You have made a secret agreement with all your victimizers and attackers.

1) Their half of the bargain entails they must appear to be responsible for all the guilt you do not want to own in yourself, which you thought was true of you. They must carry the burden of it and be condemned by it, by you. You get to blame it all on them and to displace it away from yourself, rendering you seemingly innocent and them guilty. You get to claim they are the cause of all problems and that you did nothing at all.

2) Your half of the bargain entails you must allow them to attack and victimize you, in direct relation to how much guilt they are carrying for you. The more guilt you put onto them, the more you will experience them as an enemy, and the more you hate them the more they will hate you. You give them a permit to punish you, in exchange for their service.

3) You will suffer because of them, and you will not want it, and you will be terrified of it, and you will create tremendous drama about how you did not ask for it due to your newfound 'innocence', BUT deep down you KNOW that you gave them every permission to do this to you, and as such you AGREE with it (oh the horror!).

4) You secretly PREFER that they victimize you compared to having to carry the responsibility of the GUILT that was yours to begin with. You think its a bargain, because you experience yourself as 'innocent' while experiencing them as 'guilty'. It's just unfortunate that, in this innocence, you also MUST be an 'innocent victim'. That is the price you have to pay.

This whole agreement is set up to defend you against your own guilt. You hire everyone who provides this service for you and does this to you, and you are grateful that it creates an illusion of innocence for you. You would rather tolerate this than to actually obtain REAL innocence, which you DO NOT BELIEVE IN, because you DO believe it is true that you are sinful and guilty and deserve to die.

Nothing heavy.

You do, however, have a clause in the contract. You are permitted to break the agreement. However, breaking the agreement has TERMS. The terms are:

1) You must take back the guilt that you projected onto them and find them innocent. You must stop blaming them or scapegoating them or accusing them in ANY way of being the cause of ANYTHING you are experiencing.

2) You must ADMIT that you were the one who wanted this agreement, you are the one who agreed to it, and you were the one who ACCEPTED the consequences, even if you did not like how it felt.

3) You must be willing to take back all of the guilt, which undoes your own perception of yourself as innocent (and that alone is terrifying), and which places responsibility for ALL of it back in your own lap. You may not want this. And if you stay in this perception for long you will suffer. That suffering is why you wanted to make the agreement in the first place.

4) You must admit that you were only ever a WILLING victim, a willing participant, that you wanted every single attack, and were willing to LAY DOWN AND DIE if it would mean you are seen as innocent again. Nobody dies without their own consent.

5) You must admit that, now, because these people are NO LONGER in the contract with you, that they are wholly innocent, and this means they ARE NOT victimizing you and you HAVE NOT BEEN victimized by them. All blame for any past experiences must be lifted from them and you must be willing to see them as forgiven. You MUST also be willing to THANK them for their cooperation, service, perfect role-play, and for carrying out your contract to perfection, recognizing they did ONLY what you wanted them to and they did it well.

Having taken full responsibility for arranging this agreement, you are holding the guilt, but you have an exit option. The option states you are permitted to either re-enter the victimhood agreement with more people, and continue seeking for artificial innocence, OR, you can seek for real innocence, by appealing to an AUTHORITY ON TRUTH, such as the Holy Spirit. You have to be willing to go before Him, take your guilt with you, expose it TO Him, allow Him to be aware of all of it WITH you, look upon it from HIS perspective (in the light), and be willing to be SHOWN the truth about it. You must agree to accept His verdict, whether it is that you are innocent or guilty (and btw it will always be that you are truly innocent).

If you take the exit option, you must be willing to surrender the guilt that you placed on yourself and own up to the deeper truth that you are TRULY INNOCENT, HAVE DONE THING WRONG, and you must accept God's love again. Too much to ask? Choose again? You could always choose to be a victim some more.

If you are upset or having issues with a person, try doing a forgiveness which includes them. A forgiveness which applies to both of you at the same time. Forgive them, for them.

At each step of your forgiveness, as you remind yourself about what the truth is and as you undo your false belief, affirm also that this is also not true for the other person. Everything you say relating to yourself, also say it in relation to the other person. Use words like "both of us are not really guilty..." "neither of us have sinned" "we are both innocent" etc.

Take yourself and the other person all the way to the atonement, together. See how not only you are innocent and forgiven, having not really sinned, but how also the other person is innocent and forgiven, having not really sinned.

You may find that this works particularly well, because it includes a sense of joining, a sense of being equals, a sense of mutual agreement as to your mutual innocence, and emphasizes your shared interests. It also undoes any illusions you might have associated with the person as to what their attitude is, separate from your own.

