects, when the mind decides to exercise its ability to cause, it can "modify" the content of the dream, or rearrange it, in order to demonstrate and prove that it is NOT really governed by the ILLUSORY LAWS, but by the laws of spirit.

Since spirit is love and love's expressions are miracles, these "acts of love" demonstrating the true laws or "true nature" of existence, MUST DEFY AND BREAK the illusions of horizontal laws that the ego assumes are true.

If a child is playing with a train set and the train is traveling around the track "on rails", seemingly by itself, following physical laws, it can only go where the "laws" seem to tell it to go. However, if the child reaches down and picks up the train and positions it in a totally different section of track, all of those laws are completely defied. Indeed, another child may complain that "you're not supposed to do that" because it breaks the ILLUSION of the game they were playing at PRETENDING the train is going around the track on its own.

The mind of the dreamer is what dictates what shows up, where it shows up, how it shows up, and how it behaves. Any so-called "interactions" of objects are FAKE. The objects would completely pass through each other and occupy the same space if it were not for the MIND deciding to make it seem like they collide with each other and perform a cascade of so-called "reactions". There is no such thing as a real reaction. Spirit creates and extends, it does not react.

This whole world and everything in it was designed to conceal the nature of God and His laws, behind a smokescreen of fake laws and fake nature. To present an illusion that one thing depends on another or causes effects in another, thereby expressing the ego's insane idea of un-equal laws or finite laws which apply only some of the time to some objects. After all, not all objects are causing something to happen at all times, and even objects which are affected turn around and become causes soon after. Are they causes, or effects, or both, or neither?

Nothing in this world has the power to express the laws of Spirit on its own because "form" is the form of ERROR, and error is all about separation and powerlessness and fake causality. Miracles HAVE to express something which is BEYOND the nature of this world, in order for them to be miracles at all. It is not a miracle for a car to drive down a road. It is a miracle for the car to disappear and reappear 50 miles further along in a split second. It is not a miracle for a tree to catch on fire. It is a miracle for the tree to avoid being burned in the midst of a raging forest fire where everything around it was incinerated. Ego laws MUST be defied in order for it to be miraculous.

Miracles obey the laws of Spirit, not the laws of the ego. For a miracle to express, something which the ego APPEARED to establish as true is shown to be FALSE, and is demonstrated to be false, by completely defying and breaking and overriding the ego laws to produce effects which are outside those laws. This would include for example giving someone new eyeballs after they were born without any eyes. Or re-growing a missing limb. Or turning water into wine. Or walking on the top of the ocean without sinking.

If this nature-defying, thus super-natural element is missing from miracles, and if miracles in ACIM are not super-natural, then what are they? There is nothing super natural or ego defying or ego-law-breaking about shifting perception. There is nothing ego-law-breaking or capable of demonstrating that the laws don't apply, in correcting some thoughts. There is nothing that's going to change the direction the world spins when some old emotions are released. There's nothing particularly powerful about any of these efforts at purification. They are just clearing away belief in ego laws to make way for Spirit to express itself.

Illusions + reality = sin.

Reality - illusions = innocence.

This world we're in is a place of limitations. Everything is an illusion. Nothing is whole. Everything is partial. And all the forms that things take seem to depict and symbolise, in one way or another, ideas of separation and attack.

But even so, the world is neutral and is just a dream, it doesn't mean anything. Its forms are just mistakes - errors, various symbolic images which seem to depict impossible things, unnatural things, things not of God. Like sickness and death and murder.

None of this is a sin. But it could tempt you to believe it is a sin, IF you follow the sin formula.

The sin formula is a combination of illusions and reality. It's what you get when you take something that is an illusion and you try to GIVE IT the properties of God. If you give it reality, permanence, irreversibility, unchangeability, truth ..... then you now combine various flawed-looking limited things with truth. And that is how you convert a mistake into a sin.

Sin is then a way of looking at a mistake, in a mistaken way. It's a mistake about a mistake. It's' where you don't recognize that an illusion is just an illusion, or that a mistake is just a mistake. Instead it is regarded AS TRUE, as real, as happening, as permanent.

As such a sinful false-perception way of seeing things looks at bodies and physical happenings - which are all illusions - AS IF THEY ARE REAL.

So IF it were true that we are bodies, and IF bodies were real, and IF bodies were "doing something" to each other, it WOULD be a sin. Because now something real is attacking something real. And that WOULD be a horrendous attack upon reality. And it WOULD have real effects which can be observed and proven.

Such a sin WOULD call for punishment, it would be such a logical statement of truth and fact, such as that "you really have killed God" or "you really have killed God's son" ... that it would absolutely totally JUSTIFY all anger and all revenge and all punishment. This is why "the wages of sin is death." Logically it says you DID do this, I did not ask for it, you owe me, I am justified in revenge in order to atone and equalise, and therefore you deserve to die.

But sin - the perception that something IS a sin - is just a mistake ABOUT mistakes. A mistaken view OF illusions. A mistaken combination of things which in and of themselves are NOT true or real, taken to be true and real. An illusion believed, turns it into a sin.

Sin kind of "locks things in", makes them seem unchangeable - this is the idea that sin is irreversible. It would indeed seem that sins are irreversible if you give them God's properties - because God himself is irreversible. His permanence, confused with space and time and its contents, produces a perception of a world of sin.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away." UrT5A5

What this is really saying is that the world of bodies is the world where you could be tempted to believe sins are happening, and typically you need bodies in order to make sins possible. But sin is just a way of INTERPRETING bodies, and once you interpret them as REAL, you introduce a demand for guilt and death.

This is why forgiveness takes away guilt, because it still looks at the same bodies but WITHOUT confusing them for something real or true. It lifts away God's properties and power and permanence, and sees that the bodies are just neutral harmless illusions. And as such they ARE ERRORS, but they are NOT SINS.

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. 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." UrT20H4

The body is not "sin-ful" as in FULL of sin, because this is an ego attribute - a false perception OF a body - to suggest its erroneous nature is REAL, and therefore that it is inherently a sin. The body is not really a sin. But at the same time, the body is also not said to be sin-less. .. because sinlessness is a state of such purity and innocence that it cannot have illusions in it. The body IS an illusion, so the body is actually NOTHING, so cannot accurately be said to be "a sin" OR "an innocence."

The thing is that we in our egos, in our false perception insanity, tend to COMBINE physical things with the properties of God. The worst of all these beliefs is the belief that the physical world is God's creation, IS God, and is thus real forever. This is the most sin-laden view of the world possible.

By believing the world is reality, is true, is eternal, is of God, all physical things - which are errors, are converted into sins. And now all acts, all behaviours, all events, are regarded as sins. As we believe that bodies are real, we believe that bodies ARE PEOPLE, and now we are believing that the mind is physical and souls can be destroyed.

Believing that the body is real and is the person, IS a belief in sin, and is thus an attack upon the body and the person. It's an egoic way of framing the person as not innocent. And once you believe they ARE a body, you will enter into all manner of nightmares.

There will be the nightmare of fear that their body could be in danger, the nightmare of guilt that you cannot save their body from death, the nightmare of anger that other people or things are doing stuff to their body, the nightmare of hopelessness that you cannot stop their body sickness, it goes on and on.

While we continue to be confused and lost in combining illusions with reality, giving God's properties to things which are not of God, we will continue to suffer and have a bad dream experience. But once we separate out God from the world, reality from illusions, souls/Christ from bodies, we can enter into the happier dream.

The happy dream comprises still the dream of illusions, but without sin projected onto it. Without that sense of - this is actually really a horrible bad thing. Without that attacking judgement of "this world REALLY IS a shit place." Yes it can seem to be a shit place, indeed it cannot be anything other than shit, but thankfully it is not a REAL one.

The happy forgiving dreams of RECOGNITION that an illusion is an illusion, that bodies are dreams, that the world's events are fiction, and that the world IS NOT ACTUALLY doing anything to anything real, liberates the mind and allows us to be in a state closer to sinlessness, closer to innocence. And we can project this onto the world, temporarily, and see it reflected back as the reflection of heaven. A distorted strange dream-world seen with forgiving eyes, a kind of "happy fiction."

"Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and the truth. They" UrT4A2

"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 this view are all your sins forgiven." UrW220W11

Sins are forgiven by recognizing they are NOT sins, they are just mistakes. And mistakes simply call for correction, not punishment. When you recognize that someone just made a mistake, you do not hold it against them like it is some kind of permanent reality and truth about them. You let your view of them be CHANGED, so that you see their mistakenness calls only for a gentle loving correction, and not a horrendous accusation.

"And what else should therapy be? Awake and be glad, for all your sins have been forgiven you. This is the only message that any two should ever give each other." UrP4B4

When considering "what are you?", the body could be said to be responsible for a vast majority of what you think you are, including most of your personality and aspects of your mind.

All bodies are different, even if there are similarities. All brains are different. The body gives rise to a superficial personality as well. Within this personality there are different parts and some of these parts even conflict with each other, are activated in different scenarios, and have sub-personalities within them.

Consider what happens in the eyes of your soul, as it passes through different lifetimes with different bodies. Sometimes you are a man, sometimes a woman. So right away your seeming gender is not a consistent and permanent part of your real self. Sometimes you are gay, sometimes straight, sometimes asexual. Your sexuality is not a permanent part of what you are.

Sometimes you are black, sometimes white, asian, mexican, chinese, english, who knows. None of these qualities or ethic backgrounds or body types or genetic materials defines what you really are. Sometimes you have brown eyes, sometimes blue or green. Sometimes you have dark hair, sometimes blond, or red, or whatever. None of this is part of your permanent identity.

The body also gives rise to personality. Personality springs from the various qualities and focuses and 'talents' and attributes and wirings of the brain and the rest of the system. People are born with certain qualities, which give rise to preferences and interests.

Some are born with a strong intellect, while others may lack the precision and brightness of thought. Some are born highly emotional, while others may be shallow. Some are born flamboyant and dramatic, while others may be more subdued and withdrawn. Some are extroverted, some introverted. These are largely all based on the nervous system and the brain wiring.

You'll notice also that you generally keep roughly the same personality throughout the lifetime. Even if you're working on spiritual things, your voice is much the same, your mannerisms, your way of walking, your intonations, your subtle ways and nuances, all much the same still.

In the course for example in the manual for teachers, Jesus remarks about how teachers of God retain these attributes:

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct." UrM5A1

So here he's saying that the physical appearance of the body is going to be much the same, to the body's eyes their bodies are all different still, they have different backgrounds and experiences, they have superficial personalities still which we quite distinct etc. None of that changes just because your mind is waking up. And notice how it says the personality is superficial - ie appears to be an entire character, but isn't really you.

You'll notice also for example that people who go through awakenings don't suddenly really change their physical or personality nature or style. They still have the same body, the same general personality, the same way of talking, the same sense of humour, the same general way of expressing etc. Their personalities are much the same. They might be more serene and calm, more peaceful, happier, lighter, healthier, etc... but in general the body and personality stay much the same.

So that being the case, we have to ask ourselves, WHAT exactly is your real self, if all of these many varied bodies and personalities are NOT what you are? And how do we transcend or rise above or dis-identify from this superficial personality, if it is not our real self?

You might've been thinking all this time, doing the course, waking up, that "you" or "your mind" is somehow "your real self". That you are applying things "separate from" some kind of lower ego self or body. But perhaps that isn't true. Perhaps the personality that you've been using and thinking is "you", is actually part of the body's personality. Maybe this whole character, this person, that you think you've been all this time, isn't actually you at all. And maybe your real self is actually so far out of sight and out of your awareness that you don't even know it's there.

"You do not realize the whole extent to which the idea of separation has INTERFERED with reason. Reason lies in the other self you have CUT OFF from your awareness." UrT21F5

Perhaps you've divided up parts of your fictitious self and called some parts the real you and other parts the fake you. But maybe all of it is the fake you. Maybe quite honestly, the whole of what you think has been you all this time, is not you at all, except for what? What exactly is left over, when you take away the body, the gender, the sexuality, the nervous system, the brain wiring, the personality, the preferences, the things you feel comfortable with, the compatibilities and incompatibilities? What part of any of your experience is actually the real you at all?

We're told that CHOICE is at least a freedom we still have, which is part of the mind. Here is Jesus saying that even our seeming "consciousness" is not really what our real mind is like.

"In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice; this choice is always between two choices or two voices. Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice. CONSCIOUSNESS is the receptive mechanism, receiving messages from above or below; from the Holy Spirit or the ego. Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. Yet the very fact that it has levels and can be trained demonstrates that consciousness cannot reach knowledge." UrU2A6

So it seems that in some regard, "consciousness", in its essence, which is a separation-based psyche, and part of the larger "mind", is the only part of our experience and reality that we would retain if we awaken. And indeed consciousness itself is based on a split mind, and that split will end when we wake up, restoring us to "awareness". But it is mind that has belief and denial and choice, and mind is where we can have perceptual changes and alterations to values and desires.

Yet some parts of what seem to be mind may not really be our real mind. And many of our thoughts are not even what ACIM would consider real thoughts. Ego thoughts, separate thoughts, thoughts about bodies, thoughts of attack, etc, these are illusions of thoughts, in what is really a sort of blank mind not really thinking anything real. But we have to work with thoughts to get our mind to re-align with spirit.

"Only the mind and body need Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of mind, and abolishes its errors." UrT1B27E

"You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of your need for mind training." UrW94L4

"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." UrW1Ln11

So it seems that overall the "course" or curriculum is about training the mind to be put back into its proper role as a medium for the soul to use for creative constructive purposes. This mind is trained by various practices, in the mind, including a shift in a sense of identification. From believing that you are the body, or that you are even the body's "personality", to identifying yourself as Christ/Spirit/Soul/Sonship. And this includes dis-identifying from the body's "personality" character.

"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification." UrT1B26

Along the way, we have to sort out and question, what parts of what we think are our "self" are actually part of self, and what are just transient temporary things. All aspects of the body are not permanent and not part of a permanent identity. Even across lifetimes. Whatever body attributes seem locked in for a lifetime, are irrelevant to what you are. But this also extends to major personality traits, the way you handle emotions, the sensitivity level with which you experience the world, the way you speak, how your body moves as an expression of your sense of your "character", all of this stuff is superficial.

I think then at some point we have to realize, even our personality here is not likely to really be true to how we are in spirit. This "person", this character in a dream, that you thought was you, maybe that too is an illusion. Maybe it would change radically if you switched bodies. Maybe none of these personalities are real personalities. Maybe all that is left over in your awareness that is real, is a much more fundamental underlying "pure awareness", coupled with the magnificence of the soul and the attributes of being part of God.

For now, this "you" that you have to work with, is like an interface to the world, a tool... just a figure in a dream, like a puppet, complete with a built-in software character, that has certain characteristics. A sort of persona. And you can work through that and use it, but must find a way to not regard it as your self. If you could see all the seeming selves you've been across lifetimes this would be far more obvious.

The fact that the personality is part of the body, and that we have a superficial egoic mind, is revealed in this paragraph, where we're told that "the body" "seeks for friends and enemies", it has a concern for safety, it looks for comfort, it looks for pleasure, it avoids hurtful things. These could not be attributed to a mindless body, they have to mean that the body and personality-mind are part of one system, this "character" of a dream person, a false self comprising physicality AND personality, which interacts with the world and has motivations and actions and preferences - like a favourite ice cream and favourite music. This is all part of the body, and not part of what you really are.

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by OTHER bodies, born into the world OUTSIDE the body, lives a little while, and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies, dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful. Above all, it tries to teach itself its pains and joys are different, and CAN be told apart." UrT27I1

"There is ANOTHER vision and ANOTHER voice, in which your freedom lies, awaiting but your choice. And, if you place your faith in them, you will perceive ANOTHER Self in YOU." UrT21F3

Since the world does not contain any real causes, and absolutely everything is an affect of the mind on a higher level, this shines some light on what happens when you are attacked or hurt.

If it seems that someone comes along and hits you, and a bruise forms, this is an illusion.

The person hitting and the formation of the bruise are not actually connected by any kind of linear causality. Laws of physics DO NOT EXPLAIN how the bruise gets there.

The bruise does not show up as a result of the attack.

The bruise shows up because your own mind buys into the illusion of linear cause and effect, and USES the opportunity to demonstrate that the other person is the "cause" of your hurt. This is an attempt to demonstrate that you can be hurt, in order to prove your brother is a sinner, so that you can get rid of your sin!

Your own mind puts the bruise in your own body, all by itself. It doesn't get there by the "causal power" of another person. If you believe in the causal power of another person, what your mind is doing is it is actually twisting itself so that it can seem to attack itself from the outside in, through that person, and it is your mind which puts the bruise there.

This works in exactly the same way to how medication works, which is that you pretend that something outside of you will do something to you, your MIND decides whether or not to allow it, and IF it allows it, the MIND ITSELF puts the effects into the body, not the medication. All medication is a placebo. None of it has power to cause anything but illusions.

If the mind decides not to get well, IT WILL REFUSE the illusion of the medication and the medication will NOT WORK. Similarly, among those who refuse to believe in the cause-effect of certain foods, they can eat those foods WITHOUT EFFECT even if they would hurt other people. Mind over matter!

Jesus asks us in the Course to demonstrate that we cannot be hurt, or attacked, or sick, and that our brother is innocent because nothing they try to do us produces ANY EFFECTS.

If we produce sickness in the body after eating the wrong food, or we develop a bruise after being hit, or we walk around with a broken leg due to falling out of a tree, we are ACCUSING everyone else (ie the world) of doing this to us.

This means we are attempting to prove that we CAN BE HURT. This proof demonstrates for all to see, that someone else must be the sinner, because something happened that you *appear* to not want to have happened, against your will. Your demonstration of "being a victim" is actually a show that your mind puts on, for a purpose, to scapegoat the world.

What Jesus is therefore asking is, that we become invulnerable to attack, incapable of being sick, unable to be hurt, and that we refuse to CHOOSE to show up as damaged or broken. This means that when it SEEMS in the illusion that there is a linear causality of someone hitting you, YOU DO NOT develop a bruise. When you fall out of the tree, you DO NOT break your leg. When you eat a certain food, IT DOES NOT poison you.

This means you are supposed to get to where you can SUPERNATURALLY DEMONSTRATE that you cannot be hurt, sick, damaged, or made to suffer, in any way, by any cause in the entire world! At the physical level! He is asking us to show that we are holy by showing that the Son of God CANNOT BE DESTROYED, using the body as a SYMBOL of immortality.

Here is how Jesus puts it:

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. NOTHING EXTERNAL TO YOUR MIND CAN HURT OR INJURE YOU IN ANY WAY. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. NO ONE BUT YOURSELF AFFECTS YOU. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail." !!!!!!!

He also speaks of this here:

"Sickness is an attempt to demonstrate that you can be hurt"

and here:

"A broken body proves the mind has not been healed"

and here:

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

and here:

"(regarding your brother) But every pain you suffer do you see as proof that he is guilty of attack. Thus would you make yourself (your body) to be the sign that he has lost his innocence, and need but look on you (your body) to realize that he has been condemned. And what to you has been unfair will come to him in righteousness. The unjust vengeance that you suffer now belongs to him, and when it rests on him are you set free (you projected your sin). Wish not to make yourself a living symbol of his guilt, for you will not escape the death you made for him."

Here Jesus is basically saying that you must not attempt to put sin and death onto your brother through attack of any kind (sickness also) because if you do, YOU will be attacked. This is the basic law of the one mind, that what you do to your brother you to do yourself. All attack is self attack. You cannot escape the consequences of your attempted attack on another, and they are not required to receive those consequences from you.

This means that if you demonstrate that you are sick or hurt physically IN ANY WAY, you are attacking your brother, trying to SHOW HIM what he must have done to you against your will, and are therefore projecting your sin! If you do this, you will suffer, and your will experience death. This also means YOUR MIND *IS NOT HEALED*, therefore you CANNOT experience peace. A broken body proves your mind is not healed. Your mind is proven to be healed when your body shows up as NOT BROKEN. Therefore, to escape death, you MUST NOT use the body for attack, thus rendering it INCAPABLE of being attacked by you or anyone.

Whenever you attempt to use the body for attack, which means, to fail to extend love through it to your brother, the body itself will become sick. The sickness in your body will directly correlate to your belief that you and your brother are sinners. Your attempt to project your sin will project it onto your body and destroy it. This is the ONLY WAY that bodies become sick. Not through external causes, not through the illusion of cause and effect, not through your brother.

We are therefore REQUIRED, and WILL NOT BE ABLE TO AVOID, to demonstrate that our body is absolutely invulnerable, in order to CANCEL OUT the illusion of cause and effect, to PROVE that the ego's laws mean nothing, to SHOW that our brother is as innocent as we are, and to TEACH that the Son of God cannot be hurt or affected by illusions in any way.

Can you imagine what a miracle it will be to witness someone demonstrating this? That nothing you try to do to them works? That you cannot hurt their body whatsoever? That their body cannot even die no matter how you try to attack it? Their mind will simply project an image of permanent health the whole time, IGNORING anything you try to do to it. And by this will be PROVEN your innocence, because no sin you try to commit WORKS, and therefore you CANNOT believe that you are sinful. Thus are you set free because your attempted sin HAD NO CONSEQUENCES. This is how you set your brother free from his belief that he sinned!

This is one of the most radical teachings in the course, so I understand that many people don't believe this or don't want to. But this is what Jesus has said. If your body is broken in any way, you are teaching vulnerability and suffering and sin. You cannot have sickness in the body and prove that you are innocent, or to be at peace. And you cannot be at peace with death. You cannot have sickness showing up if you want to be awake, and being awake you WILL NOT show sickness to anyone. The body MUST HEAL if the mind heals. And the body will become as immortal as the mind.

Cause and effect at the level of the world is entirely an illusion. THERE IS NO CAUSE in the world. Nothing causes you. Nothing is the reason why you are showing up in any particular form. Nothing has happened to you against your will. Nothing of this world can be found responsible for having power over you, for "making you" be a certain way, for instigating illness, to triggering suffering, or for making your body change in any way at all. Not even the forces of nature or acts of nature or whatever else. NOTHING.

Your body is 100% a projected image from YOUR MIND, and YOU are the one that determines how it is going to show up. Not this world. Not other people. Not food or water or weather or anything else. We are meant to demonstrate that our body is completely invulnerable, completely NOT DEPENDENT on anything of this world, and incapable of being affected by this world. This will demonstrate the the mind of love has power over all illusions and nothing can assail the Kingdom of God.

If we're sick, hurt, in pain, suffering, a victim, abused, damaged, missing something, lacking, attacked, upset, whatever... we are the ones who are putting it there, we are RESPONSIBLE for it, and no-one else has caused it. Only through this willingness to admit honestly to this truth, will you be able to access the SUPERNATURAL PROTECTION which comes from realizing the secret to salvation: "you are doing this to yourself". If you stop doing it to yourself, NOTHING ELSE WILL BE ABLE TO DO ANYTHING TO YOU.

I'll let Jesus finish up with this section from "sickness is a defense against the truth":

"The body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more.

Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. 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 judgment 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."

An "appearance" is another term for something physical. It's what you see when you take the physical form at face value. You look at what it appears to be on the surface, on the face of it, without any seeming interpretation.

"There is nothing so blinding as perception of form."

When mind denies itself and denies God's reality, it tries to become one with a body. To become one with separation. It narrows itself and confines itself and aligns itself with the body. The closer it becomes to being "body like", the less difference there seems to be between them.

Eventually this lack of difference makes the body seem like an ally, as in "the ego's chosen home", a friend of sorts, and something you can "identify" with (agree with), because it seems to agree with your mind. The mind is then confused with the body and the two seem to become one. In this ***illusion of oneness***, the body's sight is believed completely to be total fact.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

Actually, without a difference between mind and body, you will enter a state where it seems you are not even interpreting at all. Where the physical world is total fact. Where everything is physical proof. Where the form something takes is entirely what it means. And where there is no sense of questioning or a bigger picture or a different vantage point. Everything seems to be "exactly as it is".

In false perception, the mind trusts the body's senses and this produces an experience of being "convinced", that what you see happening really is happening. In fact, you move toward a state of "obviousness", where everything physical seems to "obviously" be there, doing what it's doing, irrefutable and undeniable. The more you are in false perception the more the physical world seems to be totally real to you.

The mind gets into a state of being so body-aligned that it is no longer questioning what the body senses. Everything physical becomes total reality. Everything that "happens" becomes actual life and real events. And without any difference between mind and body, other bodies and their activities are taken as absolute and irreversible, having all the qualities of God.

So our minds, by believing IN separation, actually get into a state of what SEEMS to be ***"no separation"*** between mind and body, where all sense of you interpreting anything is lost. There is a seemingly unified experience, a oneness with the world at the physical level, everything looks obvious and real, and you take everything to be exactly what it appears to be.

In this state you also form a "story", because now the story of what bodies are doing, what events transpire etc, is all taken to be actual real fact. If someone's body acts out, or someone attacks, or there's a conflict, or any kind of thing you don't agree with, it is taken as being totally real. Like they REALLY DID DO it, provable in a court of law. And then you will automatically and naturally and logically hold it against them, justified by the fact of it happening.

Holding something against someone happens as a result of the mind binding with the body and believing that physicality is true. It does not question or doubt the physical "reality", so if someone does something offensive it is now a SIN. And this sin has physical proof right in front of your eyes. And your eyesight cannot deny it sees it. And this sin is irreversible, unhealable, unfixable, and the person has definitely messed up in a way that is so actual that it has the property of permanence.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

You will then find yourself accusing the person, justifiably, of having done some terrible thing, all on the basis of what things look like at the physical level only. You did this, and you didn't do that, and that's the fact of it. And you used to be like this, and now you're like that, and I don't like you like this anymore. And how dare you treat me this way, and why are you doing this to me etc. Why is your BODY doing this to me.

This of course gives rise to an experience in which you are a helpless victim. In which you seem to have no say, no influence, no interpretation or way out of anything. Because what happens physically is factual reality. So now there is real physical threat and danger, people really are physically attacking, and there are physical things wrong with "you".

This is all blindness. This is the state of perceiving falsely and being body-identified, mind seeing itself as a body, total unforgiveness, unconsciousness, special-relationship, ego identification, and self destruction. There is no "gap" between mind and body, so everything that happens seems to happen to you, hurting you and upsetting you.

"The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it, and sheltered by its presence. If this were the truth, the mind were vulnerable indeed!"

So "appearances" really are form, ie physical form. They are how stuff looks when you don't question its reality. It's how the physical world appears to you, or what it seems to mean, when you are totally invested in it. All meaning seems to be taken from how the external world tells you it is, as though you are not giving anything any meaning. Whatever happens seems to be the only truth. If someone kills your cat, they sure as heck actually did do that, and the cat is in fact really dead to prove the sin.

In such a state, we have been tempted by form and have "fallen for" the temptation. We've believed that people are bodies, that we are having relationships with bodies, that the physical world is the only reality, that there is no other mind besides the body, that God doesn't exist, and your self is a physical object. In this state you are not aware of reality, but you THINK you are, and because you're so convinced the physical world is WHERE the reality is, you do not question it.

To get out of this requires the questioning of appearances. The questioning of the PHYSICAL. This is why Jesus in the course introduces ideas such as that you give everything all the meaning it has, that you are projecting something, that you are influencing what happens, that your thoughts are involved and are attacking you, that you need to dis-identify from the physical body, that the physical world is an illusion not to be believed, and that all the events are nothing. To not even believe what the body tells you.

Without this rising up above "the battlefield", you will just live a life of hell, of blame and accusation, or suffering and selfishness, of specialness and deprivation, or mis-treatment and attack, unfairness and regret and remorse and resentment.

Only by questioning the physical world can your mind begin to see that it is NOT one with the body. And that because mind and body are different, they DISAGREE. And therefore what the body shows you is not to be believed. And you are now starting to step outside the "story" of your little body life and seek for a higher life.

If you were to describe someone's life based purely on what appears to be happening at the physical level, that is false perception. Only when you begin to look for a larger purpose or meaning, an influence of mind over matter, a choice and a freedom of will, a way by which someone might be responsible for making the world be the way it is, and an identity beyond the physical, only then are you properly recognizing that there IS a separation between mind and body. And that mind does not HAVE TO believe in the separation.

The gap of separation was COVERED OVER by your attempt to be one with the body. It seemed to disappear entirely underneath your mind's identification with the physical. Trying to be one with the body and make the physical real HIDES the fact that the world is separate from God and is not heaven. Only by beginning to recognize that you are NOT a body, can you recognize that there IS a separation between mind and body, and the two are not the same. Nor is the world a part of God.

Then you will seek for a higher oneness, a oneness with something NOT physical, a oneness with God and with a true reality. And the whole transition towards that is the awakening process. Waking up from the dream of hell and death and suffering and murder. Only then are you being forgiving, and seeing a forgiven world, because the world must be seen in another light in order to overlook its illusions of form.And only through the forgiveness state can you be free from deception permanently.

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

Everyone has free will. If someone uses their free will to choose to be mistaken, that's up to them. If they use their free will to try to be a sinful evil-like person, that's up to them. If they use their free will to be angry and violent and abusive, that's up to them. If they use their free will to wage war and murder, that's up to them.

It's actually not a 'right' of ours to judge that the choices people have made are sinful. The choices they have made might be very mistaken, very ineffective, very backward or confused, but it's still their free will to make that choice. We don't actually have a right to hold their mistakes against them or to decide that they are sinful because of what they've chosen.

This means that we have to allow people the freedom to be very wrong, the freedom to attack, the freedom to hurt and damage, etc. That is their free will right. This is not to say that they are sane in those choices, or that it's 'morally right' or justified or loving behaviour etc. But it is still their freedom. If they want to suffer, if they want to produce suffering, that's their freedom.

We therefore have to find a way not to judge such choices as sins. We have to be more like, okay, if that's what you want, then you're totally allowed. Whether or not there are actions or counter-measures or defences or protections or whatever after that point, is another matter. Whether there are consequences of legal actions or imprisonment or whatever, that's another matter. But the person does have the free-will right to do what they want.

What this means is that regardless of how someone is different, regardless of the form it takes, what choices they make, what they seem to want, we have to have an attitude that these differences don't define them as guilty sinners. We can't be judging them for it.

If we start going into modes of like... you did this thing, it's a bad thing, therefore you are sinful, therefore I'm justified in blaming you and shaming you and punishing you .... now we're on shaky ground.

What it means is that we actually want people to have poor choices so that we have an opportunity to see them sin. If they sin, then we can find them guilty. Then we can project our own guilt onto them while making out that they're the guilty one, and it'll all seem nice and tidy and covert. We ourselves as "with sin", and we are trying to cast stones at people we want to be sinful.

As Jesus says in the bible "He who is without sin should cast the first stone." In other words if we're busy judging people and hurling stones at them to punish them for 'sin', we should be a bit more honest and look at the ways we ourselves are being sinful before finding other people to be sinful. We don't really have a leg to stand on. And only those who are forgiving and sinless would be in a position to judge, and would refrain from doing so.

In effect, if we are judging people for making poor choices, seeming to suggest that we think that shouldn't be acting that way, we actually DO want them to act that way, because we get a great opportunity to scapegoat. And that means we can shove some of our guilt onto them and justify it on the basis that they are the one who deserves it, and our anger is justified. Thank God they chose to sin so that we could have a chance to be innocent.

To be more honest we have to stop judging people as being sinners for what they've chosen. But this also does mean that even in the face of people seeming to do what we might classify as horrible things, abusive things, evil things, we have to STILL find them not guilty. We have to still not judge them as evil or wrong or bad people. They are just mistaken.

Criminals, murderers, rapists, child abusers, terrorists, war-mongers, thieves, bullies, you name it... yes they are making quite poor choices but they are not sinful for it. Nor are we supposed to be pointing a finger of blame and saying they are the guilty ones. Or holding it against them, or shaming them, or wanting to counter-attack them, or punish them for it.

If we're doing that, trying to use the things in the world that seem less than holy as justification for revenge and hate and accusation, then we're in our ego. Because the ego loves to judge harshly and find guilty and make wrong. That means we are being "judgey". As "judges" we act like "judge and jury", some kind of God or authority that has the 'right' to determine who is innocent and who is guilty, and to sentence the sinners to death.

We're judgemental and unforgiving. Instead of being forgiving toward them for their mistakes, we step out of forgiveness and go into judgement. We reason that we're not being forgiving BECAUSE the person is judged to be wrong. The judgement tries to justify NOT forgiving, by pointing out how the person is obviously sinful and MUST be judged. So then we're justifying unforgiving attitudes on the basis that people are doing wrong all over the place, which is itself the perceived result of not forgiving them in the first place.

Bottom line is, we are not supposed to be judging anyone or anything. Judging is just another form of attack and projection. At times it can seem to not be angry, maybe just a subtle annoyance, but it's still a way to project guilt. All the things we judge against, we have to find a way to stop doing that. All the ways we say people are wrong, and hold their acts and choices against them, we're being unforgiving.

So ultimately it means that in order to be forgiving, we have to forgive everyone and everything. There mustn't be anything that we single out for punishment, no-one that we call names, no one that we hate or are offended by, no-one that we see as deliberately evil, and no-one that justifies our anger or revenge.

People in their differences need to be allowed to be different. It doesn't mean differences are true or real, but if people are choosing to be different that's up to them. If in any way we categorise their choices as wrong, we're being judgemental. No matter how weird their choices, how strange, how unnatural, how fake, how immature, how selfish, whatever.... we have to still let them have the freedom to make those choices and not accuse them of being stupid, sinful, evil, bad, wrong, guilty, or any other negativity because of it.

We don't have to agree with the differences, we don't have to choose the same things, we don't have to condone it or support it, we don't have to go along with it or let ourselves or others be in the line of fire. We don't have to go into inaction or being carpeting or a martyr or letting people walk all over us etc, but at the same time we must not be having such unforgiving attitudes towards them.

It requires infinite patience. And it requires a willingness not to be at war. In judgement we are unforgiving and cold and heartless and unloving. Only in forgiveness - an earthly form of love - can we be kind and supportive and truly helpful.

"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." UrW220W14

"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."

You can share the power of God, if you know how to pray. "Prayer (asking) is the medium of miracles". - ACIM

How do you ask? How do you pray? How do you accurately communicate with God as to what you want? How do you cause to happen what you want to happen, instead of what your unconscious chooses against you?

One part of miracles is believing you have received what it is you want, or in other words, acceptance of its "reality". But the receiving is only part of it. There is also the asking. "Ask and you shall receive". So how do you ask?

Asking isn't done by there being a sense of separation between you and what you want to happen. It isn't done in a typical asking fashion, where you say, "I do not have this yet, but I want it". That simply affirms and states that you do not have it, and that's going to remain the case. You think this is asking, but this is how a victim asks.

In victim consciousness, where you see yourself as powerless, where there are causes outside of you working against you, and where you are afraid, you tend to withdraw and stay frozen, acting as if you are choosing or wanting, but basically remaining paralyzed. There is no power in it.

This lack of power, or empowerment, literally means that the Holy Spirit - who is the expression of God's Power, has been blocked. Or basically, you are choosing not to USE His Power. His Power is shared with Christ, who you are, but if you are in a victim consciousness you have disowned yourself, and therefore disowned this power.

To ask correctly must entail the presence of POWER, because it is that power which actually gives you power OVER illusions, and actually is like a "force" which can make actual changes. If you are not empowered, then you are cut off from the power you share with God, and therefore do not have the power to do anything. So when you ask, in a disempowered state, you really strongly believe that there is no power that can actually act, and therefore the power does not do anything.

So you could be in a victim mindset and be very very strongly "asking" for help or change, pleading with God, begging for someone to be healed, and nothing is happening. Because even though you're making a lot of noise, most of which is a reaction to perceiving that there's a "really big real problem", it's all ego expressions, not expressions of empowerment.

You can also be in wishful thinking. You could be saying "I wish I wasn't sick". There is no power in that whatsoever. So it's a wish, but it doesn't do anything. So it's not really a request. You're not really asking for the sickness to be healed even if you're wishing very hard. You can really really strongly feel that you really really "want" a person to be not sick, because you think the sickness is real and want to help, but this "wanting" is not asking. It is just making the problem real and reacting to that delusional perception, taking the form of "looking like" you're asking, but really doing absolutely nothing.

God has the power to do anything. And the Holy Spirit can express that power with no limits. This power comes because God EXTENDS. And you are meant to be sharing in that power, causing you to be ABLE to actually CAUSE ANYTHING to happen. But you're not going to be able to wield that power if you are not in alignment with "being empowered". So victimhood has to go. You have to become responsible for being what you really are. You have to claim the truth and own up to your causality, which you share with God.

When you are in the victim mindset, you have disempowered yourself, and you are used to having no power. You think that if you do spiritual practices and "wake up" then you will still be a disempowered being, perhaps more responsible and aware but you don't realize it means you will have ACCESS TO REAL POWER. The power that creates worlds. There is a line in ACIM urtext which says "your mind has the power to create planets". No joke.

So if you want to get access to the power, first and foremost, you need to get out of the victim mind, which is your long-term goal of becoming closer to God's truth. As you approach that truth and align yourself with it, you are opting to become an extender of God's power (love). Meanwhile, you need to learn how to ask.

Asking is more of an act of stating that something is already manifest. It is a command. It isn't really a question. It's like writing reality. You don't ask by begging or traditional ego asking. You state what you believe in. There is, however, a caveat to this.

