"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."

The separation from God was a pretty big event, placing many sons of God into states of insanity and producing an entire world of separation.

What was the answer to this? God himself gave the most profound miraculous answer, in the form of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was created TO GUARANTEE the resolution of this problem for everyone everywhere forever.

The Holy Spirit was given us as God's HELP. He is described as our friend, therapist, comforter, our only teacher, healer, and way out of hell.

It sounds to me that we should therefore be trusting him and using him and asking for his help and healing. He has a function in awakening that God has given him, and we have a particular function as well.

Very often people talk about doing ACIM as though it's something they do all on their own. They might say that all you have to do is forgive, all you have to do is see things correctly, all you have to do is think right.

But there is no room for the Holy Spirit in any of this. What does he DO exactly? How is he helping? What is his role and function? Because apparently GOD decided that the Holy Spirit was the answer and guarantee and power that will correct the ENTIRE separation issue. So are we LETTING him do that?

If we are not working with, using, trusting, depending on, making room for, being healed by, the Holy Spirit, then we are essentially denying Gods help. And that to me seems somewhat arrogant. Some people see the path to awakening as something they can do all on their own without the Holy Spirit ever doing anything, and this cannot be right.

We're told the Holy Spirit will respond to your slightest invitation. We're told that we are having just a little willingness and he will help us. Were told to refer ALL DECISIONS to him with increasing frequency. We're told that he will heal us and teach us how to heal as we attempt to heal others with his help. We're told that when we heal by the Holy Spirit he never fails. We're told that he has the power of God at his disposal and what he enables you to do is unlimited and not of this world.

If we're not incorporating the Holy Spirit into our PRACTICE AND APPLICATION of this course, then we're missing something major and crucial. It's not really enough to just say that we should merely see from a forgiving perspective, or that all we have to do is identity with Christ or all we have to do is get rid of our grievances. Were told to not even attempt to forgive without FIRST joining with the Holy Spirit.

You might ask yourself what function the Holy Spirit HAS, what he is capable of, and what he can DO FOR you. Or even to you. There is essentially nothing that he cannot do, and it's really us who is placing limits on him through mistrust and fear. WE should be building a solid relationship with him and working with him as the centrepiece of our entire journey back to God. Especially since it is HIM that orchestrates events and happenings to lead us to eternal life.

I think we ALL need to let the Holy Spirit be our teacher, healer, comforter and helper in ALL matters, and that we should trust him and turn to him for support in ALL things. Certainly as a priority above and beyond turning to any other ego-driven teacher who might be falling short of the whole truth.

"The imagined usurping of functions not your own is the basis of fear. The whole world you see reflects the illusion you have done so, making fear inevitable. To return the function to the One To Whom it belongs is thus the escape from fear. And it is this that lets the memory of love return to you. Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you."

"If it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit, it will be right, for judgment IS His function. You share His function only by judging AS HE DOES, reserving no judgment at all unto yourselves. For you will judge AGAINST yourselves, but He will judge FOR you."

"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE."

"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."

"The Holy Spirit never refuses an invitation to enter and abide with you. He will give you endless opportunities to open the door to your salvation, for such is His function. He will also tell you exactly what your function is in every circumstance and at all times. Whoever He sends you will reach you, holding out his hand to his Friend."

"The curriculum is highly individualized. And all aspects are under the Holy Spirit's particular care and guidance. Ask and He will answer. The responsibility is His, and He alone is fit to assume it. To do so is His function. To refer the questions to Him is yours. Would you want to be responsible for decisions about which you understand so little? Be glad you have a Teacher Who cannot make a mistake. His answers are always right. Would you say that of yours?"

"In His function as Interpreter of what you have made, the Holy Spirit USES special relationships, which YOU have chosen to support the ego, as a learning experience which points to truth. Under His teaching, EVERY relationship becomes a lesson in love."

"(secret of salvation - doing it to yourself) 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."

"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."

"They will not hear another voice but yours, because you gave your voice to God and now you rest in Him, and let Him speak through you."

"It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only that I DO NOT INTERFERE with His plan to RESTORE to me my own AWARENESS of my readiness, which is eternal."