Rather than forgive in isolation and only accept the atonement for yourself, claim it for yourself and your brother simultaneously.

I found this very helpful last night as I went all the way to atonement with a forgiveness about a person, seeing them as right there with me standing alongside me receiving God's love and radiating our innocence together.

Forgive yourself and your brother together and you may find it works rather well to heal a relationship.

Recognize this. The body was made to have permanently false perception. To be permanently unforgiving. It is absolutely incapable of ever forgiving anything. All it can do is sense what it detects seemingly in the world, and report it back as REAL. It cannot question it. It cannot rise above the battlefield. It will NEVER see reality. It cannot get even the slightest glimpse of real light or real truth It is permanently fixated on the physical form of objects, utterly blinded by them and incapable of seeing past them. It takes the form of objects as utter reality and meaning. It is completely convinced by the hierarchy of illusions, orders of difficulty, levels of problems and all manner of suffering. And to the body, every difference or change is real.

Every sickness appears utterly real to its senses. Every death is seen as undeniable proof of termination. It is tempted by literally everything it looks up or senses. It has never made even the slightest progress towards forgiveness, and it never will. It cannot step out of hell, it cannot wake up, it cannot even begin to suspect there is another reality, and it will not ever look upon God. What was made in vegas stays in vegas, and the body is MADE OF unreality.

This is just what the body is. It is a limited piece of biological machinery designed to deceive. It has one specific function of turning illusions into reality. It is an embodiment of the belief that separation is possible, and implements that belief. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh".

It is a reality inverter. It absolutely shuts out all trace of reality and light and truth and God, and only allows illusions and unreality and falsehoods to pass through its filters. And as false things pass through its filters, it regards them as the whole truth. What is false is seen as true, what is unreal is seen as real, and what is evil is seen as holy. This is because it was in an attempt to swap all the properties of what is true with what is false.

The body is a polarizer. It takes what is not true and makes it seem true. It takes what is true and makes it seem false. It denies God's Kingdom of heaven and opens itself up to hell. It makes itself "invulnerable" to eternal life and makes itself vulnerable to death. It is the very idea of exposure to death and to hell, to murder and sin, to suffering and fear. It is the inside-out expression of the desire to be unnatural and uncreated.

The body is always going to be like this. You can change the purpose that you use it FOR, but you cannot change its nature. You cannot make the body see reality, or wake up, or know what's true, or discern facts from fiction. The body is limited. It was made TO limit and to remain limited forever. It is the "lens" through which hell is looked upon and regarded as real, and not for a single second will any body EVER gain access to the light of reality.

The body ALWAYS sees with UNFORGIVENESS. It is absolutely locked into false perception. It constantly makes all unreal things real to itself. It cannot forgive, overlook, see past, recognize, correctly judge, discern, or recognize anything. It is blind to reality, and sees only unrealities.

And because the body itself is made of that same unreality, an unreality seeing an unreality registers as "truth". The body thinks an unreal world is true because unreality is the body's truth. Two negatives seem to make a positive. It does not see the world as opposite to its own nature, and so regards it with agreement. Even though both the body and the world are false. And this makes it utterly biased toward always regarding unreality as real.

The body will not ever show you God. The body will not allow you to be with God. The body will not bridge the gap to God. The body cannot open your mind. The body will never ever see the light of truth, or the real world, or heaven. The body cannot have visions of God or Christ. The body will never see Christ in your brothers. It is NOT CAPABLE. And it will always be incapable. And it cannot love.

The body is only what it is. It was made to confine and to limit and to imprison. You cannot use a prison to experience freedom from prisons. You cannot use handcuffs to know what it's like to be unlimited. You will not EVER turn the body into an awakened being, or get it to look upon reality, or make it able to forgive anything whatsoever. It cannot even BEGIN to forgive because it is absolutely PERMANENTLY HARDWIRED into hell.

There must be a better way, yes? There must be ANOTHER WAY TO SEE. There must be some way that your MIND can choose away from the body and experience without it. A way to escape from hell. There has to be freedom FROM the body. "Do you want freedom of the body, or of the mind? For both you cannot have." If you want your mind to be free, it has to be free FROM the body. The body itself cannot be free because the body IS imprisonment. And there's no point polishing a turd.

We have to then learn to recognize the body for what it is and what it is not. The body is a JUDGER and a condemner. It is an accuser. It cannot stop judging sin to be real. It cannot stop testifying to the proof of sin. The body is utterly selfish. The body is so locked into unreality that the ego actually sees the body as its ally, something it is in "agreement with", because both the body and the ego identify hell as reality. That's why the body became the ego's "chosen home."