Such power can only be used for the highest good of all. You cannot be a "power ego" that gets access to God's power but uses it for all kinds of ego whims and purposes. The power only works through ego relinquishment, which automatically means it cannot be even accessed for malevolent purposes. It can only be accessed and used for loving purposes. This is why you need to be clear about what God's will is, because you can only use His Power if it is God's will that you do so.

if you want, lovingly, for a person's sickness to be healed, you do not say, "I'd like that healed please". You also do not ask God "are you going to heal this" or "can you heal this please?". You instead state a "new reality". You command the old reality to go, by cancelling the illusions psychologically, then you state what you want to change. You tell it to change, using that power. Your word becomes powerful.

"All your sins are forgiven, get up and walk" - Jesus' example.

Jesus isn't wishy washy in his asking. He is commanding. Authoritative. That's the key to asking. He doesn't ask God to maybe do something. He joined WITH God, BECOMES the power, SHARES the power, and EXPRESSES the power. THAT is correct prayer. That is the highest level of prayer. When there is a separation in the prayer where you think there is some obstacle to overcome, some time delay, some real problem, or some doubt as to whether it's going to transfer, that's basically ego and it will rob you of your power.

True prayer, the highest song, ACTS, as if it is real already. Jesus says his "workers are ACTIVE workers". It's not a form of asking that the ego is used to. It's counter to the ego's intuition. It's almost like, looking into the future and visualizing what it's going to be like, believing it is true, and pulling the future state into the present by receiving the truth that it WILL happen and already has. This is totally the opposite of the ego's form of asking, which focuses on the PAST and the reality of existing problems, causing there to be no power in the present and no ability to affect the future.

Thus, since asking is prayer, prayer must mean commanding results, ie expressing LOVE from love's perspective, as a representative of love, and it means that whatever song you are singing, whatever truth you are radiating, whatever you are ASSERTING, that is what you are giving, and that is what you are asking for. So asking in a way is backwards, you do not ask, you command. You receive.

You believe God's truth and make it a reality, regardless of what form looks like currently. How can a new form be expressed (e.g. a healed body) if you are dwelling on what the existing form looks like, or if you keep looking to the existing form to see if it has changed? Instead you focus squarely on the reality in the mind - what you are CAUSING TO HAPPEN. You do have a right to this power and you can access this power. It is your inheritance. But you need to unlearn the ego's ways of causing stuff to not happen, in order to reawaken the proper FUNCTIONING of the Son of God.

If you're seeing bodies, your vision is blinded by sight of form.

Christ's vision LOOKS PAST bodies to the truth and does not see physical forms.

"The BODY'S EYES are therefore ***NOT THE MEANS BY WHICH THE REAL WORLD CAN BE SEEN***, for the ILLUSIONS THEY LOOK UPON must lead to more ILLUSIONS of reality. And so they do. For EVERYTHING THEY SEE not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"Christ's vision has one law. 2 It DOES NOT LOOK UPON THE BODY, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. 3 It BEHOLDS A LIGHT BEYOND THE BODY; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. 4 It sees no separation. 5 And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"THE OPPOSITE OF SEEING THROUGH THE BODY'S EYES IS THE VISION OF CHRIST, which reflects strength rather than weakness, unity rather than separation, and love rather than fear. The OPPOSITE OF HEARING THROUGH THE BODY'S EARS is communication through the Voice for God, the Holy Spirit, which abides in each of us. His Voice seems distant and difficult to hear because the ego, which speaks for the little, separated self, seems to be much louder. This is actually reversed. The Holy Spirit speaks with unmistakable clarity and overwhelming appeal. No one who does not choose to identify with the body could possibly be deaf to His messages of release and hope, nor could he fail to accept joyously the vision of Christ in glad exchange for his MISERABLE PICTURE OF HIMSELF."

"Christ's vision is the HOLY SPIRIT'S GIFT, GOD'S ALTERNATIVE to the ILLUSION of separation and to the belief in the reality of sin, guilt and death (seeing the physical world which is made of sin and death). It is the one correction for all errors of perception; the reconciliation of the seeming opposites on which THIS WORLD IS BASED. Its kindly light shows all things from another point of view, reflecting the thought system that arises from knowledge and making return to God not only possible but inevitable."

"Learning MUST LEAD BEYOND THE BODY to the re-establishment of the power of the mind in it."

"The body cannot be looked upon EXCEPT THROUGH JUDGEMENT. 2 To SEE THE BODY is the sign that you LACK VISION, and have DENIED the means the Holy Spirit offers you to serve His purpose."

"Today the lights of Heaven bend to you, to shine upon your eyelids as you rest BEYOND THE WORLD OF DARKNESS. Here is light YOUR EYES CANNOT BEHOLD. And yet your MIND CAN SEE it plainly, and can understand."

"A WORLD FORGIVEN CANNOT LAST. IT WAS THE HOME OF BODIES. ***BUT FORGIVENESS LOOKS PAST BODIES*** This is its holiness; this is how it heals. ***THE WORLD OF BODIES IS A WORLD OF SIN***, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains TO KEEP A SEPARATED WORLD IN PLACE? For PLACE HAS GONE as well, ALONG WITH TIME. ONLY THE BODY MAKES THE WORLD SEEM REAL, for BEING SEPARATE IT COULD NOT REMAIN WHERE SEPARATION IS IMPOSSIBLE. Forgiveness proves it is impossible BECAUSE IT SEES IT NOT. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

"BEYOND THE BODY, beyond the sun and stars, PAST EVERYTHING YOU SEE and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light"

"The Holy Spirit's messengers are sent FAR BEYOND THE BODY, calling the mind to join in holy communion and be at peace"

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out BEYOND THE BODY, to let you and your brother be joined."

"Yet what is that to those who have been given one true relationship BEYOND THE BODY? 10 Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ?"

"THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. 4 THEY CANNOT SEE BEYOND what they were made to see. 5 And they were MADE TO LOOK ON ERROR AND NOT SEE PAST IT."

"You do not doubt that the body's eyes can see. 4 You do not doubt the images they show you are reality. 5 Your faith lies in the DARKNESS, not the light."

"Here is a WORLD established THAT IS SICK, and this THE WORLD THE BODY'S EYES PERCEIVE."

"It is impossible to see your brother as sinless and yet to look upon him AS A BODY. 2 Is this not perfectly consistent with the goal of HOLINESS? 3 For holiness is merely the result of letting THE EFFECTS OF SIN BE LIFTED (body veil disappears), so what was always true is recognized. 4 ****TO SEE A SINLESS BODY IS IMPOSSIBLE****, for HOLINESS IS POSITIVE AND THE BODY IS MERELY NEUTRAL. 5 It is not sinful, but NEITHER IS IT SINLESS. 6 AS NOTHING, WHICH IT IS, THE BODY CANNOT MEANINGFULLY BE INVESTED WITH ATTRIBUTES OF CHRIST OR OF THE EGO. 7 Either must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot be. 8 And both must be undone for purposes of truth."

"WHO SEES A BROTHER'S BODY HAS LAID A JUDGEMENT ON HIM, AND SEES HIM NOT. 2 He does not really see him as sinful; HE DOES NOT SEE HIM AT ALL. 3 In the darkness of sin he is INVISIBLE. 4 He can but be imagined in the darkness, and it is here that the illusions you hold about him are not held up to his reality. 5 Here are illusions and reality kept separated. 6 Here are illusions never brought to truth, and always hidden from it. 7 And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality IMAGINED AS A BODY, in unholy relationships with other bodies, SERVING THE CAUSE OF SIN an instant before he dies."

"Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother without the body?" 2 Ask only, "Do I really wish to see him sinless?" 3 And as you ask, forget not that his sinlessness is your escape from fear. 4 Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. 5 THE MEANS IS VISION. 6 For what the SEEING (with christ vision) look upon (overlooking bodies to something beyond) is sinless. 7 No one who loves can judge, and what he sees is free of condemnation. 8 And WHAT HE SEES HE DID NOT MAKE (heaven), for it was GIVEN HIM TO SEE (by God), as was the vision that made his seeing possible."

"You believe that what your PHYSICAL EYES CANNOT SEE does not exist."

"Let love draw near them and OVERLOOK THE BODY, as it will surely do"

"For FAITHLESSNESS is the perception of a brother AS A BODY"

"IT DOES NOT LOOK UPON A BODY, and mistake it for the Son whom God created."

"Perception is a FUNCTION OF THE BODY, and therefore represents A LIMIT ON AWARENESS. Perception sees *THROUGH* THE BODY'S EYES and hears through the body's ears. It evokes the limited responses which the BODY makes."

"If you are SIN, YOU ARE A BODY, for the mind acts not."

"Let not the FORM of his mistakes keep you from him whose holiness is yours. Let not the vision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the BODY'S EYES can see. Let your awareness of your brother NOT BE BLOCKED BY YOUR PERCEPTION OF HIS SINS, ***AND OF HIS BODY***."

"(sin) The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet REASON SEES THROUGH IT easily, BECAUSE it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason's eyes. "

"EVERYTHING that the BODY'S EYES can see is a MISTAKE, an ERROR in perception"

"THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. They cannot see beyond what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on ERROR, and NOT SEE PAST IT."

"See how the body's eyes REST ON EXTERNALS, and CANNOT GO BEYOND. Watch how they STOP AT NOTHINGNESS, UNABLE TO GO BEYOND THE FORM TO MEANING. "

Giving and receiving must occur simultaneously.

This means that in order to receive love and healing, you must give love and healing.

Which in turn means, that the only way for you to be healed, is to extend healing to others.

Which therefore means, that your willingness to heal your brothers heals you.

"I will be healed as I let him teach me to heal (self and others)."

This is a key point because when you focus on "your" healing or "your body" that in fact is falling short of extension. As you fixate on "what is wrong with me", you are failing to forgive and overlook it.

What's needed is the re-establishing of your function of healing, which happens through extending PAST the body to others.

If you seem to be sick, it is because you have not loved yourself AND other enough. As ACIM says, those who are sick do not love themselves. But to love yourself you have to love PAST yourself because love has to be shared.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves."

"Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. 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."

As you become willing to give, you are praying to receive. You can only receive by becoming part of the giving. When prayer is asking to get and not give, it is asking for sacrifice. And when prayer is asking to give and not receive, it is asking for sacrifice.

You have to be included in the prayer that asks to receive, because you must be part of the functioning of giving. The "flow" through you as a conduit for God only works when you are willing to be part of the transmission of that which you want to affirm is in you and through you.

When the mind's extension is arrested ie held back, through the body, and begins to fixate on your body or another body, it is not fully joining minds. It is falling short. Love is being held back. There is resistance and fear. This induces illness.

Once illness is induced and you are deceived, the temptation is to continue believing that since you are sick, you need to address the sickness. But focusing on the sickness does not look past it. It is the sharing, extending, and looking past your body that re-establishes the proper functioning of the mind. Once mind is extending/forgiving past the body, it is shining a light, and that light heals your body indirectly.

So the trick to this is that if you need healing it is because you are not healing. To heal, you need to heal others. By being of service, you receive support. By extending love you receive love. As ACIM says "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." If you block it is cannot extend. You must participate in the giving, to open up your vessel so that love can flow through.

Jesus tells us, "you are healed because you wished him well." As you wish your brother well it heals you. If you attack your brother you will attack yourself. If you try to accuse your brother of sin, you will be accused. If you prepare a list of effects and suffering that you wish your brother to endure, you can be sure that you will be the one who experiences them. You cannot be healed alone, nor can you escape the effects of your thinking.

It's important to realize then that not only is healing not "just you getting healed alone", but also sickness is not about "you being sick alone". Sickness is an attempt to come between brothers and to attack BOTH you and your brother, driving a separation between you, using the body as a separation device and attempting to increase the rift.

Making the body "more real" by focusing in it, increases its symptoms, in an effort to convey that it strongly comes between you. Your sick body acts like a solid brick wall blocking you off from others, attacking them keeping you imprisoned. Similarly healing cannot entail merely the repair of "your self", it HAS to entail the REJOINING and SHARING with your brother, to undo the rift that caused the sickness in the first place.

No-one is sick in isolation. In contagion do the sick seek to kill others. Sick bodies are accusers. If "you" seem to go into sickness it is because you are attempting to accuse your brother of your sins. Which means you believe you are sinful AND that your brother is sinful. And this means you see yourself in a sickened state AND your brother in a sickened state. It may well be that you seem to be the only one suffering but it is because psychologically you have separated yourself off from others.

No-one heals in isolation. Isolation must end for there to be healing. To be healed yourself, you cannot hold grievances against others, you cannot project sin, and you cannot find your brother to be guilty. By the Golden Rule, what applies to you applies to them. For you to experience healing, mentally and or physically, you have to be willing to see your brother healed. "Forgiveness is not real unless it has brought a healing to your brother AND yourself."

The temptation is to think you are the only one sick. The belief in "I am alone" produces sickness because it ends sharing. Therefore the opposite, "We are joined", produces health because it acknowledges that in their natural healthy state, minds are joined as one. And you can only ever join in LOVE.

It's almost as though you should "ignore" (overlook) what seems to be "exclusive sickness" and focus more on extending love to others, which shines past the sickness and erases it. If your sickness is a barrier to sharing, sharing is the remedy. The sickness was an attempt to disable yourself so that you could NOT share. The solution is to share and extend love in defiance of the barriers you've erected so that they are shone away.

Sickness then is an attempt to isolate, to cut yourself off, to be exclusive and special, to be different, to not share, to hide and to be in the dark. Healing must then be a matter of joining, reunion, equality, sharing, coming into the light, opening up to extension, and allowing your brother back in. This means receiving all of the sonship again, developing holy relationships, and moving past the illusions of separation.

When Christ Mind is shining through a body in wholeness and love, the body is shone past, making it illuminated and healed and transparent, eventually to disappear entirely. Bodies are interference, originally made as devices for separation. To use them with the Holy Spirit is to UNDO them. "The body cannot remain without illusions."

"Christ is within a frame of holiness, whose ONLY purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not; that He may call to them to come to Him, and see Him where they THOUGHT their bodies were. Then will their bodies melt away, that they may frame His holiness in them."

"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy. His PURPOSE folds the body in His light, and fills it with the holiness that shines from HIM. And nothing that the body says or does but makes HIM manifest. To those who know Him not it carries Him, in gentleness and love, to heal their minds. Such is the mission that your brother has for YOU. And such it MUST be that YOUR mission is for HIM."

In ACIM, there is a central pillar which was not clear to me before. It is an unexpected strategy for acheiving salvation, which is pointed to and reinforced over and over again. And in effect is the ONLY way.

We may be familiar with the idea that ATONEMENT is the goal. Yes it is. The course also states that atonement, true perception, forgiveness, and salvation are all one, ie synonyms.

Atonement, as salvation, is a major goal. How do you find salvation, ie atonement? How are you saved from death and suffering? What power or ability is it that you have to get there?

Recognizing that salvation and atonement are the same thing, and salvation is "the ONLY way out of hell", the next key is to ask, how do you achieve salvation? Is there a secret to it perhaps?

Jesus refers to the "how", the key, as "the secret of salvation". Simply, "you are doing this to yourself." And to back this up, the supporting statement would be, "You can be affected by nothing but yourself."

This is similar to "Only the truth is true and nothing else is true". So let's say...

I am the one who causes ALL my suffering.

Nothing else causes ANY of my suffering.

If I so choose, I will not suffer.

This may seem unexpected, because we spend a huge amount of time lost in the ego, tangled up in other people, dramas, upsets and suffering. Our focus is pulled away from this idea constantly by ego temptations. And this builds confusing walls around this core idea.

Whenever it we've bought into the idea that someone else is causing us, we are affected by something, the world is upsetting us, things are happening against our will, we don't want something but don't see how we can stop it, etc... we're getting lost in FALSE causes, and losing sight of the forgiving truth that WE ARE CAUSING THIS. The cause is in OUR mind.

It is the movement AWAY from those confusions and untruths, TOWARD the STATE of salvation/atonement/forgiveness, that is "applying forgiveness". Undoing our false beliefs about WHO is causing us, is part of forgiving.

Becoming clear about how WE are causing OUR OWN suffering, is applying forgiveness. Our goal, to achieve the STATE of forgiveness, which is also true or corrected perception, we must "correct" the "errors" we are making in our discernment of what is true.

What is true is that WE ARE THE CAUSE of ALL of our own suffering. Becoming clear about this, seeing this accurately, recognizing it fully, is true perception. Perception "corrects" as you sift through and remove belief in "other causes" beyond yourself, which are FALSE causes. Illusions.

What I find surprising is that Jesus clearly is teaching us to simply CHOOSE NOT TO SUFFER. And that if we are suffering, we HAVE chosen to do so.. And there are NO EXCEPTIONS. Our mind causes all suffering, all sickness, and death in the body. There is NO OTHER CAUSE.

At its simplest, this means, you have free will and choose what you experience. At all times. In all cases. And there is NO POWER capable of interfering with this. There are NO OTHER CAUSES of you other than God. Anything that happens, YOU CHOOSE. Anything you feel, YOU CHOOSE. Any suffering, YOU CHOOSE. You do it to yourself.

Why is that? It's simply because you have been given TOTAL FREEDOM by God. Free will provides you the ability to CHOOSE what you want and thus what you value. You ARE free to deny God if you so choose, and "God does not coerce" you to do otherwise. It IS up to you to CHOOSE heaven and happiness.

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

Because you CAN CHOOSE, and there IS NO other cause of what you experience, you CAN CHOOSE NOT TO DIE. You can choose never to be sick. You can choose to always be happy. It does not take effort, it merely takes recognition, clarity, sanity, and decision.

You do not MAKE happiness or love or peace, those are shared with God who has created reality. But you DO choose whether to accept or reject them. You do not choose WHAT the choices are, but you do choose WHICH you elect to experience - real heaven or an illusory hell.

You can choose to go home. Nothing can stop you when you choose God. Death has no power over you. You are at the effect of NOTHING in this world.

The surprising, unexpected thing about this to me, is that I did not used to think this was the main focus. I did not think forgiveness would lead to this. I did not recognize that "forgiving" was about choosing, or that I HAD a choice, or WAS choosing. I did not think the secret of salvation was even necessarily the be-all and end-all of "how to get there."

But Jesus is clear. Atonement as salvation, is achieved ONLY through the total acceptance of your free will and the exercising of your CHOICE never to die, and thus to accept God and eternal life. You are free to come and go. You are free to make yourself suffer. And you are free to wake up at any time. Nothing can stop you.

The challenge then, in applying this idea, is examining WHAT you are doing, and then identifying not IF you are doing this to yourself, but HOW and WHY. A first step is to recognize you ARE doing to this to yourself, in all cases. The second step is identifying HOW you are doing this to yourself. The third step is identifying WHY you are doing this to yourself. And then finally the fourth step is CHOOSING OTHERWISE. ie, stop hurting yourself.

This reveals that really, this world is a world is suicide and death. Every person is attacking ONLY themselves. There are NO victims. Every person here is suicidal and self-attacking and hurting themselves. And we are all trying to learn how to LOVE OURSELVES. How NOT to hurt ourselves.

That entails RECLAIMING our power and freedom as CHRIST, a co-creator with God, capable of choosing whether to live or die, to come and go as we wish, and to become willing to choose ONLY LIFE. To choose God and go home. Not through coercion or force, not through wishful thinking, but simply by being in touch with the POWER of our decision to simply be ABLE to do so.

Jesus is telling us that NOTHING happens to us against our free will, as a result of someone else doing something to us, by accident, by acts of nature, by external laws, or by ANY CAUSE other than YOU. Your mind has TOTAL DOMINION OVER THE WORLD. You are the cause.

"This is a course in cause, not effect."

Being cause, is being empowered. Being cause is being strong. Being cause is being fearless. Being cause is being miraculous and creative. Being cause is being loving and whole. Being cause is freedom. Being cause, it is impossible that ANYTHING happen to you un-chosen by yourself.

This means TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY. You have the power to choose not to die. You have the power to choose never to suffer or be sick. Anything you ARE experiencing, you HAVE chosen, and you CAN change your mind. And this choice DOES NOT depend on anyone else. Nor is this choice made BY anyone else, nor is it limited by anyone else or any circumstance.

YOU have the power of God in you. You have His freedom.

"Nothing can affect you but yourself."

Atuning to this state of total responsibility and freedom and power of choice IS FORGIVENESS. It IS the atonement, and is your resurrection.

If you see yourself as being victimised in any way, mistreated, not respected, attacked, hurt, threatened, judged, abused, terrorised, not recognised, hated, left out, invalidated, accused, misrepresented, subject to racism or sexism or homophobia, in any other way somehow slighted or offended by anyone OTHER than yourself, they your ego has formed a FACE OF INNOCENCE, and you ARE in heavy denial!

This face of innocence is a facade the ego wears to DENY AND COVER UP the internal guilt, to hide itself from itself in self-hate. The internal guilt is denied, so that it is not even recognised as existing at all within you, and is then projected. It is then seen IN AND AS everyone else other than oneself. It then appears that everyone but yourself is doing something TO YOU against your will that is un-asked for and undeserved.

This projection of guilt and ego frames you as an innocent victim of it in OTHER people, which in turn justifies an angry counter-response - since you see yourself as doing absolutely nothing wrong at all, which points a further finger - a second layer of projection - designed to hide the first, to further reinforce the ways that other people have obviously sinned, been guilty, committed evil acts, failed to live up to standards, or any other way that they are defective.

The "mask" of innocence is worn as a face psychologically, really a disguise, as part of the ego. And it is especially part of the spiritualised ego. Having denied that oneself believes oneself to be guilty - which is still an ongoing internal belief - on sees oneself as "not guilty", and thus innocent. But this is a fake innocence covering up a persistent guilt. The guilt is then projected onto others and associated with them, as though attached to them and part of them.

It is particularly viciously reinforced by an increased level of anger and resentment, as a REACTION to what is now perceived as something other people are doing to you and not you doing to them. The more you feel justified in anger the more you project even more separation and increase the sense of dis-association between you and the guilt. This is designed to make sure it seems that you have nothing to do with the guilt, and it is entirely associated with someone other than yourself. The more this is believed the more unconscious you become as a helpless victim.

What this entails really is self attack, which began long before the projection of guilt. Self and self innocence were denied, producing an accusation against oneself as an attack upon oneself. This is a denial of self as God created you. This is an opinion of oneself - an ego view of oneself - that is far short of the divine holy self that God created you as.

This vicious self-attack produces guilt, inferiority, judgement, self-hate, and various other forms of self destructive behaviour. This is DENIED, which makes it seem largely unconscious or at least disowned and "not part of me". And the result of this is projection. It is given away in order to try to make it not be a part of oneself, or within one's mind. It is seen as "outside" the mind, external to the self (body perimeter), as though literally someone other than oneself, seen as an inherent built-in permanent PART OF someone else. And now it is THEY who are guilty and full of sin.

The result of this is then the formation of a face - a facade - a persona - a cover-up face of innocence, which sees itself AS innocent, but with fake innocence. This fake innocence is shallow and is merely a smokescreen to hide the self-hate that is behind it. Thus self-denying person then believes they are doing no wrong, asking for no harm, doing nothing to hurt others, and are completely benevolent, yet conveniently also are experiencing being "unfairly treated" as a victim. And this of course, if it were true, means anger is completely justified and everyone else should die for THEIR sins against the innocence.

The fact is however that this still remains a SELF ATTACK, because the mind is still hating itself, still believes it is guilty, does not want to admit to this, is IN DENIAL, and refuses to even look at what is being denied. The unwillingness to look at the denied guilt is because of the belief that IT IS THERE, and that it is dark and real and terrible. And the ego DOES believe that you are full of sin. So instead of looking within, it looks without, to find the guilt there instead.

Once the guilt is denied and projected there forms an extremely long lists of all the sins, errors, guilts, mistakes, faults, weaknesses, defects, horrors, and various other forms of unholiness that are regarded as the truth about OTHER people, and not oneself. And THEIR guilt and sinfulness is kept apart from YOURS, so that you are in no way associated with it, and can maintain an illusion of being the innocent one.

Being subject to an incredibly long list of things other people are doing wrong, and thus attacked and victimised BY, is DESIRED AND CHOSEN, so that the face of innocence can be maintained. Even if it seem to hurt oneself to do so, and even if one has to be willing to BE victimised - or so it may appear on the surface - this is ACCEPTED as the natural cost of being able to find someone else to be the fall guy for the guilt.

We even in the extremes are willing to be attacked, hurt, made to be sick, destroyed and killed off, if it will mean that someone ELSE can be accused of sin. And then we can say, "brother by your hand I die." This means that we literally are willing to suffer, be sick, and die, if it means the sick body can accuse someone ELSE of causing it to be the way it is, so that the mind can be exonerated of the sin IT believes it has committed against self, others and God.

But not for an instant does the guilt leave your own mind, not for an instant does your mind truly become healed of it, not for an instant do you escape what is being denied, not for an instant do your accusations of other people's wrongfulness NOT target you, not for an instant do you escape the murderous consequences, and not for an instant do you get away with NOT being hurt by the projections. Yet alone the fact that you then hurt yourself through other people due to the way that you see them as causing you to be hurt, which you want.

Ultimately this means that this whole mechanism is STILL a way of attacking and destroying yourself, of hurting yourself, and that you are doing this to yourself. This is the secret of salvation. Recognizing that it is YOU who is accusing yourself of guilt, it is YOU who is projecting the guilt, it is YOU who is in denial, it is YOU who does not want to admit to wearing a face of innocence, it is YOU who wants to be a victim, and it is YOU who keeps using people to attack yourself. And not once do you really WANT it to stop, because that would mean having to be more honest, stop scapegoating, look within at the guilt, and undo it. Those who are dissatisfied with OTHERS, are incredibly dissatisfied with THEMSELVES.

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins."

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further."

And if you think you are not condemning yourself and it is only others that are condemning you, you ESPECIALLY are doing this. Your denial can be very strong and it can make it seem like you are not doing anything wrong AT ALL, that you have never chosen or provoked the slightest attack, and it is entirely everyone ELSE on your list of sins that has failed to measure up to God's standards.

Admitting to all this takes a greater willingness to be honest, to stop attacking yourself, to stop hating yourself, to stop projecting blame onto others, to stop believing that other people are the guilty ones, to stop judging others as the ones with egos, and to be far deeper in the willingness to look at WHAT YOU ARE DENYING. Because only by admitting that you are denying how much YOU hate yourself, are you going to ever stop finding a thousand ways to encourage others to hate you FOR you.

Projection of guilt simply keeps the separation going, and the ego absolutely loves that, as it hides behind its wall of "I'm completely innocent, I'm not doing anything to myself." You are trying to destroy yourself. Look at that! And stop doing it.

"The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears, at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good.

This aspect NEVER makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse. The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly wears can tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a well-known fact the world deals harshly with defenseless innocence? No-one who makes a picture of himself omits this face, for he has need of it. The other side he does not want to see. But it is here the learning of the world has set its sights. For it is here the world's reality is set, to see to it the idol lasts.

Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand condemned, because of what I am." On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them will not escape.

Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what YOU are has now become his sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved, and kept in darkness, where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. You can be neither BLAMED for what you are, nor can you CHANGE the things it makes you do. And you are each the symbol of your sins to one another, silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are.

That you are what your brother made of you seems most unlikely. Even if he did, who gave the face of innocence to you? Is this YOUR contribution? Who is, then, the "you" who made it? And who is deceived by all your goodness, and attacks it so? Let us forget the concept's foolishness, and merely think of this; there are two parts to what you think yourself to be. If one was generated by your brother, who was there to make the other? And from whom must something be kept hidden? If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what YOU are made of. Who is there to see? And what but is attacked could NEED defense?"

In ACIM, we're told that we made a world, which is really spacetime, and a part of this spacetime is planet Earth. This didn't exist before the separation from God, and DEPENDS on the continuation of separation in order to take on "form".

The world itself was the idea of the opposite to everything-ness, which is the idea of nothingness. Thus the world was made as an empty shell symbolizing nothingness or a "lack of God", onto which we project meaning.

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth." (the world Earth comes between you and the truth as "emptiness" and "nothingness", and we then project ONTO the Earth)

The Earth itself is meaningless, and is nothing. Being devoid of any inherent properties of its own, like a dark shadow, it acts like a mirror, reflecting meaning given to it. You have to give it meaning because it has none. And even when you give it meaning, it still has no INHERENT meaning of its own.

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning."

Because Earth is meaningless, you can project good or bad thought onto it. Thus it can REFLECT an IMAGE projected onto it. It can reflect ideas of heaven or hell, and you can see these IN it, as though a reflection once removed from the thing projected. This doesn't mean the Earth IS heaven or hell, it is neutral, but it can be INTERPRETED as REFLECTING either.

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego."

"If a mind creates without love, it can create an empty shell (spacetime/Earth). This CAN be possessed by evil."

Having projected an "empty screen" AS EARTH, our egos rushed in and attempted to project ego meaning onto the Earth. It tried to focus on form and separations and differences to emphasize the separation, projecting this onto the Earth so that Earth "reflects hell."

"It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality."

Earth, and spacetime, are a "void" of nothingness, onto which we project God or the ego. Our task then becomes to recognize that we are projecting ego/hell onto a neutral/nothing/meaningless world, and that we can instead project God/heaven onto it. This seems to project meaning and reality onto it, as well as love and peace and holiness. It then becomes possible to see IN the world, a REFLECTION of heaven.

As in "God is in everything I see". This doesn't mean the thing reflect IS LITERALLY the world or AS it, but is reflected IN it. Just as an image of your body is seen IN a mirror. This reflection is an image, and is also referred to as forgiveness. It is SYMBOLIC. It represents something once removed from itself. Just as a reflected IMAGE in a mirror is once removed from the actual object. The reflection of heaven on earth is NOT heaven ITSELF, but it appears to be LIKE heaven. And it is what you PUT THERE that is "the only reality it has."

"The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself" (it has no inherent love/value/reality) A mind which is healed translates the neutral nothingness of Earth into something that resembles heaven, interpreted with ideas of wholeness and healing, with love and peace, with light and happiness etc. This "converts" in a sense, through an inner translation, the form of the world into something that seems to mean heavenly things. Thus Earth appears to the mind to become heaven-LIKE. A REFLECTION of heaven, a symbolic DREAM of heaven. A "real world."

However, we need to be clear that this reflection of heaven on Earth IS NOT the same thing as heaven ITSELF. Heaven Itself, which is reflected ONTO the Earth through projection, is still a distinct dimensional reality created by God. Earth, as a veil of illusions, as an illusory world, as an empty screen, as a void, as a nothingness, must disappear. Part of seeing heaven in it ALSO entails seeing that the world has no attributes of its own, otherwise the reflection cannot be seen. And having no attributes, Earth is recognized as NOT REALLY THERE.

As the veil thins, the mirror dissipates, the reflection in perception (forgiven world) gives way, and parts. And now it disappears and is forgotten. Everything that entailed "the Earth" fades into the nothingness from which it came. The reflection of heaven, the real world, is gone.

"The real world still is but a dream." "Even the real world will vanish from your sight."

With the disappearing of Earth and space and time and the sun and stars, shone away BY light, because they are darkness, REPLACED by heaven, all that then remains is heaven ITSELF. An actual real created "world", not Earth in any way, not space or time, or any other such form, but the living world of light, the creations of light, the true Kingdom of God, which the nothing Earth was all this time made to CONCEAL and hide.

Heaven is first reflected in the world, seen "in the world" here, as Earth is "translated" into heaven. But then Earth ends. A translation IS once removed from the original form of something, and although our minds can see the translation the thing BEING translated is still a void of nothingness and illusions. Earth cannot remain as part of the Kingdom, it is not ACTUAL holiness, the body cannot BE holy, and all other divine attributes cannot be fused into the planet.

"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."

As the world, Earth, spacetime, disappears, heaven itself, a condition of ACTUAL holiness and BEING holy, is all that remains. This is A Course in Miracles.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself" (notice how you GIVE it reality/love, it does not HAVE it itself)

"The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning. And what you behold upon it are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real." (wishes can be unholy or holy, but they're still GIVEN and not inherent)

"This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has NONE."

"But what is truth to him must be brought to the last comparison that he will ever make; the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception; IT HAS NO MEANING AND DOES NOT EXIST." (the Earth mirror does not exist, spacetime has no meaning of its own)

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth." (forgiveness is an earthly symbolic form of heaven's love)

"The body no more dies than it can feel. IT DOES NOTHING. Of itself, it is neither corruptible nor incorruptible. IT IS NOTHING." (this is literal, the physical body is nothing at all, it has no reality).

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself."

"The test of EVERYTHING on earth is simply this: "What is it FOR?" The answer makes it what it IS for you. It has NO meaning of itself, yet you can GIVE reality to it, according to the purpose which YOU serve." (it has NO MEANING of itself, Earth has NO MEANING of itself. You have to GIVE it TEMPORARY meaning)

"Darkness is lack of light. It does not have unique properties of its own." (Earth is like a shadow, a lack of light, the absence of God - world made as an attack on God/light etc)

"All these attributes are given it by you. The world is meaningless in itself." (Earth has no inherent attributes)

"In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego." (Just the fact Earth can reflect VARIABLE things means NEITHER is permanent)

"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, are ready at last for Heaven. There, holiness is not a reflection, but rather the ACTUAL CONDITION of what was but reflected TO them here. God is no image, and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely REFLECT the truth, for THEY ARE truth." (notice how reflecting holiness on earth makes you READY to go to heaven, cus you're not there yet. IN heaven, holiness is a condition not a reflected image)

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home." (again, bringing heaven to earth to REFLECT here, gets you ready to LEAVE)

"As I begin to see, I recognize His reflection on earth."

"Forgiveness, truth's reflection, tells me how to offer miracles, and thus escape the prison house in which I think I live."

"All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last."

"Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven. For the REFLECTION of truth draws everyone TO truth. And as they enter INTO it, they leave ALL reflections behind. In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected" (again a distinction between reality being shared (communion) in heaven, vs reality being REFLECTED on earth (communication))

"What they have felt in them they look upon, and see Its sure reflection everywhere."

"A sleeping mind must waken as it sees its own perfection mirroring the Lord of Life so perfectly it fades into what is reflected there. And now it is no more a mere reflection. It becomes the thing reflected, and the light which makes reflection possible. No vision now is needed. For the wakened mind is one that knows its Source, its Self, its Holiness." (again moving out of the reflected heaven on earth, INTO heaven proper, leaving the world behind)

"We do not see the ego's shadow on the world today. We see the light, and in it we see Heaven's reflection lie across the world." (heaven's REFLECTION, not heaven itself)

"the world he made. In error it began. But it will end in the reflection of his holiness." (the world ENDS when heaven is reflected in it, it doesn't go any further or enter INTO heaven)

"Where this Child shall go is holy ground. It is His holiness that lights up Heaven, and that brings to earth the pure reflection of the light above, wherein are earth and Heaven joined as one." (one means similar, not singular. also heaven is above the earth and they are not the same thing)

"God's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning. Yet are His laws reflected everywhere. ******NOT that the world where this reflection is, is real at all.*******" (The place where heaven is reflected on earth IS NOT REAL AT ALL - Earth is not real at all!! The reflection appears to be a real-like IMAGE, but is not heaven itself. Earth is never heaven but can appear heaven-like through translation.)

This may not be popular.

True relationship is between one person and everyone, simultaneously. The human body was constructed in order to disrupt this relationship, and to focus on isolation, so that rather than being in relationship with everyone, you are in relationship with typically only one other person.

By becoming closer to their body, and attempting to unite with the body, there is actually an attempt to move AWAY from everyone else. Far more is excluded than included. By attempting to join with "only one", 99.99% of the rest of existence is left out. One winner and billions of losers, as is always the result of competition. And so the sex act is a total opposite of true joining.

Bodies cannot join, they cannot even share the same space. One part protrudes, another caves in, there seems to be a surface friction but there is never a true merging. The ritual of the sexual act is really a ritual to death and sin, whereby the body is emphasized over spirit in order to move towards the body, towards sin, towards hell, and towards death.

Intercourse is movement towards death because it emphasizes that the body is real, it highlights sensations over knowledge, it shuts spirit out of awareness, focuses on the body's sensors, eyes, touch and so on, and makes you "lose your mind." It produces and increases body identification, believing you are the body and that you are interacting with a person who is a body. This closes the spiritual eye, shuts out life, and proceeds towards death.

You could say that by a man and woman copulating, they are performing a death ritual, in which they are attempting to manufacture a separate self, born from death, born in pain, and produced as a result of an illusion of joining made to actually prevent joining. The separation then increases, there is a fragmentation, and another "entity" shows up as the result.

This is very much no different to the illusion of cell division, in which separation is used to split cells in order to multiply them. This is called reproduction, but it is the opposite of creation of life. Bodies come together and do not join and some matter is transferred and some illusory biological processes occur and another body appears, increasing bodies. But what has actually occurred is separation has been used to testify to the end of God and a symbol of the separation has emerged. It's called birth, but it's an eruption of death.

All sexual acts involving a person attempt to utilize the person's body to get something, to meet a perceived need, or to mutually take from each other. Since the body is a picture of selfishness, resulting from specialness, sin and isolation, both body identified persons see themselves as lacking and limited, and want to fulfill themselves by getting something out of the activity. Of course, we then imagine that if we "only give and don't receive" this is somehow more loving, but giving without receiving is sacrifice, and you can be sure the ego is right there to emphasize it.