"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."

"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM. I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

We don't want to ask for help. Because in our ego we think we don't need help. Because we think we're so amazing and masterful all on our own, that we can do everything on our own, and don't even need any help. This means we believe there's not even anything wrong with us, and that we're amazing super advanced beings already. But the fact is that we need to admit that we are LESS THAN PERFECT, having attacked ourselves and limited ourselves. And we are IN DENIAL about this. We don't want to admit that we suck.

Admitting it is frightening because it means realising that we're "not in a good spot". That we might even be believing we're in danger or are living in fear or are full of guilt or are sick or whatever. But ADMITTING this also means, your mind is going to accept that you DO NEED HELP. And only by recognizing that you are in NEED, will you be willing to ASK FOR HELP. Only by recognising that you are NOT DOING WELL, will you reach out, or acknowledge the fact that you cannot get out of this all by yourself.

Only by having that honesty to admit to failure and lack and not knowing how to get yourself out of it, resigning as your own teacher, will you ASK the Holy Spirit to help you. And then you will be WILLING with a little willingness to LET HIM help you, to let him heal you and guide you. If you can't admit that you are crap all on your own and you don't know what to do about it, you're never going to get to the point where you realize you need God to save you, in which you will turn to him.

People sometimes only reach this when they hit rock bottom and crash agains the rocks and realize they can't help themselves, which is an excellent thing to recognize because it finally means you surrender your egoic efforts to save yourself and become open to something from outside the ego. This is when we are wiling to admit ego defeat, ie failure, which is a GOOD THING, and can then crack open and let some light in from beyond the ego. This is when we want a better way, because our tolerance for pain and suffering has reached its limit.

Those who have suffered and have been tested and have failed and have realised the meagre limitation and powerlessness of their ego self, have been blessed with an opportunity to find God, to turn to him and to trust him. If we're not willing to "admit defeat", we'll just keep fighting ourselves all on our own and continue the suffering, trying to tolerate the pain and misery for as long as we can stand it.

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

The body is entirely designed to look upon an illusory world and make it seem real. It is designed to take something unreal and give it seeming reality. To turn fantasy into fact and to experience its own unreality as if it were real.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

Therefore you cannot ask the body to show you what is real or to ask it to describe anything true. It is not ABLE to see reality. It ALWAYS and permanently fixates on what is not real, and attempts to give it truth. And because the body itself is part of "what it observes", it will tell you that the body ITSELF is real, and will pass this off as a neutral observation.

"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."

"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."

"You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real.""

The body then is a strange device which is utterly biased and incapable of being objective. The question of whether the body EXISTS or not, is given to the body to answer. And the body can ONLY report that it does exist. It will not ever report its own unreality. It is not capable of seeing reality, or recognizing it, or having the kind of vantage point to be able to discern whether something is real or not. That's because the body ITSELF is unreal and cannot step outside of its own unreality.

So what we do is, we keep using the body to try to evaluate what things are, whether they are true, whether they have reality etc. But the very device we're using to do this is utterly biased towards false perception. The body can ONLY see falsely and CANNOT see truth.

"But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. "

The problem then is that the body itself is INCAPABLE of reaching outside of its own limitations. It is not capable of seeing heaven, nor is it capable of seeing the real world. The physical eyeballs are LOCKED into a mechanism of physics and biology based on separation, utterly dependent on separation to function. They can "see" only the reflected photons which were rejected by illusory surfaces, put there to BLOCK vision and to not see.

You cannot therefore USE the body to see reality, nor to discern what is true, or to correctly identify anything. It is a device made to be part of the very system that it is observing, such that it literally cannot discern anything unlike itself. And because what it observes IS like itself, it regards this as a validation of "reality" and of its own existence. You use the body to look at the body and the body reports, "this body exists". But this is not true.

The body is completely biased and one-sided and tainted in its supposedly "neutrality" of observation. It is incapable of making neutral observations because it, itself, is completely skewed towards making illusions seem real. It HAS taken sides. And it is on the side of hell and death and proving sin is happening. All things physical do this - they are all part of the deception of spacetime.