As Jesus says, we have to leave the desert. The body has to be transcended and the mind has to open up to ANOTHER WORLD, another vista, through another sight, which does not depend on the body at all. It has to get out of the box and step out of limitation. And if you are going to forgive at all, it CANNOT be that the body forgives. Your mind has to overlook what the body shows it and recognize it as false. Only if all of hell is false can heaven be true.

"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."

What if everything that's happening in the world is exactly what is supposed to be happening, per everyone's agreement and decision? And there are no accidents or mistakes and nothing is going wrong? And I don't mean, that "bad things" aren't happening, just that they're not happening accidentally or without consent.

On the surface, the world looks like hell. And it's hard to consider that everything is happening according to agreement. But there's more to life than meets the eye.

What if everything that happens can only happen because you agree to it? What if you have to put some kind of contract in place which has to be agreed to by everyone involved, in order for anything to happen? What if everything that happens is completely deliberate, and every single event in the world is deliberately orchestrated and chosen by everyone, on purpose?

What could this purpose be, but to assist you in spiritual awakening?

Before you incarnate, you make agreements with people that they will help you with your spiritual growth by playing certain roles for you. You ask them to do this and they agree freely. A contract is made. The terms of the contract state exactly what the person is to do and that they are to do nothing else. They do not add to the workload or take away from it. They are to play their part faithfully.

This includes contracts that you make with your own ego. You chose, on purpose, to make your ego, so that it would function according to your design and your rules. You wanted it to do certain things for you, to adjust your perception in certain ways, to change your values and beliefs in certain ways, and to fulfill a purpose that you wanted. You wanted the ego to function as a loyal and trustworthy device that would enable you to go through various struggles so that you could awaken spiritually. This is its only purpose.

A lot is said about how the ego is devious and vicious and all of this, pointing the finger at it and making it out to be a horrible enemy. But what role are you playing in that scenario? You are the victim. And this is the lesson. Lessons are there for your benefit to help you to wake up. The ego can be seen as a device for facilitating what's needed in order to awaken, if you perceive it correctly and use it correctly.

A spiritual lesson occurs when there is some part of you which is asleep, or at least that believes it is. This part of you, you put to sleep in the first place. And now it seems to be unaware of some aspect of truth. In its unconsciousness, in certain situations and scenarios with certain people you will suffer and struggle because you do not see the truth. This part of you will act exactly according to how you designed it. The purpose of the lesson is awakening and the solution to the lesson is always to wake up to the truth.

All lessons point to the truth and the outcome of learning a lesson must always be that you come to see the metaphysics or structure or mechanism of the lesson clearly. To step out of the lesson, out of your unawareness into awareness, and out of lies into the truth.

The ego, just like your bodily ailments, just like your relationship woes, just like your enemies, just like your financial struggles, and everything else, is only a device acting under contract to fulfill what you told it to do. It can hardly be to blame for anything when you are the one that made it. And you made it with great intricacy and intelligence, and you could say that it is a beautiful creation. It does for you according to what you wanted it to do for you.

Jesus tells us in the Course not to play down the magnificence of your mind's creative power, or to tell yourself that you are stupid for having created a monster. You must acknowledge and access that your mind is a very powerful creator and that it has been used to create your ego. Regardless of whether the ego is real or not, it is still very impressive - this whole universe is very impressive. You made it.

Also recognize that every person that you encounter, no matter what they do, they are doing because it's part of a lesson in which you asked them, under contract, to come along and treat you this way. Even if they seem to be an enemy, someone that hates you or abuses you or attacks you or even tries to end your life, they are still under contract. There is a spiritual purpose. They are trying to help you. That sounds absurd doesn't it, at least to the unawakened mind. But everyone is in your life because they are playing the roles that you hired them to play. You asked for it. You wanted it.

You wanted it because you wanted to awaken back to God and you need their assistance. You need them to trigger you, to get you to engage with your own ego, to get you to look at your own beliefs, to get you to heal, to get you to learn to forgive, etc. These are valuable lessons. Even the person you hate the most is completely acting under contract with you in agreement with you and according to your will.

Even if you are engaging with them in such a way that it makes it seem you totally do not want them to do what they are doing. Your unwillingness to accept their help is actually the lesson you need to learn. You need to find a way to see them as helpful, as innocent, as serving your highest good, as servicing your spiritual growth, and as being loyal and faithful servants according to everything you wanted.

Initially, asleep, you will react to these contractors with resistance and rebellion, because in your ego state you won't see how they are helping you. And this is what you need to learn... So you need to then transition from your initial reaction, which is blindness and forgetfulness, to becoming aware of a bigger truth, a bigger picture, in which you can see clearly. In that clarity you come to realize how they are doing what you asked, how you are not a victim, how you wanted this, how you contracted it yourself, and how you have been dutifully served.