More or less, everyone with a body is interested in self gratification, a kind of masturbation, in which ultimately they seek through the body to experience something external, to sense something, to have something happen to them which they find to be preferable. For some the "happens to me" might be painful, sadistic and twisted, while for others they might seek what appears to be an illusion of "love making". But rest assured, sex is murderous and cannot in any way create love.

"What is not love is murder" is based on the Golden Rule, that what applies to one applies to another equally. When this law is broken by our egos, we move into a state of imbalance where something is more for one and less for another, there is finite limitation, there is "give and take", and attempts to believe something is true of one person not the other. "It's my turn" is selfish. Two people copulating is an attempt on both parts, typically, to gain something which the other is perceived to give them, both taking from each other, usually under the guise of giving.

Bodies cannot create. They do not create life. Life forms are not alive, they are death forms. Illusions of life. Babies bodies are just as much illusory as adult bodies. Bodies reproducing is a testament to the ego's attempt to produce alternative, different, unique, separated off identities. Little walking prison cells for the mind to inhabit. There is no particular glory in the production of an allegedly "god given" (ego given) baby any more than there is glory in those children becoming adults and trying to merge back together. You'd think it should be obvious that the bodies should not have been produced through separation in the first place if later a "re-joining" is the supposed goal.

Bodies cannot join. Just so you know, no two atoms of matter can ever touch each other. They are repelled by nuclear forces. The sensation of someone touching you is not really them touching you, it's the force fields repelling your force fields and causing there to seem to be a sensation of collision. No two bodies have ever touched and lived to talk about it, because this would result in a nuclear explosion. And the earth does not "move" this way.

For the most part, most of us body identified people are rather self absorbed with our bodies. Men and women alike preen and prune as if attempting to allegedly attract a mate, but quite honestly, almost all of it is self adoration. Because it is the body that we are in love with, not people. Bodies are idols to worship and we worship no bodies more than our own.

Most of what we allegedly do to prepare ourselves for a partner (an excluder) is of no interest to them and they probably can't relate to it. We bolster ourselves up in our vanity and egotism so that if we approve of our own condition, we're satisfied. We're all a bunch of egomaniac vain self-obsessed fools, falling over ourselves to manipulate someone into doing something to us that we prefer so that we can get our own rocks off - a form of positive victimhood.

Having become body identified, we have identified with being separate. The bodies are literally separate. There is space between them and the bodies will never touch. There is even a line in the course that says God is the only one who has ever touched his creations. Going into body mode, we then go through this process of trying to hump the brains out of all the other body identified people, in an attempt to overcome the very separation that we bought into in the first place, without doing so.

And there really is no real attempt TO do so, the whole purpose of it is to STAY SEPARATE. The whole dynamic of bodies joining is an attempt to KEEP the separation going, to reproduce the separation, and to produce more separate things. "Babies" come from this, as an increase in the population of ego flesh suits, ready for the next mind to be trapped in a brain and ready to suffer.

You could say, that the more an intimate couple focuses on the body, the less connected they are. The more they focus attention on sex, the more love is shut out. The more they make the body real, the more disconneced they become and have no real relationship. Then it becomes just about the physical sex, which is not love. They come together, almost literally, to separate from each other. Only love joins people together, not the body. And by starting out by going into body identification, they have already moved away from love, away from relationship and away from true joining. You could even say that this is a form of sickness.

In holy relationship there is no interest in the body for its own merits or purposes. It is recognized that the body is not inherently pleasurable, and anything related to it is not the cause of joy. In fact, the body would diminish true pleasure (which comes from doing God's will), by shutting God out of the equation in order to "sin together." Is it any wonder that a vast majority of sexual practice occurs in the dark, under the sheets, behind closed doors, in guilt and shame and fear, perhaps even with eyes closed? What is there to hide? Or rather, what are we hiding from? God?

The sins of the flesh, so to speak, include temptation. The temptation to believe that a son of God is a body. To then relate to their body as if it is the person, which is really an attack on the person and an attempt to imprison them. And to even ignore their body and focus on your own, for what it is getting from them. What you think you're getting from them is the rest of your self, which they stole, and housed in their body, which you hate them for and want to destroy them for, and you plug yourself into them in an attempt to regain what you think you do not have.

Being tempted by physical form is also another example of the rejection of Christ Vision and a willingness to be blinded by perception of form. As we oogle the nude pictures or watch the naughty porn movies or get all excited upon seeing a physical specimen we like, we are quite strongly falling for illusions, entering into body vision, losing sight of the truth, losing our minds, losing sanity, losing sight of the light beyond the body, and preferring bodies to God.

Of course, all of this is enough to induce guilt and make everyone feel like dirty little sinners. Which the ego is perfectly happy to label you with. Let's say that there is nothing at all wrong or sinful about any such activities because they are not real. And you can bet that millions of people are still "doing it" right now and will continue to do so for a long time to come. Course students included. But it is what it is.

Sex is something we invented, for a purpose. The only HOLY use of the body is for extending love and perhaps, if conception happens in such a way as that the persons are in christ vision and barely even noticing the body at all, you could call this the ultimate use of the body for procreational purposes only. But we have to also realize that the entire functional mechanism of what causes a man to inseminate a woman for example, is entirely based on sensations, body senses, chemistry, physical interaction, and usually hormonally driven, testosterone powered desire. And that's all at the level of ego body stuff. And it's selfish.

In essence, in truth, there were never supposed to be bodies in the first place. Yet alone to use them for separation, to make bodies real, to mistake subtle pain for pleasure, or to mistake copulation for love. There isn't anything love related about a sexual act. Unconditional love has nothing to do with it. It's purely a physical, biological, sensory process. Producing feedback, perceptions and justifying certain behaviors. You can do the same exact procedures with or without love being present.

Of course, someone who is loving, truly, unconditionally, may well enjoy the sexual performance with less guilt, more joy, greater fearlessness and confidence, but the point will come eventaully where what the body "offers" is so pale in comparison to what the spirit offers, that all desire for intercourse will end. Spiritual marriage, mind-to-mind joining, oneness with God, are orders of magnitude more meaningful and enjoyable than anything the body has to offer with its parody of love. "A teacher of God is willing to give up all the pleasures of the world." Knowing that you are gaining far more than you are giving up.

This is not to say, you have to give up sex right now. I'm not going to and nor is most of the planet. But we ARE in a process of learning what it really IS, and what it is not, as part of our journey home towards true union with God. And we can use this information to help move our special, sexual relationships, with others or self, towards a more innocent, holy experience, as we transition onwards its eventual total relinquishment.

At some point we will come to recognize it is not possible to do ANYTHING REAL with the body, and so will stop using the body entirely. Until then, boink your brains out if you so choose, or not. It's up to you - free will. But keep in mind, your MIND is more important than your body, and if body identification is increasing as a result of how you look at what you're doing, you're heading in the wrong direction.

In heaven there is no sex. In heaven, there is the constant bliss of needing nothing and being permanently fulfilled. Surely this is better than an occasional splurt at the end of a long road of effort. And certainly better than the frustrations and failures of sexual attempts to separate from God.

God's Kingdom is the level of primary reality. We then made a SECOND world, with the power of our minds. When we made the world we also invented all the rules of the world, all of the laws of physics, all of the ways spacetime would function, and populated it with every object and body and planet and galaxy.

What this means is there are now two levels. There is the level of source, actual reality, and then there is the lower level of the world. The lower level is sometimes referred to as a lower-order reality. This lower level was made, well within the confines of what is possible for the higher order to accomplish. It was a limited mis-creation, is filled with limitations, and its rules are completely invented restrictions.

We who live within this lower order world, who take it at face value, might believe that this world is first-hand reality. And we might believe that the very strictly enforced laws of spacetime physics cannot be broken. We accept all kinds of limitations as being "normal" for this universe. There are so many things that seem impossible, so many things which proceed according to certain rules... it's "just the way thing work here".

But what we might not realize is that this world is not primary reality, its laws are not actually the most fundamental lowest-level limitations, all limits are artificial, and every single "impossibility" is an illusion. In science now the holographic theory is starting to point to this, recognizing that this world is NOT primary reality but a secondary by-product, and is therefore once removed from source.

There are a couple of good analogies. The first is that of a movie director. The director is outside of the movie at the level of what we'll think of as actual reality. The director decides to piece together a set, to populate it with characters, to assemble a scene and make it appear as though certain stories are playing out.

The director will even play a bit with the rules/laws, perhaps they will devise some illusory special effects which LOOK as if they are believable when you look through the camera and don't see all the strings being pulled and all the behind-the-scenes stuff that is going on. And the illusion depends on not seeing the secret workings of the scene in order to maintain believability. To the casual observer, the romantic tale playing out in the movie is believable and "happening". Limitations are accepted as normal and not questioned.

But the movie director could decide to do something completely outside the realm of this little illusion. They could decide to suddenly walk onto the set in front of the camera. This would blow the whole illusion of a scene set in the 1950s. They could decide to move the camera to see the set from a certain vantage point that reveals the buildings aren't real buildings. They could "break" the laws that seem to run the world.

Another analogy is that of someone who builds 3D CGI scenes in a computer. At first the scene is empty. The modeler wants to make a scene where a CGI car crashes into a lamp post. They put the car into the scene, then the lamp post. But there are no laws in place to govern any kind of collision. There is no physics. They have to tell the computer what they want to happen.

They have to invent some physics laws and implement them, so that it SEEMS that when the car touches the lamp post the post bends in a way that makes it look AS IF the car caused the damage. And perhaps the front of the car needs to be remodeled to make it appear AS IF it has been dented.

They also have to make the car move, define how fast, and configure every parameter of what happens. It's sort of similar to how a child plays with a toy car and pretends the car crashes and has to make the object it crashes into move as well to pretend it caused something to happen. In truth the car does not cause anything to happen, the lamp post is not at the effect of the car, and there is no "real damage". It's all pieced together to make an illusion. To seem as if it's believable. There is no actual cause and effect here.

It's possible for the modeller to decide to do something to the car which would "break" the normal laws of physics. They could make the car float, they could change its color, they could turn it into an apple. These would be "unbelievable" to someone who bought into the illusion of the scene, and would appear miraculous.

Which is another point. Within this world we're used to living in, we believe there is cause and effect on the horizontal level. That a brick thrown through a window causes the window to break. One thing is a cause, another thing is an effect. And sometimes the thing that caused becomes affected. We buy into this as if it's a closed system. As if the dream that we caused is causing us.

But in truth, the director has VERTICAL causality over the movie scene. The 3D modeller has VERTICAL causality over the entire contents of the what happens. And so too the MAKER of this world has entire power OVER everything that happens in this world.

Since you MADE PHYSICS, you can BREAK it. You can decide, hey, I am under no laws but God's, I am not bound WITHIN the laws of physics, I made the laws, I will transcend them and break them. I will do something OUTSIDE the laws. I will walk on water, breaking the law of gravity. I can ignore gravity because I made gravity myself. Since you are above, beyond, and outside of, the level of the laws, you have the FREEDOM to exercise your will to bend, break, and totally override the rules.

You who made the world are PRIOR to the world. You are able to pull the strings. You can do thing to the laws and the scene that the laws and the scene itself says are impossible. Things which cannot seemingly be undone or reversed, are reversible with miracles. You can control space and time. Your mind has power over matter. You can literally move a mountain. You can reverse death and sickness. There is nothing beyond your ability to rewrite the dream. You're the dreamer, YOU call the shots.

When you break the laws of the world, the effects or "what happens" is seen by the natives as "miraculous". Or "impossible". When you walk on water, breaking gravity, this seems impossible. Such a demonstration shows that because you are DOING IT, the law of gravity must be an illusion. This is why "miracles are teaching devices."

Also since miracles "do the impossible", this is often why many people do not believe in them as being capable, as if such things are just "magic", as a way to try to explain why miracles CANNOT BE supernatural. This is due to a belief that the world is real. Those to have fallen for the illusion of the lower-order scene are convinced by appearances and made-up laws and believe they cannot BE broken.

Demonstrations of your power over the world reveals that all the limitations and laws you thought you were bound by, you are NOT bound by. When a few loaves of bread and some fish are multiplied out of nowhere to feed 5000 people, this seems miraculous. But he who is operating on laws OUTSIDE the laws of this world is merely exercising their freedom. Anything goes when you are literally above the law!

When a dead body is suddenly resurrected to life and the person starts walking around as if nothing happened, this is considered a miracle by the people who anticipate that death cannot be reversed. In total defiance of all the laws of this world, the laws of decay and time and chemical decomposition, can be broken. Even bodies that have been dead for years can be resurrected. Even when the pieces are scattered and decayed and beyond help. This should not be considered "difficult". There is NO order of difficulty.

You are not bound by ANY LAW of this universe. It is all an entire level removed from the level at which you exercise your creative freedom. This world is further down the chain of causality than the starting point, and you at the starting point can therefore change your mind and change the whole world. It doesn't matter how irreversible, solid, permanent or impossible something seems to be, all of that is overridden when you operate from a higher level of causality.

"Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly."

Since you are operating from a level above the world, you are having vertical causality over the world. You even cause the causality of the word. You cause the causes, and the effects. You set up the causes and the effects to PRETEND that the causes caused the effects. You can violate the illusion of causality at any time. You are above the world. This is why the coures says:

"41. The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. The sudden shifts from horizontal to vertical perception which the miracle entails..."

Vertical perception is a state of seeing yourself as prior to the world, above the battlefield, causal over everything below, overriding all horizontal causality, under no laws but God's. Miracle working ENTAILS shifting INTO vertical perception, SO THAT you can be miraculous. What you then perform FROM vertical perception breaks the laws of the world. Miracle mindedness is vertical perception.

Since super" means above, and "natural" is of course to do with the nature of things, super-natural means "above nature". Being above the nature of the world. Beyond and above the laws of the world. This is why miracles are rightfully "supernatural". At least in terms of looking at them from below. In truth they are completely natural and should be happening all the time. Miraculousness is actually the NATURE of God's Kingdom, which has UNLIMITED POWER.

Everything that is of God is supernatural and naturally so. "God's miracles" "You are a miracle" "You are a miracle not of your own making" "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life" "The miraculous nature of the soul" "Miracles are a universal blessing from God" etc. Being miraculous is natural, being UN-miraculous is UNNATURAL.

Being BOUND by the laws of space time is UN NATURAL. And the NATURE of everything within space time is NOT NATURAL. What we affectionately call "mother nature" is OPPOSITE to the nature of God. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." And "miracles are natural and should be happening all the time. When they aren't, something has gone wong."

So being a miracle worker means being supernatural. Miracles are supernatural acts. They CAN BE spectacular. "A miracle is MISUNDERSTOOD when it is REGARDED as a spectacle". "The use of miracles to INDUCE BELIEF is a misunderstanding of their purpose. They are for and by believers." Nothing wrong with throwing a mountain into the sea. Nothing wrong with materializing objects or turning a snake into a branch. Nothing wrong with multiplying food and walking on water. Nothing wrong with reversing death or sickness and giving eyeballs to those born without them. This is *natural*.

"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."

Miracles express from above and outside of the nature of this world. They are supernatural, and what they are capable of IS UNLIMITED.

"Your mind has the power to make worlds."

"There is nothing your holiness cannot do."

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

"Miracles reflect the laws of eternity, not of time."

"I am under no laws but God's."

"one point already tells you that miracles reverse the physical or lower order laws."

"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 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."

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

It seems that Jesus is telling us in the course that all of our regular thoughts are the sole cause of all our suffering. Our faulty THOUGHTS are the problem. Just the mere act of HAVING a thought that is fearful or guilty or attacking produces an upsetting and endangered perception, which we complain about but continue to think of. Having the thought AT ALL is the problem. And there are much higher thoughts of love and peace and invulnerability that we could be having instead.

"My thoughts do not mean anything."

"My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world."

"I am affected only by my thoughts."

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"I see everything upside-down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you."

"The idea for today contains the only way out of fear that will succeed. Nothing else will work; everything else is meaningless. But this way cannot fail. Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see. It is with your thoughts, then, that we must work, if your perception of the world is to be changed."

"What but your thoughts of misery and death obscure the perfect happiness and the Eternal Life your Father wills for you?" "Only YOUR thoughts have been impossible."

-- -- -- --

However, Jesus also distinguishes that we can have true/real thoughts instead of false/unreal thoughts. And it is our false/unreal thoughts that are a problem. The problem is, we spend almost our entire time having false/unreal thoughts. And our thoughts produce 'images' or interpretations which affect or define what we see.

"As a man thinketh, so does he perceive."

"My thoughts cannot be neither true nor false. They must be one or the other. What I see shows me which they are."

"The thoughts which the mind of God's Son projects, HAVE all the power that he gives them. The thoughts he shares with God are BEYOND his belief, but those HE made ARE his beliefs. And it is THESE, and NOT the truth, that he has chosen to defend and love."

"As my thoughts of separation call to the separation thoughts of others, so my real thoughts awaken the real thoughts in them."

"Whatever I see reflects my thoughts. It is my thoughts which tell me where I am and what I am."

"The images I see reflect my thoughts."

"Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact."

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents your thoughts. And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind"

"Your thoughts of death envelop it in fear, while in your kind forgiveness does it live."

"But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically."

"Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so."

"Today's idea introduces the concept that your thoughts determine the world you see."

"Until this shift has been accomplished, you can not perceive that it is but your thoughts which bring you fear, and your deliverance depends on you."

"I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts."

-- -- -- --

Jesus goes on to tell us that if we will opt to think with and like God, sharing the Holy Spirit's thoughts, then we will see differently and will stop hurting ourselves.

"Father, I give You all my thoughts today. I would have none of mine. In place of them give me Your own. I give You all my acts as well, that I may do Your Will instead of seeking goals which cannot be obtained, and wasting time in vain imaginings."

"Your Thoughts can only bring me happiness. If ever I am sad or hurt or ill, I have forgotten what You think, and put my little, meaningless ideas in place of where Your Thoughts belong, and where They are."

"But let today's idea find a place among your thoughts, and you have risen far above the world and all the worldly thoughts that hold it prisoner."

"You think with the Mind of God. Therefore you share your thoughts with Him, as He shares His with you. They are the same thoughts, because they are thought by the same Mind."

"Father, my mind is open to Your Thoughts, and closed today to every thought but Yours."

"We accept Your Thoughts as ours, and our will is One with Yours eternally."

"Peace to my mind. Let all my thoughts be still."

"In quiet would I look upon the world, which but reflects Your Thoughts and mine as well."

"Place, then, your future in the hands of God. For thus you call the memory of Him to come again, replacing all your thoughts of sin and evil with the truth of love."

"If you would remember your Father, let the Holy Spirit order your thoughts, and give only the answer with which He answers you."

"Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified."

"Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son as proof of His eternal Love."

"Exclude the outer world, and let your thoughts fly to the peace within. They know the way. For honest thoughts, untainted by the dream of worldly things outside yourself, become the holy messengers of God Himself."

"The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God."

"And your thoughts will be as free as God's."

-- -- --

In order for us to atone to our real/true thoughts with God, we need to perform some degree of mind-training, mind-watching, and careful articulation of the mind's abilities. It isn't enough for us to just go about our daily business, mind-wandering, using thought to think anything and everything, and consequentially suffering from every single ego thought that crosses our minds. We have to learn to be carful with how and what we think. Especially if we want to be performing miracles which require a careful focus and intent.

"It is certainly much more useful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts at all carefully, except for a relatively small part of the day, and somewhat inconsistently even then."

"As you sit and quietly watch your thoughts"

"Watch your minds for the temptations of the ego, and do not be deceived by it. KNOW it offers you nothing."

"Watch your minds for the scraps of meanness"

"You persist in believing that when you do not consciously watch your mind, it is unmindful."

"It is a particularly difficult form for the undisciplined mind because it represents a major goal of mind training."

"It is difficult at this point not to allow your mind to wander if it undertakes extended attempts. You have surely realized this by now. You have seen the extent of your lack of mental discipline, and of your need for mind training. It is necessary that you be aware of this, for it is indeed a hindrance to your advance."

"It is a particularly difficult form for the undisciplined mind because it represents a major goal of mind training. It embodies precisely what the untrained mind lacks. Yet the training must be accomplished if you are to see."

"It is difficult for the untrained mind to believe that what seems to be pictured before it is not there. This idea can be quite disturbing, and may meet with active resistance in any number of forms."

"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."

"The purpose of the exercises for today is to begin to train your mind to recognize when it is not really thinking at all. While thoughtless "ideas" preoccupy your mind, the truth is blocked. Recognizing that your mind has been merely blank, rather than believing that it is filled with real ideas, is the first step to opening the way to vision."

"THIS IS WHY VIGILANCE IS ESSENTIAL. Doubts ABOUT being MUST not enter your mind, or you CANNOT know what you are with certainty."

"Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it IS necessary AGAINST ILLUSION."

"Your vigilance is the sign that you WANT Him to guide you. Vigilance DOES require effort, but only to teach you that effort ITSELF is unnecessary."

"Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego, and how little you have been willing to exert to protect your higher mind."

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS. Its application does not matter. It is ALWAYS maximal. Your vigilance does NOT establish it as yours, but it DOES enable you to use it ALWAYS and in ALL WAYS."

"Attack thoughts cannot enter such a mind, because it has been given to the Source of Love, and fear can never enter in a mind which has attached itself to Love. It rests in God, and who can be afraid who lives in Innocence and only loves?"

"Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation. Otherwise, the miracle will be necessary to set the mind ITSELF straight"

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

"The test of EVERYTHING on earth is simply this: "What is it FOR?" The answer makes it what it IS for you. It has NO meaning of itself, yet you can GIVE reality to it, according to the purpose which YOU serve."

What you use the world FOR, what PURPOSE you give it, what it MEANS to you, and the GOAL that you ascribe to it, determines everything about WHY it is there and HOW you see it.

If you give the world a purpose of death, you steer towards false perception and murder and hell. If you give the world a purpose of resurrection, you steer towards true perception and heaven. And which purpose you choose determines how you interpret what you see.

The world isn't just sitting there as a WHAT. It's sitting there as a WHY. The world was made FOR A REASON. It was chosen specifically and deliberately. Its making was intentional and on purpose. It was made to serve a GOAL and to accomplish that goal. It's not just a "thing", it's a DEVICE.

"The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary."

"The ego made the world as IT perceives it, but the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made, sees it only as a teaching device for bringing you home."

It's not enough to ask "what the world is". Science can study the WHAT as long as it likes, but it's not asking the right question. You can't just look at the nature of the world through analysis of WHAT, to discover the REASON WHY it exists at all. For that, you have to ask WHY it's there at all, what it means, and what purpose it is serving. Then it becomes obvious WHY it is the way it is.

We're also taught in ACIM that everything is deliberate, because there is free will. Anything that happens MUST have your consent. Nothing happens WITHOUT your choosing it. You choose everything ON PURPOSE. You are completely deliberate, intentional, and responsible. Nothing happens at all unless it serves a purpose. And everything must have a purpose.

"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."

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you."

The world did not exist before the separation from God. It was made ON PURPOSE, to serve a goal. The goal was to deny God, to make separation real, to murder God's son, to make possible what is impossible, to bring about death, and to rule a kingdom in which God was absent. That is the original PURPOSE of this world. That is WHY it seems to be here. That is why the "what it is" is the way it is, and why it functions the way it does, and HOW it accomplishes this goal.

Make no mistake here. The world isn't just sitting there happily churning over all innocent and sweet. While the world is actually nothing, we give it belief and try to MAKE it serve the purpose of hell. We made it by rebelling against God, throwing away our inheritance, not WANTING to communicate with God, and by wanting to re-create ourselves in our own images. That's how spacetime came to be made as an opposite to omnipresence and eternity. That's that's why "the world was made as an attack on God."

So if we're just examining what the world is, we're not really looking at the rather extraordinary fact that it is in fact "the hell you made" for the purpose of fighting against heaven and trying to overthrow God's reality. That's WHY it's here. That's WHAT it is FOR. Or at least, that was what it WAS for, in the past, when we made it with our egos. The world functions the way it does simply because that's how its function SERVES the PURPOSE of destruction.

What ACIM is then telling us is that, since the world itself is nothing, and acts like a TOOL, to serve a certain purpose, with a certain USE, we can choose instead to RE-PURPOSE it. To give it a NEW GOAL. A new purpose which can serve a higher goal. We can take what we made, which was originally a weapon for destruction, and turn it into a way to UNDO the weapon. We can take hell, and convert it into a reflection of heaven, so that it will disappear in light. And we can USE it to bring ourselves and others back to God through holy relationship.

"For here, the GOAL of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the EXACT OPPOSITE of what it was."

"For, once the unholy relationship has ACCEPTED the goal of holiness, it can never again be what it was."

This means giving the world a different PURPOSE from the one we originally gave it. And that means it has to have a different GOAL than the one of murder and death that we originally gave it. So now, whatever state of mind you're in, whatever attitude you have, you have to ask yourself what you are USING IT FOR, or what purpose or goal you are trying to accomplish. Are you using it for attack to bring about the goal of death, or are you USING it for resurrection and healing and the goal of atonement, to restore the sonship and bring us back to God?

"Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me. Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor USE it for destruction.

Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE (goal) to peace, but let You USE it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming (of the higher goal)."

Let's be clear, that the power of the mind and the law of cause and effect determines that nothing can happen without your will, and anything that happens MUST be something you want. And by wanting it you WANT it to SERVE a purpose for you. To fullfill a FUNCTION. And a function is a way of operating that leads to the accomplishment of a goal. Our true function is to create life, and our false function is to destroy. Even YOU have a function that serves the creator of that function, because your function is to serve God for HIS purpose of sharing creation.

""Let me not use this to hide my function from me."

"I would use this as an opportunity to fulfill my function." "Let me not use this to justify a function God did not give to me."

Even all forms of sickness are there to SERVE a function, for a PURPOSE. This is why "sickness is a defense against the truth". It serves the PURPOSE of protecting you from the truth and hiding from it in darkness, by blocking the light/life, which implements forms of death. So long as a person has a USE FOR the sickness, serving a purpose, BENEFITING from it, wanting it, NEEDING it, choosing it, the sickness remains. And sickness is always ONLY there because of the PURPOSE it is serviing for the person. All sickness is intentional and deliberate and providing a function to achieve a GOAL.

"The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, "I have no USE for this." There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once."

"No one can heal unless he understands what PURPOSE sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic."

"Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously."

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

So as ACIM rightly states, we should always ask, WHAT IS IT FOR? What am I using this FOR? What is the goal I am trying to achieve? What is the purpose of this? Am I using this for an ego purpose, and if so, how can I switch to a higher purpose? What was my original purpose in CHOOSING this, for what NEED, to achieve what GOAL? Why do I still believe I need it? Maybe I'm mistaken about my REASON FOR THIS and can choose otherwise?

How can I use this to FACILITATE the coming of peace, or the fulfillment of a higher function? How can I USE the world which I made in hate, to demonstrate the truth and awaken my brothers? What renewed spiritual PURPOSE can I give TO the world, to USE it in such a way, that it brings about the undoing of the world and the restoration of holy relationship and health and happiness? How can I USE the world for the GOAL OF GOD, in which everything in the world is seen with forgiveness so that it only serves the purpose of awakening and atonement?

When the Holy Spirit's PURPOSE for the world is accomplished, when the atonement is complete, the world no longer needs to SERVE this new purpose. And WITHOUT A PURPOSE, it simply now disappears into nothing.

"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary"

"And, like all the things you made, it can be used to serve ANOTHER purpose, and to be means for something ELSE. It can be used to heal, and NOT to hurt, if you so wish."

"Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation."

"What purpose could it serve? What is it for?"

"In any situation in which YOU are uncertain, the FIRST thing to consider, very simply, is, "What do I want to come of this? What is it FOR?""

"What purpose has an idol, then? What is it FOR?"

"The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it."

"Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has given it."

"For you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it."

"If I so choose, I can depart this world entirely. It is not death which makes this possible, but it is change of mind about the purpose of the world."

"When joy has come the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began."

"The Great Transformer of perception will undertake WITH you the careful searching of the mind that MADE this world, and uncover TO YOU the SEEMING reasons for your making it. In the light of the REAL reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will SHOW you that there is NO reason here at all. Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God. NOT as the Law Itself upholds the universe as God created it. But in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error. There IS another purpose in the world that error made because it has another Maker, Who CAN reconcile its goal with His Creator's Purpose."

"The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you KNEW its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a DIFFERENT view, ANOTHER purpose, can be given it. You do NOT know its purpose. You but gave ILLUSIONS of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing WITHOUT a purpose CANNOT hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, ITS purpose and YOUR function both be reconciled at last, and seen as one."

"Illusions serve the purpose they were MADE to serve. And FROM their purpose, they derive whatever meaning that they seem to have. God gave to ALL illusions that were made ANOTHER purpose that would justify a miracle, WHATEVER form they took. In every miracle ALL healing lies, for God gave Answer to them all as one."

"And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

You made the ego as a device for separating from God. Symbolically, the body is the ego - the hero of the dream. The ego is a machine designed to operate in separation, opposition, and delusion, believing that illusions are reality and that reality is an illusion. Its perspective is that what is true is false/evil, and what is false is the truth. It is convinced that death is salvation from God, and that sin is real.

You who made this ego really are not bound by it at all, since it is imaginary and doesn't really exist. But you chose to believe that it is real. You gave reality to it by using it, since it is a device for turning illusions into reality.

Your decision to identify with it, was an attempt to attract yourself and attach yourself, or cling to, something other than God, like a magnet, which would allow you to attempt to resist the attraction of God.

So you tried to wear the ego like a piece of clothing, and this is pretty literally symbolized by the wearing of the body, which is the symbolic manifestation of the ego - the false self image. It is helpful to recognize that the body itself is the symbol of the ego, within this dream, although this entire dream is also the ego.

Now, in order to try to repel God and attract yourself to something more attractive than His Love, your ego device offers you the pretend opportunity to be magnetized to something else. You hold onto the ego, cling to it, attach to it, attempt to join with it, and try to be one with it. You try to make it your identity.

Your very sense of self you try to give to it, you empower it, you add reality to its illusory nature, and really you are trying to bring it to life. It is like a frankenstein which is made of death, that you pretend can be animated and take over your self. This is the ego's version of raising the dead!

One of the major ways that you accomplish this, and how this symbolically plays out in the dream, is in your identification with the body - the symbol of the ego. The ego is hiding in the body, as the body, as its attempt to withdraw from God and be protected against the truth. This is why the body is fundamentally an idea of sickness, which must eventually disappear when it gives way to the truth. The body is a defense.

Knowing this, each time that you identify with the body and thus the ego, you do so in order to pull yourself away from God. You are trying to rip yourself away from being identified with God and to anchor yourself into some other identity. You're trying to fuse yourself with the ego and body and turn yourself into them.

The closer that you associate with the body, and the more you push God away, the more the body starts to exhibit sickness. Sickness is a defense against God, and it makes the body more real. The more reality you give to the body, the more you are able to become "one" with the ego, and therefore whatever happens to the body is happening to you.

Eventually, a profound "unity" with the ego, as the body, produces death. Death simply means that you've created so much sense of clear distinction and separation between you and God, that you have super-magnetized yourself to the body, and have done everything you can to cut off the source of Life.

The body then cannot be long maintained when it is starved of Life, and the perception that you are disassociated from God makes you perceive that you have no power and no causality. What has no cause cannot exist, so without a cause you will die.

In attempting to overcome this, the journey simply involves giving up the identification with the ego and thus the body. But at first this is going to be difficult. Each time that you find a willingness to expose yourself to the truth, your association with the ego is going to have a major reaction. Since you've come to see through the ego and with the ego, you will interpret the meaning of the truth as the ego would interpret it.

Whatever the truth says, the ego perceives to be false, unwanted, an attack, dangerous and threatening. Whatever the truth claims is true, the ego cannot see clearly or correctly, will read into it, and will see reflected back to it its own ego nightmare, which will be frightening. So this produces a lot of resistance. You will defend the ego, protect its beliefs, side with it, trust it, believe it is telling the truth, and go along with its guidance. You will think you're doing this completely sanely and in order to not only uphold innocence but also to protect your life. You are trying to preserve your sense of self.

No-one in any state of mind wants their self to really be destroyed. Whether your self is identified with your real self, or with the ego self/body, you will protect it and defend it. If you are associated with ego and the ego experiences the truth as an attack, you will defend your ego, believing that you're doing exactly the right thing. However, when you defend the ego, you are choosing death.

Each time that you are aligned with the ego and try to protect it, because you think that you are protecting what you are - what you perceive yourself as - your self/identity - you protect illusions and give reality to them. This cuts you off from God/Life, which is a step towards death. It will produce sickness. So in the name of self-preservation, you will actually believe you're preserving your existence while in fact you are destroying yourself.

This is how people choose to die! This is why all death is a choice and all death is suicide. People don't realize that when they're identified with the ego/body, they keep doing the perfectly natural thing of defending themselves, but because their identity is all caught up in the ego, they inadvertently defend the ego. And that is a major problem. Everyone defends the truth, as they see it, and if the truth is the ego's truth, they will defend it to the death, literally.

Also when you are exposed to the truth, if you are holding onto the ego identity/body and believe/see yourself as the body, you will perceive that the truth is threatening you. Anything in agreement with your current beliefs is seen as truth and anything not in agreement is seen as an unwanted evil attack. This is what makes it difficult to learn to trust God - because initially God is thought to be evil, a threat, a danger, and an attempt to stop you from existing.

This is why you have developed in your mind a sense of a "false God" who is evil, out to get you, wants you to stop existing, is trying to destroy you and wants you dead. This is your ego's view of God. This is its interpretation, and you've made it your interpretation. This is the God of wrath and vengeance and revenge. And this part of you, the ego part, really believes that it is God's will that you die. And it uses this as perfectly rational-seeming justification for why you should die - because it's what God wants for you and you think it's inescapable. This is the death wish.

In order to overcome this "evil God", you need to recognize that your association with the ego has clouded your judgement, has presented the truth as something false, has presented what is false as something true, your whole world is upside down and back to front, and you need to become willing to rediscover what the truth really is.

That's not going to seem easy or welcome, especially to your ego alliance, because the real truth appears as the complete opposite to what the ego believes. It seems to be evil and dangerous, and you will feel tremendous resistance to approaching it. You think it wants you dead, and nobody in their right mind would want to approach their most feared enemy.

However, you need to learn that the God you fear is not REALLY what God is like. The God you think will mean you don't exist, does not REALLY prove you don't exist - that's just what the EGO thinks about God. God demonstrates not only that you exist but that you exist forever, are immortal, eternal, and that God completely supports and sustains you in every way.

This isn't the view of God that the ego will ever be able to see or accept, because it was not designed to do so. It was only designed as a kind of filtration device, to block the truth and invert it, and make illusions seem real. That's all it does and that's all it was meant to do. That's what you designed it to be, and that's why the ego cannot awaken. How can an illusion awaken? The ego isn't really anything at all.

So to awaken, you must awaken FROM the ego, in spite of the ego, and in order to recognize that the ego is not real. Everything the ego perceives and believes in MUST be false and unreal. So you get this choice, to decide who you are going to side with. God or the ego. There isn't really a choice because the ego isn't real and doesn't exist, but it will seem like a choice so long as you think the ego is who you are.

Believing you are the ego goes hand in hand with believing you are a physical body, because the body is the symbol of the ego thought system. And as you expose yourself to truth, mis-perceiving it with the ego will threaten "you", or your sense of self (ego aligned self), and you will want to defend yourself against it. Therefore you will resist the truth, resist waking up, want nothing to do with the Holy Spirit, will not want to entertain the idea of powerful miracles, and you will fear the rejection of God. Not just God's rejection but that, if God is real, you (ego) do not exist.

That is terrifying to the ego, so if YOU have associated yourself with the ego and believe it is you (you are a body), then you will be afraid that you don't exist. You might have noticed when you read ACIM especially at the beginning, that you feel like it is saying a truth that completely ignores you, doesn't even mention you, doesn't acknowledge you, and acts as though you don't even exist.

It can be maddening and make you genuinely angry. This is the ego, because the truth DOES ignore the ego and does not acknowledge it as existing. Because it really doesn't. It simply overlooks it entirely and demonstrates that it is not real. So if you are tied to the ego you will think that this applies to YOU, and that is pretty upsetting.

You might even put up a defense against the truth because you do not want it and see it as an evil enemy, and therefore implement sickness in your body/mind/emotions to try to protect your identity from the truth. You'll try to make the body more real than the truth, and give truth to the body.

This will put power into the ego, will distort your view of yourself as someone little and vulnerable, will shut you off from the Source of Life, and will show up in the body/as the body as sickness and disease. Eventually if you do not choose to be willing to accept the real truth as it is, and not the ego's misinterpretation of it, this will produce death, and you will have chosen it on purpose because you thought you were saving your life.

So really it's a struggle to wake up when you have this ego thing that you made that you are still pretty fond of, which you side with and listen to and trust and use, because it makes you very defensive against the truth and very suspicious of it. Remember the ego will go from suspiciousness to visciousness, and you can bet that with enough exposure to "reality" it will turn viscious in an effort to block it out.

Gradually you will surrender and let go, allow the truth to seep in with little steps of willingness, open yourself up to accepting God as the truth, allow Holy Spirit into your heart and mind, and come to recognize that illusions are not real. This will mean realizing the body is not real, just an illusion, as a symbol of the ego in the mind, and that you do not need it.