If you want to find out what is true or real you have to go beyond the body and beyond the physical. There has to be ANOTHER kind of vision, another way to see, which does NOT depend on the body and does not use the physical eyeballs. A way to discern what is real and what is true and what exists. This is the spiritual eye in the mind.

"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."

"Corrective learning always begins with awakening the spiritual eye, and turning away from belief in physical sight."

"The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity. This is because the spiritual eye has perfect vision."

"The spiritual eye literally CANNOT SEE error"

"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. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

We are asked therefore to turn away from this isolating dependency on the PHYSICAL SIGHT, on the physical senses, and all the physical LIES of the body, and open up the spiritual eye to being able to SEE with vision, using the mind only, beyond the physical. This is what the development of true perception is about. It's about going beyond the body into the light where you can actually see what is real and true and not be deceived by an illusory physical world. And that has to mean overcoming the body and leaving it behind.

In ACIM there is a theme which says ... we need to surrender control of our lives and hand it over to the Holy Spirit in trust.

We've put ourselves in a position of being greatly disadvantaged, blinded, confused, lost, alone. We can't see the whole picture, we don't have all the facts, we are lacking greatly.

And yet at the same time, we've adopted a position of trying to be an "authority". As though we have rejected the authority of God. We don't want God telling us what to do, what is true, how to live, or anything. We value our own judgement, we value our intellect, we value our experience and education, and think that we know it all - that we don't need or want any help.

In that position, we have to depend on our own strength - which is really a lack of strength, which makes us afraid. We have to make all decisions on our own, which leads to huge amounts of guilt and fear. We have to try to control everything, which leads to everything becoming uncontrollable. And we stubbornly refuse to admit to being mistaken.

What if God came along and said, hey, I will just plan your whole future for you, I will orchestrate everything that is going to happen, I will choose everything for you, I will make all decisions, I will smooth the way, I will cause the right people to show up at the right time, I will put you in the right situations, I will guide the right people to come to you for help from me, and we'll do this all together.

What would you say to handing over control and management of your whole life to the Holy Spirit? Would you accept an off-the-shelf inheritance, rather than one you made up yourself? Would you be willing to admit that you are not in a POSITION to be ABLE to correctly do anything on your own?

The course has several teachings that focus on this in different ways.

1) You cannot decide anything on your own

2) You're not in a position to judge anything correctly

3) You're supposed to put your whole future into God's hands

4) You're supposed to let the Holy Spirit make all decisions

5) You're supposed to go where you're directed

6) You'll be told specifically what to do

7) If you depend on yourself you become afraid

8 ) You are trying to take on the Holy Spirit's function

9) You're being asked to resign as your own teacher

10) There is an atonement plan in place

11) You're asked not to interfere with God's plan for salvation

12) The Holy Spirit leads you to eternal life by his planned events

13) You are nothing without God

14) The right people are being sent to you at the right time

15) You don't know anything because you lost knowledge

16) You have a big problem with God having authority

17) The ego in you has ruined your life and you trust it

18) You don't trust God to look after you

19) You think you are separate and autonomous

20) You keep trying to control and manage reality

The list goes on and on. The central core of all of this is you RECOGNIZING that you are NOT in a position of knowledge or capability. You have put yourself at a disadvantage, with limited abilities, a massive lack of awareness, a great inability to make wise decisions, you're making a mess of your own life. We've even given ourselves learning disabilities.

Rather than carrying on like a bunch of headless chickens, it would be better for us to have humility and humbleness and admit that we are ILL EQUIPPED to run our lives. That we do in fact NEED HELP. This takes surrender and willingness to look at the fact that we are essentially very disabled in our ability to be aware of the whole picture, or to know anything for sure.

In the course Jesus asks us to admit that we cannot judge on our own, and any time that we judge anything without total whole awareness we are making a mistake. That it's not just that we make bad judgements all the time, but factually we cannot actually make any judgement at all. Because we are so out of touch with reality and knowledge.

Instead of us being so arrogant, so dependent on ourselves, so alone and isolated, so putting our egos on pedestals, idols worshipping ourselves, thinking we're better than others and proud of all our useless education and worldly learning, perhaps we should be admitting that we generally suck. We have very limited resources, very limited perception, very limited truth and very limited ability.