At some point, when your lesson has been learned, and you have come to recognize the truth, you will see all of the ways that a person who once was seen as your enemy was in fact your best friend trying to help you wake up. You will see clearly, without having to add anything to the situation, that it's actually true that you asked them to do what they did. You will also see clearly that everything they did helped you, that you grew from it, that you gained awakening from it. You will see how it benefited you in the bigger picture of your life.

At this point, with clarity and truth and recognition and having therefore transcended the lesson, you will be perfectly poised to enter into genuine gratitude. This does not mean artificially forced gratitude or people-pleasing gratitude or trying to be positive gratitude. It is a gratitude that involves an appreciation - an understanding - a recognition - of what has really happened. It's the ability to see. It's the ability to recognize that this person has served you selflessly and faithfully according to what you wanted and the only possible genuine response to that is genuine gratitude.

And so you will look at this person recognizing their innocence, because they obviously can't be to blame for doing to you what you asked them to do to you. And you will see their help as welcome. And you will recognize the great benefit it has given you. And you wI'll appreciate their help. And in this moment there is a kind of reverence and sacredness or recognition. It's like the two of you will bow before each other, the fight is over, and you are both in full acknowledgement of a job well done. Services rendered. Contract completed to perfection. No loose ends, no resentments, no ties, no desire to get rid of the person or end their involvement prematurely, no grief or sense of loss of harm, just total appreciation.

And then it's as if you both bow in divine brotherhood and see each other as being absolutely the best of friends and for each other, and set each other free. And it is in this moment of freedom and love that you are finally set free of the contract. This is the only way that you can complete a lesson and be free of a contract. This is what al lessons are leading to - a recognition of your freedom and innocence and truth and equality with all your brothers. No victims. No enemies.

So with any problem you have, be it a person or a body sickness or a financial struggle or a noisy neighbor or whatever it is, while you see the problem as unnecessary, unwanted, uncalled for, inappropriate, unjustified, un-asked-for, or in any way happening outside of your will, you will be lost in the ego. And you will therefore be in the midst of a lesson and will need to learn a thing or two about the truth. You can fight with your helpers all you want, that won't help. You can struggle with your contractors, that won't help. You can try to get rid of the problem, that won't help either. You got what you asked for and nothing else. You put this thing into place, on your own, and nobody put it there for you. So at least admit to that and stop attacking what you made.

So how to do you find freedom when you're in a lesson? Forgiveness. Undoing the ego perspectives. Shifting your perception away from attack and toward welcome. Shifting your way of looking at things as happening for you, not to you. Using it as an opportunity to be triggered so that you can look at and heal what you do not want to look at. Allowing the problem to attack you so that you can see how you believe you are attackable, so that you can learn not to attack. Ultimately the purpose is for you to sort out what is really true from what is apparently false and to receive love in everything that happens.

So if you can shift your viewpoint this way and learn your lesson, you will find that you are in a moment of mutual recognition with the thing you made - the contract you created - the person you hired - the sickness you put in place - the lack you chose etc... where you can acknowledge full responsibility for what has occurred, claim the full benefits of the lesson, recognize the innocence and compliance of everyone involved, and set both you and that problem free in a moment of gratitude and welcome.

What you made cannot leave your presence until you can set it free in gratitude and recognition. Any measure of seeing it as your enemy or unwanted attaches you to it and keeps it hounding you, because then you have not learned your lesson. If you want to be free of something, you have to see how you made it yourself and why you wanted it and what you gained from it. What are the benefits? How did it serve you? Where is the silver lining? What function did you give to it? It's simply a matter of whether you truly want to continue with the need for the functionality of this self-made device or not.

And if your ultimate, very long-term goal is to awaken to God's love, then you'll be perfectly happy to keep your devices and not get rid of them, simply because you know that you still need them until you can learn your lesson. Your priority above all else is to learn to awakening to the truth, to return to God, which is more valuable to you and important to you than anything else. So given that, why would you want to keep getting rid of the very lessons that are helping you to wake up? Not that you must suffer... only if it helps you awakening and only for so long as is needed to learn the lesson. You need not suffer at all.

"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? (W-135.13)" - ACIM

It's all for the best.

When someone comes along and says something to you which seems hurtful, and if you are affected by it, it is because somewhere inside you you've taken it seriously. That means that you believe there is some truth in it.

If you did not believe there was any truth in it, you would recognize that this person is just calling out for love, that they are mistaken, that they need healing and correction, and you would just respond with love and laughter. You would make light of it and not take it seriously or personally at all.