Your dependence on it and on the ego's laws regarding what the body needs must also go. And so your mis-identification with the ego will come to an end. Finally you will let go of it, detach from it, and recognize that it is nothing at all. It has no power, it is not real, it holds no truth, it cannot do anything to you, and you are free of it. And having no further purpose or use for it, it will disappear, and it will not be YOU that is disappearing but just something that didn't really exist to begin with.

So you can see this is all really an exercise in identity. Who are you? You've become an ego, but it's not who you are. You cling to it and the body like you're trying to turn it into yourself, or yourself into it. You use the body and your oneness with it through sickness to reinforce your ego's reality and deny God's. All because you are always trying to protect your "self" even if your sense of self is misplaced.

The desire to defend yourself isn't misplaced, although the course says "If I defend myself I am attacked", meaning that if you defend the EGO, you are attacked. Defending your enemy will result in attack. You just don't quite as yet recognize fully the ways in which you and the ego are best buddies, trying to stay associated with it and to keep it ONLY because you've become convinced that it is you.

If you were to recognize clearly that YOU are not the ego at all, and it is nothing but an illusory device, having withdrawn all belief that its illusions are real (including sin and death and sickness and physical matter and the body and the world), then you wouldn't have any real reason to need to defend 'it' AS you, and you'd simply be who you really are. YOU need no defense at all when your sense of identity and self is associated with your Real Self - the Higher Self - or even as Christ.

Be free!

Jesus speaks in ACIM about translating hell into heaven, converting somehow the Earth into heaven's reflection. ie that the Earth is neutral/devoid of meaning and we project meaning onto it. Or to put it another way, we decided that certain states or forms or situations "must mean" something in partcular.

We associate meanings like they are outcomes or inherent definitions of what is happening. As if, when such and such happens it always means "this". As if the meaning is inherent in the form. Jesus speaks of this as form appearing to shut out all meaning to the extend that the form itself seems to describe what the forms means. And that this is a total illusion.

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

The truth is that we give everything all the meaning it has, and the world has NO inherent meaning of its own. It is indeed a meaningless world, which is why it acts like a mirror reflecting back whatever you project onto it. We actually decide that it means whatever we think it means, and then pretend it meant this without our contribution.

But when you think about it, he's talking about a process of interpretation or translation. There's plenty of interesting quotes about both those terms. We basically interpret the world. Interpretation means, a process of judging or evaluating, what WE BELIEVE something is, which in some way TRANSLATES it into some other preferred form in our minds that we find acceptable. We decide to interpret it to mean whatever we WANT it to mean, hence "there is no world apart from what you wish."

Similarly, the idea of a translation does not simply mean that the thing itself changes. The world doesn't actually "turn into" the meaning that you give it. You can take the example of translating a language.

If the world is writen in English, and you translate the world into Spanish, and you can only speak Spanish, then you can "read" or interpret a VERSION of the world, an image of it, written in the Spanish language, that seems to represent the world. But the translation you are reading isn't the ORIGINAL form. The world is essentially still in English, but your interpretation of it is transforming its meaning.

Translation is also a kind of math term, translating means to move something from one location to another. And it's part of a broader group of operations such as rotation and scaling, which are all types of "transforms". In effect the thing goes through a transformation of some kind and ends up different to how it began.

So in ACIM terms, our minds are giving the world meaning by interpreting it, putting that meaning onto it. Sometimes we give it meaning from our egos and sometimes from the Holy Spirit. When the ego gives it meaning, we believe the world is inherently hell or reflects a hell-like nature. When the Holy Spirit gives it his meaning, the world now reflects the love of God.

But we should note here that the TRANSLATED VERSION of the world is in fact once removed from the world, just as a Spanish translation is once removed from the original English. When you have interpreted the world to mean that it reflects heaven's meaning, we're saying that we now look AT the translated version, a sort of copy of the world, which is a different way of looking at it.

So when ACIM talks of earth translating into heaven etc it's not really saying that a meaningless world, having the meaning of God projected ONTO it, reflected back, now is actually a meaningful world. But that the REFLECTION is meaningful, and the TRANSLATED alternative dream which INTERPRETS the world is heaven-like. You are then seeing what you put there to see, rather than necessarily what is there. Because really the world is not there at all.

Our task then is simply to recognize that we do not want the translations that are converting the world into a hell-like language, and we instead want to "read into" the world a heaven-like language. We want the Holy Spirit's translation of the world, his purpose for it, his use of it, instead of what the ego is trying to "make of" it or use it for. And that applies to the body too.

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

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

"Thus are the Holy Spirit's lesson plans arranged in easy steps, that, though there be some lack of ease at times, and some distress, there is no shattering of what was learned, but just a re-translation of what seems to be the evidence on its behalf."

"For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight. The end of the world is not its destruction, but its TRANSLATION into Heaven. The RE-INTERPRETATION of the world is the transfer of ALL perception to knowledge."

""Father, Christ's vision is Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world! Yet how much more will I perceive in it than sight can give."

"For the instant of peace is eternal, BECAUSE it is wholly WITHOUT fear. It WILL come, being the lesson God gives you, through the Teacher HE has appointed, to translate time to eternity."

"Blessed is God's Teacher, Whose joy it is to teach God's holy Son his holiness. His joy is not contained in time. His teaching is for you, BECAUSE His joy is yours. Through Him, YOU stand before God's altar, where He gently translated hell into Heaven."

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. Yet God created One Who has the power to translate into form the wholly formless."

"Forgiveness is the ONLY function meaningful in time. It is the means the Holy Spirit uses to TRANSLATE specialness from sin into salvation. "

"For to RECOGNIZE fear is not enough to escape FROM it, although the recognition IS necessary to demonstrate the NEED for escape. The Holy Spirit must still TRANSLATE it into truth. If you were LEFT with the fear, having RECOGNIZED it, you would have taken a step AWAY from reality, not TOWARD it."

"Never forget that the Holy Spirit does not depend on your words. He understands the requests of your heart and answers them. Does this mean that, while attack remains attractive to you He will respond with evil? Hardly! For God has given Him the power to translate your prayers of the heart into His language. He understands that an attack is a call for help. And He responds with help accordingly."

"Miracles are natural to God, and to the One Who speaks for Him. For His task is to TRANSLATE the miracle into the knowledge which it REPRESENTS, and which IS lost to you."

"However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM. You can place ANY relationship under His care, and be sure that it will NOT result in pain, if you offer Him your willingness TO HAVE IT SERVE NO NEED BUT HIS." "Every attack is a call for His patience, because ONLY His patience can translate attack into blessing."

"Thus does the Holy Spirit replace fear with love, and translate error into truth. And thus will YOU learn of Him how to replace your dream of separation with the fact of unity."

"When a child is helped to translate his "ghost" into a curtain, his "monster" into a shadow and his "dragon" into a dream, he is no longer afraid, and laughs happily at his own fear."

"The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device FOR you. Again, as always, it re-interprets what the ego uses as an argument FOR separation into an argument AGAINST it."

"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT."

"Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations, that show you all fearful outcomes of imagined sin, into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. They are HIS substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego's purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step AWAY from sin, reminding you that it is NOT reality that frightens you, and that the errors which you made CAN be corrected."

"By RE-INTERPRETING the ability to ATTACK, which you DID make, into the ability to SHARE, He TRANSLATES what you have made, into what God created."

Some related quotes about what the body cannot do and how it limits you. You can become free of the limitations, but ultimately not WITHOUT the body disappearing entirely. God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there.

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU."

"The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you."

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will ALWAYS seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him. "

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

"To see a body as anything EXCEPT a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and hurt yourself. "

"As the ego would LIMIT your perception of your brothers to the body, so would the Holy spirit RELEASE your vision, and let you see the Great Rays shining from them, so unlimited that they reach to God. It is this shift in vision that is accomplished in the holy instant."

"For the body IS little and limited, and only those whom you would see WITHOUT the limits that the ego would impose on them, can offer YOU the gift of freedom."

"No-one can BE beyond the limitless, because what has NO limits, must be everywhere. There are no beginnings and no endings in God, Whose Universe is Himself. "

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found. The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it and sheltered by its presence."

"For what you think is sin is LIMITATION; and whom you try to limit to the body you hate because you fear. In your refusal to forgive him, you would condemn him"

"Who transcends the body has transcended limitation."

"The special relationship is totally without meaning WITHOUT A BODY."

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love outside? The body will not stay."

"The body is a dream."

"The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT be of God. "

"Only bodies can be attacked."

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to LIMIT communication, and thereby TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE. For communication MUST be UNlimited in order to HAVE meaning, and DEPRIVED of meaning, it will NOT satisfy YOU completely. Yet it remains the ONLY means by which you CAN establish real relationships."

"As something is the body asked to be God's enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limit and despair. It is HIS loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate."

"Each miracle He brings is witness that the body is NOT real."

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person"

"The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

"The body can bring you neither peace nor turmoil; not pain nor joy. It is a means, and NOT an end."

"For holiness is positive, and the body is merely neutral. It is not sinful, but neither is it sinless."

"You see the flesh or recognize the Spirit. There is no compromise between the two. If one is real the other must be unreal."

"The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone; and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it. The limit on communication cannot be the best means to expand communication. Yet the ego would have you believe that it is."

"We have seen ourselves in a body and the truth outside us, locked away from your awareness by the body's limitations."

"Forgiveness lets the body be perceived as what it is; a simple teaching aid to be laid by when learning is complete, but hardly changing him who learns at all. The mind without the body cannot make mistakes. It cannot think that it will die, nor be the prey of merciless attack. Anger becomes impossible, and where is terror then? What fears could still assail those who have lost the source of all attack; the core of anguish and the seat of fear?"

"You CANNOT make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will NEVER be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love's condemnation. For here is love made fearful, and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded deep in mystery, and kept apart from those who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships, and no return. Here is the "mystery" of separation perceived in awe and held in reverence. What God would have NOT be, is here kept "safe" from Him. "

"Yet would I offer you my BODY, you whom I love, KNOWING its littleness? "

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

"A miracle reawakens the awareness that the spirit, and not the body, is the altar of Truth."

"The body DOES appear to be the symbol of sin, while you believe that it can get you what you want. While you believe that it can give you pleasure, you will ALSO believe that it can bring you pain. To think you could be satisfied and happy with so little, IS to hurt yourself. And to LIMIT the happiness that you would have, CALLS upon pain to fill your meager store, and make your lives complete. This IS completion, as the ego sees it."

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be STRONGER. "

"The Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your relationship, and not your bodies. You have ESCAPED the body. Where you are now, the body cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set HIS temple there. "

"As nothing, which it is, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego."

"The body cannot create, and the belief that it CAN, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to, produces all physical symptoms."

"The body cannot see this, for the body AROSE from this for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER SEE."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

"The Holy Spirit is not concerned with form at all, being aware only of meaning. The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for anything, because there is COMPLETE COMMUNICATION FAILURE between them. But you can ask everything of the Holy Spirit, because your requests are real, being of your will."

"It is extremely simple, being based on what this little kingdom really IS. The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes. ITS vision IS distorted, and the messages IT transmits to you, who MADE it to limit your awareness, ARE little and limited, so fragmented that they are meaningless. From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. For YOU sent forth these messengers, to bring this BACK to you.

Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not, its senses remain quite UNAWARE of it, its tongue can not relay ITS messages."

"The body's eyes were made not to see." "They cannot see" "They will never see."

Space and time are nothing but beliefs. This doesn't mean that we merely have beliefs "about" space and time, as if they really exist separate from our beliefs. They exist ONLY WITHIN our believing in them, and without believing in them they DO NOT exist at all.

"There is no world (spacetime) apart from what you wish."

If you have a good grasp of what space and time ARE, it becomes very obvious that they are not the same as reality. In fact they are totally opposite to reality. This also then tells you that anything WITHIN spacetime is opposite to reality as well. And it also further tells you that WITHOUT spacetime, nothing whose nature COMES FROM spacetime can exist, because it depends on spacetime for its entire existence.

In reality, God is omnipresent which means all of God is in all parts of God/existence simultaneously. God is everywhere. When we made the idea of "space", we attempted something COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to this.

Space is the idea of separated-out locations, in which each location is kept apart and is exclusive of the other locations. What is in one location is not in another location. There is no sharing of locations. The contents of one location cannot touch or overlap the contents of another. There is no true joining or sharing of any kind. All locations repel all others and hold them apart through what science calls atomic forces, but really is the idea of trying to put distance between yourself and God.

Space therefore invented the idea of a gap, separation, distance, avoidance, exclusion, repulsion, rejection, dissociation, and isolation. It gave rise to the seeming possibility that something can exist in one location and NOT exist in the others. Which in turn seems to make it possible for atoms and particles to exist separately and without touching each other. So long as there is the idea of spatial separation, "matter" is possible.

Matter requires that all its parts be kept SEPARATE otherwise not only could there not even be a three-dimensional object that "takes up space" or "spans across locations", but all objects would attempt to share the same space and cause a massive nuclear explosion. This is basic stuff supported by science. Atomic overlap causes atomic explosions. The seemingly physical material universe is therefore dependent on the idea of MAINTAINING SEPARATION at all costs.

Space also is the assertion that anything which exists only exists in PART of the space, and that what exists in that part is only a PART of existence. Therefore anything that exists does not WHOLLY exist and is NOT whole. This in turn implies that nothing is everywhere. Which also implies that everything is nowhere. Which is the entire idea that "God, whose nature is to be everywhere, does not exist anywhere". This is because "the world was made as an attack on God." "A place where God could enter not."

Just as space is UTTERLY upposite to God's nature, so too is time. Eternity means that what exists always exists. It is eternal, never-ending, permanent, immortal. It cannot ever stop existing. The idea of stopping existing is the idea of interruption, change, alteration, decay, modification, etc. This is totally incompatible with eternity. Nothing eternal can EVER change otherwise we introduce the potential for an END, and for death.

Time is the notion TOTALLY OPPOSITE to eternity, that whatever existed no longer exists, having died. And what exists now, is not the same as what used to exist, having changed. And what exists now will not always exist, because death or change is inevitable. Even the idea of change ITSELF is the idea of time, producing a "dream of death." SPACETIME IS DEATH! It's the very idea of bringing an END to what is endless, and making temporary what is permanent, and making mortal what is immortal.

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. ***It dreams of time***; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere."

Time was made as a total attack on God's nature. It is the suggestion that God and his creation, which are eternal and changeless, are in a state of total constant change, decay, suffering, alteration, interruption, attackability, impermanece and death. Just the idea that everything is always changing is the idea that "everything is always dying". The laws of nature such as that flowers bloom and die and human bodies bloom and die and planets bloom and die and so on, is INHERENT to the nature of time itself.

Time is really the idea that God is dead, once again in support of space's idea that God is nowhere. It says God is no-when, did not exist before, does not exist now, and will not exist in future. It is an attempt to eradicate eternity. Time was made in the separation in an attempt to DENY eternity. And everything that changes, grows, withers, dies, is born, transforms, modifies, interferes, attacks, can be hurt or damaged, etc... is entirely goverened by and DEPENDENT upon time.

"It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time. "

"It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die"

Therefore space-time is an attack on God, it is in TOTAL OPPOSITION to God's nature, it is ENTIRELY UNLIKE reality, and NOTHING like heaven. And everything which has arisen WITHIN the confines of spacetime, is similarly TOTALLY OPPOSITE to reality. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way." And everything within spacetime COMPLETELY depends on space and time "existing" in order to "exist."

Without space you CANNOT HAVE OBJECTS. Of any kind. Planets, bodies, cake, houses, cars, galaxies, all depend on spatial separation of particles. They all REQUIRE an ongoing assertion that God is dead. "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son." If space or time were to END, which they MUST because they are not permanent in any way, ALL THINGS which are based on space and time must end as well. They CANNOT REMAIN.

You cannot have a three dimensional physical object without the atoms being held apart by space, and time governing their constant chemical and physical interactions. There is no motion without time. There is no growth without time. There is no birth and death of bodies without time. There are no planets without space. There is no world of spacetime without space or time. And both space and time are entirely illusions of an attempt to deny the reality of God.

It is a mistake to think that there is a way to KEEP the physical world while being IN reality, or that the world IS heaven, or that three dimensionality can remain WITHOUT spacetime. Sorry but this is impossible. This is why the world will eventually end and all the stars will disappear in light and all the galaxies will vanish. They MUST go if spacetime goes. You cannot have any of it without the belief in separation.

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

"Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love."

"Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary."

"Like all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability is temporary."

"Acts were not necessary before the Separation, because the time-space belief did not exist."

"The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete."

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

"The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked."

"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."

"And those who serve the lord of death have come to worship in a separated world"

"And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible."

"And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant."

"For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

"Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love."

When the mind clearly recognizes that CAUSE is in the mind, and Cause is God, and that the mind extends God's will, God's Power can extend forth to enact miracles.

This means, that God has FULL power over illusions. Or in other words, God is not a victim of illusions and God does not pay any attention to what illusions say can or cannot occur.

Let's talk about it in terms of authority. God is the One Authority. When we are fully aware of and aligned with God, we too inherit Authority. We are now representatives of God, or you could say, a "Teacher of God" or "Advanced Teacher of God".

With authority, you have commanding authority over all illusions, all ego, and all deception. This includes all sickness, and death. If you say that something will happen, it MUST happen. If you command that something be healed, it MUST heal. It must fall into line with your authority.

Now, in this authority there is no sense of paying attention whatsoever to ANYTHING that illusions appear to say. It is as if being blind to illusions (overlooking them completely, which is true forgiveness), not listening to ego, giving absolutely no credit to any grounds for fear, and not even really paying attention to even what the eyes and ears are telling you is happening in the illusion.

None of the things of the illusion, world, body, sickness etc, none of them are important because none of them have CAUSAL POWER over God and His Son (you). The world is NOTHING but an effect. It MUST fall into line and be/do what YOU command it does. This is why there is "no order of difficulty in miracles". The authority you have as a representative of God/Christ, does not listen to the world of form in any way whatsoever, believes in no ego, and completely ignores appearances. Instead it simply ENFORCES GOD'S WILL (that there be healing etc). And there's nothing the ego illusion can do to stop it.

Now, when someone is a victim, what this means is there has been a great reversal of cause and effect. There is also a DIS-EMPOWERMENT. There is a listening to the ego, a paying attention to illusions, a making illusions real, a becoming afraid because of how frightening the illusion SEEMS to be, and a taking it seriously. This is all of course to do with listening to the ego, which means, listening to what the ILLUSION is telling you. What the world is telling you, what the body is telling you, what the sickness is telling you.

So for the victim, what this means is, their attention has stopped being fixated on God, and is now fixated on the world/ego/body and all of its reasons 'why' (justifications, rationalizations) something cannot be healed. All of those reasons are bullshit. They are all temptations. They are all deceptions. We are to NOT listen to them. But for the victim, in the victim's mind, they perceive causal power as outside of them, separate from them, inaccessible, and acting AGAINST them instead of for them. And as such, they perceive and believe, that form/illusions/ego has power over God. This is the reversal of cause and effect.

This is also the AUTHORITY PROBLEM, because the victim has a mistaken sense of who has authority over whom. The ego/victim having authority over God is POWERLESSNESS. Weakness. Fear. Failure. The ego's attempt to be God is its attempt to block God's authority (which some would call aligning with 'hell'). It is also an ignorance of YOUR real authority, which is extended to you by God. A victim is not AWARE of their authority, and that's why they experience themselves as being weak and vulnerable and victimized, and at the same time believe they have a false authority over God.

So, the entire point of waking up, as it were, is the transition from victimhood, where you are allowing the world to dictate "what is" (i.e. to dictate to God a resistance against God, the authority problem, which tries to assert that God has no authority here), to a state where you are ABSOLUTE CAUSE, recognizing the world is ONLY an effect, and therefore it is absolutely under your power and MUST absolutely comply with any change you choose to make to it. And yes, when you are in this mind of cause (Holy Spirit onwards), you CAN change the world/dream/illusion because you have total authority over its deceptions. You recognize the world is a LIE, and therefore it has no power over YOU.

When the Son of God commands with authority and firm conviction and lack of fear and with strong belief (all of which are required!), that the illusion MUST do something, the illusion WILL comply. But it won't comply if you do not have this unshakeable certainty. It won't comply if you are in doubt. It won't comply if you are listening to the ego and fearing that there is a level of difficulty here beyond what can be changed. It won't comply when you listen to your own uncertainties or when you start to 'change your tune', trying out different words and so on. This means you've allowed the illusion to start to encroach on your authority/territory and invade your mind and you're starting to listen to what it's saying and are taking it seriously. This is dis-empowerment. Victimhood.

Your word is your 'wand', and you need to speak to the illusion and command it to heal and so on. You need to exercise your authority over it. Reversing cause and effect back to their proper orientation (which is a correction of level confusion also), doesn't just mean, oh, now you realize cause is 'in' your mind and you're not at the effect of the world. It LITERALLY means, there is now ONLY cause in your mind, and the world is ONLY effect, and IT MUST OBEY. It doesn't just mean the world still has some kind of fixed nature or objectivity, and that your subjective perception is now unaffected yet still 'passive'. It means you are now in command, in charge, you have dominion over it, and you tell it what the fuck to do.

That is how it is possible to enforce God's will, to enact healing, to raise the dead, etc. People being dead bodies is an EGO ILLUSION, a part of the dream world that attempts to put on a really big 'show' about how this is more powerful or important than God. God has power OVER it, and when you are aligned with God's power, YOU have power over it, to literally reverse death. It means not believing a single shred of the ego illusions, appearances, any state of form, any reason 'why' something cannot be changed, or anything else that comes 'from' the illusion/form/ego/body. If you are listening to form, you are listening to the ego. If you are tempted by the severity of form's condition, you are listening to the ego.

This is why we must become single minded, one minded. Absolute certainty. We must have firm 'belief' i.e. conviction that it is TRUE, that healing can, must, and will occur... even in the sense that it HAS occurred and therefore the ego MUST represent this healing, e.g. by the body image 'demonstrating' that there has been no attack. Jesus instructs us many times to demonstrate our brother has had NO EFFECT ON US, which means anything outside of you has NO POWER to do anything to you whatsoever, YOU hold all the causal power, you are NOT at the effect of ANYTHING in the dream (and therefore must be 100% responsible and 100% free of victimhood). We are to demonstrate that the Son of God - you - are NOT at the effect of the dream, the world, sickness, death, the ego's forces, agents of hell, deceptions or lies.

This isn't just about getting our mind straightened out and getting things into their proper order. Once cause and effect are CORRECTED, all the powerlessness that you thought you had will be replaced with POWER. All of the fear that you had will be replaced with CERTAINTY. All of the victimhood you had will be placed with CONVICTION. And you will become CLEAR that everything in form, everything of 'level 1' of the dream, is UNDER YOUR COMMAND. This isn't passive. This means you are an agent of God, you extend God's power (because you stop resisting or blocking it), and your alignment with love produces CONSTANT NATURAL MIRACLES. Where do miracles occur? THEY CORRECT THE ILLUSION (world/body/dream), NOT just the inside of your private inner world.

Miracles are "miracles" because they are 'supernatural' acts which come from a place of inner causality, BEYOND the world, via a clear alignment to and experience of the 'metaphysics' of the truth, and which therefore ABOLISH all of the ego's laws and have absolute power over everything in this world. This means it can defy all sickness and death, it can defy the laws of physics (e.g. Jesus walking on water), it can defy all forms of lack (feeding the 5000), it can defy all disease (healing the blind, raising the dead etc), because we have POWER OVER ALL OF IT.

This is not a drill. This is for real folks. And it's going to be up to you, once you access that authority and power and certainty and clarity, experientially, to decide when and where you might 'exercise' your miracle-mindedness. Maybe you will perform no such miracles. Maybe you will perform many. But they will be natural and effortless and unlimited. Just look at Jesus as an example. He performed even more miracles than are mentioned in the bible. He performed miracles DAILY! And as Jesus tells us in the urtext, "each morning ask me what miracles you would have me perform today, and help me to perform them." Every day folks!

It's a Course in MIRACLES because it's a Course that will lead you to God and will set you free and miracles are your RIGHT!

Amen.

In God's Kingdom, each individual being is also all of the other beings. There is a shared oneness. Everyone is everyone.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds. Such is the truth." "The Sonship is your soul."

Each brother or Son of God actually IS the other brothers, while still being multiple brothers. It is correct to then say, you are the whole sonship. And also, that other person you know, they are also the whole sonship. And everyone in the world, is the whole sonship. And each one of them individually, is each other, as the whole sonship. This is the natural arrangement of the family of God, where every child of God is one with all other children of God.

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

In the physical world however, bodies were constructed as separation devices. Their purpose was to SPLIT OFF each child of God and prevent them from being one with each other. The body then acts like a prison cell with walls, keeping the whole rest of the sonship out, and locking you inside in isolation. This denies that you share ANYTHING with anyone, and asserts that there is NO oneness.

To enter into the bodily state, you enter into the ego thought system of sin and death. And the body is an expression of the idea of sin and death. "The body is clearly a device for separation"

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

Once you're in a body, or have identified with a body, or see yourself as less than the whole sonship in any way, you confine yourself to a little tiny speck in space and time, wrapped and trapped in a body, kept apart from everyone else.

This makes you feel alone, and also as though you are the only person inhabiting your body. And everyone else's bodies are only their own bodies, and no-one shares bodies. And indeed there are vast distances between bodies, to ensure they never meet. And even when the two bodies meet, the two people are still alone and separate and do not really touch each other, inside-to-inside.

Such was the physical world made and arranged, so that bodies would act as separation devices to keep everyone apart. To exclude and isolate and make everyone seem different and unequal. The body was designed to always be different, unfamiliar, unalike, and unrecognizable. Such that they turn all brothers into seeming strangers.

Essentially bodies are expressions of the idea of having NO RELATIONSHIPS with others, no connection, no sharing, and no communication. You can't be related to something you're different from.

"Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply BEING."

"You cannot enter into REAL relationship with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY."

"If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and MAKING them unreal."

You see a body that you don't remember and you think you never met them before, even though all brothers are part of God's original family. And then it seems like you have to "get to know" people, as if you are starting out with no knowledge of them and have no clue who they are. You ask their name and where they are from and what they do, only because you've been estranged from them for so long you don't even know anything about them.

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU."

This is incredibly unnatural. This is the opposite of the nature of the sonship and the reality of heaven. Everyone's unity, everyone's shared nature, everyone's oneness, the fact the each son of God is all sons of God and the one son of God is hidden completely by bodies. Bodies pull the sonship apart and confine them in containment and limitation, isolate them away from each other and don't allow them to share anything.

This was the original intended purpose of the body, to produce slavery to the ego, to worship and exalt the very prison that keeps you bound, and to anchor you in spacetime so that you'll die along with it.

"What could the purpose of the body Be BUT specialness? And it is this that makes it frail and helpless in its own defense. It was CONCEIVED to make YOU frail and helpless. The goal of separation is its curse."

If you look at society in general you'll see that this is a prevalent experience. Everywhere you look there are expressions of individuality in the sense that, each person is their body, and is not another body. The law of the land looks to what one body does to another. You are held responsible for your body's actions, but not those of others. And everyone thinks in terms of "only me".

My house, my car, my food, my television shows, my toys, my bed, my kitchen, my toilet, my day, my life, my separate isolated experience, my unique loneliness, my exclusive specialness, my self-interests, my my me me my my me me. This is the selfishness of the ego thought system, physicalized as bodies. Bodies designed to prevent the sons of God from recognizing or sharing with each other.

We can, however, re-purpose the prisons that the we made in the separation, and use them to help us to transcend the prisons. We can use the body to increase communication, and that doesn't mean to increase talking it means to extend the mind beyond the body's limits and beyond limits of "a solitary identity", beyond exclusion and specialness, to a much broader inclusiveness of everyone.

We can use the body for a higher purpose, but note that the body IS STILL a prison no matter how you use it. It will always be a limit on love. It will always confine and separate and have limited senses. It cannot ever see reality through its eyes and it will not ever enter heaven. So we should be careful to think the body can turn into a physicalization of the freedom of spirit, or that it can be truly holy. But it can serve a holier purpose, within the limits of what it is capable of.

To transcend the body is the body's higher purpose. To use the body to learn that you are not a body. To use the body to render the body unnecessary. To use the very device of separation against itself, so that we move past the body's limits. In this view the body actually is recognized as having NO FUNCTION.

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship."

In effect, the body and its limits needs to get out of the way. In fact a holy relationship should be a way of actually relating BEYOND the body, transcending its limits, mind-to-mind, soul-to-soul, and physicality shouldn't even enter into and need not even be a part of the relationship. The mind needs to learn to extend through the body to join with other minds, beyond their bodies. So that we can recognize again our shared oneness. This is why "miracles unite you with your brother."

"Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. 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."

Our challenge then is to learn how to ignore the body's imposed limits, transcend its boundaries through transcendental vision, move the mind through and beyond it to join with other minds, overlook all physical objects of spacetime which were designed to keep everyone separate, and rejoin the sonship. Not just to return to being a member of the collective mind, but to learn to recognize YOU ARE EVERYONE, and NOT just this one little tiny body self.

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself. Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation."

"Yet what makes them God's teachers is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body. As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages which are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source."

"Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION. THIS VISION is invisible to the physical eye. The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation (the only re-purposing of it after it was made)."

"For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made"

"You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light."

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

In the separation, we tried to invent a world which was completely opposite to God's Kingdom. This resulted in false perception, and also the reversal of cause and effect.

The son, who is an effect of God, who is our cause, tried to be the cause of God, to create effects in Him. This was a kind of role reversal, and is the idea of original sin or the authority problem.

In this effort to oppose God, we dreamed of a world opposite to God. Given that God is truth, this world had to be false. And in opposing knowledge we invented perception. So simultaneously in the making of the world we entered directly into false perception. This world was made to also be completely opposite to God's world.

"The world is false perception."

"Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

So all this was happening at once in the separation:

* The complete opposition to the truth producing a false world* The opposition to knowledge producing false perception* Cause and effect are reversed, making the effect (dream) seem causal

We entered a state of unconsciousness, in which we dreamed of a false world, which was opposite to Heaven, AND in which cause and effect were reversed.This reversal of causality or "backwards perception", is what made you necessarily believe that the false world you made is NOT an effect of you dreaming, but instead is a CAUSE. ie that the world seem so have a LIFE of its own, or an alien will. And it also made you believe that you are NOT the dreamer or cause of the world, but rather the EFFECT of it. So you instantly went into a victim role, which is played out in physical matter and the "laws of physics."

Forgiveness, salvation, atonement, true perception etc, is what you arrive at when you REVERSE all this. It requires that you recognize the world is false, not true. It requires that you recognize the dream is coming FROM you not TO you. It requires the re-reversal of cause and effect (which is also level confusion), so that you recognize you are the NOT AFFECTED by the world in ANY WAY. You see yourself as cause, not effect ("This is a course in cause, not effect"). And you thus position your vantage point as a reflection of heaven.

If you look at how life typically is on the level of form, you can see all the ways that we made ourselves AT THE EFFECT of the very dream that we dreamed. This includes all victimhood roles, all reactions, all ego emotions, all of the senses of the body, and every way that the world seems capable of doing something to you.

It means vulnerability, the need for defenses, perceiving oneself as unfairly treated, fear of threats and dangers, grief and loss relating to parts of the dream which you value and lose, and all manner of suffering. It also includes any and all kinds of sickness and death, because death is nothing more than the firm belief that the WORLD is entirely the CAUSE of you and you are COMPLETELY AFFECTED by it with no will or power to do anything to stop it.

Every ego emotion, is a reaction, an EFFECT, produced by your mind, in response to your mind's parallel belief that THE WORLD is the cause of you. By believing the world is real and true, you give it power over you. And then you experience effects. So some person get's killed, you feel anger and sad and lost. Someone attacks you and you feel threatened. Some war breaks out and you fear for your life. Some plague spreads around the world and you worry about your continuation. Someone seems able to hurt you and you become angry at them.

The list of victim roles and the seeming reactions that it produces is endless. All of them are ways by which you believe you are CAUSED BY the world. That the world oppresses you, hurts you, changes you, defines you, dreams you, makes you what you are, decides your fate, ends your life against your will, destroys you, does things that "you like", gives you things "you want", and generally acts as the CAUSE OF everything you are. All of that is false perception and backwards causality.

So that means that all ego emotions are fake. Some people would say its "natural" or "healthy psychology" that you would feel loss or grief when someone dies. Or that it's normal to feel sad when something doesn't work out. Or that it's sane and rational to be angry because of what someone did to you. Or that you should feel happy because of the gifts someone gave you. Or that anyone would feel depressed if they had to go through what you went through. But ALL of that is complete bullshit. It is all part of believing that you are AT THE EFFECT of a dream which, in and of itself, has NO POWER to do anything.

This carries over to the body senses. "To sense is not to know". The body's senses are ways of BEING SUSCEPTIBLE or "sensitive to" the dream. They can only operate by BEING AFFECTED by the environment. You touch something and it relays a message to you, changing you, affecting you. You smell a bad smell and recoil. You see ugly sights and are driven to anger. You hear the sounds of hell and it frightens you. The physical senses were all designed to make the world seem real, to PROVE that you are AFFECTED BY the world, to sense what is there, and to lock in false perceptions. Even pleasure, which is interpreted as "being affected positively", is a form of victimhood and powerlessness.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

Every physical sense is a form of vulnerability, susceptibility, effects, victimhood, the ability to be caused by something outside of you, and a way for you to "get" from the world. And the body was designed this way so that it would permanently be locked into a victim role and a false way of perceiving.

"These eyes made not to see will never see.""The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen.""Everything the body sees is a form of conflict.""The body sees only the forms of error.""Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

The body essentially was built on the idea of sin ("the body is the idea of sin made flesh") and on the reversal of causality. It was meant to be at the EFFECT OF the dream. It testifies to the ways in which the dream CAUSES you. And so the body is a lie.

Your function of forgiveness operates in an opposite direction to the seeming nature of the body, its senses, and to ALL beliefs and perceptions that the world can ever do anything to you.

In truth, you are immortal and you cannot die. You cannot be affected. You cannot be hurt or changed or made to suffer. Nothing can happen against your will. The dream has no power to oppress you or make you ill or sad or weak or frail. Nothing in the world can force you to be sick, or make you dead. Nothing can happen without you choosing it to. You cannot die without electing to. You cannot facilitate sickness without backwards perceptions. And literally you are beyond the reach of every illusion.

To recognize this is to completely reverse cause and effect in the dream, which means completely opposing and breaking all the laws of spacetime. All the laws of physics are completely backwards because they are designed to make the dream function AS IF the world is the CAUSE OF events. As if the world is first-hand reality. But the world is an EFFECT.

"Perception is a RESULT, not a cause." "The world IS perception."It is by COMPLETELY recognizing that the world CAUSES NOTHING and cannot do ANYTHING to you, that you return to a state of invulnerability, producing in the interim the INCORRUPTIBILITY OF THE BODY, in which the body becomes a symbol of eternal life and is devoid of all signs and symptoms of "being affected by the world." This includes the healing and prevention of any attack by anyone or anything. A demonstration of immortality and power over death.

Resurrection, which is the "surmounting of death", is the state of being THE CAUSE, and not the effect of the world. It is awareness of dreaming. And as the Course says, "For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming." This is the secret of salvation. The fact that the world IS NEVER the cause of ANYTHING. And the fact that YOU are the cause of everything, because YOU are the one dreaming it. And if someone seems to play a role in your dream of victimizing, or of being a victim, the truth is that NOTHING can affect you unless you make it do so.

Once you recognize that you are CAUSING the dream, and that the world CANNOT produce effects in you, ALL the ego emotional reactions must cease forever. You can no longer have reason to justify anger, to be sad or upset, to be unhappy, to have loss or grief, or even to be happy as a "result of" what the world "does to you". Not even through special relationships or idols you worship or valued objects or career success or any kind of INPUT coming from the world to CAUSE you to feel a certain way.

The only TRUE feelings are those which come OUT of you CAUSALLY, and extend through you. This includes love and joy and peace and happiness. You GIVE these through causation and sharing. They come out of you and extend. They are not the RESULT or EFFECT of anything in the world. The world cannot give you happiness OR unhappiness. They are not there because of what someone does for you or what you GET from the world. Positive or negative. Victim or reward.

"It takes great learning to both recognize and accept that the world has nothing to give.""This world holds nothing that I want""Teachers of God are willing to give up all the pleasures of the world."

This is why we have to learn that we are ONLY extenders of God's spirit, we are only GIVERS of life and love and happiness and joy, and we are CAUSAL. We are co-creators with God. We are not to need, require, depend on, want, desire, be attached to, or react to, ANYTHING in the world. ANYTHING AT ALL! Why would you need to when a) you are immortal and have everything and b) have inherited everything you need from God and c) can only be happy and at peace when you GIVE what you want to receive?

You cannot GET happiness from the world. You cannot GET freedom from the world. The world cannot give you life or immortality or invulnerability or protection or safety or love or peace or joy. It has no ABILITY to give, because the world has absolutely ZERO causality. It is NOT a cause. The world is ONLY an effect. It is your dream, that you are putting there."It is not a cause, but an EFFECT."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

This is the essence of A Course in Miracles. BE THE CAUSE. BE THE POWER. Do not give power to a dream which is nothing but an effect of you. Do not believe in being affected BY anything or anyone in the world. God is the only cause of you and your brothers. Your brothers are NEVER the cause of each other, and you have never caused or been caused by them. Nothing real can be changed or threatened or made different by the world and its contents.