So that being the case, we are far better off admitting that without God we are nothing. That since we're not aware of everything right now, we cannot do anything correctly. We are lost in the woods. We need help from outside of the scope of this world. And that means admitting that you are flawed and limited.

Egos everywhere will not like the idea whatsoever of admitting to being limited or incapable. Ego will take it as an affront, suggesting you are inadequate, uneducated, don't know enough, not successful enough, not enough social standing, not intelligent enough, stupid, flawed, lacking in some way. Ego does not like to admit that it is woefully inadequate at fulfilling the ROLE of God. Yet we are all in our egos trying to play at being God - being an authority, because we have a big problem with his authority.

How would it be, if you let the Holy Spirit run everything? Like, put your entire future in his hands, let him decide everything, let him tell you what to do, where to go, what to say. In which you TRUST that whatever he decides, whatever is in HIS plan, is right for all concerned. That you don't NEED to know the details. You don't NEED to be informed of the reasons and why and explanations of what it's based on - which all undermines trust. What if you just trusted that everything he's orchestrating and telling you to do is absolutely correct, and just went with it?

What if you don't need to know everything, don't need to figure everything out, don't need to explain the reasons for everything, don't need to "be sure", don't need to control and manage anything, don't need to find the correct judgement, don't even need to make any decisions? What if you just had faith and trusted? What if you just asked for His Help and listened and followed his guidance, saving you massive amounts of time and effort and thinking and worrying?

Adopting this position of humility and downplaying the ego's importance is not only VITAL to salvation and awakening, it is REQUIRED.

"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." UrW136L19

"Resign NOW as your own teachers. THIS resignation will NOT lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourselves, and of the learning outcomes which have resulted." UrT11F11

"If you are trusting your own strength, you have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious, and fearful. What can you predict or control? What is there in you that can be counted on? What would give you the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve them in such a way that only good can come of it? What is there in you that gives you the recognition of the right solution, and the guarantee that it will be accomplished?" UrW47L1

"There is another advantage,- and a very important one, - in referring decisions to the Holy Spirit with increasing frequency. Perhaps you have not thought of this aspect, but its centrality is obvious. To follow the Holy Spirit's guidance is to let yourself be absolved of guilt. It is the essence of the Atonement. It is the core of the curriculum." UrM30A3

"Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow HIS plan of Salvation, in recognition of the FACT that you do NOT know what it is. His work is NOT your function, and unless you accept this, you CANNOT learn what your function IS." UrT9C6

"You would make no ATTEMPT to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not know WHAT ANYTHING MEANS." UrT15F1

"The giving up of judgment, the obvious prerequisite for hearing God's Voice, is usually a fairly slow process, not because it is difficult, but because it is apt to be perceived as personally insulting. The world's training is directed toward achieving a goal in direct opposition to that of our curriculum. The world trains for reliance on one's judgment as the criterion for maturity and strength. Our curriculum trains for the relinquishment of judgment as the necessary condition of salvation." UrM10A2

"You are still convinced YOUR understanding is a powerful contribution to the truth, and MAKES IT WHAT IT IS. Yet we have emphasized that you need understand nothing." UrT18E8

"The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love." UrW165L2

"EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE. You have made a SEMBLANCE of power, and a SHOW of strength, so pitiful that it MUST fail you. For power is not seeming strength, and truth is beyond a semblance of any kind." UrT14G1

"You taught YOURSELVES the most unnatural habit of NOT communicating with your Creator." UrT13H16

"You do not know how to OVERLOOK errors, or you would not make them. It would merely be further error to think either that you do NOT make them, or that you can CORRECT them without a GUIDE TO CORRECTION." UrT9C2

"The Bible tells you to become as little children. Little children recognize that they do not understand what they perceive, and so they ASK WHAT IT MEANS. Do not make the mistake of believing that YOU understand what YOU perceive, for its meaning IS lost to you. But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away. As long as you THINK YOU KNOW its meaning, you will see no need to ask it OF Him. You do not know the meaning of ANYTHING you perceive. NOT ONE THOUGHT YOU HOLD IS WHOLLY TRUE." UrT10H6

"There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this:

"I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on myself." Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will TELL you of Itself. UrT31E16

Every question contains fear. Knowledge is a state of total certainty, in which there is nothing to ask, no questions, no doubts, no fear. When you have knowledge, there is no basis for needing to ask anything.

When you don't have knowledge, due to a denial of knowledge, you enter into a state of lack. Here, knowledge is missing, so you now have a basis of "needing" to ask questions. The questions are part of seeking for what seems to be missing, trying to make sense of what is now confusing.

This means you have gone into fear. Fear is uncertainty. Knowledge is certainty. Without knowledge you must be afraid. Something becomes "unknown", leaving an open door for possibilities, imagined monsters, unexpected threats and things you cannot predict. Instantly you are in fear because you are uncertain.

There is a spiritual self-help idea of "questioning everything". Now, what's important to realize is NOT everything should be questioned. What should be questioned is anything to do with questions. Because questions are fear, and that is ego. So you should be questioning whether the fear is true, whether you really need to ask the question, and why you have blocked knowledge.

But if you are asking any other kind of question, which is based on the assumption that knowledge is denied, an entire world has arisen from ignorance, a universe of fear is in front of your eyes, and now you are asking questions about it... those kind of questions are not helpful. "What is it?" "What is happening?" "What is causing it" etc are all based in the assumption that a world of doubt is happening, inspiring questions.

You could continue being in a state of fear and questioning for a very long time, asking a billion questions, and not becoming any more certain. In fact many ego questions are designed merely to maintain fear, keep you searching, distract you from knowledge, and send you on a very long wild goose chase "not finding" any real sense of answer, certainty, clarity or knowledge. Questions that take you away from the TRUE answer, are not really helpful.

The only answer to all questions is God. Only the truth is true. The true answer is there is no question. In knowledge of the Kingdom nothing is missing or lacking or unknown or absent. All is known. And so there is no fear, because there is no uncertainty. There is also nothing to learn, so no questions to ask in an attempt to learn. When you are learning, you are really moving away from the truth, UNLESS you are learning the Unreality of your doubts and fears.

If you use questioning to unravel false questions, then this is helpful. If you are being radically honest for example, going within and finding out the deeper truth through a kind of inquiry, that's great. If it's moving you out of fear into certainty, great. If it's moving you away from ignorance toward knowledge, great. But if it's moving you outward away from yourself, away from peace and certainty, and you're becoming lost in doubt and not knowing and worry and fear and terror, which turns into stress and desperation, then you're asking ego-affirming questions instead of ego-dissolving questions.

"I have no question, I forgot what to decide".

"I know nothing"

These are important elements of the course's approach. It's not that you must know nothing. In fact, you must become reunited with knowledge and know everything! But the stuff that you THINK you know, but which is NOT really knowledge, has to be identified as NOT real knowledge. It's fake ego knowledge. It's great to recognize you don't REALLY know that things are going to work out badly - you are just speculating. It's good to drop your past learning, your self-taught lies, your false beliefs, your made-up rules, your justifications and so on... to make room for ACTUAL knowledge.

Ego knowledge always goes hand in hand with not knowing, and so always entails uncertainty, and therefore fear.

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."

Even true perception is not knowledge. Nor is it wholly certain. It is fundamentally unstable. It can be stabilized to seem to align with certainty but it is not fundamentally certain. All perception is a separated state, and anyone still perceiving still needs healing. Only when perception is gone can there be knowledge. And that means the body must go as well, because the body is the device you made to perceiving with. "Indeed, you cannot remain in this world with this knowledge."

The world you made is a world of fear, a world of lies, and a world of uncertainty. Nothing in it can really be known. It's all made up bullshit. Questioning its reality is useful, but asking questions about what, why, how, when, where such and such is happening IN it, is just the ego going down the rabbit hole. The form of a question seeming to be a question, but really being a desire to fear and NOT KNOW the answer. The answer is in the Holy Spirit. Ask Him the truth.

"The ego will demand many answers that this course does not give. It does not recognize as questions the mere form of a question to which an answer is impossible. The ego may ask, "How did the impossible occur?", "To what did the impossible happen?", and may ask this in many forms. Yet there is no answer; only an experience. Seek only this, and do not let theology delay you."

Forgiveness is a high state of mind, aligned with the Holy Spirit's vision, in which you SEE and RECOGNIZE everything for what it truly is. That which is true is recognised and accepted as true, while that which is false is recognised and rejected as false.

The problem is, when you are lost and confused amidst various mental distortions, delusions, deceptions, convictions, being a victim and seeing yourself as a body and other such things, that high state of accurate truth that would set you free is "inaccessible."

So then you have a paradox. The very state of mind you need to get INTO in order to be free from the delusions of the mind and its suffering, is only a state that you can reach AFTER the delusions have stopped. The very forgiving viewpoint needed for accurate perception and recognition, is hidden behind all the clouds of deception and lies. So how do you navigate out of the ego mess you've made when you can't see straight?

First thing is you should ask the Holy Spirit to help you before you even attempt to forgive, and ACIM tells you you should be doing this every time:

"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."

So you are supposed to ASK FOR HELP first, because you're so lost and confused you don't know the way out of your insanity. Then having asked for help, you RECEIVE help, by being willing and open. Particularly a willingness to be mistaken about what you believe, and willing to move closer to the truth.

Then the Holy Spirit can help you. You should find that as you then begin to try to unravel the tangled mess of your ego victimhood, your mind is going to take a different course - the Holy Spirit can and will influence your thinking and cause you to come to insights and conclusions and realizations and perspectives quite effortlessly.

Like your mind just starts to open up and flow on a kind of slipstream of inspiration, on a path that leads quickly upwards. This is the Holy Spirit enlightening your mind, and it works in realtime AS you proceed to work through your dilemma. As you have willingness and receptivity to find a way to the truth, He helps you along and lifts you up.

Eventually you'll want to get to the place where you can see clearly that the beliefs you had were mistaken, the guilt was unfounded, there has been no sin, and therefore there's no need to keep supporting the victimhood and suffering that you were choosing. Then in that atonement-view you can let it go.

"Ask then His help, and ask Him how to learn forgiveness as His vision lets it be. You are in need of what He gives, and your salvation rests on learning this of Him."

"To keep it for yourself to solve WITHOUT His help is to decide it should remain UNsettled, UNresolved, and lasting in its power of injustice and attack."

"Prepare for this each morning, remember God when you can throughout the day, ask the Holy Spirit's help when it is feasible to do so, and thank Him for His guidance at night. And your confidence will be well founded indeed."

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.

Repeatedly Jesus instructs us in ACIM to demonstrate that you are invulnerable.

He says that we are to show our brother that nothing he has done has had ANY effect on us.

He says that we are to demonstrate that we are innocent and our brother is innocent.

He says we are to show our invulnerability by having no effects of attack.

He says we need to be completely unaffected by the world and "I am not a victim of the world I see". Not a victim AT ALL.

He wants us to basically stand there, while the world and its people are doing absolutely whatever they want to do, and be absolutely unaffected, unchanged, undisturbed. Our peace is meant to be so rock solid that we are not moved by anything.

This really means we're being called to NOT play the game of "I am suffering" or "I've been victimized" or "I'm unfairly treated" or "You did something to me" or "I am this way because of someone else" or "I didn't ask for this" or "I've been changed by the world" or "There are effects in me that I didn't put there".

Jesus repeats this theme when he says that nothing happens to us without our consent, we always get what we ask for and we never get what we do not ask for. He goes on to tell us to make sure never to give any belief or reality to the suggestion that the Son of God has been or can be affected by anything, including having absolutely no belief in sickness or separation.

He asks us to see no blame whatsoever in our brother or ourselves. To see ourselves as completely blameless and guiltless.

Innocence doesn't just mean 'you didn't do anything', its an experiential state of INVULNERABILITY and IMMORTALITY, in which quite literally you recognize nothing can or has happened to you.

But who is the 'you' that nothing happens to? It's not the you that you think you are. It's your real self.