When people come along and provoke you in this way, they are actually attempting to help you, by pointing out places in yourself where you actually believe that something is wrong with you. If you didn't believe something is wrong with you, when people say these things to you you would not react at all. It would not move you or disturb your peace, or your confidence, or your certainty.

Clearly, if you are upset by what someone has said, it is because, sadly enough, deep down, you believed there is some truth to what they said. In other words, you've abandoned your certainty that you are wholly truth and love and light, and have entered into a lower estimation of yourself, which is in agreement with their evaluation of yourself. If it seems that they have so easily triggered you into a reaction of hurt and retaliation, then clearly you have too easily fallen into a belief that you're not good enough, and that you deserve this mis-treatment. And this will be marked with you viciously retorting that 'thats not true at all', in a very upset way, because some part of you actually does believe it's true. You say you don't want it, but you do.

Therefore, people come along and seem to hurt you but in fact, you could not be hurt if you did not agree to be hurt. And then you must in fact be hurting yourself, because the other person isn't the one who forces you to agree. That's your choice. You don't have to agree, you can hold firm in the truth, certain of what the truth about you is. But if you have any fear as to who you are, or any doubt as to your worth, or any undermining of the truth of you, then for sure, you're going to attract people to come along and poke and prod at your sore-spots to try to get to look at them to heal them. And you'll take these helpful provocations as unwanted attacks. ALL of your sense of attack, however, comes from yourself, and you attack yourself plenty enough without needing to claim that anyone else has added to or caused it.

So if someone has said something to me, something that is not true, and if I have a reaction to this, it must mean that I have an ego, which means that I believe I am not as God created me, and therefore I am the one who is not certain of my own integrity. And it is my own lack of certainty in myself that is being pointed out, and it is my own agreement with what they've said about me that sends me into a tailspin. But I have to realize that I really am responsible for this reaction. I am the one who believes this (and probably worse) about myself, it just *seems* like they put the hurt into me by seeming to be the one who attacked me. They did no such thing. All they did was raise to my awareness the pre-existing hurtful attitude about myself that was already inside me, which I put there, because it's what I think of myself.

People who are frequently easily upset and easily triggered and easily angered and easily offended, do not think well of themselves. People who are often reactionary and get extremely worked up when other people seem to say or do things that are unacceptable and 'clearly false', you know that those people are 'weak' in their loyalty to the truth, and have little faith in themselves. They don't realize who they really are, or how much God loves them, or what the truth is about them and others, otherwise they would be in a constant state of invulnerability and joy and peace.

This state of invulnerability is what we all deserve. We are all worthy of it. We are all good enough. None of us are sinners. We've done nothing wrong. All of us are equally innocent and divine. So if that's all we are certain of, we could not be harmed by anyone attempting to say otherwise. We would just laugh and not take it seriously. But if we do not believe and know and experience this truth, then yes, we will have a reaction of 'how dare you say that' and will feel hurt and have justification for blame, to disguise the fact that we ourselves actually are the ones who don't believe in ourselves. The other people just came along to show us that, to point it out, to make us be aware of our own pain, so that we could have an opportunity to choose again as to how we regard ourselves.

And it is our own self-attack that we experience as inner hurt, not an attack by another person. We are 100% responsible for everything we experience and feel. And before we attack others for how they seem to attack us, we need to really honestly take a look at how we are attacking our own self with our own beliefs in unworthiness, negativity, lack and so on. Why is it that we don't deserve absolute love all the time? Why is it that when such and such a person comes along to tell us that we suck, do we recoil in horror that WE ourselves actually believe this is true, and how dare they point it out?

"I am not upset for the reason I think." - ACIM

All sickness is just a form of GUILT. And removing this guilt makes sickness IMPOSSIBLE.

Guilt induces sickness because it demands punishment. It is an agreement to suffer. It is the result of NOT forgiving sin, thus believing sin is real. And once sin is real, you must become guilty and attacked, self destructive, suicidal, ready to suffer and die. Unforgiveness of sin is the root of all sickness. Removing all GUILT removes all sickness. A person is not "sick"... they are GUILTY, this guilt is IN THE MIND, in its unforgiving attitude, and THAT is what needs to be healed. Undoing this guilt, which is atonement, which is forgiveness, due to recognizing there is no sin, is the CURE which GUARANTEES PERMANENT HEALTH.

"Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea."

"If you WITHHOLD agreement, and accept the part YOU play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in LETTING it perceive itself as separate and apart from YOU. Thus is the body NOT perceived as sick by BOTH your minds, from SEPARATE points of view. UNITING with a brother's mind prevents the CAUSE of sickness, and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate."

"Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him. He has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and YOU have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred. Thus are you JOINED in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him."

"For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"ALL sickness comes from separation. When the separation is denied, it goes. For it IS gone as soon as the idea which brought it has been healed and been replaced by sanity. Sickness and sin are seen as consequence and cause, in a relationship kept hidden from awareness, that it may be carefully preserved from reason's light."

"Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin. The Son of God perceives what he would see, because perception IS a wish fulfilled."

--- Part of lesson 140 "Only salvation can be said to cure":

"Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. ***Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt.*** Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. ***It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible.*** And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return.

Peace be to you who have been cured in God, and not in idle dreams. For cure must come from holiness, and holiness can not be found where sin is cherished. God abides in holy temples. He is barred where sin has entered. Yet there is no place where He is not. And therefore sin can have no home in which to hide from His beneficence .There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide.

This is the thought that cures. It does not make distinctions among unrealities. Nor does it seek to heal what is not sick, unmindful where the need for healing is. This is no magic. It is merely an appeal to truth, which cannot fail to heal and heal forever. It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real.

Let us not try today to seek to cure what cannot suffer sickness. Healing must be sought but where it is, and then applied to what is sick so that it can be cured. There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. The mind that brings illusions to the truth is really changed. There is no change but this. For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes that have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?

Today we seek to change our minds about the source of sickness, for we seek a cure for all illusions, not another shift among them. We will try today to find the source of healing, which is in our minds because our Father placed it there for us. It is not further from us than ourselves. It is as near to us as our own thoughts, so close it is impossible to lose. We need but seek it and it must be found.

We will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick. We go beyond appearances today, and reach the source of healing from which nothing is exempt. We will succeed to the extent to which we realize that there can never be a meaningful distinction made between what is untrue and equally untrue. Here there are no degrees, and no beliefs that what does not exist is truer in some forms than others. All of them are false, and can be cured because they are not true.

So do we lay aside our amulets, our charms and medicines, our chants and bits of magic in whatever form they took. We will be still and listen for the Voice of healing which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. No voice but This can cure. Today we hear a single Voice Which speaks to us of truth where all illusions end, and peace returns to the eternal quiet home of God."

Everyone should love everyone, and be a part of everyone. That is natural. What is unnatural is to be separated off and not share with each other.

The device which we use to separate ourselves off, is the body. Bodies act like little anchors that root you in a little spot of space and time and keep you apart from others. And without a body there cannot be specialness or special relationships.

Within this scenario, all bodies are separate and unrelated. There are no relationships, only separateness. Everyone is alone. The body is like a prison with legs, walking around keeping its occupants inside. The prisoners cannot reach outside of their prisons, but they can shuffle their prison cells around to try to get closer to each other. Usually the prisoners clash and disagree and hate each other for their differences.

Sometimes, when two prisoners find each other and regard each other as similar, sharing common ground, common features, common backgrounds, common interests and beliefs, they see each other as less of a threat. They are less than totally hated for a while, granted special rights and privileges.

To perceive another as being like you, in terms of physicality or form or beliefs etc, creates the illusion that you are less at war with them. There seems to be something that you agree about. When there is a lot of agreement, you might even feel trusting enough to become closer to the person.

You then enter into a special relationship. The relationship, which is really the absence of relationship, and more like two prison cells banging against each other in the darkness, brings two together so that everyone else might be excluded.

"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."

They come together to share on the basis of how they are alike, and therefore how they threaten each other less than others. This mutual illusion of trust seems to open doors and lets the two become more intimate. But their intimacy depends on the rejection of all others.

These chosen ones, the special love interest, the exclusive partner, the one with whom special rules are agreed to, whom has special rights which cannot be shared with anyone else, becomes the idol. They are given special artificial value, not inherent to who they are, but in contrast to what others seem to lack.

And so they experience feelings of closeness, seeming special love, a certain degree of trust, a magicalness in which the whole world seems to disappear, and you wish you could be with this person forever and to hell with everyone else. Coming home to this person feels like a breath of fresh air, as you both lick your wounds and hate the rest together, pointing out their flaws and keeping them at a distance.

The so-called relationship is then a tentative state of mutual partial agreement, or allegiance. Certain terms are made which cannot be broken. The persons are not allowed to become too different or step away or act outside the prison walls, otherwise they are violating the contract. And the contract may even be called a marriage.

If one of the persons strays too far, goes outside the envelope of interests, violates the common ground, breaks the walls, stops being exclusive, tries to become intimate with another, changes in a way which makes then unalike, or steps on their toes, the underlying sense of loneliness, isolation, abandonment and rejection will come flying out, hurled at the other to accuse them of sin.

And so the special love quickly turns to special hate, as those who once were trusted allies turn into enemies, brothers become strangers, lovers become divorcees, and significant others become forgotten.

For as much as they allowed the other to come into their secret circle, they kept everyone else out. They had to in order to make the relationship special. This chosen one was the only one permitted to be loved. This special one was the only one who could gain permission to access secrets and hidden hates. The whole world was against them and they against it. But their conditional love always had conditions from the start.

At some point, a relationship based on bodies, and on such specialness, and illusions of joining, may be brought into question. If there is enough of a movement or willingness towards becoming more unconditional, truly open, or sharing more honestly, a relationship not based on flimsy illusions but on something deeper, then the special relationship will be brought into question.

This questioning of it will reveal that the two did not really come together in love, they came together in hate, and hated together, and thought this was love. And the whole relationship will be seen as unfounded, in which what they thought was a magical kingdom of perfection and bliss was in fact founded on a lie. A lie of loneliness and shared suffering and false empathy and codependency and enabling and justifying attack together.

This can produce a lot of pain and misery and shock, because suddenly what was an illusion of love and magical specialness and special value is suddenly recognized as false, faulty, flawed and fake. You thought you were in a relationship but you really weren't. And so now in order to convert this specialness into a true relationship, a holy relationship, it's going to take some transcendence of its exclusive limitations.

The terms of the relationship will have to change. Who you think you are relating with will have to open up. You will have to become more unconditional and accepting and tolerant. You will have to put aside grievances and unforgivenesses and hatreds. You will have to dig deep to find love even in the face of rejection and attack. And this will also mean having to heal and love yourself so that you are willing to give more than you ever gave before.

If the relationship can tolerate this transition, from a make-believe love affair of idol worship, special love, body worship, physical intimacy, safety in numbers and so on, to a more encompassing inclusiveness, then it can be converted into a holy relationship.

To do this, bodies must be transcended. The other cannot be regarded as a body. Nor can yourself. Special values and beliefs which seemed to apply only to the two of you have to be questioned, and now the interests of others have to be incorporated as well. Others have to be included in the circle which has to expand to include everyone. Exclusivity has to go out the window, and all sense of physical limits has to be uprooted. The whole sense of who and what you are, your identity, is brought into question.

This is where you are learning to truly join, to unconditionally love, to identify beyond the body, to learn to see the other for the first time beyond the body, to truly open up and expose oneself, to join in minds instead of in bodies, and to realize that you ARE each other. Interests become shared, special boundaries become blurred, the world is no longer an enemy, and an equality sets in.

In true equality, the other can no longer be seen as a parent, or a child, or a special one, or someone better or worse than self or others. They have to be seen as God's equal creation, alongside you, in which it is an honor to support and help them in their ascension into the light. To heal with them and to share with them. The two of you have to come into the light of honesty and truth and forgiveness. And then you might find that you are able to actually BE related, because you are part of each other.

The prison doors begin to swing open, true access begins to reveal itself as mind reaches out beyond the body, and now the two can become one. Thus specialness ends, and the unholy become whole again. And now the wholeness incorporates the whole, and all are regarded as included in this whole. One way of relating to every one. One love, one truth, one family of God.

Here is some instruction on how to miraculously heal others, from Jesus. Here he talks about how YOUR MIND can be used in such a way, whereby if you do not agree with or support the belief of another that they are guilty/sinful or sick, you shine your loving light into their mind and SHARE that love with them, making it impossible for their own mind to continue believing in the sickness, causing the EFFECTS of sickness to disappear and thus for healing to take place, even physically.

He says that when you join minds like this - ie, share love, it erases the separation and ALL illness comes from the separation belief. Therefore MIRACLE HEALING is accomplished by, in a sense, MERGING MINDS with your brother, and that can only be done through LOVE because love is the fundamental state OF sharing and wholeness. So as you LOVE your brother - effectively, loving their mind, mind-to-mind, this ERASES the separation between you and thus HEALS THEM.

Note that Jesus also says DO NOT ALLOW YOUR BROTHER TO BE SICK. That sounds like a pretty firm injunction to go HEAL OTHER PEOPLE, as a natural and constant feature of of being a loving person, dispelling sickness everywhere you go!

"If you WITHHOLD agreement, and accept the part YOU play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in LETTING it perceive itself as separate and apart from YOU. Thus is the body NOT perceived as sick by BOTH your minds, from SEPARATE points of view. UNITING with a brother's mind prevents the CAUSE of sickness, and perceived effects. Healing is the effect of minds that join, as sickness comes from minds that separate. The miracle does nothing just because the minds ARE joined, and CANNOT separate. Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN.

Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him. He has not seen the cause of sickness where it is, and YOU have overlooked the gap between you, where the sickness has been bred. Thus are you JOINED in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him. Fight not His coming with illusions, for it is His coming that you WANT above all things that seem to glisten in the dream. The end of dreaming is the end of FEAR, and love was NEVER in the world of dreams."

ACIM says "anger is never justified". This is big news for anyone who is used to feeling justified in being angry about anything.

There is a culture in this world is believing it is 'normal' and 'healthy' to be angry. When various 'bad things' happen, it seems very commonplace to react with anger. You might even be outraged. It may appear to you that you're completely right to feel that way.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Anger may acknowledge what you perceive has happened unfairly, but it betrays the fact your perception is faulty and in need of correction.

It is so widely accepted (by everyone's egos) that anger is a normal, justified reaction, that to say it is anything but justified seems like complete nonsense.

What if we were to say, anger is a state of insanity? What if anger is a mindless attempt to blame someone else for your own self condemnation? What if anger is deception? What if anger has a secret agenda of shoveling your own giult onto other people whenever anything conveniently goes wrong or looks like it could be used to justify being angry at yourself?

When anger is justified, the world is at war. There is no side you can take in anger to be at peace. And then your life will be filled with things which you get angry about. Every angry reaction is another instance of you believing that whatever happened is justified in happening, in spite of the fact that you're attempting to use it to explain why it shouldn't have happened.

It is extremely common to react in anger. It seems so commonplace and so 'normal' that most people accept it as some kind of 'normal psychology' or a 'healthy anger' or a healthy way to process what is wrong with the world. This is far from truth. It's a myth perpetuated by a very deeply ingrained ego thought system which runs through every society on the planet.

The only way anger is justified is IF .... IF.... this world is real. IF what happens is real. IF someone is really hurt. IF someone has actually proved that we are separate from God. IF we actually are not responsible for what happens to us. IF everyone else is guilty except ourselves. Only then would anger be justified. But that doesn't mean it is sane.

We have to lift all of humanity out of the bogmire of unconscious reactions based in the ego, reactions of anger which really are reactions of agreement and victimhood. We need to be more honest with ourselves and own up to and heal the real reason for our anger - that we are angry at ourselves for leaving God. Until this is faced, it will seem like 'normal culture' to get angry and upset about everything in the world.

"Anger is never justified" - ACIM - Anger is never justified because there is never any REASON to be angry because there IS ONLY LOVE.

There is a risk of accepting the world. Because we have to be aware that our perception and beliefs have a lot to do with what we see in the world, or as the world.

If we are in ego and we believe the world is real, not an illusion, e.g. war is real, suffering is real, sickness is happening etc, and we try to "accept that", that's not going to work. Your belief in it as true and real will hold it in place and work against and effort to find peace about it. No one can ever find peace on the basis of believing the world's nightmares are reality. Trying to "adjust to" the world or accommodate it or "come to terms with it being shit" or "accepting that death happens" or trying to "die in peace" is all total ego bullshit.

We have to remember that whatever you accept into your mind becomes real to you. The world is not real. If you accept it into your mind "as real", through an act of "trying to accept everything that happens", you're going to be stuck. Accepting appearances as true is not right mindedness. Accepting that there "really is war, but I'm okay with it" is not right mindedness. Accepting that "I am sick but I'm at peace with it" is a lie. Accepting "something died but it's ok" is not really acceptance.

The only thing that can be truly accepted is true reality. Only the truth is true. You can accept the atonement truth, God's truth, as being true and real. It is acceptable while being simultaneously compatible with peace, because nothing unreal exists. Recognizing the world is an illusion, there is NOT really war, there IS no sin or sickness or death, is what brings peace, not trying to "integrate" a nightmare into your peaceful mindset.

We should focus on overlooking what the world is, which is forgiveness. NOT seeing it from a perspective which shows it to us as though it's really there and happening. Because otherwise we're just falling into an illusion, have false perception, believe a dream is reality, and now are trying to "withdraw" into the mind to sit on a fence of "i need do nothing" and pretend that this is peace. It's an illusion of peace.

You can only find true peace by accepting that only God's Kingdom is reality, nothing unreal exists, the world does not exist, and this is "acceptable" to you. You allow the truth ABOUT the world to enter your mind and accept it. You don't allow the FORM of the world to enter your mind or accept it as anything but false. Acceptance goes hand in hand with agreement, which goes hand in hand with belief in what's true. So you have to be careful what you are trying to find acceptance about. Getting "comfortable" with suffering is not peace or awakening or spiritual.

"The world you see must be denied"