You are to reach a point of resurrection in which you CANNOT BE AFFECTED by the world. Where even the body CANNOT be sick OR die. Where your mind is so certain of its strength and power that there is NOTHING your holiness cannot DO (cause). Where you are so fully EXPRESSING love that you are miraculous all the time. Where you extend and inherit the power and love of God every second of every day. Where so much light and joy is flooding OUT of you through giving and thus receiving, that nothing from the OUTSIDE is able to come IN to you. Making you completely safe and invulnerable.

You are to cease believing that anything or anyone in the ENTIRE world, in the whole universe of spacetime, EVER has a power or causation over you, making you change, making you suffer, making you die, making you happy OR unhappy. You are to be BEYOND this dream and beyond this world. You are PRIOR to the dream. You are beyond sickness and death. You are immortal spirit and NOTHING can change that. All it requires is your total acceptance of this truth, the reclaiming of your immortal rights, and your willingness to express and know your true self. It is nothing short of reclaiming eternal life.

Quite often there are discussions in ACIM circles about whether this world is real or not. Whether the planet earth really exists, or is an illusion. Whether perception overlays on top of it or is just a misinterpretation of its objective reality. Whether the world is the forgiven world or the real world. Whether God created the physical or whether it's really not physical, and whether it will continue to exist after all atonement is done.

There seems to be just so much fundamental uncertainty among people as to whether this "thing" of a "planet" we call earth is actually part of God's creation, and whether it's going to live forever in some way.

For me I often come back to some very simple statements which I find practically impossible to deny. Such as that "God did not create the body". But you'll also get some people questioning what references to "the body" are, and going off on tangents about the body being real or "the body" referring to an interpretation in the mind, or some kind of perceptual psychological body, or whatever else.

Despite the fact ACIM refers to various aspects of the body that are very obvious such as the physical features, limbs, body parts, and their typical physical interactions with the environment. I think one think we can say is true, we've done a darn good job of just twisting and mangling the course's statements as a result of our confusion and uncertainty to the point where, sometimes, it's barely recognizable what it's even saying.

For me I take a fairly honest direct approach to what I'm reading. I think Jesus is super advanced in his mastery and knows exactly what he's saying. I think he is very careful about his word choices and their meanings and I also don't think he's ever expecting us to do major mental gymnastics in trying to understand what he's saying. "Like the Text for which this Workbook was written, the ideas which are used for these exercises are very simple, very clear, and totally unambiguous."

"You have begun to realize that this is a very practical course, because it means EXACTLY what it says."

That means that when he refers to such things as "the body" he's just very simply talking about the physical human body. And when he talks about "earth" he's referring to the physical planet earth. The earth which EVERYONE recognizes as a name for this physical planet. I don't see ANY reason to question that or to suspect that there's some kind of super-subtle esoteric "only for experts" meaning to those terms, where you have to study it for 50 years to finally grasp the nuance of that word is attached to.

A body is a body is a body. Earth is the planet earth. It's simple enough. And I think Jesus would've been a pretty terrible teacher if he were using such obvious terms in some kind of alternative, bizarrely indirect, nebulous way that only very few can ever grasp. It's a bit of slap in his face, to me, when people suggest that Jesus has somehow not been obvious or literal, or plain enough in his language, intending for most people to grasp it as easily as possible.

In light of that, for me personally, I come away from ACIM with a very strong impression that all things physical are fundamentally an illusion, the human physical body is an illusion - as in "the body is a dream" and "God did not create the body" etc, and that planet earth - the spatially separated spherical ball of rock and vegetation and creatures - is all totally an illusion. Not even that it's some counterpart to a higher more spiritual "version" of the planet or that it's some kind of stepped down denser version of some actual planet in heaven. But simply that it is NOTHING LIKE heaven in any way and is an artifact of separation and attack.

When you further look at other references in the course to very obvious well-known physical things, and look at what Jesus is saying about them, it becomes very clear that he really is referring to the physical world. Such as when he talks about children being born in pain, growth attended by suffering, being trapped in the human brain, growing old and dying, being buried in the ground, these are all such obvious references to the physical that anyone with half an ounce of sense has to recognize that's what he's talking about when he's referring to "the body". And in those references it is clear that he's saying "such things" are not like God or of God or anything to do with God. That God would be cruel to have created them.

But for some who knows what reason, some people who think of themselves as advanced experts on the course, seem to still persist in the belief that somehow Earth is heaven and human bodies are God's wonderful creations and all the little cute animals are part of the Kingdom and all we have to do is change how we look at it in order to recognize this. As if to say that true perception of this world is practically the same thing as what you would be aware of when you have KNOWLEDGE of this world. As if they're practically identical.

I see a lot in the course talking about forgiving this world, reflecting in this world, using this world for a purpose of eventually leaving it, and that this world will not last. I even see stuff about seeing it in such a heaven-like way that it seems to be almost part of heaven itself. But I still cannot get past the fact of how this world requires separation in order to show up at all. It is STILL an illusion of a world, like a shadow. It's an absence of a creation. The body is a residue of an idea of not being joined, and a wall that comes between things. I cannot see that a wall of separation can ever be thought of as truly part of heaven, or like God. God does not create limitations.

So for me, at some point earth is going to end. It's going to be forgiven and not condemned and light is going to be seen in it and then it's going to be shone away. It is not going to be able to withstand the light of God once we stop defending it from him. Such as in "eternity will shine away the world." And "the stars will disappear in light". And "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came." That's the extra step that some people don't seem to like the idea of, that even in its forgiven state this world is going to end. "The world will end in laughter because it is a place of sorrow." I don't think people realize that this still means the world WILL end, because it has a beginning.

Fundamentally it boils down to the fact that you cannot have "separated things", or space, or time, without separation ideas. These are ideas of a lack of love, an idea of sin. A gap or splitting off. These gaps and splits cannot exist when there is total healing. Healing would eradicate the gaps. And that means space will end and so will time. And that also means that now you cannot have physical matter with separate objects and distances and private locations and things being in one place and not another. The whole foundation for a three dimensional planet goes out the window. The body itself can no longer exist WITHOUT separation, it utterly depends on it.

There is also a fundamental fact that you can only forgive something that's an illusion. Some people seem to think if you forgive the world you are taking illusions away from it and seeing it as real. But that isn't forgiving the world, it's forgiving the illusions about the world. The forgiven WORLD, if it is earth, and if we are trying to forgive the earth, is only possible if the earth itself is an illusion. Only illusory worlds can be forgiven, and forgiveness is undoing. This is why anything you forgive MUST DISAPPEAR, because it's not really there. You can't therefore have a forgive world AND KEEP IT. Forgiveness eradicates it.

So either earth is going to remain unforgiven and kept, or forgiven and disappeared. Which means earth is fundamentally an illusion of a world. If we have false perceptions of it we are having illusions about an illusion - two layers of illusion. If we have true perceptions of it, we're having accurate perceptions of an illusion. Just because true perception sees earth for "what it is" doesn't mean "it is real". It is just what it is. It's an illusion of a world. A world that NEEDS separation in order to show up, that RELIES on space and time, that CANNOT EXIST without them. And once they end, it has to vanish. Because without sleep, there is no dream content. And "the body is a dream", and so is the entire environment in which it finds itself.

It's very very very obvious to me that ACIM is teaching us that there is NO EARTH, as in "there is no world." That it is literally an illusion of a world and not real. It's part of a "second order reality" or a second thought system which was invented temporarily in the minds of insane people. It doesn't have real existence, it only seems to. And the only reason to "save it" is to remove sin and accusation from it for the purpose of being able to finally recognize it as NOTHING, so that it can disappear. It still boggles my mind that anyone can come away from reading what ACIM says in such plain terms and still think that the earth is somehow a permanent reality.

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

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed."

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist. The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device FOR you. Again, as always, it re-interprets what the ego uses as an argument FOR separation into an argument AGAINST it."

It may be easier to understand the differences in perception, when you consider inanimate objects. Objects which appear to just sit there and do nothing at all.

A good example is a rock. It just sits there. It has no will or mind and isn't particularly alive. At the subatomic level maybe it wiggles around but over time it generally does nothing but vegetate. It cannot move itself, it cannot articulate an attack, it cannot think, it cannot cause of its own will. It has no power and is just a lump of stuff, inert and unmoving.

If you a walking by and you stub your toe on the rock, you might yell at the rock for seeming to attack you. In pain your anger projects and you find the rock to be an enemy. This is your perception of the rock. In your mind, you are giving meaning to the rock. You now believe the rock is a sinful enemy, a guilty attacker. And as you look at it with hate you see it as real and threatening.

But the rock is just sitting there. And if you come to your senses you have to admit that really the rock didn't do anything at all. It was all you. Your own movement caused you to stub your toe. The rock just sat uninvolved and uncausing. So is it really the rock's fault? No. It's something you did to yourself.

So then you admit ok, I am only thinking the rock is an evil sinner because I am choosing to project guilt and sin onto it. I'm framing it as sinful and believing it is an attacker. That's happening in my own mind. I'm projecting stuff onto it and it's making me perceive it as hated and unwanted.

Then you have to realize that since the rock isn't really the cause of the upset, that you are the one who actually attacked the rock with your toe, it's really your own doing. And now you take back your accusation. The rock isn't a person, so there's no point yelling at it and calling it names. It can't hear your swear-words.

You shift "your perception" from false to true. You decide to believe that the rock is innocent and harmless, not an attacker or an evil sinner. You recognize the rock as incapable of hurting you against your will. You realize it has no will or mind or power to do anything on its own. So it cannot have wanted to hurt you. It must be innocent. So now you're willing to believe the rock is not sinful, or guilty, or an attacker. The inverse of which is a belief that it is innocent, loveable, beautiful even.

Your mind is able to decide what it sees in the rock, ie what meaning it projects onto it. When the mind is deciding to project from love, it sees the rock in a loving way, which makes it appear as though the rock is lovable rather than hatable. And so now you love the rock, because you are projecting love, in spite of the rock's own nature.

But the rock isn't changing. The rock isnt inherently sinful, nor is it sinless. It doesn't really have its own meaning. In a way it's kind of like a neutral mirror. You actually see yourself in it. Whatever you think is true you visualize in it. You see refleted back to you what you put there to see. So the rock is doing its own thing, and you are having varying types of beliefs about it, seemingly independent of it.

It's possible to project a mental state of hell onto the world of rocks, just as it is possible to project a mental state of heaven's reflection onto the rocks. True perception can be very close to heaven's nature. You reach within and find love and peace and joy and light and shine it outward and light up the world with it. What appeared to be a harmful rock is now a healing rock. What used to be an attacking rock is an innocent rock.

This is the translation, in your mind, of earth into heaven's reflection. A translation is an interpretative process which evaluates the meaning of something. It gives meaning to it, based on what you believe or WANT it to mean. This is in spite of any seemingly inherent properties that the thing has. Because it has none.

Earth, the world, the galaxies, space time, rocks and plants and animals, human bodies, cities and forests etc, is all essentially a neutral mirror. It's a veil of images which the mind is making and inventing. It holds pictures of forms and illusions of life and death. And yet it is a meaningless world. And so it only has the meaning that you GIVE to it. "The world is what you gave it, nothing more." "There is no world apart from what you wish." "Projection makes perception and makes the world you see."

So on the one hand, we made a world in an attack on God, which was made to be completely opposite to heaven, and which is therefore hell. Or at least, we came up with it in a state of false perception, ie misperception. In that state it appears to be hell because we see it in a hellish way. So we project hell and fragmentation and separation and attack and guilt onto it. And so it appears to be a hellish world. But this view of it (this projected world) only exists while you are having false perception (false projection).

What the course is saying is that you can change your vantage point. But the change in vantage point is huge. It's a 180-degree total opposition to false perception. It's a way of seeing totally alien to the world and to how the body functions. It flies in the face of every seeming law of physics and reality, and completely denies the apparently separated world. It's a lofty, heaven-based perception, which does not buy into anything the world appears to be.

It is in fact difficult for minds to comprehend how it's possible to see the world through loving eyes. The mind has trouble breaking through its own defenses against love. It can't sense or feel or experience what it is like to see from the vantage point of the Holy Spirit, without a whole lot of purificaiton and correction. And so most of the time, it seems impossible to love the world. Or indeed it seems as if the world is inherently sinful and wrong and bad.

The hell seen in false perception motivates a person to not want to love the world. Indeed the course says that such a world "cannot be the world God loves". Yet also that "God does love the world". He does not love the world seen in false perception, where rocks are separated and death seems real and attack seems commonplace. He does not love that world. No one can love such a thing and still behold it. No one can love death. "You cannot behold the world and know God."

But God does love the "real" world. The real world is a world seen in true perception, in which reality's love is projected onto it. And it does not show you separations of forms, or illusions of meaning. It is an accurate view of what the world IS, and the world is nothing but a flat image. It is a neutral inert meaningless lifeless powerless willless uncausal incapable valueluess veil of illusions. It has nothing of its own because it is nothing, and so at best it is symbolic. It can symbolize heaven or hell, but it cannot ever really be either.

If you look upon war you see war and you hate it. But if you see war as war, it is because you are giving war. If you give love and peace and extend and express these higher vantage points, then what you see comes from what you GIVE, not from what is THERE. You project the real world and see it as forgiven and holy because that's what you're projecting, and so it's all that you can see because you can ONLY see what you project.

You give love to the image of a world and the image reflects the love you are giving, and now you see the reflection of love in it. But this reflection also completely ignores anything the image itself possesses as its own properties. It overlooks forms, ignores shapes and sizes and distance or delay, and sees no orders of hierarchy anywhere. It doesn't distinguish individual bodies or places or times. And it sees no orders of difficulty.

If you extend love toward the world, it makes you blind to the world seen in false perception. It causes the dark twisted world to not be seen, and for this layer of interpretation to be lifted from what the world is. In a sense, the world of false perception is a world of specifics, and the world of true perception is abstract and transcendental. This doesn't necessarily mean the world stops having the form of attack. In fact it cannot ever have anything BUT forms. And it is this the body's eyes always and only see.

Even as the mind is healed and views love from love, the forms of the world remain much unchanged. The dogs still bark, the trees still lose their leaves, murderers still kill, and the graveyards are still populated. But they are translated, re-interpreted, overlooked, ignored, and do not stand out as different. All the differences are ignored, all properties of appearances are ignored, all ways that the objects could compete with one another for attention are ignored. The world becomes flattened and regarded as a singular unreal image. A veil of illusions, in which none of it is true.

As the veil is seen with love, in which its own nature is recognized as false, and yet which simultaneously acts like a mirror for your own meaning to be clearly projected, the veil is also losing its solidity. It becomes transparent before the light. And ultimately the reflection of God is seen. But to see God's reflection you cannot see bodies and spacetime, vying for attention. When "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind", God becomes ALL that you see, and you see nothing else. "A world forgiven cannot last." "Forgiveness sees it not."

And so the veil of a world lifts from sight, as all differences become ignored. And the face of Christ is revealed as heaven's reflection reaching across what still remains as a world of chaos. And all forms and differences are no longer seen. And to such an extent is the mind in the holy instant, fully present, that things of past and future such as bodies cannot be seen at all. The world is forgotten, and disappears. It is as though it has become so deflated and equalized and transcended that it does not exist at all. And all that remains is the face of Christ, which once seen leads to the immediate return to heaven. And "heaven is all that remains."

Miracles and supernatural interventions occur more readily when there is physical relaxation and a willingness to surrender and receive.

The act of not 'acting', of not transmitting, of not even giving, but simply a willingness to let go and be open and RECEIVE, invites and allows Holy Spirit to access and help you.

I have now over the past few months received healing from the Holy Spirit on an almost daily basis. And I don't just mean he fixes some perceptual issues. I'm talking, supernatural power! Sometimes it will occur spontaneously even if I am in public, or anywhere that I need it, but Holy Spirit can be discreet and is able to tone-down the visual signs of this happening (which usually entails much shaking of body parts), lol.

Most readily I am open to this happening when laying in bed either towards sleeping or in the morning. Typically Holy Spirit begins by simply saying either "relax" or "surrender". This could be in the middle of some rant or some other conversation and is often unexpected and I don't always clue-in at first that this means He is going to do something, but then it begins.

Even if I am laying there relaxing, sometimes He knows that I am not necessarily letting go of a situation in order to let Him help, and so he will say "surrender". This signals me that I need to actively surrender.

To do this, I will repeat in words, "I surrender", several times. At first I seem to say this slowly and with gaps between, because I am not yet very willing to let go. But I notice that the healing really starts to flow when I say it quickly and in quick succession, so that there is no time in-between for my ego to get in there and keep holding on. "I surrender, I surrender, I surrender." After saying this several times, Holy Spirit will likely spontaneously activate and begin healing.

By surrendering, what I mean is, having a willingness to let go and give up and stop fighting. It's actually a 'feeling' I get of like, how you'd feel if you'd tried everything and failed and just threw up your arms and admitted defeat. It's an openness, a giving in, and an admitting. Admitting the truth literally means "allowing the truth to come in". This is why surrender is apparently a VITAL part of the miracle process, because it means you're willing to put aside doing this yourself, and admit that you cannot, and stop trying to be God.

Then God comes.

Sometimes I've heard Holy Spirit say, "come", and I'm not sure if this means for me to come to Him, but I've also had Him basically put words in my mouth as to what He wants me to say to Him to get things flowing, which is cool. So I will say, "come Holy Spirit", "come into me". This is an invitation. Also sometimes I will ask Him to join with me or to help me to join with Him.

In my willingness to surrender, there is much activity which I'll describe in a moment. But I've also found that in addition to surrendering and allowing Him to operate on me, if I am also actively doing some kind of forgiveness during this time, like, really getting down to the truth that stuff isn't real and it hasn't happened and I'm not a victim and so on, this will also activate additional 'phases' of healing. So just when I think it's kind of done, there'll be another whole wave of it.

What almost always happens, I'm finding, is there are about 4 or so different expressions of Holy Spirit healing me. The first one is that my head literally starts to shake from side to side "violently", i.e. very very rapidly, like a vibration, and the speed of this can be so fast that it's like just a really intense vibrating, and I have to trust that this is safe (lol), which it is. This seems to dislodge... I don't know what, from my head area. This can last anywhere from a few seconds to up to 20 seconds or more. Then there will often be a short pause, and then it kicks into phase 2.

In phase 2, all of a sudden whatever energy or whatever was drained from my head area flows down into the belly area. I suddenly start to experience muscle contractions in that area, which can be quite intense. The muscles become so contracting that it forces me to hunch over or partly sit up, and in the really strong cases there is such vibrational tension in the 'floor' of the abdominal area, that it feels like an earthquake vibrating very deeply. This will go on for possibly 15-30 seconds depending. As the energy or whatever clears, and He gets done, I relax back down, and I immediately notice that ... just something has changed in my experience.

Often I immediately notice that I feel expanded, calm, peaceful and relaxed, and soft. It feels really good. It's as though something happened on the inside of me and my whole awareness is different. Sometimes after several rounds of this, per my willingness to invite more and do more healing, I have felt really really peaceful. It also energizes me somewhat but can also make me a little ungrounded for a while.

A third way it manifests is that sometimes the energy or whatever goes out through my arms which will shake, sometimes quite aggressively. Sometimes this is followed by a series of belly contractions as well. A fourth way, which actually I think was the first way that I started to experience this, was that gradually some kind of presence would begin to fill me up from my feet upwards, causing the muscles to all become tensed all the way up my legs to my stomache, and then there would be much shaking and 'draining' where emotions and other energy from the upper torso would just seem to drain out of me quickly.

I have absolutely no idea really what Holy Spirit is doing. No idea. I don't know why His presence causes the body to shake. I have no clue why His healing focuses around the head and later around the belly, other than that these are the two main area of nervous systems and the "two brains".

Similarly, if I ask Jesus to come into my belly area when I am having intense feelings, He will do almost the same thing, resulting in a complete undoing of that feeling, its cause, and a state of happiness and laughter at the end.

Also I forgot there is also another way that this manifests, and it's to do with if I am focussing my attention on another person. If I am doing a forgiveness about someone and I am asking Holy Spirit to heal some part of them, I will start to experiencing shaking and vibrations in that area of MY body, sometimes quite intensely, and sometimes it's so unusual in its focus on that body part that there is just no way I could even conceive of making that body part move that way. Like it could be a healing in the lower back or something and it's shaking all over the place but if I were to think, how could I make the back muscles shake in just that one area like that, it's just totally impossible.

I have been learning to trust that when I do this for some other person, it is helping them, but this is an area of doubt for me, which I am still working on. I have, however, noticed that after some rounds of healing for someone else in this way, they do appear to exhibit signs of SOMETHING having changed in their experience, afterwards, through at least some kind of shift in mood or renewed clarity of awareness or even some physical side effects. This is especially an area that challenges me to trust because I am not the recipient of the benefits and I cannot tell from my own sensations whether it is helping or not.

This has all has come about through SURRENDER. Also through trust. Just opening up to Holy Spirit and inviting Him to come into me and to do whatever he wants to do... that alone is a big trust step at first, because you don't know what might happen. I did that numerous times with 'milder' healings taking place before it ever progressed to the intense shaking. Another way to approach this if you prefer, is to just address God, "God, I receive your healing love".... do that a few times and tell me you don't feel some sense of love come around and into you. This also can be sufficient to signal to Holy Spirit to allow healing love to flow into you, as much as you are willing to receive it. Receiving love from God takes seemingly a bit more willingness than letting Holy Spirit run riot, maybe it's a trust thing.

These are all acts of RECEIVING, and they entail that I relax. If in the middle of the healing I start to tighten up and resist, He reminds me to relax, because it does seem to interfere to some degree, whereby the shaking etc may stop or lessen if I start fighting it. I have had to learn to TRUST it and not be afraid of it and to just let Him do whatever. It is often quite funny when my head is shaking all over the place and my cheeks and mouth are flapping around and I'm actually relaxed, it's sort of fun!

I look forward in particular now to doing a pretty strong session of this for myself on the weekends, either toward sleep or upon waking, but really Holy Spirit I'm finding out doesn't care about schedules and sometimes will start doing the shakes even before I really seem to be ready. It's gotten to where even a slight 'hint' to Him to do it can kick it in, at any time. I believe the same is true of miracle performed for others - which is where this is leading, whereby we are to just spontaneously funnel the power of God without even thinking about it.

I was watching some videos today of a pastor who performs many many many miracles and has risen the dead etc, and one of his teachings is that you need to get the RECIPIENT of healing to surrender and relax a lot, in order to RECEIVE the full transformation and healing. This seems to be key. If the person is interfering and trying to pray and do stuff at the same time, that's actually a block. Receiving and transmitting are two different functions, and the person receiving the healing needs to be ideally in a RECEIVING mindset.

So relax! Surrender a lot. Be willing. Have courage and trust and invite Holy Spirit to come into you. He is willing and ready, He's just waiting on YOU to be RECEPTIVE. This is how you can receive your own healing miracles effortlessly. I think this is actually EASIER than sharing miracles with other people, which is a whole different dynamic. But I think,... Holy Spirit may be about to reveal a new way of looking at that, based on surrender.

Let us know how you get on! Happy shaking. And remember, "He will correct the consequences of my wrong decisions if I will let Him, and I choose to LET HIM"!!

Many people teach about the course in such a way, that it all seems to be about going up towards God.

This seems to make sense in many ways. We're told to take illusions to the truth and not the other way around.

We're told the world doesn't exist and that it's not our home. That we have added all these blocks on top of our love and need to remove them.

It all seems to focus on an undoing process. The whole "impression" you get of the course then it that it's ENTIRELY about this undoing and removing ego and going within and stepping back from the world.

But what is not taught enough, is the whole PURPOSE of doing this process.

The purpose of the course isn't simply to remove and undo. The purpose of the removing and undoing is so that LOVE CAN SHINE. The undoing itself is just clearing the way for EXPRESSION.

Everything about love shining is NOT in an upwards direction, nor is it in an inwards direction, nor is it to do with taking yourself away from the world, nor is it to do with simply reaching a "state" where you are sort of sitting on the fence just observing everything and waving.

What ACTUALLY happens is that as you remove these blocks to love, as you shift your perception seemingly "toward" God more, LOVE EXTENDS THROUGH YOU MORE.

Far too much emphasis has been placed on the process of the removal of blocks, to such an extent, all this focus on forgiving and purifying and undoing ego etc, that we can actually miss the POINT of all this. Which is that we're doing this SO THAT the love, which has been blocked, can FLOW FREELY.

Love flows OUTWARD. It is shared. It is given. It heals OTHERS. It produces MIRACLES.

Projection, as defined mainly in the course, is an act of denying the presence of love, which creates a sense of emptiness/lack/sin, which results in displacing that sin externally. So then people think that this was the only function of the mind. It's not.

The mind can either CREATE, OR project. And it has free will to choose which process. Miracles come from the creative/extending function of the mind, illusions/ego comes from the projecting function. We've become so busy with fixing the false projections, that we forget that the mind in its natural function actually is creative, expressive, giving, extending, radiating, healing, unifying, miraculous.

So it seems a bit paradoxical but, as you lift away blocks in the mind which seemed to project outward, it actually uncovers LOVE and then love extends outward. As you get closer to God, you become more loving. As you have more awareness, you become more miraculous.

Many teachers and students actually have adopted this kind of idea that the only point of the course is to get your ass out of here and go home. Like, you're only supposed to do the forgiving part, the undoing part, the fixing of your mind, the stripping away of ego and all this reducing. But this leaves a HUGE gaping hole in the rest of the story. It turns the atonement into a totally selfish goal that you "accept for yourself and no-one else".

And this is because THE EGO is a ONE-DIRECTIONAL thought system where giving and receiving are separated. The Holy Spirit's thought system is BI-DIRECTIONAL, meaning that giving and receiving are EQUAL. The EGO interprets the course to mean, we are only moving in the direction of God. Holy Spirit sees it differently. In fact, you could say, the only TRUE nature of spirit is that it INCREASES OUTWARD. That's totally opposite to what the ego is trying to do with the course.

It successfully also denies major aspects of the course which is the OUTGOING of love, and everything that comes from that. Which, VERY importantly, includes the PERFORMING OF ACTUAL MIRACLES. Miracles are such an outward expression of love that all this "taking back" and "going inside" and "returning home" malarky doesn't even touch on it. You can do all this retracting and get to a point of sitting on a fence having a personal peace experience with not a single miracle coming out of you. Something is wrong with that!

There are entire audiences now following various teachers who preach this one-directional movement away from the world and towards God. It SEEMS to make sense, after all we came from God and want to go home. But it is not in our NATURE to head in the direction of God. The only reason we're heading toward God is because we left. It's in our NATURE to EXPRESS AND EXTEND God. It's entirely an outward expression of love.

There's a really interesting section in the course which I posted about recently, which goes something like this. When the mind is naturally extending fully THROUGH the body, it heals the body and flows past/overlooks/forgives the body and flows OUTWARD beyond the body, extending to others and seeing the same love in others. This produces perfect healing of oneself and others, it produces miracles, it maintains the body in perfect divine health. ie the body is a MEDIUM through which love radiates and is used as a COMMUNICATION device to TRANSMIT.

But any time that you start to make the body the focus, any time there are blocks to awareness, any time you start identifying with being the body, or you start blocking the outflowing of love, the mind starts to "stop at" the body and, in a sense, collide with it. The blockages are like acts of will against the flow of will. This causes "attack", and the body thus becomes a kind of target. It thus becomes sick and weak and suffers, and eventually dies.

THAT DEATH RIGHT THERE is actually the logical RESULT of only fixating on the INWARD direction of movement away from the world. And that is PRECISELY why there are many gurus and others who have had a measure of awakening who LATER DIE without having performed a single miracle. Leaving the world is only half of the story. And if all your focus is on leaving the world, it CAN result in death, especially if your belief system is then really focused on NOT HELPING OTHERS and not demonstrating the overcoming of the world by BEING ENTIRELY CAUSAL. We are not asked to being NEUTRAL. This is a course in CAUSE, not effect or neutrality.

It makes the self too special. It's an imbalance between giving and receiving. When the blocks are removed, love NATURALLY flows outward because of what it is, and there is all this outpouring of LIFE and POWER and MIRACLES. There is this radiance, this shining, this blessing of yourself and everyone. The body becomes healed by the sane mind as the mind flows past it, carrying love with it, and flows it out PAST self to others.

So we really need to look at this and be careful about this. When ALL that we focus on is the "undoing", which in a sense is the same thing as "the ego getting what it wants without giving", we SHUT OUT any of the GIVING, because we equate it with some kind of "doing" which we think is sinful. Jesus says in the course that the undoing aspect of the miracle IS important, but that the DOING aspect is FAR MORE important.

The only REASON there is such a huge course book here which is helping to remove blocks to awareness of love, which seems to be a major point of the course, is to REVEAL the love and to let it SHINE. Because the course can't teach the meaning of love, and focuses heavily on the removing of the blocks to awareness, this leads so many people to think that "removing blocks" is the SAME THING AS being natural, or being healed, or getting out of this world.

The ONLY PURPOSE of removing blocks is SO THAT you can fulfill your function as the light of the world and so that the love IN you can EXPRESS and HEAL and BE MIRACULOUS. To essentially, "bring heaven to earth", supernaturally, while people are still calling out for love and struggling to get home.

And that DOES MEAN "bringing" the love and power of HEAVEN to this world, because it NEEDS IT. This is why "miracles fall like drops of healing rain from heaven", causing the "signs of life" to spring up. It doesn't say "suck it all in and you won't look so fat".

Major course teachers have pushed this agenda of "get out of here and screw the rest". You are actually to become PART OF the atonement PLAN, which is a plan FAR BIGGER than just your individual atonement. You become part of the atonement ITSELF when you accept it. And accepting it is accepting and receiving miracles, which you are to then GIVE TO OTHERS. Your job is not DONE when you've accepted atonement. That's so selfish and ego. Jesus needs our help to BRING healing and truth and light and love and miracles TO the world and those in the world, to HELP THEM to return to God as well.

Love shines. Love radiates. Love is miraculous. Love extends OUTWARD. Love moves PAST yourself and past the world. Love looks PAST bodies. It doesn't recoil. Jesus talks about how there is what seems to be a "state" you reach where you are miracle-minded and miracle-ready.... but reaching the STATE is only important so that you can get into "MIRACLE-DOING". We're not supposed to look at this whole process in terms of just "withdrawing" everything from the world. That is of course a majorly important ASPECT, but it is ONLY HALF OF THE STORY, and I would even say it's not even half.

The focus on being at peace about the world and accepting personal atonement and "there is no world so no point doing miracles" and "holy spirit has nothing to do with the world" and all this intellectualized "escaping" from the world, has really basically CUT OFF all mention of, teaching of, support for, any of the EXPRESSION which we are supposed to be DOING THIS FOR. That's the whole point - to return to BEING LOVING, to expressing love, to demonstrating miracles, to giving LIFE TO OTHERS, and being truly helpful beyond our own nose.

As Jesus says, "members of my party are ACTIVE WORKERS". As Jesus says, he told the disciples (and if you are an ACIM student you ARE a disciple) to be physicians of the lord and go out and HEAL OTHERS. Jesus also says to "listen, learn, then DO". Not just listen and learn. DOOOOOOOO. DO miracles. DO healing. Help people. Shine your light.

If a person is a body, and the body dies, there is no denying the fact that the body is gone. If it is buried or cremated, it's gone. it's not coming back.

It does not matter how much forgiveness you do, how you look at it, how you frame it, how you justify it or anything. The physical fact still remains that the body is gone.

The body is absent. The body will stay absent. It is not coming back. Where is the body? It's dead forever.

So regardless then of what your state of mind or perception is, the body is NOT THERE. And this is now the PROOF that death HAS happened. This is what the Course calls "the proof of sin." ie, the physical presence or absence of something PROVES that sin occurred.

If I spill milk on the floor, the fact that there IS milk on the floor testifies that milk was spilled on the floor. This is undeniable. It doesn't matter whether you laugh or cry at it. If the milk IS STILL THERE, it proves there was a "sin" of spilling it. The sin is STILL proven so long as the PROOF remains. In course terms, if there is an "effect", THERE MUST STILL BE AN ONGOING CAUSE. And you cannot have effects without causes.

Similarly if the body is attacked and loses a limb, and now has an arm missing, the very physical fact that the arm is missing PROVES that the arm WAS LOST. This is undeniable. It doesn't matter how you forgive it or whether you love it or hate it. If the arm is not there, it PROVES there was a sin.

The presence of "the evidence" shows that something has happened. And so long as the evidence remains, the sin remains. This also leads to the conclusion that when ANYTHING happens in this world, it is a sin, and it is IRREVERSIBLE. Which is why ANYTHING that happens becomes locked in as the PROOF that sin occurred. The evidence is there permanently. And the idea that it CANNOT BE UNDONE is precisely what sin means.

"But sin, were it possible, WOULD be irreversible."

If the body is dead and gone, the fact that it is NOT HERE, acts as proof. It is utterly undeniable. And the world would say there is nothing you can do to change it. Death is locked in. Once it all goes to shit there is no turning back.

So it can't be that you just have to find a way to look at shit in the physical world differently in order to be happy. No amount of looking at it differently is going to bring the body back. Not unless you're going to go gather up all the little pieces and stick them back together at a molecular level. Or - the only exception to this - is if you perform a miracle of resurrection that UNDOES THE PROOF.

However, if the physical proof of sin is TRUE AND REAL, there is NO ESCAPE from the fact of it. It cannot be denied if it is reality. If it is the truth, there is no escape. and no hope and no peace.

It is impossible therefore for anyone to ever be at peace with someone dying if the person was their body. And now the body is gone and it's not coming back, and that slaps you in the face over and over again.

You will never be at peace if this is the truth because the absence of the body will always be there, and the loss of a "real thing" cannot be denied. If the person HAS DIED, you will FOREVER SUFFER LOSS. That means there is permanent suffering and loss with no escape. And on top of that, if the world is real, you'd be INSANE to ever even contemplate "getting over it", because for as long as you live the fact of the death is still undeniably real.

If this physical world is reality or God's creation, and if it is accorded truth, and if the truth is that a person is a body, and the body is dead, the person is dead, and there HAS to be loss because in all honesty there HAS been a loss. There is PROOF of it.

No amount of smiling at it will change the fact. Which means if this world in its physical configurations is ultimate reality, there is absolutely no hope and no escape from hell. You can look at it askew, think about it in various ways, but you cannot deny that IT HAS HAPPENED. And the physical fact of it will haunt you forever.

ONLY IF this world is unreal and untrue, and ONLY IF the evidence - as slapping you in the face as it is - is still NOT true, ONLY then is there any hope of peace. There is no escape from a world whose evidence and proof testifies constantly to supposed "facts."

ONLY IF Earth is NOT REAL, do you ever psychologically have any hope of freedom or peace of mind. Because that now means that if you can not simply have a direct experience of this world's facts and instead are seeking to experience "a different reality", you would be considered as though going into denial or escapism. Avoiding the facts. And that means forgiveness is now an act of denial and AVOIDANCE of reality.

Only if Earth is not reality is there any hope of peace ever. Because the PHYSICAL facts of what happens proves over and over again that there has been loss and death. People have been obliterated from existence. Only if this is NOT REAL, can there be any hope of happiness about this situation.

Therefore the world must be questioned and its reality brought under scrutiny. Its proof, even its physical testimony, even the presence or absence of the flesh and bones matter, has to be questioned. Even if it's glaring you in the face, it has to not mean that it is God's given truth. Even the proof of sin has to NOT MEAN that there has been a death.

But obviously if the physical testimony is that the body is destroyed and is no longer here, that still is PROOF that death has happened ... UNLESS none of it is real. Even the physical absence of the body says "death has happened." The only way for it to NOT be true, is if this ENTIRE WORLD is not true.

If peace even exists at all, there has to be another world that is more real than this one, and in comparison this world must be completely unreal. That is the ONLY WAY that anyone can ever find peace and escape from the proof of sin. The physical testimony of stuff having "happened", has to be written off as NOT TRUE.

A dead body on the ground, must be regarded as NOT TRUE. It must NOT prove that death has occurred. A sick body with malfunctioning parts has to be regarded as NOT TRUE. Otherwise if there is any truth to any of this, you SHOULD be terribly upset forever.

If mind believes a person is a physical body and the body is then gone, mind HAS to believe there has been a loss of something real. And it MUST feel a loss and grieve it. It has no choice. Its own belief in the reality of the thing makes it suffer. ONLY IF the death has NO reality at all, can the mind be happy.

So it doesn't even matter that you're forgiving the world or the sights you see or trying to see the world in a happier way. If there is still physical proof of death staring you in the face, and you accost it REALITY, you are in DENIAL to pretend that you're okay with it. You cannot be okay with it.

You cannot be okay with hell being real. You cannot be okay with death having really occurred. You cannot be okay with real loss. The ONLY hope you have is that this entire world of such things, the world of sin, is utterly unreal and just a dream. Just a nightmare, an illusion of a world. A spacetime that doesn't even exist, in which even the physical objects pretending to be proof are TOTALLY FAKE. An illusion of a world, an illusion of evidence.

Only in recognising its utter unreality can you find peace and freedom from it. Which is why planet Earth CANNOT BE reality if there is a God at all. And unless it is utterly false there is no grounds for peace anywhere. Earth is a world of constantly PROVEN DEATH, with physical undeniable facts that what once was "alive" is now dead. And what seemed healthy is now a rotten corpse.

And you can't deny that it does this all the time. So either it's real and you are locked into hell, or there must be a heaven that is NOT this world and is opposite in nature. A heaven where death is IMPOSSIBLE. Where everything is immortal, attack cannot happen, problems don't exist, suffering is impossible, and there is never even a possibility of a PROOF that sin or death has occurred.

Only by recognising that this world is FALSE and UNREAL can you allow an idea of peace to enter. And then you can be at peace IN SPITE OF the proof of sin, in denial of the death, and ignoring the visual-lies of matter. Only by admitting that the world of bodies is NOT TRUE, can the proof of sin become void and irrelevant, allowing heaven's peace to descend upon it.

The ONLY way you can be at peace is to recognize heaven's reality and this world's total unreality. You can only find peace here, be being not from here. You can only see this world with peace, by knowing it is not of God. That in truth, there is no death, and all the physical lies which say otherwise cannot be believed.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible."

"The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"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."

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped. It is not the world which makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible. Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer. Peace now belongs here, because a Thought of God has entered. What else but a Thought of God turns hell to Heaven merely by being what It is? The earth bows down before Its gracious Presence, and It leans down in answer to raise it up again. Now is the question different. It is no longer, "Can peace be possible in this world?" but instead, "Is it not impossible that peace be absent here?"

"The world will end in joy because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began. To turn hell into Heaven is the function of God's teachers, for what they teach are lessons in which Heaven is reflected."

"He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive."

A Course in Miracles tells us that as soon as we cease to be forgiving, we enter into an unforgiving state where judgement is automatic. Judgement is attack. It is condemnation. It is required and necessary in order to implement separation, to come between You and God.

Typically we think of judgement as something you believe about others. But this is always an illusion. Judgement is always from you, towards yourself, happening within your own mind.

Judgement also does not judge something which is separate from you and outside of you, but it seems to make a part of yourself separate from the rest of you and outside of what remains of you. It establishes part of yourself as "other" and "not me", and attacks it.

Judgement is sin. It is an attempt to attack the Truth and split the mind. It also possesses two parts, one being the vantage point of "the judger" and the other being the vantage point of "the judged". It is not possible for a mind to be only a judger and not the judged. It must be both, because that same mind must believe that being judged is possible and real to it.

The mind entering into judgement is entering into separation. The mind becomes separated within itself. It forms a victimizer and a victim simultaneously. It engenders an attitude of superiority and inferiority simultaneously. It is not possible to therefore hold an "inferiority complex" without also possessing a "superiority complex".

To believe you are inferior can only come about by part of the mind skewing itself away from what appears to be superiority or worthiness or innocence, which is required in order for the other part of the mind to skew towards judgement.

Thus the mind splits into two simultaneous attitudes, victimization and victimhood, or judgementalism and being judged. You cannot judge without being judged, and all judgement is a judgement of yourself, not another. The mind thus simultaneously manufactures an experience of being judged, and an experience of judging, and then pretends not to be doing so.

It becomes easy for a judging mind to enter into denial that it is playing both roles, because it will either side with the position of judger or judged and deny that the other role exists within the same mind, in order TO judge or be judged. A sense of separation is needed between these two "false identities" to establish that one is what it is and the other is different.

The conscious part of the mind will likely see itself either as judged or as judging. When it sees itself as judged, it will see its judger as separate from itself and likely projected outward. It will be afraid of judgement coming from "other" than itself, which is thought to be other people. It will literally use other people to judge itself, even if they are not actively judging, trying to explain how "not myself" is the cause of this.

Alternatively, the mind can focus conscious awareness on the active role of judger, in which the role of being judged is more unconscious. It sees itself as judging only, and that which is judged is separate from itself and "other". It therefore sees judgement as being against others outside of itself, such as other people, even if other people are innocent. It believes it is not judging a part of itself, having split off the target of its judgements from awareness, through disassociation.

Both of these roles coexist within the same mind, as a split personality with two identities. There is an identity of a judger, superior and righteous and condemning. This is more clearly aligned with the act of sin, whereby to judge is to affirm that sin is real, that judgement is justified because of sin, and that it is someone else who has sinned.

Yet this condemnation is itself sin occurring in the mind, because sin is an attack just as is judgment. The attacking, judging part of the mind believes it is free from the effects of its own attack, having projected them onto another part of the mind.

Then there is the second identity of the judged, the victim who has been attacked from without, and the part of mind that sees itself as powerless, unjustified, weak, vulnerable and open to attack.

It sees itself being attacked against its will and having no power to judge at all. Seeing itself as unworthy, it disclaims having its own opinion or any sense of passing judgement upon others, and acts like a helpless victim. It is the receiver of judgement, open to feeling hurt and embarrassed and ashamed by the accusations which seem to come from beyond itself, typically projected onto other people as the cause because it doesn't recognize that the cause is within the same mind it exists within.

Both of these identities are happening within your own mind, and the interplay between them is happening entirely within you. The judging "you" and the judged "you" are both fictional, illusory identities. Neither of them are true of who you really are - a whole mind with no separation. Neither of them are your real identity, given that who you really are is wholeness and innocence and is completely free from attack, given or received.

You which are the HOST MIND to these two artificial portions of ego mind must gain enough awareness to recognize that you are judging yourself AND being judged by yourself, you are the one who stands in condemnation over yourself, it is you who is the source of your victimization, and "others" have absolutely nothing to do with this.

The only reason you believe that others i.e. other people are judging you, or are the target of your judgement, is because both the judger and the judged parts of your ego mind are unaware that they exist within a larger mind which hosts both of them. Both believe they are all of your "self" and that there is nothing more to your identity than the limits or confines of each false idea of identity.

Being incapable of seeing beyond themselves, both the judger and the judged thus see the "other" which is playing a part in causing or receiving judgement, as being "not myself" and therefore must seem to be "other people". It's easy to conclude this given that other people showing up separate bodies are readily available to "project" this onto, or to see them as sharing the same location as the "otherness" which is believed to be the problem. But this all has nothing to do with other people at all.

Whether it be others in the form of distinctly separate external people, or others in the form of the other part of your own mind, it is only the separation between these identities and the fictional story about how they see each other which is maintaining the split and projecting of the cause.

Your whole mind needs to recognize that it is bigger than and containing these two false selves, that neither self is the whole truth because its story is limited and partial, that YOU as the whole mind are choosing and playing these two identities against each other, and own up to the fact that since they are both WITHIN you, they must both BE a part of your one identity.

In order to return to a single identity, their separateness and distinctness must be dissolved and seen as an illusion. For both of these illusory selves to be a part of you, neither of them can be the whole truth. And in this light, the distinctiveness between them is overlooked and dissolved. Thus do they disappear and judgement and suffering ends. You must admit that you have been playing both roles, and therefore YOU are the one identity behind the ILLUSION of two selves.

Similarly, you must realize that all of your victimization, all of the ways that you believe others are doing things to you, all of the ways that you seem so suffer because of causes separate from you etc.. these must all be recognized as being because of another part of YOU, which is perhaps hidden behind denial and unconsciousness, attacking this second part of you. You've come to identify with this one split-off part of your mind, and are in denial of the rest of you.

It is you who has judged yourself, because it is you who have believed in sin and used sin to split your mind into multiple personalities. You are both the judger and the judged, and yet you are neither because they are both ego illusions.

It is no more true that you actually are being victimized by anyone else, than it is true that you are a victimizer of someone not yourself. You must realize that BOTH of these roles are not your true self, your real identity, or the whole of who you are. They are but an illusion of a separated, split ego mind, pretending to be an identities which you made up.

You are the one who has attacked you. You are the one who is attacking you. You are attacker and attacked, victim and victimizer. And yet you are neither of these, ultimately, because they are both fictional. The ego is always attacking itself and nothing else. The ego IS your self-attack, the scene in which a victimizer and a victim both play roles and cooperate to build a fictional story of interaction.

This is all taking place within you and has nothing to do with other people. It's only because of the split in your mind and your sense of there being a self that is "other" than your self, that you then become confused and accidentally project that sense of otherness onto other separate bodies. Really the otherness your are relating to as your enemy is just a part of your own mind, and your judgement of "them" is directly an attack on yourself, appearing to be indirect, or not at all.

To judge is to attack yourself. To believe you judge another not yourself is the very denial which makes judgement seem possible. You will judge yourself if you judge, and you will never judge another person. And if you are judged, rest assured you are not judged by another, nor should you fear the judgement of other than yourself. It is really your OWN "other self" which you are afraid of judging you, because YOU are the one who is judging you from within.

Surrender both of these positions, therefore, and return to wholeness, which is a mind of forgiveness. In wholeness you will not see an other to judge or to be judged by. Forgiveness cancels judgementalism and the belief in victims and victimizers. You have but done this all to yourself and have experienced all sides of your self conflict. Self conflict always contains two selves, who believe they each are all of your self and yet is limited in its self concept.

You cannot judge without being judged. You cannot be judged without judging. Both make up the state of sin, which is a belief that you should be condemned, or are being condemned. All of it is your own doing.

Judgment of another is a position of causality, in which you are squarely within the identity of the one who is doing something to another. Being judged then is a state of being at the effect of the judgement of another. Yet by entering into the drama of judgement, you become both the cause and the effect of it. And yet, you are not really the cause because none of it has been real. There are no real consequences from separation.

Following from the judging causality of sin, there is the result of guilt, which sees itself as the effect of sin. Yet from the perspective of guilt, as the victim of sin, the mind sees itself as separate from the sinner, and therefore sin is made unconscious and the guilty mind now sees itself as causal. It then proceeds to stand in the role of cause, continuing judgement against the self, determining that because it is guilty, it must be punished, and punishment is just another step on the road of judgement.

Judgement leads all the way to death in this manner, since condemnation calls for death to atone for what you claim you did. You will both suffer and want to suffer, will die and want to die, and will be victimized and want to be victimized. This is what comes from judgement - the entire ego thought system of sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death.

Learning not to judge is only important in terms of learning not to believe in real sin, and to place your mind back into a state of forgiveness. Of yourself. Wholeness, which is the end of judgement, cancels its illusory effects and they are undone.

It is not helpful to simply stop projecting judgements onto other people, if you are not recognizing that it was you that you were judging all along. That would only mean you continue to judge yourself but now are constipated with a censorship of the judgement that continues internally, trying not to shift it onto others but still believing you deserve it. Ceasing to project onto others is only the first step.

You must realize that you've been attacking yourself, judging yourself, being judged by yourself, and that you need to stop doing this. That you are willing to stop doing this. Generally speaking, an awareness that you have been doing this at all may be enough to shine enough light into your mind to make sense of what you have been experiencing, and to dismantle the ego's construct of self attack completely.

You need but a little awareness that it is you who has been both attacker and attacked, and that if you are both of these, then you must have a single identity, and therefore the illusion of separateness between them must be false and unreal. And thus, as an illusion recognized as an illusion of separateness, it will disappear. The mind is thus healed and restored to wholeness, awareness of wholeness returned, and along with it your FULL identity is restored to awareness.

You'll often hear talk of how "my ego this" and how "the ego" that. A lot of clout and blame is pinned on "the ego" now. It's used to describe all kinds of stuff in the world and in life.

People have even turned it into a kind of enemy that they fight with and blame and try to accuse for doing stuff. The label is thrown around like there actually is an ego, and then you'll hear explanations for why it doesn't "really" exist except in a dream.

There are widely common interpretations that Jesus is describing "the ego" in the course and therefore "the ego" is a thing or an entity or a something, that is responsible for some bad stuff. And this sets up a whole premise of being at war with it.

This is all confusion. Jesus is NOT trying to suggest that the ego exists AT ALL, not even fictionally in a dream. So let's put aside any belief that there is such a thing as "the ego", and we'll start from scratch.

God's world, heaven, reality, has various qualities, characteristics, properties etc. It has a nature. For example it's immortal, alive, permanent, perfect, whole, innocent, etc.

"Ego", is nothing more than, a CONCEPT OF, the "opposite to all that is".

Someone had a thought in their mind, like, "What if the opposite to God's Kingdom is true?" And so began the tiny mad idea.

This is ENTIRELY conceptual. It's someone sitting there just wondering, imagining, theorizing. Asking themselves, "what is the opposite of all this?" Or indeed, "what if I OPPOSE all of this?"

We simply tried to use our free will to oppose free will, or to "create" (will) that there be an outcome OPPOSITE to what God wills. A "mis-creation" or a "mis-use" of will. That is all.

This was a silly idea, ridiculous in fact. To try to use will, to make yourself NOT will, is obviously circular logic and makes no sense. It's impossible to will to be unwilling. But this is what you tried to do. You tried to put your will to sleep, to disempower your creative powers, and to strip yourself of what you are. To oppose yourself.

So ego is just this idea of opposition. What would it be like if there was an opposite to everything real? The opposite to life would be death. The opposite to permanence would be impermanence. The opposite to happiness would be unhappiness. The opposite to existence would be non-existence (death).

Now it's important to also put BELIEF on hold because I'm not even talking about BELIEVING IN this concept yet. At this point we're happily sitting in heaven just theorizing. Asking a question. "What?" Questioning everything, which is an attempt to oppose it.

What you come up with conceptually is, the idea of "non-existent impossibility." This non-existence, by definition, DOES NOT EXIST. It's not some real place you can go and visit. You can't live there. You cannot be its nature. It's ENTIRELY theoretical. Non-existence DOES NOT EXIST. It's the idea of being OUTSIDE of and completely SEPARATE from, existence. And existence is God.

So we started out with just a conceptual notion, an idea of an opposite to God's nature. An idea of NOT existing. And fundamentally we could never actually DO that. We could not LEAVE God and go where God is not. We couldn't get outside of God to go to that "non-existent" place. It's impossible. Literally totally impossible.

For example God is infinite and is everywhere. So you cannot go be somewhere and expect him not to be there also. Everywhere you go, God is there. He is omnipresent. So this idea is an idea of, what if you could go and be somewhere that God is not? Which is obviously a totally ridiculous idea, and no sane person would give two seconds of thought before laughing at being outside of infinite unlimited boundaryless reality.

So first we came up with this theoretical notion of "an opposite to what is". This was prior to believing in it. And at this point we were still sane. What made it a MAD idea, or turned us mad, was that we then attempted to CLAIM or assert, that you actually CAN go where God is not, you actually CAN be opposite to his nature, you actually CAN be unwilling.

You BELIEVED IN IT by denying its obvious impossibility, thus making you unable to RECOGNIZE it for what it is, and thus losing sight of the fact that it IS impossible. You became confused and lost.

This obviously was a form of denial and confusion and being totally mistaken. The logic shows that its impossible, but you insisted anyway. To insist that something is possible that is patently impossible, is essentially "nuts". BELIEVING IT in spite of its ridiculousness, became the only problem.

It was only when you forgot to laugh at the ridiculous notion of not existing, that you took it seriously. And you became deceived, tempted, and you "fell" into delusions, denial, hallucination, confusion, mistakenness, and all manner of fantasy nightmares. You lost track of WHAT IS TRUE AND REAL, and so went insane.

What were you trying to do? You were trying to MAKE non-existence be TRUE of you. Whatever you believe is true of you, you regard as your IDENTITY. Your truth describes you, defines you, establishes WHAT you are. And originally this was God's truth about you. But now you were attempting to assert that some OPPOSITE truth was true of you. And so your sense of WHAT I AM, your identity, became CONFUSED WITH, or caught up in, identified WITH or "matching" this notion of being opposite to what you are.

You did not actually make an ego as such. You did not accomplish the making of a non-existent self, because it is impossible. You did not ACTUALLY get outside of God's existence. You did not reach non-existence. You did not cease to exist. BUT, you BELIEVED YOU COULD. And so you DREAMED OF "the ego". A dream of the ego concept is NOT the same thing as ACTUALLY being it or bringing it into existence.

So when you believe that "the ego concept" (impossible non-existence) is POSSIBLE, your sense of IDENTITY shifts to align with it, to reflect it, to mirror it. You try to BE LIKE it. To be one with it. To merge with it and make it true of you, thus redefining your whole sense of what you are. And so by putting belief in "opposites to reality", your sense of WHAT IS TRUE changed, and thus your sense of WHO I AM changed.

Your sense of identity shifted from your soul, to an IMAGINED idea of what ego might be like. This did not actually make "the ego". You never created a "real ego". You just BELIEVE what is BEYOND your dream on the other side of oblivion. You believed in not existing. You believed in impossibilities. You believed in being opposite to what you are. That is all.

So there is no EGO doing anything whatsoever. There is no EGO taking responsibility for making ANYTHING happen. There is no ego to pin stuff on. There is no ego to say "the ego did this". There is no ego PERIOD. So every time there's someone teaching that "acim says" there is an ego, they are mistaken.

NON EXISTENCE DOES NOT EXIST. THE EGO DOES NOT EXIST.

Not even in dreaming do you go there. Not even in your wildest fantasies can you ever CREATE an ego. You never have. All you've done is TRIED to exchange God's reality for UNREALITY. Which means, taking everything true about God and trying to make it false. And taking everything untrue about God and trying to make it true. This results in CONFUSION (insanity) and that is all.

If you believe something is possible which isn't, you are not sane. If you believe you are IN the non-existent realm outside of God, you are insane. If you think you DID become separate and thus are OUTSIDE God, you are insane. But that IS what you believe, and that BELIEF is the tiny mad idea. The notion that the ego concept is OPPOSITE to what the ego concept IS.

Earth is just a neutral fantasy ABOUT non-existent realms, an attempt to REFLECT hell/ego/impossibility, as an "image" in the mind IMAGINING what having no imagination is like. Thinking about what having NO thought is like. Being unwilling to will anything real.

Let's put this another way. If the ego concept is non-existence, impossibility, death, nowhere-ness, lovelessness, emptiness, etc... in your BELIEF in it, you have tried to assign it the attributes of heaven, reality, truth, and God. You've tried to BRING IT TO LIFE. You've tried to turn hell into heaven, you've tried to claim that non-existence exists, you've tried to assert that immortality can be killed, etc. You've produced an entire hallucinated world based on this attempt to oppose life and make NOT LIFE appear to "live."

The body is nothing. The world is nothing. But in our BELIEVING (spacetime), we have TRIED to make it APPEAR AS IF bodies live, worlds evolve, there are "life forms" etc. it is NOT LIFE. It is an illusion. it is nothingness pretending to be something.

"There is no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true."

So there literally is no ego. We need to stop blaming "the ego" for stuff. EGO IS NON-EXISTENCE. It does not exist even in dreaming. There is no ego anywhere. Evil is not real. An absolute opposite to everything does not exist.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"By steadily and consistently cancelling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

So what does happen? What does happen is OUR MIND keeps on trying to turn itself into "the ego". It keeps trying to get CLOSER TO the CONCEPTUAL idea of "being ego", which is non-existence and impossibility and total limitation and death and a void and emptiness and lack and darkness and lovelessness. We keep trying to BECOME it, as if reaching through the outskirts of God's being to another world. But we can't. And we NEVER will. So it's all wasted effort. We might as well just accept the truth.

This is why the secret of salvation tells us that we MUST recognize that WE are doing this ALL to ourselves. Not the ego, not the world, it's us. We do the shit, we must undo it. It is NOT the ego, ever. It's part of our own mind running rogue and opposing the rest of our mind. It's us TRYING TO BE opposite. Working against ourselves. We are the dreamer. Miracles reflect the idea that it's this thing I have done and it is this I would undo. ME. My mind. Not "the ego".

You cannot give your power to the ego either. EVER. All you can do is BELIEVE that you are giving your power to "it". And thus YOUR MIND now goes into a distortion, against ITSELF, pretending to be opposed, pretending to BECOME an ego, and acts ego-LIKE, and now you blame "the ego" for stuff, but its PART OF YOU doing stuff to yourself. So now you are disassociated and projecting and trying to make your ideas leave your mind. That is all. Take responsibility for that. Never blame ego for anything. It does not exist whatsoever.

And when I say that I don't even mean, ok, this is a dream, so ego doesn't REALLY exist, cus none of this really happened, but it seems to, and so in the dream it does exist. IT DOES NOT. Ego doesn't even exist IN the dream. It's ENTIRELY just a theoretical concept and label for "absolute opposition". It's BEYOND God completely and even this dream is not THERE. It not here, it's not anywhere, and you can never make contact with it. This is why the Holy Spirit and "the ego" never communicate.

If you could actually leave God completely, and go to where existence is NOT, you've meet "the ego". But you can't and you never will. And all your dream life is about is imagining that you ARE or HAVE or CAN, when you AREN'T and HAVEN'T and CANNOT. It's wishful thinking at best. Ego is nothing but a theory. Which is why when it's gone, it's recognized as nothing.

Replace "the ego" with "I". Your mind is either whole or split. There is nothing else.

"The ego's opposite in every way, in origin, effect and consequence, we call a miracle. And here we find all that is not the ego in this world. Here is the ego's opposite and here alone we look on what the ego was, for here we see all that it seemed to do, and cause and its effects must still be one.

Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"

I've been wrong about the world. Again.

My view of what the world IS has changed a lot recently. I see now that ACIM is telling me the world itself was projected out as "nothing", or an empty screen, and THEN we projected secondary meaning onto it and "gave" it meaning. We can give it egoic meaning, or we can give it heavenly meaning. And thus it acts like a mirror to REFLECT an outward picture of an inward condition. This is projected on top of what the world IS, which is a veil of illusions.

What I USED to believe was quite different. Some people say there is an "objective world", and that the course is telling us we have "subjective" perceptions about it. In this view we have beliefs ABOUT the world. I never liked this approach because it seemed to imply the world had to be objective, which meant it was real. And clearly other parts of ACIM tell us God did NOT create the world. So then I threw out the idea that we were really having ideas ABOUT the world, which led to believing the world ITSELF was a more direct "belief".

What seemed to make more sense was to say that there is no objective world, especially in light of "there is no world." And there are statements like "the world is false perception" and "there is no world apart from what you wish", etc. These seem to imply, coupled with "projection makes perception", that we literally project out the physical world in one single act, and how it appears to us depends on "how we made it" or what we projected it from. Such that there is no objective world, ONLY subjective fluctuating worlds that live INSIDE of subjectivity.

I thought this made sense for a long time because there is a lot in the course about how you cannot see both worlds, how you can have either false or true perception, how you see what you project, and how forgiveness/christ-vision doesn't look upon bodies. Again, major parts of the course seemed to click into place, but there were always a few things which seemed to not quite line up.

I'd also find that there would always be SOME people who believed certain other chunks of the course, which contradicted my ideas about the world. Maybe they got those parts RIGHT, BUT also got OTHER parts wrong, and so still didn't have the whole picture. Some things they said seemed to side with a partial view, that the world must be objectively real, created by God, and that's why the course talks about projecting ONTO it. But this couldn't be based on what else is written.

So it always seemed like everyone had a big chunk of the truth but not the whole picture. And I thought I had the whole picture too. But apparently I did not. Because what I see in the course now tells me something different. Something which produces far less contradictions and seems to be a more complete picture.

What it says is that in the separation, we came up with the idea of an opposite to God, which is really an idea of nothingness, since God is everything. This was projected out from the mind, which "made the world". We're talking here about the making of space and time and setting the wheels of physical objects/evolution in motion. But because this was an idea of nothing, it really had no meaning of its own. You might also notice that "outer space" is really mostly empty nothingness.

"That was the first projection of error outward. ***The world arose to hide it (a first projection), and became the screen on which it was projected ( a second projection)***, and drawn between you and truth."

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

"***The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning.*** And what you behold ***upon it*** are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real."

"It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written ***in the empty space*** which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that ******the void****** may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality."

"Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the vacant place between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by."

Clearly then, what has taken place are TWO steps. The first is that we projected out the physical world of bodies - really empty nothingness ("the body is nothing" etc). This was a world of nothing and the idea of sin or "absence of love/everything". It's really neutral because it's nothing and has no meaning. A meaningless world. This world then became A SCREEN onto which we SECONDARILY PROJECTED the mind's belief in it, which GAVE it meaning, GAVE it reality, and projected sin and guilt onto it.

In a sense then, there ARE two kinds of layers to the world. What the world IS, and what we MAKE OF IT. This then doesn't mean the world is objectively real, only that it is in some way "separate" from the secondary projections we put ONTO it. The meaning we GIVE to it. This also corresponds to the idea that the world itself is an illusion, which we have further illusions ABOUT.

For example, the world is an illusion and is unreal. When we then project untruth onto it, trying to MAKE it real by GIVING it reality, this is what we call false perception. It makes a world which is actually an illusion, SEEM as if it's is REAL world. And now physical form is believed and appearances deceive and the mind is lost, insane and confused. The alternative is true perception which recognizes the world for WHAT IT IS, "accurate perception", which reveals the world IS an illusion, IS nothing, and does not really exist.

So it all still lines up perfectly with what the course says, provided you now recognize that the interpretation of what you THOUGHT it MEANT, or what it was referring to, might be a little different. That the world is "distinct" from what you project onto it, doesn't have to mean or imply that God created it. And because it IS "separate" from your projections onto it, or beliefs about it, you CAN change your mind ABOUT it. And we are indeed asked over and over again to do this.

"The world you see (false perceptions about an illusory world) cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world (loves the illusory world through truth). God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact (as though, a distinct separate "thing"). You cannot choose what this should be (because it was projected in the first projection). But you can choose how you would see it (per the second projection). Indeed, you must choose this."

So now it becomes possible to reinterpret the "world you made", by reinterpreting the "world you see" ie your psychological interpretation of what you made, or what you "make of" what you made. When you take the neutral meaningless illusory world you made, and you take away from it the projection of sin and guilt, and leave "an empty space", uncluttered from ego projections, UPON which you project God, love, light, holiness, the "world you made" now reflects heaven's light, and you see "God in everything you see." But bear in mind this is a REFLECTION in a mirror which has no meaning of its own, and is STILL just nothing. It does not mean the mirror is God or is heaven.

What this means for me is that I now recognize there ARE two parts to this world. There is the world we made, the physical world of forms, which in and of itself is nothing and means nothing. Then there is meaning we GIVE to it which is what I project ONTO it which produces my perceptions ABOUT it.

This results in my "joining the camp" which claimed that perception was always "about the world", but WITHOUT the clause that suggested "this must mean God created it." Rather than merely think that "the world is in my mind", ie that its contents are my mind's contents, I can now approach "the world I made" but without the false-perception ego baggage.

In a way this means no longer "throwing the world out with the bathwater". The dirty water of ego projections ONTO it can be let go, and I can then become more willing to look at this same world, the physical world, through eyes of Christ. Devoid of the projected sin and guilt, or labels of wrongfulness. Which also overlooks appearances and differences and forms and transcends the hierarchy of illusions.

Recognizing that, eventually, I can still look at "this world" through more loving eyes, WITHOUT it having to mean that God created it, because of the clarity that we DID project it out in a first step BEFORE we projected ONTO it. I notice now many references to how we look UPON the world, project UPON the world, and therefore FILTER the world, depending on where our mind is at, and this can be thought of as SEPARATE FROM the physical world itself.

I can now stop resisting the idea of blades of grass being "a sign of God's perfection", because if seen through loving eyes they are reinterpreted as SYMBOLS that REFLECT God's perfection. Not because they are made of God or are created BY him, but because they are forgiven.

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

What this means is that a kind of ... reunion of sorts, between me and the physical world, up to a point of course. A willingness to recognize that it can MAKE SENSE, to suggest I can look at it still but in a way that doesn't take its illusions seriously, OR condemn it, OR needing to make it out to be negative. Because what the world IS is in fact completely neutral and nothing, ultimately.

My egoic false perceptions about it, were mistaken for what the world IS. Guilt and sin and fear we ASSOCIATED WITH the world, thought to be ONE THING, when in fact they are two things. I did this as part of my DIS-association of guilt in my mind, which bound my guilt to the world and made me believe IT was inherently guilty. The world cannot be inherently anything, because it is really nothing. There is no world at all.

If what the world IS is not inherently evil, because it is nothing, then this at least provides the logical basis for being able to project love onto it. Rather than the impossibility of loving an inherently false world. If the world can act to reflect heaven, then it makes it OK to "love it", even if this is a temporary love designed ultimately to dispel it.

I also see that I thought that moving into a higher perception meant "not seeing the physical world", and I had associated the physical world with false perception. I thought it should become invisible and unseen, when approaching christ vision. But I see now that in fact a big part of reaching forgiveness still entails looking upon the physical world but WITH forgiveness, which overlooks its forms and such and gives it a love to reflect back. Recognizing it as a mirror with no meaning of its own. As such blades of grass and leaves can become "things of wonder" and the world can appear beautiful, as it prepares to vanish.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created (but still looks upon a body). It beholds a light beyond the body (at the same time); an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events (which is still physical), without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. And in His sight there IS another world. You live in that world just as much as this, for BOTH are concepts of yourself, which can be interchanged, but never jointly held."

"Have you wondered what the world is REALLY like? How would it look through HAPPY eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on YOURSELF. IT is not there at all. But judgment lays a sentence on it, JUSTIFIES it, and MAKES IT REAL. Such is the world you see; a judgment on yourself, and made by YOU. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whose image it IS and which it loves, and placed OUTSIDE you, in the world.”

Notice how that paragraph is really talking about your secondary projection onto the world, which places an image INTO the world, seemingly outside of you, which is a picture of your sick self you projected ONTO it. This is what the EGO makes of you and of the world - the void - the emptiness, in trying to fill it with images.

"It is essential, therefore, that you learn to ***recognize the meaningless, and accept it without fear***. If you are fearful (in ego/false perception), it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes which it does not possess, and crowd it (project onto it secondarily) with images that do not exist."

The world we made ITSELF, can be "a thing of wonder." But only if it is seen through "loving eyes".

"There IS another purpose in the world that error made because it has another Maker, Who CAN reconcile its goal with His Creator's Purpose."

"The real world is attained simply by the COMPLETE forgiveness of the old; the world you see WITHOUT forgiveness. The Great Transformer of perception will undertake WITH you the careful searching of the mind that MADE this world, and uncover TO YOU the SEEMING reasons for your making it. In the light of the REAL reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will SHOW you that there is NO reason here at all. Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"Again we come to the question of judgment. This time, ask yourself whether your judgment or the Word of God is more likely to be true. For they say different things about the world, and things so opposite that it is pointless to try to reconcile them. God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so."

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped. It is not the world which makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible. Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer. Peace now belongs here, because a Thought of God has entered. What else but a Thought of God turns hell to Heaven merely by being what It is? The earth bows down before Its gracious Presence, and It leans down in answer to raise it up again. Now is the question different. It is no longer, "Can peace be possible in this world?" but instead, "Is it not impossible that peace be absent here?"

"Into this empty space, from which the GOAL of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. 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."

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for ***only what it is***. And now it ***cannot fail to disappear***, for now there is an ***empty place made clean and ready***. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is ***the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness*** from where it came."

Before the separation, you were simply in heaven having a great time. Immortal, invulnerable, happy, loving, full of life.

Then the separation happened and we produced a state exactly opposite to heaven - heaven's logical opposite. A physical world in which bodies gave us constant "false perception", deceived by everything, seemingly at the effect of everything and prone to attack.

"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

"For this world is the opposite of Heaven, being made to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made."

These are really the only two states. These are the two worlds, heaven and hell.

The question then becomes, how do you get out of the second world and go back to the first?

As the course says, you might find a sudden leap into heaven as frightening, if you retained your ego and interpreted it through it. In fact the ego interprets heaven as hell, beings its unwanted opposite.

So instead, we gradually transition towards heaven. But let's be clear that heaven IS your only alternative to the physical world. There is no other place to go. It's one or the other.

It's also a fact that the world you made is false, and heaven is true. In the denial of God and the rejection of heaven, you came to believe that a world of lies and illusions is true and real.

That puts you in a position where, to return to a full awareness and acceptance of heaven's truth, you're going to have to both invest belief and acceptance in heaven's truth, while shifting your whole focus away from the physical.

As the course describes, beginning to do this begins the process of "opening the spiritual eye" and "weakening the investment in physical sight".

"Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way. As this recognition becomes more firmly established, it becomes a turning point. This ultimately reawakens spiritual vision, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict, which can become very acute."

Now, we need to keep in mind that you are either in a realm of perception or a realm of knowledge. We really only made false perception, built into the functioning of the body senses. And leapt straight from heaven to false perception, placing us in bodies.

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive something and with something."

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea."

Your goal, really, is to return to heaven. The goal of God. Any goal less than this is not enough. You are to return to your original state of reality and immortality. To identifying as Christ. To being as God created you and co-creating with Him in reality.

But trying to leap into heaven from a perspective of false perception, which is total confusion about what is true, would be too jarring. The contrast is too great, and we have gone deeply into the ego thought system.

Instead, there is a seeming path, the atonement plan, the personal curriculum, which lays out a more gradual transition. This is partly because the use of your free will choice is required in order for you to make any changes in your beliefs at all.

So it seems that, in time, we gradually then progress from abject hell, which is a heavy identification with a body, special relationships, attack thoughts, fear of death, sickness and suffering seeming real, etc, towards a more God-given inheritance of perfection and immortality.

This doesn't just mean you're going to run up against the "ceiling" or external walls of the perceptual realm, before experiencing ANY heaven. It means that you need to transition so that you are experiencing ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY heaven, just before you leave this world.

But how do you do that? How do you move "towards heaven", towards reality and truth and immortality, while still being within the realm of perceptual dreams? How do you become heaven-like or as close to your original nature as possible, while still being in a state which is fundamentally separate?

"Perception is a separated state. Those who perceive still need healing."

It's going to entail some kind of re-purposing of perception, some way to use it against itself. To use what we made, to undo what we made, from the inside out. We need a reinterpretation of the meaning of the world. Or a different vantage point or way of looking, that makes it seem like hell has been turned into something similar to heaven.

"Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it."

What we find out now is that there are kind of two components to what we're experiencing. There's whatever "the world is" that we made, and then there's our interpretation of it. We seem to be able to change its meaning or how it looks to us.

What we're then told is that there is a "forgiven world" or a version of hell which, seen with some kind of light, or seen with loving eyes, doesn't look like hell anymore. It's still a dream world, still an illusion, still unreal, and still false, but seems to reflect heaven's innocence.

So where does this light come from, or this loving perspective? Well, a clue is that "Perception is a result, not a cause". And "projection makes perception". We look within first, at our idea of what truth is, and then we broadcast that out, and the end result is a kind of hallucinated image, which we call perception.

So the main deal is, the question of whether when you look within you see a belief in the reality of the world, that false things are true, that you yourself are something false and evil, or whether when you look within you see sinlessness, a lack of guilt and fear, innocence and holiness. Those spiritual attributes are not attributes of a dream figure, they are attributes of YOUR SOUL, which needs to come into your awareness while you're still dreaming.

How do you go about changing your inner landscape, so that it contains only attributes which seem to reflect the state of heaven, so that when you look out you see then projected?

Well if you remember, perception is always essentially false, and the realm of knowledge is always true. The illusory world is always illusory, and heaven is reality. So in order to transition your inner world so that it "matches" heaven or is heaven-like, you're going to have to reach out beyond the illusory world and start identifying with God's creation.

"The world you see must be denied" "Beyond this world is a world I want." "No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

So now you're in a position where, you're inside a dream, and trying to shift your attention to not only see but identify with, to recognize as true, and to accept, a reality which is entirely OUTSIDE of the dream.

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it, and show it rested on a world more real than what you saw before; a world redeemed from what you thought was there."

You're trying to learn what you ARE in the Kingdom, while still being inside of the classroom of hell. Your real identity is your soul which God created which has inherited its truth from Him.

In order for you to transition your inner identity to christ, you're going to have to start identifying with something that isn't even in the world.

The best analogy I've come up with is the comparison of two rooms. We made a room with no windows, inside heaven, kind of like a prison cell. It's a dark room which shuts out the light. The walls seem solid and impassable. There is no awareness of what is outside the walls. Your whole identity seems bound to a lump of matter, the same thing that the prison seems to be made of.

Then as you begin to reach out beyond the dream, beyond the prison, beyond believing the walls are true - the granite block of sin, the veil which hangs before the face of christ, the walls of the prison begin to become transparent. They lose their heaviness and solidity. Even your own body seems to start to disappear.

This happens only by extending your mind past the separating limits of the walls, reaching out (or in) to heaven's truth, and latching onto (identifying with) the ever-growing awareness of who you are outside the prison. Your real self, which God created, and which stands beyond the world of form.

As your mind starts to associate with being a christ-soul, and starts to believe in God's truth, and starts to accept that only heaven is real, and shifts all of its attention away from the tempting deceptions and lies of physical matter, it puts its faith and belief in reality and love and light. Things which are not even INSIDE the dream world.

"Love was never in the world of dreams."

While still inside the prison, which is fast becoming a glass room with a door, enabling you to see through the walls and beyond them to the light with "christ vision", you become able to see again.

You can see a light beyond the body and beyond the world, beyond the room, and your sense of "who and what I am" or "what is true of me" is shifting away from the body and onto spirit - a spirit which is well outside of the room entirely.

Eventually this room, which acts like a veil covering up the greater environment of heaven, becomes so transparent that it disappears, and finally you are able to see christ clearly. To recognize what you are. And to see the contents of heaven. You then move through or past the walls of the room, the room disappears, and you find yourself squarely and fully in the shoes God created for you to fill.

We may talk about true perception, atonement, forgiveness, salvation, right mindedness, miracle mindedness, sanity, the spiritual eye, and various other aspects of the awakening mind. But ultimately true perception is an act of OVERLOOKING the realm of perception, overlooking hell, overlooking the opposition to God, and fixating on the Kingdom.

Essentially, true perception is a re-purposing of perception, such that it actually UNDOES ITSELF. Similarly to how forgiveness is way of using illusions to point AWAY from illusions. True perception is a cancellation of perception. Just as false perception was an attempt to fixate perception on itself and make perceptions real. True perception points AWAY from the realm of perception entirely, and towards the light of God, beyond the dream.

"Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest."

"Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others."

"Forgiveness is the end of dreams, because it is a dream of waking."

"Forgiveness is the only road that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death."

To dream of awakening, which is the happy dream, is to dream of what it is like to BE AWAKE. To be awake is to be IN HEAVEN. Therefore, forgiveness is a dream in which you imagine yourself to be NOT ASLEEP. To be similar to the way you actually are in reality, outside of dreaming. It is a dream based on the knowledge of heaven, in which, while still technically being in a dream-perception realm, you dream a dream so close to heaven that it's almost like being in heaven itself.

Just prior to leaving the prison, with sight firmly fixed on christ, who is in heaven and not in the world, you see the face of christ through the perceptual system (based on judgement/evaluation), and this "vision" is "the real world". It's you being able to see. "God is the light in which I see."

The real world is really heaven. It is the only reality and the only world truly deserving of being described as real. From within perception we see it through a perceptual filter, then we leave perception behind and KNOW its reality. "First you dream of peace, then awaken to it."

To see the real world, is to look out from within spacetime, within the perceptual realm, using perception, but using it in a special way which enalbles you to look OUTSIDE the perceptual realm. To peer into heaven beyond the separate bubble of spacetime. You don't actually become able to BE IN heaven at this point, outside the dream, but you stand within the dream, looking through its transparent walls like an window onto God.

As you do this, as you open up to reality while still dreaming, as you disbelieve in the solidity of the prison walls, as you form a bridge to the Kingdom, as you reunite gradually with God and with love, light seems to stream into your mind.

In fact an awareness of God gradually seems to return to your mind, and starts to be "seen in" the things you see. "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind." Eventually God is ALL that you see, which causes the "things you were seeing him in" to disappear.

So what we're really doing is, shifting our attention, away from hell, towards heaven. Shifting it away from God's absence, towards God. Away from body identification to spirit identification. Away from darkenss to light.

Away from fear to love. God, christ, soul, spirit, light, love, truth and everything real, is squarely NOT a part of the illusory prison world. It is "outside" of it, psychologically. So our job is to "position" oursleves in heaven, while still in the separated realm, and shine our light from heaven, into this world, erasing it.

This is why the closer your mind comes to aligning with God's will, with heaven's light, the more that light and love are able to stream into the dream through you.

The miraculousness of heaven begins to seep into the dream. The laws of spacetime begin to be overruled as you learn "I am under no laws but God's." You start becoming able to do things which "are not of this world." Your body returns to health as a symbol of eternal life. And you become empowered to overrule death.

To be the light of the world, is to extend heaven's light into the dream. To shine into the darkness, to illuminate it and shine away death. "Eternity will shine away the world." "The stars will disappear in light."

As your perception becomes "truer", it simply means that you are not mis-perceiving, so become able to "accurately" perceive what God created. This isn't the same as knowing what's there, but we can use perception to interpret what's there. "To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it." - but you CAN perceive the truth, which is heaven.

As the walls of spacetime melt, as the granite block of sin turns to whisps of smoke easily dispelled, as the light of God shines into the world through forgiveness, and as the hell we made no longer has internal sin projected onto it, the world is seen as beautiful and forgiven. A beautiful illusion. Yet "A world forgiven cannot last" because it's still an illusion of a world. And it will disappear.

"Illusions recognized must disappear."

"The old one has left no trace upon it in its passing."

"Idols must disappear, and leave no trace behind their going."

"And you will be with him when time is over and no trace remains of dreams of spite in which you dance to death's thin melody."

"Heaven is all that remains."

"When your body and your ego and your dreams are gone, you will know that you will last forever."

This is pretty much the "model" of the course's levels and metaphysics that I've converged towards over time. Simply that there are only two states, realms or worlds. They are logical opposites. And while we're in the world opposite to heaven, we gradually transition our truth, reality and identity over to the other world, such that toward the end we are almost entirely heaven-identified and vigilant only for the Kingdom.

Our task is simply to ANCHOR ourselves into our soul, remember who we really are outside of the perceptual dream environment, tune into God, leave all perception of form behind, forget the world and embrace our true nature, inherited from God.

You are the spirit that God created. You are the reality that God established. You are the power that God extended. You are the will that God has expressed. You are the light which God radiated. You are the truth which God gave you. You are nothing and have nothing that does not come from God. And nothing in the world of illusions has ever changed that.

"So fearful is the dream, so seeming real, he could not waken to reality without the sweat of terror and a scream of mortal fear, unless a gentler dream preceded his awaking, and allowed his calmer mind to welcome, not to fear, the Voice that calls with love to waken him; a gentler dream, in which his suffering was healed and where his brother was his friend. God willed he waken gently and with joy, and gave him means to waken without fear."

"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And from this dream the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son."

MY SICKNESS IS MY RESPONSIBILITY

OTHER PEOPLE'S SICKNESS IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY

YOU CAN’T WAKE PEOPLE UP FOR THEM

Jesus has the power to undo all sickness in a brother right now, BUT WILL NOT if they do not want it. Love cannot enter where it is not welcome!

I am responsible for everything I experience. Other people are responsible for everything they experience. This is directly supportive of the secret to salvation, that "we are doing this to ourselves".

All sickness we are experiencing is something we are doing TO OURSELF.

Right now, God is 100% awake, and because of this, it IS IMPOSSIBLE that there be sickness in any mind anywhere. In reality anyway. However, Sons of God have the illusory "ability" to DENY GOD. When they do so, they put denial in place, which is a block to life, which implements sickness. This is a FREE WILL CHOICE.

Love does not force anyone to be healed of this against their will. Jesus will simply WAIT for us until we are ready to accept the truth.

This is also why we must have A LITTLE WILLINGNESS, because only when we are WILLING to receive the truth, can the Holy Spirit take the opportunity to heal us. And he WILL take any opportunity we give him, no matter how small. But if we do not give that willingness, we will stay in our illusions of sickness for as long as we choose to against His will.

If we are not willing with God, doing God's will, we are willing against God. That's the entire point of the separation, the idea of sin being that we willed against God (yes, its fiction). If we BELIEVE it, individually, we will enter into a dream of suffering and death. And sickness will feature heavily in that dream because it is what we choose. It won't be real sickness at all, but we'll believe it is, using it as a device for keeping God's love at bay. Sickness is a DEFENSE against the truth. A block to awareness.

To understand this correctly REQUIRES that you believe that there are multiple sons of God, each with their own individual free will. Because if you don't, it will not make sense. To be able to have "your own choice" as to whether you are WILLING to receive healing, your own choice as to whether to ALLOW LOVE IN, is necessary in order to have a "separate will" which acts against God's will. There are many separate wills.

This is also required in order to understand how Jesus could wake up completely and yet that the rest of us are dragging our feet in snoozeville. We do not have the free will to set the curriculum ("learning to love"), but we DO have the free will to DELAY it or to choose WHEN to take it. That means we can choose NOT to accept God's will or God's healing. We can deliberately KEEP sickness if we want to, against God's will, and against Jesus's will. And it is true that there is NOTHING they will or can do about this, except gently lead us to see the error of our ways over time.

Jesus tells us that our will is AS POWERFUL as His, and that this is why he cannot forcibly take away our fears or sicknesses against our will. If we want them or hold onto them, he cannot take them. We have to be WILLING TO LET GO. Just because we are using our powerful will to make an illusion of being weak and little and powerless, doesn't mean our will is diminished at all. Mind retains its creative power at all times. Jesus CANNOT and WILL NOT go against this.

This means that even though AWARENESS OF LOVE can be complete in one brother (e.g. Jesus), it can be highly absent in another, at the same time. "Miracles are gifts given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less." This is because IT IS POSSIBLE in illusions for some individuals to be MORE AWAKE THAN OTHERS. That means, it is NOT TRUE, that one person's healed perception automatically heals everyone. It does not. It OFFERS healing to everyone, but other people CAN REFUSE IT. And they CAN retain forms of sickness as long as they want "against your will."

Awakening to the awareness of love's presence cannot extend to the entire sonship UNTIL the sonship is FREELY WILLING to receive it, every single "individual son" has to choose it and be willing to accept it. IF they do not, the sonship remains incomplete, and there's nothing it can do about it other than to keep OFFERING love and waiting patiently for the rest of the sonship to wake up. Love is not forceful. It has INFINITE PATIENCE, which would not be NEEDED unless people weren’t so resistant.

It is true AT SOME LEVEL that your mind is ONE with the mind of others. That you share a mind. You share a mind with Jesus. However, awareness of that sharing can only be fully experienced when both of you are completely purified and healed. And then you will SHARE that state of love.

But until then, it is perfectly possible within illusions for you to REJECT that union, to deny reality, and to choose against God's will. Thus you will retain your own freely chosen sickness and problems, regardless of whether you are surrounded by infinite love and healing or not. God surrounds us RIGHT NOW with unlimited healing, and yet we STILL keep projecting images of sickness in order to REFUSE IT.

This is also why it was possible for Jesus to go around giving a GIFT OF HEALING to those who were suffering, sick, missing limbs, blind, even dead, unable to help themselves due to their own unawareness that they were doing this to themselves, and yet who had enough FAITH in HIS ability, enough trust, enough willingness, to ALLOW Him to heal them for them. You do NOT need to be fully awake in order to receive a miracle! And you CAN only receive it if you TRULY WANT IT.

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it.."

Having enough FAITH i.e. trust and WILLINGNESS to receive HELP, from outside of yourself, from a brother who has more love than you do right now, who is more ABLE to help right now, is enough to RECEIVE help from beyond your own current abilities. All you need is ENOUGH trust to allow the Holy Spirit HIMSELF to perform the miracle FOR YOU, from beyond your awareness, showing up as demonstrations of TANGIBLE CHANGES (witnesses), which helps you to learn that HE REALLY IS THERE, and HE REALLY CAN HEAL. This develops trust.

Jesus went around performing miracles for those who temporarily had less, who temporarily were blind, who temporarily were sinful, who temporarily were UNAWARE of the whole truth. He did NOT do this by having a mind which was "pure yet contained sick people". His mind could NOT have been WHOLE, if it was "one with sick people", or had "sick parts" in it. The presence of sick parts in his mind would've rendered him UNCONSCIOUS, just as the presence of ego persona/shadow in our own mind right now renders us UNABLE to be aware of the WHOLE of our identity. Mis-identifying with ego BLINDS YOU. Jesus was WHOLE MINDED, and yet could still perceive the "unwholeness" others were experiencing, without their unwholeness affecting HIS.

Jesus had true perception. Jesus could SEE. He was aware of the truth. He was able to RECOGNIZE that sickness is a complete illusion, not real, and posing no problem whatsoever. This gave HIM this ability to extend the HOLY SPIRIT who is the mechanism of miracles, to perform a healing WHERE it was welcome. And where it was not welcome, HE COULD NOT PERFORM ANY MIRACLES. He had to leave entire villages in suffering because their minds were too resistant to receive healing. His state of awakening did not FORCE anyone else to wake up!

Even if He saw those other people as one with Him, even if He knew them to be "himself" or "ourself", even if He was connected to the entire Power of God, there was NOTHING he could do to help those, at that time, who DID NOT WANT IT. This is because, YOU are responsible for YOUR sickness, and for your willingness. If you are unwilling, healing will not "happen to you". Sick people, with broken limbs and defective organs, will not be healed by your true perception, UNLESS they want it. And thinking that you are "healing yourself" by healing what is showing up "as their sickness" is NOT going to work if they do not want it, because IT IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY. THEY MADE IT, NOT YOU.

You are responsible for choosing the atonement for yourself. You are responsible for being WILLING to REJOIN the sonship's oneness for yourself. You are responsible for every sickness you experience within yourself, NOT outside of you in others. You are responsible for your own belief in sin. You never attack anyone else, you never affect anyone else, you never do anything to anyone else. And the reverse is true. No-one ever affects you, no-one ever does anything against your will. You are not at the effect of the world. And no-one is at the effect of you. Your attack does not affect others whatsoever, and nor does your love, unless THEY CHOOSE WHAT THEY WILL EXPEIRNCE.

Love can be shared, WHEN it is welcome, and when it is welcome, the person is effectively giving it to themselves. It can be given to those who have a "lack" of it, BY those who have an abundance of it, BECAUSE people are in different states of perception simultaneously. This IS possible because people have an individual will and mind, even if at the highest level they are the One Son. Jesus’s resurrection DID NOT CURE EVERYONE because they did not want to be cured. YOU MUST CHOOSE IT.

Trying to bring about healing by assuming that other people are "you" and therefore their sickness is "your sickness" and that if you undo "that sickness" it will heal the other person, is a twisting of what happens. First of all, it's true that you and your brother are one, yet you are BROTHERS, with your own free will. Secondly, "their sickness" is THEIR CHOICE, not yours, and it is NOT PART OF YOUR MIND, and it is NOT YOUR SICKNESS OR SIN.

When you project YOUR sin, it DOES NOT LEAVE YOUR MIND. Ideas leave not their source. IT stays inside of you. You become split minded and perceive this sin as a separate attacker, attacking some other split off part of yourself. You interact with it as though it is outside of this part of you, as though not yours, but it is ALWAYS IN YOU. It never ever even leaves you and goes over to someone else.

It does NOT put sickness into other people against their will! To suggest you can heal someone else’s sickness "because its really your own" is actually to suggest YOU CAN MAKE SOMEONE SICK AGAINST THEIR WILL AND TAKE IT AWAY AGAIN. This is FALSE! If someone else were choosing never to be sick, your attempted projection of sin could not put sickness into them. And if someone else was choosing never to be sick, YOU COULD STILL be believing that you are a sinner and STILL be trying to project your sin and STILL seeing it in the other person. Your projection has NOTHING to do with other people’s state of mind. Withdrawing your projected sin WILL NOT HEAL THEM, if they have chosen to be sick on their own and want to keep it. Go ahead and try to heal someone who does not want to be healed. It will fail!

Otherwise, if someone could be causing someone else to be sick against their will, which is an EGO BELIEF, someone's sickness would INFECT JESUS by the power of their will. This is an extension of the idea that we CAN sin and hurt God, which is impossible. Our sickness is OUR CHOICE against ourselves. Thirdly, just because you RECOGNIZE that their sickness is entirely an illusion, that does not disappear it FOR THEM if they continue to WILL TO KEEP IT. You cannot override their will. You getting healed WILL NOT wake everyone up. You will wake up FROM them, FROM the illusion, FROM the ego, INTO a state of awareness, but if other people choose to stay in the ego, THEY WILL.

The ACT of attempting to undo that sickness, by cancelling it or not believing in it or asserting it is not there or pushing it away or shining love onto it or whatever, that ACT of trying to FORCE IT TO GO is actually the EGO attempting to have power OVER something it made real. This is the attempt to "heal to destroy", to first make real then try to undo what you made real. That’s you fighting with your own sin. It won’t heal the person’s sickness or yours.

The Holy Spirit MUST BE INVOLVED in all miracles, because He is the mechanism of miracles. HE is the one who heals. HE is the one who is capable of raising the dead. He must be the one who performs the healing of the mind because healing must come from outside of separation. While He does not perceive sickness as REAL, He still nevertheless KNOWS that people are experiencing nightmares and that they NEED HEALING, in spite of the fact that HE is already in a state of TOTAL AWARENESS AND LOVE. He will not FORCE himself onto anyone, and just because HE is healed/healing it does not mean PEOPLE WANT TO RECEIVE HIM. This is why we have to CHOOSE to be willing to listen to his voice rather than the ego. It’s up to us.

It is difficult to accept that some people DO NOT WANT TO BE HAPPY. It is difficult to accept that some people WILL AGAINST GOD AND REFUSE TO ACCEPT LOVE. It is difficult to accept that PEOPLE CHOOSE TO BE SICK and that they want to keep being sick to protect themselves. It is difficult to accept PEOPLE DON'T WANT A MIRACLE, and they DON’T WANT YOUR HEALING. And that's their right. And their freedom. And we are to respect that and be patient in waiting for them to BECOME willing. Love isn't forceful. Miracles don't happen to people against their will.

Believe me I've tried... I've tried many times to heal someone who is very sick, and who was not ready to heal, and it did not work. It was very upsetting to me that I could not heal it. It was a difficult lesson personally, but a necessary one, because until we can see how healing might FAIL (be blocked by the recipient), we may not come to LET GO of the belief in sickness for ourselves.

I eventually asked Jesus why this wasn't working. Despite many prayers and attempts at miracles. Even one time I did a miracle-working act where angels came to help and I felt it was very powerful, and Jesus said that "it was fully given". But.... just because it was fully given, DOES NOT mean it was fully received. I asked Him, why didn't it seem to work.

Why was the person still sick?! And I don’t mean... why was I still believing in sickness... the question was, why did that person still maintain an illusion of symptoms of sickness.

His answer simply... "they are not ready to receive it."

This was discouraging, because I used to believe, like many, that it SHOULD BE POSSIBLE to HEAL EVERONE if I just learn HOW. But it does not work that way. It was, however, encouraging to me to also be told that at some point THEY WILL become ready to receive it, which is heartwarming, but we still have to learn, just because WE are waking up to love and are willing to be miraculous, it does NOT mean other people will suddenly stop being sick or unloving. It is their lesson. It is their choice. We have to allow other people to be sick IF they want to. It's not God's will, but it's that person's will. God does not condone sickness, he offers to HEAL IT RIGHT NOW, but people refuse.

Trying to heal everyone, or to "perform miracles indiscriminately", is what Jesus tells us NOT to do. He knows WHO is willing and ready to receive them, and He will send the appropriate WILLING people to us. This won't be EVERYONE. It will only be those who are ready to receive. Some people are, some people aren't. We won’t get to be hero saviors or "ego healers" because other people are NOT playing along with our fantasy.

And just because Jesus COULD POTENTIALLY heal everyone in an instant, THEY DO NOT WANT IT. I asked Jesus time and again to heal someone and do you know what he said, "I cannot". And I asked why - why would someone so powerful and capable and miraculous NOT be able to heal it. "They don’t want it."

Sorry to say... this is why TIME is still ticking over with events happening and lessons being learned RATHER THAN God simply snapping his fingers and waking everyone up RIGHT NOW "against their will". God ALLOWED US to have our free will dream illusion of separation, knowing that at some point we would return to him unscathed. It is not happening because God wills it. If God had his way we never would’ve even DREAMED of separation. But WE had the free will to choose to pretend it’s possible, and it’s still our free will to keep doing that, EACH OF US, if we want to. Individually.

So please let's get off this perspective that if you heal YOUR perception, everyone else will suddenly be free of sickness. That if YOU don't perceive "sickness", you will not SEE anyone suffering with sickness. That if you gain true perception for yourself, you will be incapable of seeing anyone suffering. Or that their sickness is part of your own mind and therefore you need healing. You are only responsible for what YOU DO TO YOURSELF. And even though at a HIGHER LEVEL they are one with you, THEIR CHOICE is their own.

You will still see the form of people’s bodies being projected with sick characteristics, because that's the will of you brother! But you won't see it AS real sickness, you'll see THROUGH it, and recognize it is JUST AN ILLUSION. Just because you don’t believe sickness is REAL, doesn’t mean you will be incapable of seeing that OTHER PEOPLE still think it is real, or that they are still projecting bodies that are sick. Jesus was perfectly CAPABLE of SEEING people who were in need, people who were suffering, and people who were dying or dead, EVEN THOUGH His perception did not INTERPRET those things as reality. Your recognition of it being an illusion WILL NOT BE SHARED by them until they are WILLING AND READY.

Believe me I've tried many many times to heal indiscriminately and to alleviate suffering and it's not necessarily because I can't, but because the people involved were not willing to be healed. THEY HAVE THE POWER TO REFUSE LOVE. They already HAVE refused love. They already DID reject God's eternal life and totally healed condition. They already HAVE attempted to block miracles and to reject life. (Yes, its an illusion) Even GOD did not overthrow their free will to do this. (yes I know its an illusion, didn't happen)... but God RESPECTS free will and will ALLOW people to keep being sick IF THEY WANT TO. And so did Jesus.

This unfortunately is a hard lesson to learn, that some people simply do not want to be well, want to be sick, want to keep being sick, and there IS nothing you can do about that right now. All you can do is keep praying and offering and extending love that MAYBE they will accept and receive it BY their will, and therefore CHOOSE to be well BY THEIR OWN WILL, and therefore CONCUR with the will of God, and thus RECEIVE the love that heals them. Receiving is a choice. You can still attempt to perform miracles, but even if you give a bucketload of love, it STILL won’t produce effects if it is not welcome or goes against the person’s will.

Until you can receive the atonement or even a small piece of atonement on one particular issue you will not be willing to RECEIVE LOVE AT ALL. The first time that I did a really thorough forgiveness and took it all the way to the atonement principle, becoming WILLING TO ACCEPT THAT IT IS TRUE that I was innocent on a particular topic, I became willing to RECEIVE LOVE FROM GOD finally on that topic, and Jesus said to me "Now you will be able to perform miracles". Because I had be WILLING TO RECEIVE for myself. "You can only give the miracles you have received".!

We can offer healing. We cannot force it. We will not undo everyone’s suffering just by undoing our own. Even if we go to Heaven as Jesus did, knowing sickness is impossible, brothers will STILL be dreaming of sickness for as long as they want to. We can but OFFER love to them and pray for them and send miracles to them, but it’s up to them to let go of their resistance, to CLAIM the healing that has already been given.

God has ALREADY GIVEN ALL HEALING, He has already given eternal life, and yet we refuse it. It’s our choice

When you are whole, you have only one identity. You are identified with Spirit. You are one with Holy Spirit. You are at peace.

When you begin to believe that illusions are actually reality, entering into the separation state, you put denial in place to shut out awareness of God, and therefore awareness of your "whole self" (Holy Self, True Self etc) seems blocked.

Once this denial is in place, which is an act of believing in real sin, you have tried to attack your wholeness and God’s wholeness with an idea of separateness. You therefore put illusions of separateness into your own mind. These show up inside your own mind, or to put it another way, inside your own self.

So you "split yourself", in the same way that two people seem separate. The split seems like a wall coming inbetween two identities. At the same time, both of these identities are separated from the whole self and God.

Neither "part" of the split mind has awareness of the whole, because these parts, which have come about because you believed in separation, are both cut off from being aware of the whole mind. Neither of them "identify with" the whole self.

So now you have this whole mind which remains whole, in truth. Then you have this fictional scenario playing out INSIDE your mind, where there is this strange dream of separateness and division.

What keeps the parts of the split mind separate are simply illusions - appearances - that there is something about each part which is different to the other, causing them to seem to be "not each other". This cannot be true in reality, but within the split mind (consciousness), you develop a multiple personality disorder.

This split plays out as dreams of various dramas of conflict. Other terms for this conflict are war, self-attack, condemnation, judgement, the whole drama of victims and victimizers, some things being good and others bad etc.

The funny thing is then, within your whole mind, there is sort of a "stage" with a "play" being performed, with characters, and there are at least two main characters. And each character is seemingly "opposite" to the other in as many ways as possible. They want nothing to do with each other, they want to emphasize the ways in which they are separate and unlike, so that the illusion of "why" they are not ONE is reinforced and maintained.

One of these major parts of the split mind is the persona, and the other part is the shadow. I don’t think the course explicitly uses those terms/words, but it definitely does speak about this in many places and ways.

In order for there to be multiple selves in the mind, ie identities, false identities, there has to be denial and the purpose of that denial is to "shut out" one of the selves from the awareness of the other one. There are whole sections about this in the course.

The "persona" part of the split mind as we’ll call it, is really a part of the ego which attempts to create an illusion of innocence. Really the purpose you had in creating the split to begin with was an attempted solution to your belief in sin.

You figured that "all of you" was sinful, and you could not tolerate this idea. There was no way to KEEP it and also escape it. You wanted to keep "real sin" because that was your tiny mad idea/wish. So you made up a solution which is totally insane, but which creates an illusion of it working.

The solution is to section off one part of your mind where you’ll house all the "bad" or "rejected" or "condemned and sinful" parts of yourself, and then you’ll keep another part of the mind where you’ll create an illusion of a completely "innocent seeming" self.

By keeeping the two parts away from each other, ie keeping the fake-innocent self (persona) "in the dark" about the sinful self (shadow), the persona is able to maintain an ILLUSION that "you" did not sin! It shoves all of the evidence of sinfulness into the unconscious shadow part of the mind, attacks it, disassociates from it, and projects it "away" from the persona as much as possible.

One thing to note here is that you did not really want to get rid of your belief in sin. You wanted to believe it as real and irreversible. So you devised a way to KEEP it but To PRETEND you did not want it, so that no one (including you) would suspect or question that you might’ve been the one who did it, so that nobody ever will LOOK AT the fact that it was you, and therefore the idea of real sin goes unchallenged. You make yourself out to seem "innocenct" or even remorseful, with FAKE GUILT, in order to pretend you did not want to sin and weren’t the one to do it, but it’s not true.

This is all taking place still within your mind, entirely. It has nothing to do with what is "outside" of you, or anything to do with anyone else. But because the persona part of the ego disassociates from the shadow, it makes it SEEM "to the persona self" that the shadow-self is NOT ITSELF. Ie it is "other than me".

What happens is you, as the whole mind, who has temporarily lost track of who you are, and who thinks you are a split mind, with multiple personalities, now "sides with" the persona self. It is fictional and totally fake, but it seems to make "you" look like you did not sin. So you allow this persona self to be IN your "conscious awareness", and you make sure to keep the shadow self OUT of awareness in unconsciousness.

The primary function of the persona therefore is to attack your whole self, to identify that some major portion of your self is a sinner and guilty and deserving to die, ie not good enough and can’t be loved because it’s supposedly "evil", it confines all *illusory apperances* of the "bad stuff" and shoves it into unconsciousness, by using denial.

The act of putting "distance" between the persona and the shadow therefore implements *disassociation*, which basically means you do not want to be "associated with" the sin that you believe you committed against God (so no-one would suspect you). So you distance yourself from it using this denial mechanism. This MAKES the shadow ie basically creates an enemy for the persona, who it hates and despises and wants nothing to do with, ON PURPOSE, so that it can KEEP the bad shit away from itself, making an illusion of innocence.

Since this is happening all entirely within the whole of your mind, BUT since you have identified your "self" only with the persona self and not the repressed sinner/shadow, you then "perceive" that you are NOT the shadow self. That it is some "identity" separate from what you are. You disassociate from it so heavily that you literally believe it is NOT YOU. ie, this other part of your own mind is NOT part of your own mind.

What then will happen, however, is the mind cannot get rid of this dark sin, because ideas do not leave their source (!), so it can’t actually get it OUT of the mind, it can only *disguise* it. The persona will then seem to experience that it is now this little helpless innocent-seeming perfect good likeable harmless little self, and that the shadow unconscious self is this big ugly monsterous enemy that it wants to keep hating in order to keep it OUT of AWARENESS. To maintain denial.

Now. What this has actually resulted in in terms of the Son of God, is that within His mind, he has invented these fictional characters, the conscious self who is fake, and the unconscious self which is denied. The conscious self, the persona, SHOWS UP as a BODY! It acts as a visible representation of "who I am", a fake identity, appearing innocent, born seemingly innocent, and no one would suspect that it had tried to murder God.

And then, everything OUTSIDE of the body, the entire "world" and "environment" and all "people who are not me", are actually projections of YOUR OWN UNCONSCIOUS MIND. So your unconscious mind (shadow) is actually outside of your body, and your conscious persona self is inside your body. You can see just how much disassociation there is for an average person, by looking at how much they believe that they are ONLY the self that is "in the body", little and helpless, and everyone else is "not me".

Since the person’s mind is split and the person has identified only with their fake persona self, thinking that everything outside of them is "not my persona self", this happens to map exactly to how we experience the world in terms of bodies and relationships. When another "body" shows up "out there", we regard it as "not myself".

This simultaneously "maps" our unconscious, repressed, disassociated belief that WE SINNED, onto that other person, because just as we believe that our own sinful shit is "not myself", we also believe that that person is "not myself". Therefore it is EASY to "associate" your own disassociated unconscious sin WITH that "not me" other person! This allows you to perceive, and believe, that the sin is IN THEM, it is THEIRS, NOT YOURS, and THEY are the one who was the sinner against God!

Truth is, your experience of what you see "in the not-me selves" - other people out there, is YOUR belief in sin, actually WITHIN your mind still, and you are now interacting with YOUR SHADOW, inside your mind, hallucinating that it is a separate person or content within someone else, and you actually come to believe that this other innocent person is the "one" who is sinning against you.

Any attack you seem to experience, will SEEM like it is being caused by other people. IT IS NOT! It is YOUR other split off part of your own mind - your shadow, attacking the REST of your split off mind - your persona - which you think is "all of myself", but which is only PART of yourself. The persona - your conscious self, who denies that it has an unconscious mind, is "attacked by" this other part of the mind that it believes is not even part of itself.

If you think about it, the only way that it is possible for the persona part of the mind to "be attacked" is if the attacker is INSIDE the realm of where the persona lives. It can only get "access" to the persona because it actually SHARES the same "host mind", and therefore the persona can be attacked by the shadow.

We often, as personas, not our real selves, will believe that the identity who is doing the attacking is "not me", and therefore someone else is attacking "you" (your persona) and it is nothing to do with "you". You will therefore identify with being the VICTIM, who has been unfairly treated and abused against its will, by this "other". This ego persona will see itself as JUSTIFIED in being angry and getting revenge, which it does by further attacking yourself and sectioning off even more parts of you which it deems sinful.

The main function of the persona is to first condemn yourself as a sinner, then try to section off the sinful parts of you to hide them and make them unconscious through denial/disassociation, and to then try to "keep" only the bits of yourself that it deems acceptable, worthy, attractive, valuable, credible, innocent, likeable, good, basically a picture of fake innocence... a picture of someone who no-one would suspect of murder ous intent or a sinful past.

The whole point of the persona is to DENY that you were the one who sinned against God, by pretending to be totally innocent and harmless. To do this, the persona has to attack you, split parts of you off, judge them as bad, make them unconscious, disassociate them from yourself, and only keep the smaller subset of illusory qualities that it says is "acceptable for now".

The persona is a perfectionist and is NEVER satisfied and has impossible standards. The ego thus ranges from suspicious (when in the persona mainly), to visciousness (when the hated guilty shadow self comes out of unconsciousness to express pain and guilt).

You need to realize that the persona is actively GETTING RID OF YOU, by emphasizing all the things that it finds "good" about you, and getting rid of all the things it finds "bad". And sooner or later, because you are never good enough for it (because ego denies love/lovability), it will strip away "bad stuff" until there IS No good stuff left, and you will be DEAD! The persona tries to "preserve a good self" in the name of getting rid of you! It is not on your side and it is not acting in your best interests.

What you need to realize then is that every enemy and attacker and abuser and victimizer is PART OF YOUR OWN MIND. It is the shadow in your mind, which your persona made up, coming back to attack the persona to try to point out the ways that the persona is actually a murderer. While the persona is busy claiming "I did not do it, it’s the shadow’s fault, it’s the sinner", the shadow is going to have in its agenda to "expose" the bullshit lies of the persona and point out the ways that "you" are NOT GOOD, and not pure or holy or right or happy etc. The persona hates this and sees it as attack or violation, but it’s the mind’s attempt to heal itself in a way.

When the unconscious pain (pain body) starts to come into awareness, the persona freaks out in fear and tries to suppress it and get rid of it and avoid it. Trying to get rid of IT is what happens when you try to get rid of OTHER PEOPLE because you think that THEY are IT and getting rid of them will solve your problem! Except the ego’s tactics DO NOT WORK! YOU will keep your shadow self and make it worse.

You have to realize that every attacker is PART OF YOU. And, what is being "attacked by" that attacker, is also PART OF YOU. The key is, the secret to salvation, which is that you are doing this ALL to yourself. You are BOTH attacking you (persona identified self) and are also BEING the attacker (shadow). BOTH of these FAKE CHARACTERS are in your mind. You put them both there. oYu are not EITHER of them

At some point, in your undoing of the ILLUSIONS that keep these two selves apart, and which maintain war, and which keep you thinking that other people are your enemies when it’s really YOU, and that YOU are not even the self that was being attacked, you will start to see through this split-minded perspective.

At some point, you will first of all ACCEPT that BOTH of these things are parts of your own mind, nothing to do with anyone else. That means the attacker and the attacked are both in your mind. Then you will realize, that if they are both in your mind, and you put them there, YOU - whatever you are really - must be maintaining both of them. If YOU are putting both of them in your mind, then YOU are literally the puppet master who is pitting these two selves AGAINST EACH OTHER.

Therefore the war that is waging between "them" is actually FICTIONAL, the claims that each of them makes about what the "other" is doing to the is an ILUSION - a fake story and a fake set of character traits and a fake scenario of victimization, IS NOT REAL.

IF... you, as the whole mind, contain both persona and shadow, and if you are the ONE who has put them there, and if the ways they SEEM to be two separate identities is NOT TRUE, then...

IF you can realize that YOU ARE BEING BOTH OF THEM, then suddenly you will see a COMMONALITY between them, a truth which completely obliterates the entir illusion of separation, undoes all the disassociation, collapses all denial, and totally blows up this whole FICTIONAL PLAY which has been playing out in your mind.

IF they are both you, and you are ONE SELF, looking upon both of them, and realizing that they MUST both be you because *YOU ARE THE ONE DOING THIS ALL TO YOURSELF*, THEN.....nothing about them which *seems* separate can be true. They can’t BOTH exist as separate personalities if they are actually both you - ONE IDENTITY - not two identities.

Seeing this finally collapses the entire illusion, the split in the mind is OVERLOOKED, you forgive yourself for what you did not do, you stop playing the roles of attacker and attacked, victim OR victimizer, and you LET BOTH SIDES OF THE WAR GO. You realize your war with yourself could not be won because, since you were BOTH SIDES, you WERE ALWAYS LOSING, no matter who wins.

Seeing this futility will AWAKEN YOUR MIND to suddenly realizing, that since you are ONE REAL IDENTIY, NOT two fake ones, the fake ones cannot be real. And suddenly, they will DISAPPEAR. And since they were blocking your awareness of the WHOLE of who you are, and since you no longer see EITHER of them as your IDENTITY, suddenly your mind will AWAKEN to accepting and being AWARE OF who you ACTUALLY ARE, as ONE WHOLE SELF!

The fictional ego illusion deream will disappear from sight. Blocks to awareness will vanish. You will no longer pretend you are at war with yourself. You will no longer pretend to be multiple personalities. And you will simply return to your natural whole state of FULL AWARENSS OF ALL OF YOURSELF, as God created you. A mind which is whole, not split. A mind which is HOLY, not evil. A mind which is neither a victim or a victimizer. A mind which cannot BE attacked and CANNOT attack.

And now you are home, back to being who you really are, back with God, and in love FOREVER!

Here, you can read the THE ONLY PARAGRAPH in the entire Course where a "shift in perception" is mentioned in connection with "miracles". There are NO other references to this and there is not even a single reference to any kind of "shifting" OR changing of perception in relation to "miracles" mentioned within the same context or section of text, anywhere.

I am going to explain what it really means and what a MIRACLE is, below.

"The miracle minimizes the need for time. In the longitudinal or horizontal plane the recognition of the equality of the members of the Sonship appears to involve almost endless time. However, the miracle entails a sudden SHIFT from horizontal to vertical perception. This introduces an interval from which the giver and receiver both emerge farther along in time than they would otherwise have been. The miracle thus has the unique property of abolishing time to the extent that it renders the interval of time it spans unnecessary."

So, for a start, the "shift" referred to is in the context of the collapsing of time, and not so much talking about the so-called "shifts in perception" that you undergo when you are correcting/purifying the mind. But it does mention perception.

The KEY sentence is this: "The miracle entails a sudden SHIFT from horizontal to vertical perception."

Now, we need to understand what the Course means by a "horizontal perception" and a "vertical perception" and how they are different and what exactly is "entailed" by "shifting" from one to the other.

"Horizontal perception" is ego perception. It means that you believe in and are perceiving causes on this level, which are producing effects on this SAME level. Therefore it seems that cause and effect are operating sideways. So for example, if it SEEMS as if a person throws a ball at another person and it hits them on the head, person A is the cause and person B is affected. This illusion sets up a scenario of victimhood, if the people are thinking with the ego.

On the surface it appears there was an independent, separate cause on this level, which produced independent, separate effects in some other part of this level. This way of perceiving relies on separation and fragmentation of the level, ie multiple separate individual causes and effects. And also in horizontal perception, it is believed that a cause "escapes" from the effects it produces, so is not at the effect of itself and can get away with murder.

Horizontal perception is a murderous thought system of attack and the attempt to deny effects ie to deny oneness, to have separate rules for separate individuals, to perceive inequality and to seem capable of attacking without being attacked. This is all "standard" within horizontal perception. It's ego perception.

"Vertical perception" is very different to this. Instead of looking sideways for causality on this level, or thinking that this level causes effects in a higher level, perception instead places you IN GOD, ie in truth/heaven, looking DOWNWARDS upon the lower level (this world).

From that higher perspective, it is seen that the ENTIRE world is one dream, it is all coming FROM the higher level, the higher level is the cause of it, all of the things happening in the world are EFFECTS ONLY, there ARE no causes in the world on the horizontal level, and therefore there also are no victims, no possibility of one part of the world attacking another, and no separated opposing wills working against each other. It is the perspective of God, or the perspective of the dreamer of the dream.

In vertical perception, you literally RECOGNIZE that everything in this world/lower level is expressing FROM the higher level, thus mind is the cause of everything that's showing up, and there are no other causes of anything. That means there is no horizontal cause of sickness or death. There is nothing that is happening or showing up in the world which "explains" or "justifies" or "causes" anything else on the same level. So someone does not die from a car crash, someone is not sick because of bad food, someone is not suffering with PTSD from a war, someone is not lacking money because someone stole it, etc. No horizontal causes whatsoever.

Instead, vertical perception sees that there can be no victimhood, there are NO causes on the level of form, the entire universe is an effect, mind is the cause, mind has all the power, mind has projected this entire world and it can CHANGE ANYTHING if it so chooses. When it changes something, it basically goes behind the back of any fictional "horizontal laws", which includes all of the laws of physics, biology, chemistry, etc, and pulls the plug on them.

That means, while it is physically impossible for a physical object to suddenly disappear from one location and show up in another, based on the horizontal laws of causality, "vertically" this is absolutely effortless. The vertical mind can choose, from above, to simply undo the projection of the object and to project another object somewhere else. To the observer on the physical level it will seem like A MIRACLE! A demonstration of what appears to be horizontally impossible. A law-breaking, physics-defying demonstration that the horizontal laws ARE NOT TRUE, and that the laws of God ARE TRUE.

This is also the true meaning of "there is no order of difficulty in miracles". They are all the same because all that happens is a vertically-perceiving person who does not buy into any of the horizontal illusions/laws whatsoever, decides to rearrange the illusion in a way which completely defies all of the laws and which horizontal-believing people find to be impossible. If at first a person appeared dead, and if the horizontal laws say that once death occurs there is no going back, and the vertically perceiving person decides to remove the dead body and put life back into it and manifest a living body in its place, THAT IS A MIRACLE.

A miracle is an expression, rooted in love, aligned with the Atonement (vertical truth), which CAUSES FROM ABOVE, and produces effects BELOW (e.g. in the physical level). And since all such acts are basically the SAME ACT of causality from above to below, it does not matter whatsoever what the below rules say should be possible, or what seems more difficult or easy, or the magnitude of the effects, or how long lasting they have been, or how many times a person was caused, or how long sickness has been present, or how long someone is dead for. None of it matters vertically because love expresses maximally from above, will full power and effect below, and everything is essentially the SAME ACTION. One problem, one solution.

Now, we need to therefore recognize that when someone is in the ego mindset, if they are trying to apply the course and are trying to shift perception or have a healing or receive a correction, the only "actual" healing possible is to move in the direction of the vertical.

However, if we are being honest here, a person who is just starting out with this and who has a "little" willingness and accepts a small correction, can barely be called a miracle worker. They may "shift" from 99% horizontal perception, to 98.5% horizontal perception. A very slight shift away from horizontal toward vertical truth. And that person WILL NOT be able to move mountains. They will not be able to reverse death nor will they be able to heal the blind etc.

Each little shift in perception gradually, slowly, over a long period of time, moves the person from the horizontal upward toward God. And it takes a LOT of purification work to do this. A huge amount of investment in horizontal ego perception must be let go in order to move upwards. And there is NOT a "sudden shift" here. You do not suddenly go from heavy ego investment to "no ego" in the blink of an eye (at least almost never). We're not talking about going from horizontal to "slightly more vertical" perception. A miracle entails a shift ALL THE WAY to vertical perception.

Notice also it says "entails", which doesn't necessarily mean "is". It's not saying a miracle IS a shift to vertical perception. It ENTAILS getting into vertical perception first. You need to get your mind up there into the perspective of God, first, before you will be able to perform a miracle. And for most people that is going to take YEARS of dedicated undoing and correction, which the course calls PURIFICATION. It's not even the same thing as forgiveness.

Now, there are parts in the Course where Jesus makes a distinction between being "miracle ready" and the actual "action" of performing a miracle. Miracle readiness means being in vertical perception at all times. Actually PERFORMING a miracle, which expresses FROM love, in a vertical direction, producing changes in EFFECTS on the level of this world (almost always observable), is a separate part of being miraculous. You don't just sit there "being miraculous". It is not a spectator sport. Members of Jesus's party are ACTIVE WORKERS. There is an activity involved. A USE of the POWER of causality. An EXPRESSION of it to where love was LACKING, providing what was lacking, so that LIFE is restored and death is reversed. (Miracles fulfill a lack).

So the "shifting of perception" from fear to love, or from ego to truth, or from darkness to light, or from death to life, is not ITSELF a miracle. Miracles flow DOWNWARD FROM HEAVEN. "Miracles fall like drop of healing rain from heaven on a dry a dusty world where starved and thirsty creatures come to die." They come DOWN from ABOVE, not up from below, and they are not your movement upwards. Nor do they flow sideways. A sideways shift in perception is not a miracle. A slight shift towards vertical perception is not a miracle. A person is not performing miracles by MOVING UPWARD, they perform miracles by expressing FROM a high place, downward, which then LIFTS upward. The shifting of perception towards God is an EFFECT of a miracle, not a cause.

It is in fact the EGO which likes to believe that IT is a miracle worker. It does this through level confusion, which is the belief that a lower level causes a higher level. In this belief, the ego says, well, if I shift my perception toward truth, then I am being causal and am triggering a miracle. Or as if, the shifting itself is a cause, and it produces vertical effects. This is A LIE. This is classic ego thinking. God is cause, not the ego. Cause comes DOWN from above, not up from below.

Miracles ENTAIL a shift into a vertical perceiving mode, FIRST, in order to SEE with God's eyes, to recognize suffering for the illusion it is so that you do not make it real, and then LOVE EXPRESSES. The expression of love is downwards from God. Causality flows vertically, from God, to us. Getting your perception INTO a state of perceiving vertically IS NOT a miracle, it is PREPARATION for a miracle.

Recognize that miracles are rooted in forgiveness and forgiveness is a HIGH STATE of mind, in which there is nothing LEFT to forgive. It is the atonement. Forgiveness, atonement, salvation, are all the same thing. They are end goals after a great deal of purification work and much correction of perception. Correction of perception is not a miracle, but miracles DO have a corrective function.

They are extensions of, expressions of, the atonement principle, once it has ALREADY been accepted. Atonement has to be RECEIVED, BEFORE miracles can be GIVEN. You can only give the miracles you have received, and miracles are something you SHARE and GIVE, not something that you "only receive". You cannot express a miracle UNTIL you accept atonement, and you cannot accept atonement UNTIL you have "shifted perception". So the shifts in perception have to happen FIRST, over a long period of time, gradually, to get your mind to where you are WILLING to ACCEPT the atonement, and THEN you will be willing to RECEIVE, and THEN you will be ABLE to extend and perform a miracle. You cannot give miracles you have not received and that means you cannot express atonement if you have not accepted it yet!

You can't sit there and think, well, I just shifted "my perception" and so "I" have now received a "miracle" in isolation, which only I have benefited from, and it has no causal effects on anyone else. Giving and receiving are one, and once you accept atonement you GO OUT and you extend the atonement to others and HELP OTHERS. Miracles are services to others FROM a state of love, not little stepping stones in your own awakening.

Miracles can rearrange time because they operate from above and outside of time and therefore can DEFY linear/horizontal causality/time. Does shifting your perception rearrange time? Does it have effects which are POTENTIALLY SPECTACLES, which you then have to be careful not to use AS spectacles (ie for that sake alone)? Could you describe your own correction of your own perception, something that could have the "risk" of being considered SPECTACULAR in the eyes of other people, with effects so extraordinary (like Jesus appearing out of thin air after having "died")? Not likely.

Jesus walking on water to prove that gravity means nothing and He is not under the laws of the horizontal, THAT is a miracle. Jesus completely defying all laws by MULTIPLYING a few loaves of bread and fishes enough to feed 5000 people, that is a MIRACLE. Jesus raising someone from "certain death" and reversing death and restoring him to a living state, that is IMPOSSIBLE on the horizontal level of laws (death is irreversible), but He proved that it is NOT irreversible, because he has his hand on the "controls" of this entire world "there is nothing my holiness cannot do."

If it is not supernatural, it is NOT a miracle. It there is not some kind of causality coming from above and expressing below and BREAKING the ego's laws, it is NOT a demonstration of God's truth and is not a miracle. If it is merely someone having a personal healing in the privacy of their home and perceiving slightly more truthfully afterwards, that is NOT a miracle. It is merely a stepping stone TOWARDS being able to let miracles flow. If all expressions of love (FULL love) are a miracle, then love has to be able to flow fully and freely through you before you can be miraculous, and that is NOT even remotely going to happen while you still have a ton of correction and purification to do. "Miracles are everyone's right, but PURIFICATION IS NECESSARY FIRST." Purification is a process of gradual shifting of perception towards truth and a LOT of it is needed FIRST BEFORE you gain access to the right to perform miracles.

MIRACLES ARE NOT SHIFTS IN PERCEPTION!!!!!!!!!

Miracles are expressions from love. To be able to express from love, you have to have willingness to allow love to be in you. You have to be aware of love, and you have to be free of blocks to love. That's a HIGH STATE of mind. That's advanced. You try to get someone who has just picked up ACIM and accepted a little bit of correction, to express God's love through them.

They will not be willing OR able, because there are too many blocks in the way. Miracle working DOES NOT come to the beginner. It takes a lot of undoing and correction of the mind - a lot of "shifts", which add up overall to a much bigger shift, which eventually put you closer to God and more in alignment with vertical perception, which THEN starts to reveal miracle working abilities. The ability to cause from above. To cause from above (super) the natural (ego horizontal nature).

If it does not PROVE and DEMONSTRATE that the ego's laws are not natural and do not APPLY at all, it is not a miracle.

And note that Jesus walking on water COULD have been considered a spectacle. However, the Course actually says, do not use miracles as a spectacle as an attempt to INDUCE BELIEF. This is often cut short. The end part is vital. If you use a miracle ONLY to try to "force" someone to "believe" or to become a follower or to go along with your teaching or whatever, to coerce, to manipulate them, THEN you are producing a (potentially spectacular) miracle for the sake of achieving an ego purpose. And this IS a mistaken understanding of their purpose.

But if you are not doing that, and you're not going around putting on a show just to shock and awe people, without using them to actually TEACH or HEAL or UNDO or RAISE THE DEAD so that people become MORE RESURRECTED, THAT is the only way that they are used incorrectly as spectacles. It's got NOTHING to do with whether the miracle is spectacular or not. And this idea of "not doing anything spectacular" has led people to hide in a hole and be afraid of miracles and to play them down and shove them in a box to suggest not doing ANYTHING that could be considered a spectacle. It's a gross misunderstanding.

So anyway. Stepping off my soapbox for now. Miracles are miraculous. This is a Course in SUPERNATURAL MIRACLES, ego-law breaking miracles, what appears "impossible" to the horizontal ego thought system, and expressions of real love which has the power to LITERALLY move mountains.

Come on people. This is a course in MIRACLES. MIRACLES!!!!! Not a course in fixing yourself up and sitting on a fence.

There is a lot of resistance to this very radical part of ACIM, so let's look at it even more closely.

When you project sin onto others, you are accusing them of your own sins. You do this to dissociate from the sin, deny it and hide from it. You try to associate it WITH someone else, so that they are responsible for it, and you're let off the hook.

If you think of sin as CAUSE, you are trying to disown causal power and put it outside of yourself, making you AT THE EFFECT of it. You believe someone else is CAUSING you, affecting you. and deciding what you are.

However, this doesn't just happen on a mental level. It also happens PHYSICALLY. The body is a symbol, not an end in itself.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

"The body is the symbol of the world."

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

It is a communication device. It REPRESENTS the MESSAGE that the mind is transmitting to another. It CHANGES FORM to DEPICT a symbol of the kind of relationship you are having with the person! This is because it is a separation device and takes on the form of "how much separation" there is between you and others. And sickness is a greater degree of separation than health, symbolically.

Images of a healthy, unharmed, pain-free, sickness-free body, SYMBOLIZE ideas of eternal life. It represents innocence and the absence of attack. It symbolizes healing and wholeness and harmlessness. It contains no "proof" that sin has ever happened to it, and there is no evidence that anyone has ever attacked it. Therefore it acts as a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY.

However, when the mind is sick, having attack thoughts and belief in sin, which starts the ball rolling with projection and scapegoating, this INFLUENCES the picture of the body. The body actually literally CHANGES FORM to a different symbolic form. Forms of sickness, damage, malfunction, attack, pain, deformity, disability, disease, infection, etc, are all attempts to SHOW your brother that you "think ill of him." The body thus because a SYMBOL OF DEATH. Or as Jesus puts it, a "picture of crucifixion."

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God."

"the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes (your body in a sick state), that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death (yes PHYSICAL), and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."

We actually USE the body as a TOOL. It is a communication device. We actually hold it up as a picture for others to look at to REPRESENT what we think and how we relate. When we are in ego, we change the body into forms of sickness. And when we are with the Holy Spirit, we change the body into forms of health. This is because a "healthy body" DOES symbolize life and wholeness and happiness and innocence. Just as sick bodies SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and pain and death.

Now here's the important part. The reason WHY you make the body sick ON PURPOSE in order to accuse others of sin. When your mind is healthy, cause and effect are in their proper order and you are extending love outward. You see yourself as the cause or dreamer of the dream. However, when you go into ego, your perception becomes backwards, and you start to see cause as OUTSIDE of you, and see yourself as AN EFFECT.

Your own mind does this, and the result is that it starts to "visualize itself" AS an effect. Whatever way it believes someone ELSE is to blame, or someone ELSE is sinful, it also imagines what kind of EFFECTS that would produce in you if it were true. If some person is believed to be attacking you, YOUR mind will DEPICT itself physically as the symbolic image of an ATTACKED body. Your mind implements the EFFECTS within the body, to correspond to its belief in the projected CAUSE that it sees as outside itself.

So now what's happening is, as cause and effect are reversed, your mind starts to attack itself from the outside in, through others. As you go to scapegoat and blame someone for CAUSING you, for sinning against you, you SIMULTANEOUSLY portray yourself as a victim. You do this mentally, BUT it also in turn CHANGES THE BODY. The body PICTURES what you think of yourself and how you see yourself.

"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE."

Whatever you think you are, your body SYMBOLIZES it physically. If you think of yourself with attack and sin, which you later project, your body takes on a symbolic FORM of that attitude. It represents TWO things ... 1) what you think of yourself, and 2) what you think of others. These are actually one thing, because you are one with others.

So as you go to accuse yourself of sin, you ALSO go to accuse your brother of sin. The body COMES BETWEEN you as a separation device. It is now being USED to symbolically visualize the PRESENCE of attack, darkness, walls, blockages, etc. And so the body shifts its physical appearance (it's just an image in the mind), to represent your relationship to yourself and others. "Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, ***you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son***. ***You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes***, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. "

"For accusation is a bar to love, ***and damaged bodies ARE accusers***. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, ***proclaiming*** that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because ***your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him.***"

Bottom line, when your mind is accusing, your BODY accuses as well. It lines up with the mind's attitude. The body itself does NOT have its OWN state, its own attitude, its own decision, or its own mind. It CANNOT maintain itself. It is maintained by the mind, and the mind has power over it. The mind USES it and TELLS it what to do and HOW to show up. It MAKES the body appear in one form or another. And the PURPOSE of any chosen form is to COMMUNICATE through symbols.

So when you are accusing, which means you are projecting, which means you are splitting your mind, your mind causes the body to be used for separation, and this ATTACKS the body and makes it steer towards a PICTURE of crucifixion and death. The INTENT is that the body is acting to PROVE to your brother the consequences of what you claim HE DID. You cannot scapegoat WITHOUT it changing the body. The body is HELD UP as a picture to SHOW HIM effects, which YOU put there, which you accuse HIM of putting there.

So long as the body remains appearing to be sick in any way, and given the mind is the ONLY cause of it, and given the body can ONLY symbolize because it has no meaning or state of its own, the body HAS TO fall into line with the mind's purpose. If the body remains sick in any way, the mind HAS TO be continuing to use it for attack. The body is still showing a symbol of attack BECAUSE the mind is STILL attacking. There are no exceptions to this. It is so reliable that we can say, if the body is still sick, the mind HAS NOT been healed. And it also means if the body is still sick, IT IS STILL accusing your brother of sin.

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."

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

It is NOT enough to claim that the mind can be healed WITHOUT healing the body. When the mind is healed, it FORCES the body to symbolize its new condition. The body cannot stay sick or keep sickness or hold onto any given state, because mind is USING IT as a symbolic form of communication. Whatever the mind wants to show a brother, the body HAS TO show. And so the body CHANGES FORM according to the mind.

This works for sickness just as it works for healing. The body cannot stay sick if the mind decides to be truly healthy. No more than it can stay healthy if the mind decides to be sick. Jesus even goes so far as to say that if your mind is truly healed, it WILL heal the body ALWAYS, and this makes it IMPOSSIBLE for the body to become sick. The mind is OVERRIDING any alleged external (projected) causes of sickness, and is TOTALLY OWNING control and power over it. Therefore, it does not CHOOSE to be sick, and so does not MAKE the body show up as sick. This makes sickness of the body IMPOSSIBLE.

"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."

"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."

It can't be stressed enough how extreme and unconditional this is. If you so choose, your mind will use the body for attack, which WILL ALWAYS attack the body and FORCE it to depict proof of sin. And this proof of sin will be held up to others to SHOW them what they did to you (allegedly). EVEN to the extent that you are willing to KILL the body entirely, IF it means that you can be exonerated from sin. And he is in fact saying that we do this.

We think it is even a SMALL PRICE to pay, if it means we can be seen as the innocent one, such that a dead body IS VERY STRONG PROOF that someone OTHER than the person CAUSED The death. You'll notice that whenever there is a physical death, it always looks as though the person DID NOTHING to cause it. This is because their mind has DISOWNED the cause by projecting it EXTREMELY, depicting themselves as POWERLESS AND HELPLESS, as if having no ability to choose at all.

"Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not willing at all."

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

By PRETENDING not to be willing at all, to have no choice and no power and no say in the matter, we attack the body and make it show up as DEAD, in trying to ACCUSE THE WORLD OF SIN, so that WE will seem to be the helpless victim. A person who was "killed" NOT by their own hand. Someone who "died of" ANYTHING other than themselves. Died from cancer, died from starvation, died from a car crash, died from war, whatever. Anything so long as it appears to be NOT THE MIND. So that the person can HIDE the fact that THEY DID IT TO THEMSELVES. This is why death is an extreme LIE.

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

So in death, you are using your body to try to PROVE that your BROTHER IS A SINNER. This is the EGO's use of the body. This is what happens when you use the body for attack. It destroys the body. It makes the body show up as sick and suffering and a victim, so that someone or something is framed for sin. That is the ONLY reason this happens. And the mind makes this decision alone.

"The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions which are responsible for the body's condition."

The alternative is that if you move towards RESURRECTION, towards life and wholeness and happiness and holiness, this TOO has an "influence on" the body. It has a healing influence, we could say. It causes the mind to DEPICT itself as a symbol of immortality. A symbol of having NOT been attacked, a symbol of being free from suffering, a symbol of eternal life. A symbol of invulnerability and harmlessness and the IMPOSSIBILITY of being sick or hurt.

As such "the mind, being sane, heals the body" and "now is the body healed by miracles." Again the body has NO SAY in this. It is just a symbol. It gets its FORM from the mind's relationship to others. It SYMBOLIZES the communication. As the mind heals the body CANNOT REMAIN SICK. It cannot maintain sickness or keep it, nor is there ANY OTHER CAUSE of physical sickness. Mind has TOTAL control over it.

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

The mind is STRONGER than the body and the body can only go along with the mind's wishes. If the mind heals, the mind overrides the body image and projects an image of a HEALTHY body. A body which is free from any symbols or signs of attack, harm, damage, breakage, scars, wounds, or anything else which might symbolize the OPPOSITE of eternal life.

Furthermore, when your mind forces your body to heal, because you WANT to SHOW your brothers that you LOVE him, and think HARMLESSLY of him, HE now looks upon your physical body as a MESSAGE. Its physical form PROVES what you THINK of yourself and him. In its healed form, it says "I have never been hurt and you have never hurt me." It PROVES he is innocent. It even proves this BEYOND anything HE tries to do to you.

Even if he thinks he HAS attacked you, YOUR miracle of healing proves to him that HE HAS NOT. And therefor he can no longer BELIEVE that he is a sinner, because you've USED the body to show him, symbolically, that anything he THOUGHT he did had NO effects. This triggers a HEALING IN HIS MIND, because your BODY no longer supports or TEMPTS him to believe that he is sinful. Therefore your body now is used as a HEALING DEVICE and IS SYMBOL OF THE INNOCENCE OF YOUR BROTHER.

"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 (physically) show your mind is (also) healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, ****and healed along with you****."

"Health (physically) is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. ****Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief*****. No-one is healed through double messages."

"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 (physically) his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing (physically and mentally) is his comfort ***and HIS health***. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

So literally, the healing of your mind, without exception forces the healing of your body, which in turn HEALS YOUR BROTHER. Your healing becomes HIS healing. "When I am healed I am not healed alone." And UNLESS this occurs, forgiveness IS NOT complete. Again...

"*****Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself*****. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt?"

If your brother is sinless, psychologically, he CANNOT have done anything to you PHYSICALLY, and therefore the physical is now REPURPOSED as a way to PROVE to him, psychologically, that he HAS NOT sinned. His sins had NO EFFECT on you OR your body. Your miracles REMOVED the evidence. And he can no longer SEE proof that he sinned. Which PHYSICALLY EXONERATES HIM. And this testifies that HE CANNOT have sinned, and now his MIND is healed because your physical body has played a part in weakening HIS belief in his own sinfulness. Something it could NOT do if it remains sick. In fact if it remains sick, your mind IS still accusing him of sin, and he knows it.

Some ACIM students think that there is no validity or importance whatsoever to changing the physical body, healing it, or for any reason. But Jesus is saying something totally opposite. He is literally saying you MUST heal it, otherwise it DOES continue to PROVE that your mind IS NOT healed. And any time physical sickness of any kind is showing up, something in YOUR mind is not healed. Physical sicknesses of different kinds in fact symbolize different mental attitudes.

"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion." Different unforgivenesses (grievances, special relationships etc) produce different PHYSICAL FORMS of sickness.

"So closely is one translated into the other, that a careful study of the form a sickness takes will point quite clearly to the form of unforgiveness that it represents."

So here he is even saying you can DIAGNOSE what UNFORGIVENESS is present in the mind, based on the physical FORM of the sickness in the body. Because the body is always symbolic and the forms of sickness are symbolic. This is why you get backaches when you are carrying to much mental load, and your eyes develop problems when you don't want to see something, and someone "gives you a headache" when you don't like them, and your blood pressure "boils" when you get angry.

Physical sickness IS HOW you project your sin! If your mind cannot CONCEIVE of attack, it overpowers the body and forces it to show up AS HEALED. A mind that is TRULY devoid of attack produces a LOVELY BODY, devoid of any signs or symbols of attack of any kind. Not only does the body heal by miracles, it now becomes a SYMBOL OF ETERNAL LIFE. And symbolizing immortality, it is DEVOID OF HARM and CANNOT be sick, NOR can it die! It is now impossible for the body to die and decay, it can ONLY be left by TRUTH, by DISAPPEARING IT! "Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"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."

"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 world, meaning the larger physical universe and everything in it, is fiction. It's a dream, coming from a dreaming mind. The mind is dreaming of states of being in which there is degradation, decay, change, entropy, uncertainty and death. This shows up as what we call the universe. It's an image, an illusion, picturing what God's creation (His Son) would be like if it were NOT what it is like. It's the idea of the opposite of Heaven (reality), and is hell (illusion).

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God."

As a dream, it's not real. It's actually entirely nothing. Nothing whatsoever. It's merely an illusion of something. It's not there. At most, it is completely neutral, in that it causes nothing and has no effect on anything real. It is nothing but a thin "veil" of illusions, covering up reality. It has no mind, no will, no self, no soul, no power, no causality, no identity. It is not life and nothing in it lives forever. It has no real properties at all. Made of darkness, it is the illusion of the absence of light. When light comes, it disappears.

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

"It is at best an illusion of life, at worst, death."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

You are the dreamer of the dream. The cause of the manifestation of the illusory universe. It is in your mind and coming from you. You put into place everything that happens and everything the world contains. This is "the world you made".

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways"

"For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what it wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source."

"My self is ruler of the universe."

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

"Both heaven and earth are in your mind."

Now. You as a dreamer, the cause of the dream world, have within your power the ability to choose whether to believe God's true reality is the one reality, or whether to put belief into the world you made. The only way to believe that the world you made has any truth or reality to it at all, is to believe God's world is lacking in truth and reality. This requires you to confuse what is really true, with what is false.

The false world you made (which includes planet Earth), by believing it exists at all, seems to take on properties of its own, as if it exists, as if it causes, as if it is happening, as if time and space actually occur. Through a reversal of cause and effect, believing that the effect of you is the cause of you, that your dream world is dreaming you, this forces your mind to "perceive" itself as being "caused by" the universe. This level confusion takes you out from "above" (or prior to) the world and places you seemingly "within it" (below it).

This is the foundation for incarnation into or the making of a body, which pictures you as if you have been "made by" the world, at the effect of it, and anchored in space and time like a prisoner. The body depicts the idea that the world is causing you, rather than that you cause the world. And now you seem to perceive in, through, and with the body.

Without this reversal of causality, there is no body. This also means everything the body "perceives" is false, perceived in a false way, confusing a false world with truth, and therefore perceiving it as if it is really there. This is what the senses were made to report (lies). They were made to look upon illusions of forms ("the forms of error"), and NOT see past them, taking them to be real objects and things.

"It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere."

"Even in its most spiritualized form perception involves the body."

"Everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception"

"Perception is a witness but to this, and never to reality."

"Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it"

"The body's eyes will NEVER look on it." (reality)

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed."

The perceptual function of the body, through the body's eyes and senses, reports illusions to the mind as if to suggest these illusions are really there to perceive. The body relays images of a *false world* to the mind. These are neutral images with no real meaning. Snapshots of a fake world. Pictures of nothingness seeming to be something. It is then entirely up to the mind to determine what to make of these messages.

The body always and only perceives what is false. It can ONLY look upon false things. Everything it sees MUST be false (the world is false). It is literally incapable of perceiving reality or truth of any kind. It's vision is locked into hell, for as long as it seems to exist. It cannot see light, reality, heaven, or God. It was designed not to AND it never will, regardless of your state of mind. The body sees only sin. The world is made of the idea of sin and death. Every form, object, body, planet, galaxy, is made of the idea of separation, sin and death, being a dream of death. Physical objects are sin - illusions of separations seeming to happen.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin."

"The world was made as an attack on God."

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

"endless list of forms of nothingness that you endow with magical powers."

"For sin arose from it, out of nothingness"

"Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived."

So there's the body, showing you pictures of sin and hell, constantly. That's all it can do. Anything it "sees" is a result of vision being blocked by illusions, unable to overlook (forgive) anything. Unable to see through the block of solid physical sin (matter). Repulsed by it. Imprisoned by it.

The mind however, is the only thing that sees. "only mind can see". The mind "looks upon" the images of hell that the body relays to it through the senses. The mind is the location of the belief system. The mind is where any kind of distortion of reality is happening, and it's where you assign meaning or value or "reality" to illusions. Depending on what the mind accepts as true and real, determines how it will interpret the images of a fake world. It will either believe they are real, or will believe they are not real. But so long as the body persists, it WILL continue seeing the false world.

When the mind wants to believe (value) illusory things as real, it misinterprets what the body is showing it. It is confused. It confuses unreal things for real things. The mind, therefore, has a false perception ABOUT, the images being sent to it by the body's eyes. Since the body is showing you images of the FALSE WORLD, and the mind is believing these illusions are real, the mind is now having "false perceptions about" a FALSE world. The body only shows the mind images of "hell is real". If the mind agrees with the images and is convinced these images are indeed real hell, the mind too has false perception.

Believing the body's eyes is false perception. The body is always seeing falsely, but the mind can choose whether to be confused about what it's being shown (taking it as real), or to recognize that these images are false. Images of a false world, a fake world, an untrue world, a world that is not real, or happening, a world where the sin it is made of is recognized as not real. Not true. The mind decides what meaning to give to what the body is seeing.

"Nothing I see means anything."

"I have given what I see all the meaning it has for me"

"Therefore ... will to change your mind ABOUT the world. Perception is a RESULT, and not a cause."

Note that just because you change your mind ABOUT what the body is showing you, DOES NOT MEAN that the world is inherently real or true. It does not mean the world is REAL behind your misperceptions of it. It does not mean the world is suddenly the Kingdom of God if you would just stop projecting stuff onto it. The world is NOT REAL, IN ADDITION TO, your false perceptions "about it". You have false peceptions ABOUT a false world, which makes that false world SEEM like a real world. Therefore believing the world (which is an illusion of a world) is real, or created by God, IS FALSE PERCEPTION.

A mind that believes the world is real, is having false perception. This is a false perception about a false world. The world is false, because you invented it to oppose God's truth. It is the OPPOSITE of truth. Perceiving a false world falsely, you regard it as a true world or a real world, you take it seriously, you think you live in it, and that you are at the effect of it. A true (corrected, healed) perception of a false world, reveals to you that the world IS in fact false. This is *recognition*. It is a recognition and a correct identification that this world IS in fact illusory, false, unreal, untrue, not happening, not real sin, not causing anything, not existing.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and ***the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before***. But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal."

"Illusions recognized must disappear."

"Earth, heaven's OPPOSITE in every way."

"Enlightenment is but a recognition"

Just prior to total awakening from the dream, having sorted out what is really true and really false, having come to recognize illusions as illusions, not being confused about what is real, the mind is very much healed and still uses the body temporarily as a teaching device. It is used by the Holy Spirit to communicate healing and to symbolize immortality. This is the state of being "a teacher of God."

A teacher of God is still in the world, still dreaming, still causing the body as a result of slight cause-effect reversal, but almost awake ("those who perceive still need healing." The teacher of God still looks using the body's eyes, upon a fake world, where nothing is real. And it still remains in a world that continues to function according to ego laws, space and time, change and death, war and conflict, sickness and suffering. The world is still a picture of crucifixion. But the development of true perception is the development of the "spiritual eye" which overlooks these illusions and does not believe them. It looks PAST them, through them, beyond them, to the truth of reality, ignoring the illusory world and not believing in it.

"To forgive is to overlook."

"Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?"

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see.*** They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is ***no more real*** than to regard it as healthy and beautiful."

In this state, the mind is becoming aware it is making the world. It is the dreamer of the dream. It is causing the world. It has power over it. Miracle mindedness allows for the breaking of all laws. There is nothing you cannot do. The mind here is still perceiving, and the body is still showing it pictures of hell (bodies sick and damaged, people unhappy, death and decay etc), but having *recognized* the truth (God's) it now sees things in their proper perspective.

It's a recognition that a false world IS false, illusions ARE illusions, sickness is NOT REAL, and everything you're seeing in the dream IS nothing but a dream. If you see sick bodies, you do not BELIEVE they are really sick, even though they still APPEAR as illusions of sickness you can perceive. The body can still show you broken legs. You just RECOGNIZE that they are not REALLY broken legs. They are false images, and you are not deceived by it.

The distinction is simple. Failing to recognize that a false illusory world is exactly that, confuses the mind and makes the world seem real. Recognizing it for what it is, overlooking it, not buying into it, or believing in it, reveals its FALSE nature, BECAUSE you know what is true. What you used to believe was true, real, valuable, causing you, now clearly appears to be interpreted as doing nothing, having no reality, causing nothing and producing no real effects. The illusory world is recognized as not *really* sinning. It's sin is fake. It's sicknesses are not true of anyone. And death can be abolished at will.

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."

"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

"Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth."

"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause it has, nor ever will. Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has terrified God's Son, and made him think that he has lost his innocence, denied his Father, and made war upon himself."

In this state of mind the world becomes "the forgiven world." It is forgiven because you are seeing truly. True perception is ACCURATE perception. To accurately see the world you made reveals its "true nature" or "the reality of it". The reality of the world is that it is NOT real. "The real world" is Heaven. Seeing a false world truly, recognizes this world is nothing. False things are seen, but not believed.

Realize that this is a state of continuing to perceive the world and all its ills. It cannot help but be a dream of death. Being in true perception does not in any way change the laws of physics, unless you perform a miracle. The world still spins regardless of how you look at it. Blood falls to the ground regardless of how you look at it. How you look at it is NOT a cause, it is a RESULT. Perception does not cause anything. Perception is *feedback*. It shows you what YOU MADE. It shows you the dream that you're causing.

So you are still seeing the hell you made through the body's eyes, BUT you are no longer believing it is real or confusing it for reality. False perception is a failure to *recognize* an illusion when you see one, and the world is made of illusions. And illusions are not "only" your perceptions "about" the world. The world and the body are both illusions in their own right. You will still look upon them or with them but without the confusion that they are reality.

"The body is a dream."

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."

"God did not create the body."

"The world you see is an illusion".

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

It's important to realize then that when your mind is almost 100% healed, you will still see a world of death. You will still see bodies being sick. You will still see (illusions of) war and suffering. The body keeps showing it to you per the ego's laws of physics. Just because you see this stuff, it DOES NOT MEAN that you are sick or believing in sickness. Just because you see someone suffering, it does not mean you are making them suffer. Just because you see your neighbor with a broken leg, it does not mean you are believing in broken legs. The key is whether you BELIEVE IT IS REAL. Whether you confuse it for truth. NOT "whether or not I see it."

Having truer perception DOES NOT MEAN "I will no longer see bad stuff." It does not mean "I will not be able to see sickness, otherwise it means I am still sick." It does not mean you cease being able to perceive death. It ONLY means you REINTERPRET what you see. You change what it MEANS to you. You change how you evaluate or judge it. You change whether you BELIEVE it is true or false, real or unreal. That has nothing to do with "whether I see it" UNTIL you attain 100% Christ Vision and the world disappears.

"The Holy Spirit is the great re-interpreter of the world."

You will continue to see this world until you ascend to Heaven. That's a fact. You being near enlightened will not change the way that the sun rises or the fact that oceans still are polluted or that death seems to happen. What changes is who you see it WITH and whether or not you *recognize* it for what it actually is. You either recognize a broken body is an illusion of a fictional broken body, pretending to be sick but being actually nothing but a fake image which you can easily change, OR you fail to recognize it and take it to be real, seeing a "real need", regarding it as "sin really happened", taking it seriously and reacting with fear. If you make the sickness real to you by believing in it, you are failing to recognize illusions and are now in need of healing yourself.

True perception, aligned with the Holy Spirit, aka Christ Vision, aka Spiritual Eye, is a clear and direct and un-distorting accurate way of seeing, which recognizes TWO things. Not just what is true, but also what is false. You must learn to recognize the false stuff AS false, and you do that by learning what is really true. In light of what is true, in the big picture, discerning, clearly recognizing, illusions are recognized as false and reality is recognized as true. BOTH occur simultaneously. You don't get to ONLY see "the truth" or "Reality" UNTIL you ascend to Heaven. Until then, you see both.

The false is seen for a while, but as false. The truth is also seen, becoming increasingly obvious as true. There are two perceptions happening at once. Body eyes and spiritual eyes. What is true (Heaven) becomes able to be seen BEYOND the thin veil of the false illusory world. The world becomes thin. Transparent. Illusions are overlooked. Bodies are not believed in. Fake causes are laughed at. Miracles demonstrate you are under no laws but God's, and break all the illusory laws of this world, including space, time, gravity, atomic forces, size, weight, distance, etc. These are all fiction.

The world seems to become forgiven, in that you no longer ADD attack to what it is. The world, when seen with forgiving eyes, isn't a REAL world, but is a NOT BELIEVED world. NOT believing that the world is real, or sinning, or attacking, or guilty, or anything at all, can make the illusory world seem lovely. It can seem lovelier than a world onto which you overlaid your projections of sinful belief. BUT, it is not lovely due to being real. It is lovely because it has no sin projected onto it. It becomes seemingly "innocent", BUT IT IS NOT REAL INNOCENCE. It becomes seemingly "holy", BUT IT IS NOT HOLINESS. It is NOTHING. It is seen merely as a thin veil, a picture of illusions of attack, which isn't really attack, and so sparkles with light as if clean and new and free from accusation. BUT IT IS STILL UNREAL. A forgive, yet STILL STRANGE world made of illusions.

"To see a sinless body is impossible. For holiness is positive, and the body is merely neutral. It is not sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it is, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego."

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

Then the veil parts. Christ is seen. The world is forgotten. The illusory world DISAPPEARS. The body vanishes. Death is snuffed out. There is no world. No perception. The mind awakens in Heaven's reality and continues Creating with God, where it left off, as if nothing ever happened. Because it was just a dream. And now it is gone. And everything made of dreams has disappeared. Now you are Home. Now you are awake in God.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists."