Being afraid and perceiving that someone or something separate from you is attacking you, can ONLY happen if YOU are being an attacker.

Fear is self attack.

You position yourself as the one who is being attacked, as if to suggest, you do not believe in attack at all and want there not to be attack.

But at the same time, you have projected attack outside of yourself, see it in another, make it real, believe in it strongly, and then freak out about what you're showing yourself.

The only reason the state of fear does not seem to show obviously that you're doing this to yourself, or that a fearful person is an attacker, is because of the separation or lack of awareness in-between that which is "attacked" and that which is "attacking."

Both the attacker and the attackee are within your own mind. They always accompany each other. One seems like an external cause, one seems like an internal effect. But they are both inside of you. It is your mind at war with itself.

You cannot be afraid without believing in attack, which makes you an attacker. You cannot be afraid without therefore perceiving someone or something as an attacker, which means you've made attack real, believe attack is the truth, and WANT attack.

The state of denial present in fear is such that it seems as though you DO NOT WANT IT whatsoever. You want it to end, want to get away from it, want to be safe and so on. But this is not what your mind is actually doing. It is in denial. It has disassociated its own belief in sin, from itself, has projected it outwards, and now is being threatened by it as if it is something external and separate.

If you are terrified, you are a terrorist. If you are horrified, you peddle horror. If you are sick, you are attempting to infect everyone else. If you are hurt or damaged, you are trying to prove you can be hurt so that your brother stands accused.

This may sound like I'm saying things which are absolutely insane. Except that it is actually sanity to see this. The EGO is insane, and its use of the mind to attack itself is utterly nuts. Its disguises of what fear is and its use of fear as a TOOL and a WEAPON are things it does not want you to ever realize or look at.

There is NO victimhood in a victim. It is all deliberately chosen, it is all serving a purpose and has a very deliberate motive behind it. There are no accidents. Nothing is happening by mistake. It is all chosen. The ego uses disownership and denial and projection and irresponsibility in order to KEEP its belief in sin, deny that it is in you, and to project it outward, pretending that this gets it OUTSIDE of your mind. It doesn't. You are still attacking yourself.

We must be willing to question the appearances and ILLUSIONS which the ego presents to us. Fear is a huge lie. It is a total distraction mechanism, a decoy, designed solely to make someone who is a vicious attacker LOOK LIKE they are the one who is not attacking at all. The more helpless the ego positions you as, the more it can find everyone ELSE guilty. The more innocent you APPEAR to be, the more it's everyone else who is the sinner.

Make no mistake that appearing to be innocent, helpless, a victim, a sufferer, sick, wounded, hurt, upset, or any of these other EGO DISGUISES, is the *exact opposite* of what is really happening. It will take a lot of radical honesty to admit to this.

The benefit of admitting to this is that you STOP attacking yourself, stop USING the ego's tools and weapons, stop believing that you are powerless, stop hurting YOURSELF, and stop making out that you are not the Son of God. The benefits to your mind are immense. The benefits to your confidence and empowerment are immense. You cannot afford to let the ego run the show and make you out to be a victim when - in all truth and reality - you are IMMORTAL SPIRIT which cannot suffer or die whatsoever.

Remember always that you are immortal spirit. Everyone is immortal spirit. Immortal spirit cannot be hurt, cannot be a victim, cannot suffer, cannot die, cannot be sick, cannot lose, cannot be upset or unhappy, and cannot be separate from God. Anything else that is seeming to happen, or anything else that seems to apply to someone, IS A LIE. It is an immortal spirit PRETENDING to be mortal, PRETENDING to be hurt, and PRETENDING it can be dead.

It's BULL SHIT!

I had a dream once where this man was trying to do something bad to me or was threatening, so I ran off and went up this hill where I met this other man. This other man at first seemed to be offering to shelter me from the attacker and to protect me from him, but it soon transpired that this other man was in fact the same attacker in disguise. Even though he was putting on a show to make me believe I could run to him for safety, he was in fact the very person I was trying to get away from.

This is how the ego functions. The ego is two-faced. It will pretend to be your savior and your attacker at the same time. It will pretend to be trying to make your life better while simultaneously making it worse. It will tell you it knows how to help you be 'less of the bad stuff' and 'more of the good stuff', while reinforcing the bad stuff and secretly being your enemy. It will even act like your savior, advising you to get rid of the ego entirely, which it knows will keep and increase the ego by getting you to side WITH it AND AGAINST IT at the same time.

The ego is a representation of SELF ATTACK, since it is what you used to attack yourself. It therefore is made of self attack - attacking of self. It is against itself and for itself at the same time. It will happily attack itself while trying to protect itself. It will choose to hurt itself while at the same time enjoying being hurt (pain=pleasure). It will warn you against death while bringing it about. It will tell you to go in a certain direction while leading you down the wrong path. It will tell you you're doing the right or wrong thing while doing the opposite. It is completely contradictory in every way. In particular we fall for its messages because we tend to want to side with 'good or bad' or one or the other polarity of its madness. But we need to recognize that ALL of the ego is false. ALL of the ego is a lie and a deception. The ego is a two-faced liar.

Even this 'anti ego' ego message comes to you in part from the ego enjoying attacking itself.

Cryptic!

Your mind is always obeying the laws which Oneness established for all minds, regardless of whether you are in the ego or not. These laws are permanent and unavoidable.

These laws are fully obvious and correctly obeyed when you have True Perception. These apply to God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. They also apply to the ego even though it will deny it.

The ego will attempt to PRETEND that these laws do not apply or are not operating. (more on that later)

The laws:

1) Whatever applies to you applies to the entire Sonship and all of existence equally, and vice versa. It is not possible for something to apply to you which does not apply to others the same. It is not possible for something to apply to them which does not apply to you. If something applies to you, it applies everywhere instantly. If something applies to another, it applies to you immediately. In other words, THERE ARE NO PRIVATE LAWS.

2) Ideas leave not their source, therefore you can only experience what is INSIDE your mind. You cannot experience attack from outside the mind or outside of your Self. Attack has to be manifest WITHIN your mind, put there by yourself. You can only be aware of the content of your mind, not what is separate from it.

3) Cause and effect are NEVER separated. Where there is a cause, there must be an effect. A mind cannot contain a cause without containing an effect, and vice versa. It is not possible for cause outside the mind to put effects inside the mind - the mind has to contain both cause and effect inside itself. You cannot perceive an attacker without inventing an attacker within yourself.

4) You cannot attack without being attacked. All attack is self attack. It is impossible to do something to a separate part of the Sonship without you experiencing absolutely all of the effects. They are you. You are one with them. You cannot judge, attack, hate, condemn, or find sinful, without it applying to you. It's either BOTH of you are sinful, or neither, but never one or the other. This is the meaning of SHARED INTERESTS.

5) You cannot perceive, access, be aware of, or affected by, anything outside of your mind. There IS no outside. You cannot perceive outside of yourself. Anything you perceive or are aware of must be happening WITHIN your own mind. Believing there is a separate will outside your mind will frighten you because of what it can do outside of the scope of your mind's reach, or in other words, it has power over you which you can do nothing to prevent. Such a belief will result in death.

6) Your mind cannot remain neutral and perceive something which is not neutral. There are no neutral thoughts. Your mind does not have the ability to perceive objectively that someone is being sinful, separate from your own sin. If they are seen as sinning, you are seen as sinning. You DO NOT have an ability to perceive neutrally or objectively while seeing sin. Therefore you cannot tell if your brother is sinful or not, because to see sin in them it MUST be in you, and you cannot see past your own sin, so are blind.

There may be some more ways we can talk about the way a mind of oneness operates, but this is enough for now.

Now, the mind is ALWAYS bound by these laws, no matter what, no matter if the ego is getting involved (false perception) or whether you are enlightened The presence of ego (an attempt to defy the law) DOES NOT stop the laws operating.

However, what the ego TRIES to do, is to DENY the law, and PRETEND that these laws are NOT permanently operating. It pretends it's possible to IGNORE these laws, and to operate in a different way, and not receive the consequences of the law. The ego sees itself as rewriting the laws and having power over the laws (law = God's Will).

The thing is, when the ego tries to pretend the laws don't apply, all kinds of shit happens. It will try to convince you there is a separation between cause and effect. It will try to convince you you can get away with murder, can see objectively that someone is sinful and not you, that what applies to you does not apply to others, that you have escaped consequences of sin and someone else is paying for it, and that you can use the body for attack without being attacked.

ACIM quote: "The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it CANNOT BE SICK, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."

Within the laws of God, this means that the ego tells you that you can see the sins of others "through" your body, without your body being affected. This is denial. It is not true. If you attempt to see your brother as sinful, IT MUST APPLY TO YOU ALSO. This automatically will condemn and attack YOU, and this WILL show up in your body image as symptoms or signs of attack. Another word for that is forms of sickness.

You literally cannot judge or accuse or condemn without being condemned, by yourself. What you are actually doing then, is you're trying to use the body as a weapon. Because there is a direct correlation between your belief in and projection of sin, and sickness showing up, you will make your body SICK, in an attempt to prove that your brother is sinful. This is the ONLY WAY you can attempt to prove it. By proving you can be attacked or hurt, you demonstrate that your brother is the sinner and not you. Or at least that's the ego's interpretation of it. In God's law, you are hurt BY YOUR OWN ATTACK.

People literally are walking around projecting sin and hate through their body, trying to get rid of sin onto someone else to escape the consequences of the law, but are nevertheless finding that it makes their body sick. They cannot escape the law, but they're pretending to. The effects of sickness in the body also then reflect the level confusion, that those outside of yourself are causing you to be hurt.

Trying to prove this is level confusion and will implement sickness. All sickness is a form of magic. Magic is the belief that a lower level can cause and higher level (e.g. body causes mind, others cause you, being a victim etc). This turns you into an EFFECT and your body will demonstrate those effects to correlate to the perceived external cause.

When someone gets to the point where their body is so sick that it seems to die, they are actually attempting to severely prove that they can suffer and die, that it is someone or something else *separate* that has caused it, and therefore the dying body is a weapon. It accuses everyone and everything of sin, being the cause of the death - anything other than yourself.

Death of the body is a fulfillment of a belief in sin, an attempt to kill the Son of God by binding him to form, and demonstrates a lack of forgiveness. A dying body is like a kamikaze weapon, attempting to infect and destroy everything and prove that God and His son are dead. God's death (the purpose of the dream of death) cannot be proven without YOU dying. Death is also completely "contained" as an effect upon YOURSELF, because ideas leave not their source and therefore, God is not affected by it.

This is of course an ego cover-up job, because NO-ONE CAN DIE WITHOUT THEIR OWN CONSENT. Meaning, your body cannot die unless you are believing that everyone else must be dead at some level. Death is symptomatic of huge level confusion, where the lower level (world of effects) has produced a "cause" upon the higher level (mind). The person believing this MUST show death in the body image to represent God's law that what applies to others applies to you. All sickness and death is an ACCUSATION that your brother has sinned against you.

This also therefore means that, if you stop accusing your brother of sin, your body CANNOT SHOW SICKNESS. No exceptions. Sickness can ONLY come about through mis-use of the law, where you attempted to perceive your brother as corrupt, sinful, guilty, wrong in some way. YOU will receive the effects of this belief. Your body will show it.

And this also means that if you stop believing in sin, your body MUST show and demonstrate a complete lack of symptoms of sickness. If there was sickness showing up previously due to prior judgement, IT MUST DISAPPEAR. No exceptions. What has no cause cannot remain. If you understand the Course's section on "sickness is a defense against the truth" you will see that we implement sickness only as a form of defense and denial of the truth, and as a form of level confusion. Once this denial and defenses is not needed, it will be dropped, and the sickness MUST DISAPPEAR as a result of having recognized the illusions you were implementing.

You need to also realize that attack can only happen INSIDE your mind. It's not possible to perceive or experience external attack. This means, if there is an "external person" who seems to attack, or is tempting you to believe in sin, the only way you can SEE that attack is if it is INSIDE the scope of your mind. That means, for you to SEE attack, your own mind has to be sectioned off and part of it has to become an attacker. This attacker is part of yourself, and is in ADDITION to the external attacker, projected onto them. Simultaneously, the part that is not seen as the attacker will be sectioned off and seen as a victim of attack. Your mind will now be attacking ITSELF.

Therefore realize, your mind implements both the belief in a CAUSE of sin, AND the effects of sin, simultaneously. This all happens inside yourself, even if it seems like the person attacking it outside of you. You cannot see them as the source of attack. You have to make YOURSELF the attacker. That means, as in the secret to salvation, that you are literally doing this to yourself. Your mind manifests/produces/visualizes and turns into FORM, both the attacker and the attacked, the cause and the effects. You will put effects of sickness into your body and hold it hostage with the part of you that is hallucinating an attacker.

Now here's the trick of healing. You have to recognize you are doing this to yourself. Other people or external causes have NOTHING to do with it. You are the one who invented the cause and the effects of your sickness. You believe in both of them, and your split mind has two identities. You must recognize that illusions of causes are not real causes, you are the one who, within your mind, is attacking yourself and pretending it has something to with others, and YOU put in place ALL of the symptoms/effects of that causality.

As Jesus tells us, "you made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both". Sickness has NO CAUSE other than your mind's decision to make it. Sickness has no reason to remain, other than your NEED to keep it (as a defense against truth).

When you do not need or choose to keep it, and recognize the illusion you made (that cause is unloving and sinful - which is really the belief that God in evil and has attacked you), the symptoms of sickness MUST DISAPPEAR. You DID make your sickness, and you DID make death, and you CAN abolish them. Not only that, because you are bound by the laws of God, you cannot FAIL to abolish them if you stop using your body for attack. Sickness simply must vanish to comply with the law.

There are no loopholes in the law. There are no exceptions. There are no other causes of sickness beyond yourself. Sickness has no mind, will or power of its own. No-one maintains it besides you. It can and must disappear when you return to True Perception. Illusions recognized must disappear. A guiltless mind cannot suffer, because a guiltless mind CANNOT MAINTAIN SICKNESS. Sickness has to disappear.

This is so black and white a law, that Jesus tells us, "a sick body is proof that the mind has not been healed." You literally CANNOT be sick if your mind is healed. If sickness is showing up, or remains, your mind IS NOT healed. You can be in denial of this, as most people are. You can believe that it's possible to be at peace and keep sickness. But you can't. The law confirms that sickness WILL NOT and CANNOT show up at all if the mind is sane and free. Similarly you cannot be at peace with death or dying, because to die is the ULTIMATE expression of a belief in sin.

The dead can be raised and all sickness can be healed, BECAUSE of the law. If this were not true, resurrection would be impossible. You cannot believe in death and make the body die and believe in resurrection. Using the body lovelessly will make it suffer and die. Believing only in eternal life will bring the body to health, since it is not being attacked and twisted and deformed by the mind's attitude. The body is just an image being projected, it can EASILY be changed by the healed mind.

Jesus tells us not to use sickness to attempt to demonstrate that our brother is a sinner. If our body is sick in any way, we ARE using it to prove he is a sinner. He asks us to demonstrate that WE CANNOT BE HURT, which proves that our brother is not sinful and cannot cause death. HIS innocence is proven when YOUR innocence is proven. This DOES play out on the visual, perceptible, illusory dream level of the world, because the world is a symbol in the mind. The body can become a symbol of holiness and innocence, used as a teaching device to prove to your brother that he has not sinned. HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ATTACK IT, because YOU will not put symptoms of sickness into it, and HE is not an evil cause of effects!

You must understand the law. The law applies to you. You cannot escape it. But you can be in denial and pretend it does not apply. And then you will suffer and die. Choose the equal innocence of the entire Sonship and Live.

If a person is sick, God is a murderer.

If the sickness exists, if it has reality, it has been created, then it must have been created by God.

Only what God creates is real, or exists, or has been created.

There is nothing that exists other than what God has created.

There is no reality other than what is a part of God.

Only what God wills really exists or happens.

If a person is sick, God must have willed it to happen.

If a person is sick, God must have created the sickness.

If a person is sick, God has produces a real sickness, has given it to the person, and is making them sick.

But if God were to have to created a real sickness, then God has given sickness to the person on purpose, by his will.

If God wills that people be sick, then God is a vicious murderous bastard.

Only a cruel, unloving and unkind God could give a sickness to someone. To make them sick on purpose, to guarantee their suffering.

Such a God would have to be sick himself, hateful, vengeful, murderous, torturous, evil, twisted, malicious and an attacker.

God himself must have attacked the person cruelly and inflicted a curse of hell upon them, if they are really sick.

So the fact is, if that sickness is real, if it has been created, if it is God’s will, and if it really exists, then God is a cruel vicious hateful creator. A condemner and a killer.

The situation then is, you have to decide, whether or not God is like this. Whether God could create real sickness and give it to people.

Is God the kind of God that could create and will and curse someone with suffering?

Does God want them dead?

Is God punishing them?

Is God really cruel, vicious, hateful, and an attacker?

Has got personally inflicted suffering on someone and given them a sickness that he believes they deserve?

If God hasn’t, and if God is loving, and if God is not an attacker, and if God does not will that someone have a sickness, then God is NOT the cause of the sickness.

If God did not cause the sickness, then the sickness has not been created.

If it is not created, it is not a part of God’s creation, and nothing but God’s creations exist.

If the sickness is not created by God, it cannot exist. Nor can it cause or create anything.

If the sickness is not a part of God’s will, then it has not been willed at all.

If the sickness is not given to the person by God, the person has not inherited it from God, and they do not have it. No-one has anything other than what they have inherited from God.

If the sickness does not share God’s reality, then the sickness does not have any reality.

If the sickness has no reality, it does not really exist at all. It cannot be there, it has no life, it has no will, it has no power.

Either, God is loving and does not will that there be sickness, or God is hateful and has caused all the sickness everywhere.

But if God is loving, then not only has God not created any sickness, God actively WILLS that you NOT be sick.

“God does not will that you suffer.”

“God’s will for you is perfect happiness.”

A loving God wills that you be healed, and whole, and healthy, and happy.

A loving God wants you to have no sickness at all.

A loving God would take your sickness away in a heartbeat, knowing it is not there.

A loving God can only love you, sustain you, create you to live forever, and never attack you.

In fact a loving God can only protect you, keep you safe, maintain your perfection, and give you immortality.

If God is loving, you cannot be sick.

If God is loving, that sickness cannot exist, and must be a lie.

“God did not create that sickness, and therefore it does not exist.”

Whatever that sickness appears to be, it cannot be a real sickness.

Whatever that sickness appears to be, it does not really exist at all.

That sickness has not been created.

That sickness has not been caused.

That sickness is not there.

There is no sickness.

There never was a sickness.

That person was never sick. They never can be sick. And they never will be sick.

The sickness must be a lie, it must be false, and it cannot be real.

The sickness is not true.

The sickness must not be anything. The sickness is nothing.

Either the sickness is real and exists and is the will of God, or there is no sickness and the person is not sick and God wills their immortality.

That person is not sick now and never was.

Whatever the sickness appears to be, it is not a part of that person, or a part of anything real.

The sickness is a gone.

There is no real sickness and there never will be, otherwise God would have to be sick and share his sickness.

God is not sick.

Therefore, that person cannot be sick.

That sickness is not there. There is no sickness. There is no death.

That person must be whole, they must still be as God created them, they cannot suffer, and they cannot ever be sick. Otherwise God would be death.

There never was a real sickness.

God never created real sickness.

Real sickness does not exist.

You are not sick. I am not sick. God is not sick.

God does not will that you be sick.

God wills that you be healed and whole and healthy.

Sickness is impossible.

It is impossible for you to be sick or to die.

God wills that you live forever.

God has already willed that you live forever.

God’s will cannot be undone. God’s will is done already. So you must be healed already.

You are already permanently whole and perfect.

There is no sickness in you.

God knows you are already whole and healed and holy.

Only love is real. Only health is real. Only wholeness is real.

We are the whole of healthy holiness together.

God has guaranteed your health and your permanence.

You will never die. There is only life. You will live forever.

When you are whole, you have only one identity. You are identified with Spirit. You are one with Holy Spirit. You are at peace.

When you begin to believe that illusions are actually reality, entering into the separation state, you put denial in place to shut out awareness of God, and therefore awareness of your "whole self" (Holy Self, True Self etc) seems blocked.

Once this denial is in place, which is an act of believing in real sin, you have tried to attack your wholeness and God’s wholeness with an idea of separateness. You therefore put illusions of separateness into your own mind. These show up inside your own mind, or to put it another way, inside your own self.

So you "split yourself", in the same way that two people seem separate. The split seems like a wall coming inbetween two identities. At the same time, both of these identities are separated from the whole self and God.

Neither "part" of the split mind has awareness of the whole, because these parts, which have come about because you believed in separation, are both cut off from being aware of the whole mind. Neither of them "identify with" the whole self.

So now you have this whole mind which remains whole, in truth. Then you have this fictional scenario playing out INSIDE your mind, where there is this strange dream of separateness and division.

What keeps the parts of the split mind separate are simply illusions - appearances - that there is something about each part which is different to the other, causing them to seem to be "not each other". This cannot be true in reality, but within the split mind (consciousness), you develop a multiple personality disorder.

This split plays out as dreams of various dramas of conflict. Other terms for this conflict are war, self-attack, condemnation, judgement, the whole drama of victims and victimizers, some things being good and others bad etc.

The funny thing is then, within your whole mind, there is sort of a "stage" with a "play" being performed, with characters, and there are at least two main characters. And each character is seemingly "opposite" to the other in as many ways as possible. They want nothing to do with each other, they want to emphasize the ways in which they are separate and unlike, so that the illusion of "why" they are not ONE is reinforced and maintained.

One of these major parts of the split mind is the persona, and the other part is the shadow. I don’t think the course explicitly uses those terms/words, but it definitely does speak about this in many places and ways.

In order for there to be multiple selves in the mind, ie identities, false identities, there has to be denial and the purpose of that denial is to "shut out" one of the selves from the awareness of the other one. There are whole sections about this in the course.

The "persona" part of the split mind as we’ll call it, is really a part of the ego which attempts to create an illusion of innocence. Really the purpose you had in creating the split to begin with was an attempted solution to your belief in sin.

You figured that "all of you" was sinful, and you could not tolerate this idea. There was no way to KEEP it and also escape it. You wanted to keep "real sin" because that was your tiny mad idea/wish. So you made up a solution which is totally insane, but which creates an illusion of it working.

The solution is to section off one part of your mind where you’ll house all the "bad" or "rejected" or "condemned and sinful" parts of yourself, and then you’ll keep another part of the mind where you’ll create an illusion of a completely "innocent seeming" self.

By keeeping the two parts away from each other, ie keeping the fake-innocent self (persona) "in the dark" about the sinful self (shadow), the persona is able to maintain an ILLUSION that "you" did not sin! It shoves all of the evidence of sinfulness into the unconscious shadow part of the mind, attacks it, disassociates from it, and projects it "away" from the persona as much as possible.

One thing to note here is that you did not really want to get rid of your belief in sin. You wanted to believe it as real and irreversible. So you devised a way to KEEP it but To PRETEND you did not want it, so that no one (including you) would suspect or question that you might’ve been the one who did it, so that nobody ever will LOOK AT the fact that it was you, and therefore the idea of real sin goes unchallenged. You make yourself out to seem "innocenct" or even remorseful, with FAKE GUILT, in order to pretend you did not want to sin and weren’t the one to do it, but it’s not true.

This is all taking place still within your mind, entirely. It has nothing to do with what is "outside" of you, or anything to do with anyone else. But because the persona part of the ego disassociates from the shadow, it makes it SEEM "to the persona self" that the shadow-self is NOT ITSELF. Ie it is "other than me".

What happens is you, as the whole mind, who has temporarily lost track of who you are, and who thinks you are a split mind, with multiple personalities, now "sides with" the persona self. It is fictional and totally fake, but it seems to make "you" look like you did not sin. So you allow this persona self to be IN your "conscious awareness", and you make sure to keep the shadow self OUT of awareness in unconsciousness.

The primary function of the persona therefore is to attack your whole self, to identify that some major portion of your self is a sinner and guilty and deserving to die, ie not good enough and can’t be loved because it’s supposedly "evil", it confines all *illusory apperances* of the "bad stuff" and shoves it into unconsciousness, by using denial.

The act of putting "distance" between the persona and the shadow therefore implements *disassociation*, which basically means you do not want to be "associated with" the sin that you believe you committed against God (so no-one would suspect you). So you distance yourself from it using this denial mechanism. This MAKES the shadow ie basically creates an enemy for the persona, who it hates and despises and wants nothing to do with, ON PURPOSE, so that it can KEEP the bad shit away from itself, making an illusion of innocence.

Since this is happening all entirely within the whole of your mind, BUT since you have identified your "self" only with the persona self and not the repressed sinner/shadow, you then "perceive" that you are NOT the shadow self. That it is some "identity" separate from what you are. You disassociate from it so heavily that you literally believe it is NOT YOU. ie, this other part of your own mind is NOT part of your own mind.

What then will happen, however, is the mind cannot get rid of this dark sin, because ideas do not leave their source (!), so it can’t actually get it OUT of the mind, it can only *disguise* it. The persona will then seem to experience that it is now this little helpless innocent-seeming perfect good likeable harmless little self, and that the shadow unconscious self is this big ugly monsterous enemy that it wants to keep hating in order to keep it OUT of AWARENESS. To maintain denial.

Now. What this has actually resulted in in terms of the Son of God, is that within His mind, he has invented these fictional characters, the conscious self who is fake, and the unconscious self which is denied. The conscious self, the persona, SHOWS UP as a BODY! It acts as a visible representation of "who I am", a fake identity, appearing innocent, born seemingly innocent, and no one would suspect that it had tried to murder God.

And then, everything OUTSIDE of the body, the entire "world" and "environment" and all "people who are not me", are actually projections of YOUR OWN UNCONSCIOUS MIND. So your unconscious mind (shadow) is actually outside of your body, and your conscious persona self is inside your body. You can see just how much disassociation there is for an average person, by looking at how much they believe that they are ONLY the self that is "in the body", little and helpless, and everyone else is "not me".

Since the person’s mind is split and the person has identified only with their fake persona self, thinking that everything outside of them is "not my persona self", this happens to map exactly to how we experience the world in terms of bodies and relationships. When another "body" shows up "out there", we regard it as "not myself".

This simultaneously "maps" our unconscious, repressed, disassociated belief that WE SINNED, onto that other person, because just as we believe that our own sinful shit is "not myself", we also believe that that person is "not myself". Therefore it is EASY to "associate" your own disassociated unconscious sin WITH that "not me" other person! This allows you to perceive, and believe, that the sin is IN THEM, it is THEIRS, NOT YOURS, and THEY are the one who was the sinner against God!

Truth is, your experience of what you see "in the not-me selves" - other people out there, is YOUR belief in sin, actually WITHIN your mind still, and you are now interacting with YOUR SHADOW, inside your mind, hallucinating that it is a separate person or content within someone else, and you actually come to believe that this other innocent person is the "one" who is sinning against you.

Any attack you seem to experience, will SEEM like it is being caused by other people. IT IS NOT! It is YOUR other split off part of your own mind - your shadow, attacking the REST of your split off mind - your persona - which you think is "all of myself", but which is only PART of yourself. The persona - your conscious self, who denies that it has an unconscious mind, is "attacked by" this other part of the mind that it believes is not even part of itself.

If you think about it, the only way that it is possible for the persona part of the mind to "be attacked" is if the attacker is INSIDE the realm of where the persona lives. It can only get "access" to the persona because it actually SHARES the same "host mind", and therefore the persona can be attacked by the shadow.

We often, as personas, not our real selves, will believe that the identity who is doing the attacking is "not me", and therefore someone else is attacking "you" (your persona) and it is nothing to do with "you". You will therefore identify with being the VICTIM, who has been unfairly treated and abused against its will, by this "other". This ego persona will see itself as JUSTIFIED in being angry and getting revenge, which it does by further attacking yourself and sectioning off even more parts of you which it deems sinful.

The main function of the persona is to first condemn yourself as a sinner, then try to section off the sinful parts of you to hide them and make them unconscious through denial/disassociation, and to then try to "keep" only the bits of yourself that it deems acceptable, worthy, attractive, valuable, credible, innocent, likeable, good, basically a picture of fake innocence... a picture of someone who no-one would suspect of murder ous intent or a sinful past.

The whole point of the persona is to DENY that you were the one who sinned against God, by pretending to be totally innocent and harmless. To do this, the persona has to attack you, split parts of you off, judge them as bad, make them unconscious, disassociate them from yourself, and only keep the smaller subset of illusory qualities that it says is "acceptable for now".

The persona is a perfectionist and is NEVER satisfied and has impossible standards. The ego thus ranges from suspicious (when in the persona mainly), to visciousness (when the hated guilty shadow self comes out of unconsciousness to express pain and guilt).

You need to realize that the persona is actively GETTING RID OF YOU, by emphasizing all the things that it finds "good" about you, and getting rid of all the things it finds "bad". And sooner or later, because you are never good enough for it (because ego denies love/lovability), it will strip away "bad stuff" until there IS No good stuff left, and you will be DEAD! The persona tries to "preserve a good self" in the name of getting rid of you! It is not on your side and it is not acting in your best interests.

What you need to realize then is that every enemy and attacker and abuser and victimizer is PART OF YOUR OWN MIND. It is the shadow in your mind, which your persona made up, coming back to attack the persona to try to point out the ways that the persona is actually a murderer. While the persona is busy claiming "I did not do it, it’s the shadow’s fault, it’s the sinner", the shadow is going to have in its agenda to "expose" the bullshit lies of the persona and point out the ways that "you" are NOT GOOD, and not pure or holy or right or happy etc. The persona hates this and sees it as attack or violation, but it’s the mind’s attempt to heal itself in a way.

When the unconscious pain (pain body) starts to come into awareness, the persona freaks out in fear and tries to suppress it and get rid of it and avoid it. Trying to get rid of IT is what happens when you try to get rid of OTHER PEOPLE because you think that THEY are IT and getting rid of them will solve your problem! Except the ego’s tactics DO NOT WORK! YOU will keep your shadow self and make it worse.

You have to realize that every attacker is PART OF YOU. And, what is being "attacked by" that attacker, is also PART OF YOU. The key is, the secret to salvation, which is that you are doing this ALL to yourself. You are BOTH attacking you (persona identified self) and are also BEING the attacker (shadow). BOTH of these FAKE CHARACTERS are in your mind. You put them both there. oYu are not EITHER of them

At some point, in your undoing of the ILLUSIONS that keep these two selves apart, and which maintain war, and which keep you thinking that other people are your enemies when it’s really YOU, and that YOU are not even the self that was being attacked, you will start to see through this split-minded perspective.

At some point, you will first of all ACCEPT that BOTH of these things are parts of your own mind, nothing to do with anyone else. That means the attacker and the attacked are both in your mind. Then you will realize, that if they are both in your mind, and you put them there, YOU - whatever you are really - must be maintaining both of them. If YOU are putting both of them in your mind, then YOU are literally the puppet master who is pitting these two selves AGAINST EACH OTHER.

Therefore the war that is waging between "them" is actually FICTIONAL, the claims that each of them makes about what the "other" is doing to the is an ILUSION - a fake story and a fake set of character traits and a fake scenario of victimization, IS NOT REAL.

IF... you, as the whole mind, contain both persona and shadow, and if you are the ONE who has put them there, and if the ways they SEEM to be two separate identities is NOT TRUE, then...

IF you can realize that YOU ARE BEING BOTH OF THEM, then suddenly you will see a COMMONALITY between them, a truth which completely obliterates the entir illusion of separation, undoes all the disassociation, collapses all denial, and totally blows up this whole FICTIONAL PLAY which has been playing out in your mind.

IF they are both you, and you are ONE SELF, looking upon both of them, and realizing that they MUST both be you because *YOU ARE THE ONE DOING THIS ALL TO YOURSELF*, THEN.....nothing about them which *seems* separate can be true. They can’t BOTH exist as separate personalities if they are actually both you - ONE IDENTITY - not two identities.

Seeing this finally collapses the entire illusion, the split in the mind is OVERLOOKED, you forgive yourself for what you did not do, you stop playing the roles of attacker and attacked, victim OR victimizer, and you LET BOTH SIDES OF THE WAR GO. You realize your war with yourself could not be won because, since you were BOTH SIDES, you WERE ALWAYS LOSING, no matter who wins.

Seeing this futility will AWAKEN YOUR MIND to suddenly realizing, that since you are ONE REAL IDENTIY, NOT two fake ones, the fake ones cannot be real. And suddenly, they will DISAPPEAR. And since they were blocking your awareness of the WHOLE of who you are, and since you no longer see EITHER of them as your IDENTITY, suddenly your mind will AWAKEN to accepting and being AWARE OF who you ACTUALLY ARE, as ONE WHOLE SELF!

The fictional ego illusion deream will disappear from sight. Blocks to awareness will vanish. You will no longer pretend you are at war with yourself. You will no longer pretend to be multiple personalities. And you will simply return to your natural whole state of FULL AWARENSS OF ALL OF YOURSELF, as God created you. A mind which is whole, not split. A mind which is HOLY, not evil. A mind which is neither a victim or a victimizer. A mind which cannot BE attacked and CANNOT attack.

And now you are home, back to being who you really are, back with God, and in love FOREVER!

Are you guilty? Do you deserve forgiveness? Have you repented of your 'sin'?

If you are guilty of something, the very best thing you can do is to reclaim your innocence as soon as possible. If what you were doing before was incorrect, then returning to a state of correction is the best possible atonement you can offer.

If someone truly had a sane perception of you, they would ask that you stop being guilty and instead hold the light of innocence so that both you and they can be healed. Right? The greatest gift that a victimizer could give is to cease victimizing. Right? So to cease victimizing you have to stop choosing sin or guilt or fear. Which means you must choose innocence.

So while often we want our victimizers to be punished, to pay, to suffer, to be guilty, as though this somehow is 'better' or is justice or is a way of making up for what they did, this really is self defeating.

It is your brothers role to provide salvation and healing to you. He can only do that if he also SHARES in salvation and healing. The unhealed cannot heal. The guilty cannot provide innocence. You can't have it both ways - you can't have your vicitmizer be guilty while at the same time wanting them to 'take back' what they did.

You also can't hold guilt against a victimizer and expect to feel free of guilt yourself. How about that?

Here's the new rule.

Either you are both guilty or you are both innocent, but never one or the other.

If the world ran more according to this truth we would be far better off. An offering of guilt from a victimizer following an attack is nothing more than rubbing salt into the wound. Why would you want them to be guilty on top of having already attacked you? Guilt is an attack. You THINK that the attack of guilt is isolated to the person, and they can be guilty but not you. This is completely false and will totally undermine your sense of safety.

If a person is guilty, the guilt attacks them and you equally. Just as when someone is sick, the sickness is not limited to them - it is a statement of attack AND an attempt to infect everyone else. Not to induce guilt in saying that, but the Course does explain that sickness is an attempt to prove that everyone is sick. And not just bodily sickness - mind sickness, emotional sickness, etc.

The ONLY way for you to truly be happy and peaceful and to receive love and healing and be free of all effects of an attack, is to see the attacker as innocent and to encourage them to be innocent.

So yes, is sounds completely nonsense.... you just attacked me, ok, please revert to being loving and love me instead. Instead of... you just attacked me, you horrible asshole, you're so guilty and I hate you. Well, good luck with that self hate.

And if you are the victimizer, do you really think you're going to be better off or are doing the victim a service by being guilty all the time? Like, how much time is needed for you to be in shame and guilt in order to atone? A lifetime? At what point is it enough? When do you deserve forgiveness. You ALWAYS deserve forgiveness but you HAVE to claim and own it for yourself, because nobody, including the victim, is going to give you that permission of entitlement.

If you've ever made a significant enough mistake you'll know from experience, that people love to use you as a skapegoat and to jump on the bandwagon of unforgiveness. They want you to be guilty, so that you are the one who gets the punishment. What about THEIR sin? They're hardly being an example of love. At some point you have to realize, not only that you are the one who chose to be guilty and ashamed, but also therefore you are the one who has to reclaim innocence. Nobody can do it for you.

We all deserve to be innocent. We all deserve love. True `repentance` of sin, IF we REALLY want people to truly atone and repent, MUST mean that we allow them to be our SAVIOR. We can't hold a grudge, and we can't keep demanding their punishment. This only keeps ourselves imprisoned. IF we really want atonement and we really want healing, we HAVE to allow the attacker to be seen as innocent, otherwise there is no hope whatsoever and we're just getting lost in the ego.

Yes it runs against what we're used to. It runs against the ego. It goes against the societal normal. It runs counter to our normal ego emotional reactions. But if we want freedom and we truly want healing rather than suffering, we have to forgive ourselves AND everyone else no matter what. We HAVE to ask for a gift of innocence from all of our enemies, otherwise to hold them imprisoned is just to attack ourselves indirectly.

Love is not guilt. We don't need an offering of guilt or a performance of shame to make up for what someone did to us. We need THEM to heal. We need THEM to return to peace and love. Otherwise, how are we going to be able to get there ourselves?

Love your enemies. We are all one.

It may be easier to understand the differences in perception, when you consider inanimate objects. Objects which appear to just sit there and do nothing at all.

A good example is a rock. It just sits there. It has no will or mind and isn't particularly alive. At the subatomic level maybe it wiggles around but over time it generally does nothing but vegetate. It cannot move itself, it cannot articulate an attack, it cannot think, it cannot cause of its own will. It has no power and is just a lump of stuff, inert and unmoving.

If you a walking by and you stub your toe on the rock, you might yell at the rock for seeming to attack you. In pain your anger projects and you find the rock to be an enemy. This is your perception of the rock. In your mind, you are giving meaning to the rock. You now believe the rock is a sinful enemy, a guilty attacker. And as you look at it with hate you see it as real and threatening.

But the rock is just sitting there. And if you come to your senses you have to admit that really the rock didn't do anything at all. It was all you. Your own movement caused you to stub your toe. The rock just sat uninvolved and uncausing. So is it really the rock's fault? No. It's something you did to yourself.

So then you admit ok, I am only thinking the rock is an evil sinner because I am choosing to project guilt and sin onto it. I'm framing it as sinful and believing it is an attacker. That's happening in my own mind. I'm projecting stuff onto it and it's making me perceive it as hated and unwanted.

Then you have to realize that since the rock isn't really the cause of the upset, that you are the one who actually attacked the rock with your toe, it's really your own doing. And now you take back your accusation. The rock isn't a person, so there's no point yelling at it and calling it names. It can't hear your swear-words.

You shift "your perception" from false to true. You decide to believe that the rock is innocent and harmless, not an attacker or an evil sinner. You recognize the rock as incapable of hurting you against your will. You realize it has no will or mind or power to do anything on its own. So it cannot have wanted to hurt you. It must be innocent. So now you're willing to believe the rock is not sinful, or guilty, or an attacker. The inverse of which is a belief that it is innocent, loveable, beautiful even.

Your mind is able to decide what it sees in the rock, ie what meaning it projects onto it. When the mind is deciding to project from love, it sees the rock in a loving way, which makes it appear as though the rock is lovable rather than hatable. And so now you love the rock, because you are projecting love, in spite of the rock's own nature.

But the rock isn't changing. The rock isnt inherently sinful, nor is it sinless. It doesn't really have its own meaning. In a way it's kind of like a neutral mirror. You actually see yourself in it. Whatever you think is true you visualize in it. You see refleted back to you what you put there to see. So the rock is doing its own thing, and you are having varying types of beliefs about it, seemingly independent of it.

It's possible to project a mental state of hell onto the world of rocks, just as it is possible to project a mental state of heaven's reflection onto the rocks. True perception can be very close to heaven's nature. You reach within and find love and peace and joy and light and shine it outward and light up the world with it. What appeared to be a harmful rock is now a healing rock. What used to be an attacking rock is an innocent rock.

This is the translation, in your mind, of earth into heaven's reflection. A translation is an interpretative process which evaluates the meaning of something. It gives meaning to it, based on what you believe or WANT it to mean. This is in spite of any seemingly inherent properties that the thing has. Because it has none.

Earth, the world, the galaxies, space time, rocks and plants and animals, human bodies, cities and forests etc, is all essentially a neutral mirror. It's a veil of images which the mind is making and inventing. It holds pictures of forms and illusions of life and death. And yet it is a meaningless world. And so it only has the meaning that you GIVE to it. "The world is what you gave it, nothing more." "There is no world apart from what you wish." "Projection makes perception and makes the world you see."

So on the one hand, we made a world in an attack on God, which was made to be completely opposite to heaven, and which is therefore hell. Or at least, we came up with it in a state of false perception, ie misperception. In that state it appears to be hell because we see it in a hellish way. So we project hell and fragmentation and separation and attack and guilt onto it. And so it appears to be a hellish world. But this view of it (this projected world) only exists while you are having false perception (false projection).

What the course is saying is that you can change your vantage point. But the change in vantage point is huge. It's a 180-degree total opposition to false perception. It's a way of seeing totally alien to the world and to how the body functions. It flies in the face of every seeming law of physics and reality, and completely denies the apparently separated world. It's a lofty, heaven-based perception, which does not buy into anything the world appears to be.

It is in fact difficult for minds to comprehend how it's possible to see the world through loving eyes. The mind has trouble breaking through its own defenses against love. It can't sense or feel or experience what it is like to see from the vantage point of the Holy Spirit, without a whole lot of purificaiton and correction. And so most of the time, it seems impossible to love the world. Or indeed it seems as if the world is inherently sinful and wrong and bad.

The hell seen in false perception motivates a person to not want to love the world. Indeed the course says that such a world "cannot be the world God loves". Yet also that "God does love the world". He does not love the world seen in false perception, where rocks are separated and death seems real and attack seems commonplace. He does not love that world. No one can love such a thing and still behold it. No one can love death. "You cannot behold the world and know God."

But God does love the "real" world. The real world is a world seen in true perception, in which reality's love is projected onto it. And it does not show you separations of forms, or illusions of meaning. It is an accurate view of what the world IS, and the world is nothing but a flat image. It is a neutral inert meaningless lifeless powerless willless uncausal incapable valueluess veil of illusions. It has nothing of its own because it is nothing, and so at best it is symbolic. It can symbolize heaven or hell, but it cannot ever really be either.

If you look upon war you see war and you hate it. But if you see war as war, it is because you are giving war. If you give love and peace and extend and express these higher vantage points, then what you see comes from what you GIVE, not from what is THERE. You project the real world and see it as forgiven and holy because that's what you're projecting, and so it's all that you can see because you can ONLY see what you project.

You give love to the image of a world and the image reflects the love you are giving, and now you see the reflection of love in it. But this reflection also completely ignores anything the image itself possesses as its own properties. It overlooks forms, ignores shapes and sizes and distance or delay, and sees no orders of hierarchy anywhere. It doesn't distinguish individual bodies or places or times. And it sees no orders of difficulty.

If you extend love toward the world, it makes you blind to the world seen in false perception. It causes the dark twisted world to not be seen, and for this layer of interpretation to be lifted from what the world is. In a sense, the world of false perception is a world of specifics, and the world of true perception is abstract and transcendental. This doesn't necessarily mean the world stops having the form of attack. In fact it cannot ever have anything BUT forms. And it is this the body's eyes always and only see.

Even as the mind is healed and views love from love, the forms of the world remain much unchanged. The dogs still bark, the trees still lose their leaves, murderers still kill, and the graveyards are still populated. But they are translated, re-interpreted, overlooked, ignored, and do not stand out as different. All the differences are ignored, all properties of appearances are ignored, all ways that the objects could compete with one another for attention are ignored. The world becomes flattened and regarded as a singular unreal image. A veil of illusions, in which none of it is true.

As the veil is seen with love, in which its own nature is recognized as false, and yet which simultaneously acts like a mirror for your own meaning to be clearly projected, the veil is also losing its solidity. It becomes transparent before the light. And ultimately the reflection of God is seen. But to see God's reflection you cannot see bodies and spacetime, vying for attention. When "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind", God becomes ALL that you see, and you see nothing else. "A world forgiven cannot last." "Forgiveness sees it not."

And so the veil of a world lifts from sight, as all differences become ignored. And the face of Christ is revealed as heaven's reflection reaching across what still remains as a world of chaos. And all forms and differences are no longer seen. And to such an extent is the mind in the holy instant, fully present, that things of past and future such as bodies cannot be seen at all. The world is forgotten, and disappears. It is as though it has become so deflated and equalized and transcended that it does not exist at all. And all that remains is the face of Christ, which once seen leads to the immediate return to heaven. And "heaven is all that remains."

Perhaps one of the key features about the ego which many people do not realize, is that it is constantly attacking itself.

The ego IS the idea of self attack. It is the idea of you, attacking you. It is self destructive, which is why it leads to sabotage and suicide. It is just another word for your own will to will against your own will.

It would perhaps seem too insane to consider that the ego actually attacks itself on purpose, and this alone might deter you from even considering it. But the ego is not sane.

The ego is not like the kinds of people that you think are normal people. You think that due to separation, what one person does to another they do not do to themselves. You think that you can attack without consequences, or be attacked by another without them receiving the attack.

The ego's main plot here is the idea that, because you are separate from your brother, what applies to him does not apply to you. This allows both parties to get away with murder. Or appear to. And this creates an illusion in this world, as though it is "ego" to attack someone and get away with it.

But beware. This is a decoy!

If you fixate on this idea that one person does something to someone else, causing effects in them, without receiving the effects - which certainly APPEARS to be the case almost all the time due to separation, then you will not notice the ego's underlying insanity. You'll think that it makes total sense that something can apply to one person and not another, or that you can cause effects which you do not receive - ie giving and receiving at not one.

The ego's secret insanity is that it deliberately attacks itself, and it is NOT escaping the effects of the attacks it tries to cause, nor does it want to. It is both its own attacker and its own victim. It deliberately wants to hurt itself. It also seems to simultaneously want to get away from that hurt. It should be fairly obvious that it is completely insane, to the highest degree, for someone to want to intentionally harm themselves, consciously and deliberately, and to simultaneously enjoy and suffer doing so.

Anyone in their right mind would recognize that they are one with all brothers, and share a mind of oneness, and therefore what applies to you applies to everyone equally. In this mind of oneness it is impossible to cause or do anything without receiving the effects. It is therefore in your vested interest to share only love, that you will receive only love. But when you enter into the ego and attempt to give without receiving (which is attack), you can be sure you will experience attack.

The ego is clever at making cause and effect unconscious. It makes it SEEM as if attacking another will not attack yourself. But the ego is fundamentally insane. It IS the idea of self attack, and so attacks itself on purpose. It would sacrifice itself in the name of saving itself. It is constantly two-faced. You think that normal people have "one face" or one personality or one side to them.

The insane ego is never one-sided, it is always contradictory, hipocritical, self denying, a liar, a cheat, manipulative, and it is even capable of showing up as "good cop" and "bad cop" simultaneously.

I had a dream once where some creepy man was trying to get to me, and so I ran to escape and I did escape, and met another man on a hill who appeared at first to be helpful and welcoming. It seemed like he would help me to be safe. But what quickly became apparent, was that in fact this man was the same "person" as the other man - as if he was the same man in disguise. He was both of them. And so the ego's two-faced secret was revealed, that it is perfectly capable of playing the part of victim and victimizer, attacker and savior, enemy and hero, or any other polarities which makes it SEEM as if they are two completely unrelated separate things.

The ego's illusions are ALWAYS geared towards getting you to believe that one kind of illusion is better than another. That one way of behaving or less evil than another. That something will actually help you without hurting you. That a solution will work without any side effects. It's always bullshit. The ego is fundamentally insane and so always has in its back pocket some kind of "clause" or excuse or secret that disguises the fact that it has NO intention of making its solutions work, and it has NO interest in being truly helpful, because ALL of its sides and solutions take you away from wholeness.

We have to be careful to discern and listen and recognize, that both positive and negative are part of the ego thought system. Both good and bad, right and wrong, all opposites. The ego plays both sides of every argument and does not care who sins. It will happily fund every war and conflict on both sides just for the sake of increasing the conflict. It is fundamentally existing in a state of self conflict and being divided against itself, thwarting its own moves, willing against its own will etc.

This is why we have to learn that "this world holds nothing that I want"... because everything it offers, the "good" and the "bad", are both ego deceptions designed to get you to take a side and fall for one of two of its traps. It does not care one shit about which side you take or whether you go light or dark or right or wrong, so long as you fall for the trap of believing that one of two choices is better than the other and will save you. There is no salvation in the ego. All of its roads lead to hell.

Being afraid, a person is perceiving that someone or something is an enemy or threat. Yet it not actually true that the thing is a threat. The person is just giving it that meaning and is seeing that projected onto the situation.

Believing there is justification for being afraid, based on what the person is *showing* themselves, as a false interpretation of what’s happening, the person believes they are being attacked.

Fear entails denial, since it is a mechanism for denying the presence of guilt and for accusing others of sin in order to try to get rid of it. Because of this denial, the fearful person sees themselves as "not guilty" and the other person as "the sinner/enemy/attacker".

This sets up the scenario of seeing oneself as a victim under attack. Not seeing their own guilt, and viewing themselves as "innocently afraid", and disassociating from the sin that they’re projected onto others, the fearful person then sees a JUSTIFICATION for being angry.

They see themselves unfairly treated and attacked against their will. This is in spite of the fact that they are attacking themselves with false perception, showing themselves an image of their own sin held out in front of them, projected onto someones else.

Being innocent when attacked, if it were true, would make them completely justified in being angry at what *appears* to be mis-treatment by others, even though it is mis-treatment of ones-self by one’s own belief in sin.

You will notice that often when people are angry it is because they are afraid. You will also notice that if the situation seems to escalate fear, the person will quickly shift into anger, an increase in voice volume, an increase in defensiveness, projection and blame, and eventually an angry viciousness will emerge. They think they are angry, but they are afraid.

Sometimes, being willing to admit that you are not *really* angry, but that you are in fact afraid, is enough to completely collapse the anger in a mere moment. This means you are *recognizing* the illusion more accurately, acknowledging that there is fear, not anger. Of course, it would be even more helpful to acknowledge the belief in guilt, which is behind all fear.

The ego is simply a state of self-attack, taking place within a mind which has become divided against itself.

In this state, part of the mind has disassociated from the other part. There now appear to be two identities.

One identity is consciously identified with as "me" and the other as "not me".

The "not me" self, is very often equated with "the ego". It appears to be the self that we're always blaming and scapegoating, attacking and accusing, thinking of as other people etc.

But the trap there is not realizing who is doing the perceiving of an enemy. The person who sees enemies, AND the enemies themselves, are both two parts of ONE delusional thought system. They are both you.

The ego is not so much "that enemy" or the thing which is against you or your problems etc. It is the attacker and that which is attacked. It is both sides of every war. It is the state of *separation* taking place within yourself, between who you are and this illusion of who you are not.

Separating yourself from God was also an attempt to separate yourself from yourself. This could only create a condition in your mind where your original self remained, and a second self was added. You now think that only the second self is the "bad self", and label it the ego, but it is no more or less the ego than the self which describes it, because your real self was placed with a "persona" that pretends to be who you really are. It is the separation BETWEEN the two fake identities that is the ego.

So basically, if no-one else existed and there was just you and your mind, the entire separation from God would have to be taking place inside of yourself. And any conditions of conflict in which there seems to be wars or threats or enemies, those things MUST be also included inside your own mind. They're not outside of you.

So this is the key - the secret to salvation, that you are doing this to yourself. You have to realize that this so-called "not me", aka "my enemy", actually IS you. It's you who are against yourself, not other people. It's you who are at war with your own self. You do not have any enemies beyond yourself. That "not me" self is just part of your mind and will which you're kind of pretending not to have any control over, as if it's running on autopilot.

You have to therefore learn to recognize, that whatever it is which seems to loom over you with power and a separate will and a sense of threat or causality, making "you" at its effect, is actually your own self doing this to yourself. In other words, it's one disassociated part of your mind attacking the part which you're still associated with. You think it is not you and is attacking you - that's just part of you that thinks you are not you, attacking part of you that thinks it is you.

Truth is, you are not EITHER of these two fake identities. You are not the attacker or the attacked. You are not the victim or the victimizer. You are also not the self who looks upon the "bad enemy" and condemns them. That self is the other half of the ego, and the ego is always attacking itself. You are not the persona who rejects the shadow, and you are not the innocent victim who believes the perpetrator is not their self.

If you could see, that every pain and suffering, every attack, every torture, was actually being administered by a split-off part of your own mind, which you had disowned and disconnected from your sense of "conscious control", or your sense of the scope of your power or the reach of your influence, and if you can learn to recognize it and see yourself actually working "through" it to do things to yourself, then you will realize... you can stop doing that.

You can stop attacking yourself. You can stop hurting yourself. But even moreso, since the self being hurt is not you either, you can realize that you are no longer going to play EITHER role of victim or victimizer, and are going to give up the sense of identity that you were trying to protect from a fake enemy, transcend both of them, heal the *SEPARATION* that was creating them both, and return to a mind of wholeness and oneness.

if you could but see that you do everything to yourself, and get in touch with that choosing and doing, then you would simply realize how futile that is and stop it.

Sometimes you'll find in the day that a song is playing in your mind. It seems to be on autopilot. It can play for hours without you even noticing. And then maybe you notice and can't get it out of your head. But the thing is, it's actually being played by a part of your own mind, a part which is mostly unconscious, and you are just "allowing" it subtly to keep going. When you reclaim that power and recognize, it's YOU who is making this song keep playing in your mind, you reclaim the ability to stop it from playing. And it will stop. Because no-one else was playing that song. It was you.

It's the same thing with any aspect of the ego. You think it's outside of your control, beyond your choosing, disconnected from your influence, outside your power, and separated from "you". Reclaiming and owning that is the key to salvation. Taking back responsibility for everything you are experiencing.

No-one and nothing can happen to you against your will. No-one dies without their own consent. If you do not choose to attack yourself, you will be in capable of experiencing attack. No-one else has the power to go against your will. Your will is as powerful as the Son of God. There is nothing that can cause you other than God. You cannot be at the effect of anything but God (and that's a good thing). It guarantees that you are immortal and invulnerable forever, if you will just stop doing stuff to yourself unconsciously.

What do you mean, you're not treating me exactly the way that I expect you to? How dare you! lol

"Respect" is a term that egos love to use. It's supposed to be a sign of treating someone right. But there's more going on than meets the eye.

When someone is in ego, they have a lot of insecurities. They're carrying guilt and shame, living in fear, feeling unworthy of love, etc. They are not treating themselves and others with love.

As a result, the person becomes irresponsible, disowning themselves and their power. They project causality outside themselves and attach it to other people. They then expect other people to be the ones who act responsibly toward them.

This is the same as the ego's form of "forgiveness to destroy", in which others are expected to change while the person stays the same.

Effectively the whole world revolves around the person as the ruler of their kingdom, as though they are sitting on a throne and everyone must worship them. If the inferior external people do not measure up or treat them right, anger and murder become justified.

You'll notice that people who NEED "respect" from others, also become intimidating, aggressive, abusive, threatening and violent. Especially if the respect is not given, as they see it.

Only a victim needs respect. Only an attacker demands respect. Only an unloving and truly "disrespectful" person wants others to respect them.

This idea of respect is completely backwards. It says that everyone else is to blame for your suffering, and its all their fault, they're sinners, and they have to change their wicked ways in order for you to be happy.

If they treat you how you think you want to be treated, you'll consider them "respecting you". But what that means is they are agreeing with your evaluation of yourself as some kind of important special figure.

If they go along with your inflated ego, they are "respecting" it, effectively worshipping it like a God. This triggers the special love. If they don't go along with your control and your dominance and your threat of revenge, out comes the special hate.

An immortal innocent holy son of God does not need the respect of others. It does not matter what other people do in their attempts to "treat" you in any way at all, because you cannot BE "treated". You choose what you experience, not them.

Someone who has taken full responsibility for causing everything they experience, including all of their feelings, cannot be caused by others. Not do they have a lack of love, or a need to coerce others into giving it to them.

A self-loving person doesn't become a terrorist, or an intimidator, or a crime boss, or a ruler over people, or a dictator, or a tyrant, or any kind of threatening person who DEMANDS that others AGREE with their evaluation of themselves.

You would actually be doing a service to someone who believes something FALSE about themselves, such as that they don't deserve love, and instead giving them that love.

Giving love is the higher "form" of true respect, but isn't there as some kind of idol worship. It's an agreement as to the true higher nature of a person in spirit, rather than pandering to their ego.

Yes we all want to be "respected" or at least "not attacked", preferably. But this is only a short-term goal. In the big picture we should be working towards NOT NEEDING people to treat us a certain way. We are supposed to meet whatever happens with forgiveness, not revenge.

Yes, sure, let's all be "reasonably respectful" to each other.. as in, how about let's not be trying to murder each other. But at the same time, we have to be careful not to believe that this "treatment" of people is there in order to appease their egos. It's not TRULY respectful of a person to insinuate that they need to be treated a certain way in order to avoid them being "hurt".

We are immortal beings who ultimately cannot be hurt, cannot be upset, cannot be offended, cannot be terrorized, cannot be attacked and cannot be destroyed. This has to be central and foremost in our view of ourselves and others. Recognizing this in others is the only sign of true respect and love.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." UrT27I10

"We have emphasized that the miracle, or the EXPRESSION of Atonement, is always a sign of real respect from the worthy TO the worthy. This worth IS re-established by the Atonement." UrT2E3

"An Elder Brother is entitled to respect for his greater experience, and a reasonable amount of obedience for his greater wisdom. He is also entitled to love, because he is a brother, and also to devotion, if he is devoted. It is only my own devotion that entitles me to yours. But you will notice that I have knelt at your altar as readily as I would ever have you kneel at mine." UrT1B40X

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness." UrW190L5

It was only about a year ago that I finally 'came out' as a bisexual person and owned it after 49 years in a dark closet. Since then I've been exploring and expressing and working on more deeply coming to terms with this and living it more - being more visible.

But one aspect that has been nagging in the background is a fear that I will be attacked and judged and hurt by others about this. Largely this is based on an awareness of what people can be like, especially the bigoted angry people, and what's happened to others in brutal attacks and judgement.

I didn't realize for a while that I was taking this position, or playing at being a victim, or that it was even something I needed to do some forgiveness about. But then I became aware of it. So how does one forgive such a thing, where we're at the mercy of the world and afraid of what it might do to us? Safety is a primary concern of everyone and all of us can relate to feeling afraid of being hurt in some way.

I first had to recognize that I was even in a state of "not peace" about it, that I was having worries and thoughts about it, and this was not normal. It's quite easy to just "have" those thoughts and feelings and not even have the awareness to step outside of it or notice that it's a problem or something to even work on. In that mindset, even the idea that there's something wrong can be out of awareness and we just go through the motions of suffering.

Having recognised something is bothering me, I then start to look at it. What's going on here, who is doing what, what is this based on, and am I willing to explore more honestly what's really happening?

As I looked at this I remembered that if I'm immortal I can't really be attacked, so if I believe I'm attackable that's a mistake on my part. That cuts through a lot of crap. Nothing real can be threatened, so I must be believing something faulty if I think people can attack me. That gives some quick relief.

Then I started to notice that I believe other people are going to do something to me, have power over me, hurt me, judge me, attack me, maybe even violence. But then I had to notice, who am I in that scenario, what role am I playing? It becomes clear that I'm seeing myself as a victim, being victimised by others. They're doing something to me, and I'm afraid of it, afraid of being attacked and judged.

When I stayed in the viewpoint that people are going to do something threatening, I couldn't see an option other than to fantasise about how I might try to stand up to them, become angry at them, give them a speech, have to get into a fight, or otherwise keep the belief in being victimised while trying to fend them off. But that was like a closed loop of suffering and the cracks were starting to show.

It's always valuable to remember that nothing in the world is doing anything to me, no-one out there is the cause of me, other people don't cause me or have power over me, and I cannot be affected or changed by anything because I am immortal. So where does that leave the victim role?

I saw that I am positioning myself as a victim for some reason, and setting people up in my mind as attackers to play a role, so that I can get some kind of payoff. And what's that? To have a reason to find them guilty of something. To justify anger on my part or to reinforce defenses. If they were to do anything to me, I would be justified in revenge, and blame, and scapegoating.

So then again this recognition that I'm actually scapegoating comes in. I'm using these people and actually want them to be attacking me, am framing them as attackers, so that I can take the opportunity to have them look like they're the ones sinning, so that I can take advantage of their guilt and shove some of my own guilt in there with it. If they do something to me I can happily project my own guilt onto them, mix it in with their guiltiness, and get rid of it.

In other words, being a victim boils down to wanting to be attacked in order to get a payoff of being able to take advantage of the attacker and project my own guilt onto them. In effect, by becoming the face of innocence, the innocent victim, I can get away with saying "brother at your hand I die", and am willing to suffer and be hurt and die for it, seemingly a small price to pay if it means I can use these attackers to get rid of my guilt.

"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die."

So then this reveals the basic dynamic of projecting and blaming. I first attack myself, I make myself guilty for some reason, I then find someone willing to play the role of attacker/sinner, I bait them and want them to attack me through fantasies of suffering, I hope they'll do it while pretending to be afraid of them doing it, and if they go through with it I'll have a great opportunity to blame them and shove my self-inflicted guilt onto them. Yay.

So there's that. And that has to be unraveled and taken back. Once you see what you're doing it becomes obvious. I fear being attacked for "seeming to be gay" in any way, based on seeming "proof of sin" that this does happen in society, reinforcing a victim role, so that I can hopefully be attacked and get rid of some guilt in the process. So I'm really using these people as scapegoats so that I can benefit.

What I then have to look at or ask is, why am I projecting guilt, and how or why am I making myself guilty in the first place? Are these people really the ones who are denying me, attacking me, judging me, not accepting me, OR ... could it be that I am the one who is attacking me, judging me, not accepting me? Maybe it really is that I am the one who is "not okay with" me being the way that I am, and the fantasies of other people attacking me for it are really the way that I'm using my own mind to attack myself.

The insight from this is that, I really need to more fully own who and what I am (as God created me, transcendent of body/sex roles), allow myself the guiltless freedom, and accept myself, and if I were to do this I would be completely unconcerned with what anyone else might try to do to me.

If I am centered and solid in knowing myself, and fully owning being myself, not only will other people's attempted attacks be correctly viewed as "calls for love" on their part - a way that they attack themselves, but also I'll not take it personally because it won't resonate with an unhealed guilt within myself.

And probably, if I own and am at peace with myself, I will give off peace-vibes, and other people will not feel drawn to attack me for it anyway. Because really an attitude of "I should be punished for this, please attack me" is an energetic and psychological invitation broadcast to everyone if I'm not okay with myself. A temptation asking others to fulfil the role I expect of them.

In effect then, the real issue I/we have is that we are not being entirely true to ourselves, are not fully accepting ourselves, are not granting ourselves absolute freedom, are guilting ourselves and accusing ourselves of sins and shames and guilts, and this puts us into an insecure position. We then seek to problem-solve this in a faulty way by projecting the insecurities onto others, asking them to play roles in which they do to us what we are already doing to ourselves, so that we can pretend not to be doing it to ourselves.

I find and have found then, that my real challenge is the forgiveness of myself, the undoing of my own self-inflicted guilts and shames, and the need for taking full responsibility for who and what I am. If I become fully aligned with and on-the-side-of myself in terms of acceptance and allowing, I won't need to play the victim role or imagine how people would do things to me. And thus I will take away the self-threatening mental activities that were causing fear. When you have no guilt about yourself, nothing anyone does can target you.

Because ultimately we really just are using our own disowned power against ourselves, which turns into a projected indirect form of self-threat, which produces a fear reaction. I was doing this all to myself, and that's what the "secret of salvation" reveals.

Coming to recognize full responsibility for "I have done this to myself" leads to the miracle of healing and to freedom. If you are free to be as you are, then you don't invent or interpret people attacking you for it, and can walk in peace. Personally I still have to work on this some more, it's a work in progress, but at least I can now see the way out by recognising what was the way in. Know Thyself is what 'pride' should be about, and not a victimy disowning and projecting of guilt onto fictional attackers.

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

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts."

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very simply the entire separation from God is a matter of becoming confused about what is true and what is false. That which is really true (God's truth) has been associated with all the properties of what is false, and that which is false (ego truth) has been associated with all the properties of what is true. This produces a state of TOTAL CONFUSION. But this all hinges around your BELIEF in what is true and what is false.

Wherever you place your sense of "what is true", you will anchor yourself to that and BELIEVE that it's completely true. You'll also believe you are 100% sane to believe it. And you'll defend it to the death because you think it is your life. Even if you're becoming identified with something very untrue and you are very mistaken, your BELIEF that it's true will blind you and distort your perception.

You will SEE or regard genuinely true things as enemies, the opposition, false, unwanted, attacking you, trying to steal away your truth. And only anything that supports, resonates with, seems to confirm or justifies your current truth will be seen as accepted, truthful, allowed, welcomed. So you could be right in the middle of being extremely confused, believing something totally false is true and real, defending it with your life, trying to keep everything else from undermining it, believing you are TOTALLY justified and sane, while simultaneously being very very mistaken.

So wherever you are AT right now, whatever your belief system is, whatever is TRUE for you, you actually believe you are FULLY in the truth right now. Doesn't matter how mistaken you actually are. Even if you believe death is life and hell is heaven and the Holy Spirit is your sworn enemy, which the extreme of ego does believe, you'll think you're totally totally "right" to believe what you do, that's it's reasonable and makes sense to you. And any insinuation that you might be mistaken will be experienced as a threat, an enemy, an attack, by some person who is obviously "wrong", and are seen as someone you have to defend against and counter-attack to keep them from infiltrating your sacred truth.

Everyone does this. Every single person with an ego is doing this. Because every such person believes something is true which isn't, is mistaken and confused, and wants to protect and defend all the lies that they think are not lies. And so what happens is, if you try to tell someone something that isn't "their truth", it will conflict with their truth instantly. And this will be experienced as conflict and there will be a war that comes from it. Particularly if a person is very strong willed or stubborn, they will resist being questioned or undermined moreso than others. Or in other words, there is an unwillingness to learn, and too much faith placed in being right/true already instead of humility or self-honesty.

Others may be in general more open minded or more willing to listen and consider alternatives which may well lead to them having to question their own beliefs. And that's a position of greater self honesty and willingness. It takes a "little willingness", therefore, to be willing to open up to the possibility that you might be mistaken. That what you really firmly think is true, might not be. And if indeed what you believe is not actually true, but you think it is, you will make no progress towards God without being a little bit willing to question just how true your beliefs are. His truth cannot become true for you, until you can accept that your fake truth is FALSE.

This is more or less why the majority of people (truth defenders) do not agree with each other, and also is why most of those who do agree with each other are either mutually sane or just happen to share the same delusions. This is how the ego forms "allegiances" with people who seem to oppose their truth the least, forming a circle of "friends" who support and uphold their mistakes without questioning them. This is all begun in the ego's FIRST law of chaos, which says that the truth is different for everyone!

Everyone believes they KNOW the truth. They HAVE the truth. This is a fundamental carry-over from BEING the truth prior to the separation. Everyone attached themselves to SOME kind of truth no matter whether it's true or not. It's only a matter of sorting out what is *actually* true in terms of God's truth, from what is a fake truth in terms of ego, in order to proceed in the direction of Atonement. While we cling to lies, we are kept in the dark and away from eternal life.

The thing is, you can present a greater truth, you can explain it, you can show it and demonstrate it as clear as day, but if someone is not WILLING to undermine what they believe is already true, and doesn't see a reason to abandon their existing false beliefs, they simply will stay right where they are. Because they think they already have all the answers. All of the truth. And that they're very right about it, having convinced themselves over and over again WHY this truth is supposedly true. And this especially becomes a problem when very abstract or fundamental "cornerstones" in the belief system are upheld, supported, and reinforced, by a whole host of beliefs that keep the person highly unwilling to question fundamental issues such as whether the body or the world are real, or whether you are supposed to die, or what miracles are capable of.

We build great defenses against admitting to being

mistaken. We resist it. We in fact experience "the real truth" as an opponent or enemy, come to war with us and destroy us, and it keeps going on and on about this and that as if trying to make something "false" true, when you obviously know better. In other words, the real truth, at first, is experienced as the very thing we DO NOT WANT. Our ego ensures we see it as our nemesis, come to destroy us. The idea of oneness alone is enough to scare the pants off the ego since it implies the end of separation and thus the undoing of ALL false beliefs and false identities. This is why the ego wants NOTHING to do with the Holy Spirit. And this is why we have profound RESISTANCE to accepting the atonement.

Anything of the true nature of God, anything to do with God's laws, anything to do with the Holy Spirit, anything to do with breaking the laws of physics of this world, anything to do with performing extraordinary supernatural miracles which would probably shock most people, anything to do with Spirit, anything to do with receiving input from outside of this dimension, anything which would prove you are not a body or that God did not create the world, or that death is fake and can be undone, anything like that... which would bring doubt into the mind about what our MISTAKEN beliefs say is true, is seen as a THREAT, and a danger, and an attack. And WE DO NOT WANT IT. And seeing it as a threat we put up defenses against it, which by the way induces sickness.

And yet, all of these things are truth based, all of them are of God, and all of them are benevolent. So it is not that the truth IS an attacker, it's that it SEEMS like an attacker when YOU are an attacker. When YOU believe in a false truth you are believing in attack while BELIEVING you are peaceful, BELIEVING you are being neutral and objective, but are seriously biased away from truth. This is why most people DO NOT WANT the truth, they do not want miracles, they do not want the Holy Spirit to do anything. The very idea of Him having a power that causes things to happen that you can witness scares the pants off people who would much prefer to be in control of life and keep A Course in Miracles nice and small and safe and tolerable. Which has resulted in the various watered down "sanitized" versions of ACIM being spread and taught.

So this is a fact.... if you are not in God's truth, you will experience God's truth as a sworn enemy that you DO NOT WANT, and which you think is WRONG. And that means in order to approach the truth and genuinely wake up and become spiritual, you may well have to encounter or at least deal with, your false perception OF the truth and therefore get past this belief that true things are false, that holy things are hateful, that life is death and that the Holy Spirit can't be trusted. It more or less means... opening up to accept what you DID NOT WANT TO accept, and that REQUIRES you having a "little willingness" (eventually total willingness) to question your beliefs about what is true already. And that's going to require some radical self honesty and impeccable reasoning.

The Holy Spirit only wants to help you and heal you and give you love and support. He is not a threat at all. But He DOES represent the opposite of the FALSE truths (lies) that you've told yourself, and that means THROUGH those truths you will defend against him. This is how we chose AGAINST Heaven in the first place, substituting truth for another truth. We tried to MAKE God out to be evil and opposite to what we want. We tried to replace life with death, and now *actually believe* that death is salvation. That means the road back home MAY SEEM to be unwanted, uncomfortable, undesirable, upsetting, frightening and something you DON'T WANT, merely because of how confused you are. It may seem to had in the WRONG direction, just as Jesus says that often our greatest advances are SEEN as our worst retreats and vice versa.

WILLINGNESS is key to going home. No-one comes to the Atonement without it. God does not coerce. And the Holy Spirit will not do ANYTHING on your behalf until you are willing to invite him to do so and trust him to do so. Your free will is respected. But you DO have to be willing to want a different truth. To reconsider that what you believe, may not be true. That maybe even though you have *A* truth right now that seems consistent and whole, maybe it's NOT. Maybe it's not actually God's truth. And maybe that means you're going to have to surrender and let go some stuff that you valued, believed, and wanted, that isn't serving you on the way home. This is the work we have to do. And it takes a lot of willingness and honesty and surrendering of what is not true or worthy of a Son of God.

Moving towards God can ONLY occur through your FREE WILL. And this is why there is a required "development of trust" and a "sorting out" of what is really true and what is really false. Trust has to be developed by gradually putting aside fear and TRUSTING the Holy Spirit to do something for you or "to you" on your behalf, for your highest good. To accept HIS truth and way of perceiving with forgiveness. What is false has to be sorted out from what is true so that you are not confused about which is which, and can have accurate true perception. True perception is a state where the truth is RECOGNIZED as true, and what is actually false is RECOGNIZED as false. It's not merely a state of only perceiving the truth, it's a state of perceiving TRUTHFULLY so that false things REGISTER as false. And only in that state of SANITY and clarity and accuracy are you ready to go Home.

A little willingness is all it takes to get started. To be a HAPPY LEARNER, willing to learn "new tricks". Willing to question what you assumed was always true. And willing to open up to a new truth that's bigger and more true than anything you dreamed of.

"The holy instant does NOT come from your little willingness alone. It is ALWAYS the result of your SMALL willingness COMBINED with the unlimited power of HIS WILL. You have been wrong in thinking that it is needful to prepare YOURSELF for Him. It is impossible to make arrogant preparations for holiness, and NOT believe that it is up to YOU to establish the conditions for peace. GOD HAS ESTABLISHED THEM. They do NOT wait upon your willingness for what they ARE. Your willingness is needed ONLY to make it possible to TEACH you what they are."

When you move away from love, you move away from power. Love is power. God is love. God is power.

Moving away from love you move into fear. Fear is powerlessnses. It's the attempt to have no power. It's the attempt to be overpowered. It's the attempt to give your power away to someone or something else, who would otherwise have no power over you.In fear, you give your power to something in the world, asking it to have YOUR power OVER yourself. You ask it to attack, threaten, hurt, destroy and upset you. You give it the power to do this in your mind by framing it as an attacker. You want to be punished when you are afraid, and are asking the world to hurt you.

Fear seems to be saying that you do not want something to be happening, but it is DOING the opposite. It is requesting that there be suffering. It's a way for someone who is guilty to ask another to agree that they are guilty, deserving of punishment. As if to ask, please confirm that I am worthless and deserve suffering, and please make me suffer for me.

Being in fear is being away from love, and therefore away from life and resurrection. Fear produces death and sickness. "All forms of sickness even unto death are physical expressions of the FEAR of awakening." Suffering therefore arises from powerlessness, in which you appear to have no power to stop it because you believe falsely that you have no power.

Being afraid is a displacement of your total power onto the world. You give it your power and make it have power over you. You demand that it treat you a certain way, and usually in a destructive or threatening way. You fear in order to give your power away and to become powerless. Being powerless feels like weakness, it makes you freeze up, the life drains from you, you become paralyzed and eventually dead.

Death is a total power loss. It's like you are battery and all the life is drained out of you. It represents an unwillingness to live and an unwillingness to have power over the world. Truly you have power over death because nothing can overthrow your power unless you will to be powerless. "No one dies without their own consent."

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

Giving your power away is also murder. It frames another person as an attacker and accuses them of sin. It associates cause with them while also believing in separation, and so they appear to be sinful to you - the cause of your suffering. While fearing them, you are attacking them. While feeling powerless against them, you are using your power to attack them. Seeking to destroy another destroys yourself. Seeking to disempower another strips you of your own power and gives it away. You cannot be powerful when you are taking power away from others - either you are both all-powerful or you are both dead.

To become powerful again you only need recognize that you still have total power to choose not to give your power away. You do it to yourself. No-one ever takes your power from you. No-one has power over your will and freedom. It is you who MUST consent to give your power, and you cannot "lose" it accidentally. Reclaiming entails recognizing the secret of salvation, that it is you who gives it away, and it's not the world that takes it from you.

All of your power is God's power. "To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power." When you disown power you are disowning God, and are saying that you do not belong to God. It's an attempt to take yourself away from God and give yourself to someone else to be the author of you. Then you believe that the world is your cause. And when you believe that something evil and unlike God is causing you, you regard it as sinning against you.

There are no causes in the world. There is only cause in your mind. The world does not cause any kind of suffering. It does not cause sickness or disease or illness or damage or malfunction or death. Only your mind has the power to cause these things to show up in your dream. And it is in your mind that you have total power to undo and reverse and prevent all of these things. If you do not choose to give your power away, you cannot die. Who could see death who is powered by God?

Watch yourself as you give your power away to the world. Every time you believe it is doing something to you, you have given it power. You have framed it as having YOUR ability to cause. You are then afraid of your own power, seen dissociated and projected onto someone else. You accuse them of using your power against you. To believe that the world can overpower you, is to be afraid of power.

And to be afraid of power is an attempt to reject power. This is why fear feels like you're trying to stop something from happening.You cannot be disempowered unless you alone choose to disempower yourself. When you slip into this choice, you give power to the world and it gains the seeming ability to tempt you. But you gave it this ability by believing it has cause, power, mind, alien will, and ability of its own. It has NONE of its own, beyond what you have lent to it. Since you are disempowering yourself on a daily basis, you need to therefore recognize that you're doing this and stop doing it.

You need to take your power back, not from the world as such because it did not really take it from you. You gave it away freely. But you must freely reclaim it by realizing that in your mind there is an activity, an effort, a mechanism of thought, in which you are actively trying to get rid of your power. Every fear disowns power and assigns it to something else. You are fearing instead of loving, because you are trying to be a suffering victim. You are only ever doing this to yourself, and you can reclaim your power at any time.You have in you the ability to reclaim not only all power, but all power in heaven and earth. And then nothing has any power over you at all. When you are all powerful you are sharing in God's power, and nothing can oppose his will.

"God is seen as outside, fierce and powerful, eager to keep all power for Himself."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF."

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

"My father gives all power unto me."

"you are part of God, Who IS all power."

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS."

"He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

"I am not helpless, but all powerful."

The ego mind plays ALL of the roles in the dream simultaneously.

It is all of the characters at once, even if those characters seem to be completely against each other, or working together. It is like a puppeteer with billions of hands, pulling all the strings at once.

It is the person victimizing someone and also the person being victimized.

It is the hero coming to rescue the homeless personstuck in the river and also the homeless person stuck in the river.

It is the man shouting at some woman across the street, and also the woman being shouted at.

It is the person cutting you off in traffic, and you being cut off in traffic.

It is the person skapegoating another and attacking them as well as the person being skapegoated and attacked.

It is the politician you like and the politician you don't like.

It is your favorite team and their arch rivals.

Is is the person in the relationship who is angry and right and the other person in the relationship who is also angry and right.

But there is another mind, a non-ego mind. The mind of the Holy Spirit, which overlooks these artificial roles and the need for them. It does not identify with any of the sides being taken or any of the attacks, which ultimately are attacks upon the attacker. Whatever one person does that they think they do to another, they do to themselves. Whatever the ego mind thinks it escapes, it condemns itself with. And whoever is your enemy, is yourself.

Only if you can recognize that you are ALL of these people, in Oneness, can you truly take the responsibility to step out of ALL ego roles and disguises and be a consistent, authentic self. You can't play the game if you see that all of the pieces are set up as self attacks. There is nothing to gain. Holy Spirit sees through the costumes and the dramas and the pretense that one person is not another. He knows we are all one.

The simple transition which occurs as the result of A Course in Miracles, applying forgiveness correctly, is that you transition from blaming everyone else to becoming responsible.

Auto-pilot for the ego is that everything you experience is caused by everyone and everything else outside of you. When you think about that, it's a pretty strange way to live - only ever experiencing what life throws at you, reacting to it like a passive victim.

As you begin to see that the person you were blaming is not the CAUSE of your problem, that the cause is IN you, not outside of you, and that you are completely responsible for EVERYTHING you experience, you stop seeing others as justified targets for blame.

Now you begin to see that it is not really the person being blamed that has a problem. It's the person doing the blaming.

If a person is upset, it is NOT the person they are upset with that has the problem, its the person who is upset.

If someone seems to have been hurt by someone else, it is NOT that other person's fault, it is the responsibility of the person who was hurt. You cannot BE hurt without the consent of your mind. Your mind is powerful and CREATES the *response* of hurt in your body in cooperation with the attacker, otherwise your body could not possibly show effects.

All of the attention of blame and projection and scapegoating onto others, all finger pointing, all perception of being attacked, all perception that someone or something is causing you positively or negatively, and all ideas of being changed by, affected by, caused by or upset by, anything whatsoever outside of you, has to go out the window. There perceptions are false and they are incompatible with health, happiness and sanity.

Imagine realizing that absolutely nothing outside of you has ever affected you, absolutely nobody has ever done anything to you, absolutely nobody is to blame for anything, there is absolutely no-one worthy of being judged or reacted to, and that YOU are the sole responsible agent for what you are experiencing. And if this is true, then notice how freeing this is, how safe it feels, how deeply peaceful it makes you.

If the world is NOT attacking you, if other people are NOT hurting you, if there ARE no causes outside of you, and if you cannot ever be at the effect of anything in the world... you are SOOOOO safe, so protected, so calm and reassured, and so permanently transcendent of all suffering. Yes please!

"My Self is ruler of the universe

It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

and

"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. And it is only here salvation is.

You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. Yet can truth have exceptions?"

and

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

and

"No-one can die unless he chooses death."

"No-one dies without their own consent."

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

and

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"The power of decision is my own." OWN IT!

(and you must!)

The "sickness is a defense against the truth" section says a lot about how we make sickness AND reverse it.

Basically, sickness doesn’t just mean bodily sickness it means any kind of belief that separation is real. That belief is in the mind. The mind is projecting the body currently, because the mind sees itself as an illusion not a reality. When the mind sees itself as being "made of" something ego, it manifests the very thing it sees itself as, like a body.

Sickness is "made" or put in place, by the mind, by using the body without love, or rather, by using it for attack. That means you’re believing that you really did sin against God, are really separate, and are now trying to get rid of that sin by denying and projecting it. That means you’ll try to project it through, and onto, the body, or rather you’ll project a body which appears sick, which makes the body show up with sickness. When you attempt to therefore get rid of the sin by accusing someone else of being the one to sin, instead of them receiving the consequences or effects, you do. You do it to yourself.

This is because there is a law of the mind, to do with how a mind of oneness and wholeness works. That law is, that what you do to another, you directly do to yourself. It sort of along the lines of "do unto others as you’d have them do unto you" except that version does not work because it leaves open the possibility that someone else might not reciprocate. Instead, the law says, a mind that is one with another mind, WILL experience directly the effects of its causes. So if you were to attack that other mind, you WILL attack your own, because your are one with them. You therefore have a vested interest in ONLY loving your brother and yourself, otherwise you will make yourself suffer. This is the meaning of having SHARED INTERESTS.

When we then get into the ego, that law STILL applies at all times, but the ego goes into denial about it. Then it believes it can get away with murder by being able to attack/cause another person without experiencing the effects/consequences. So the ego will then attack trying to get rid of sin, but the law kicks in, and all the effects/consequences you have attempted to "give" to the other person, you DIRECTLY give them to yourself. So suddenly your body will become sick because you have attacked yourself. This is the secret to salvation, that you are the one who is giving yourself ALL the sickness and suffering and death that you imagine is caused by other sinful people or things in the world.

Sickness, as a belief in separation from God, and thus a belief that sin is real, is basically DENIAL. It is a way of trying to defend against God, to block God, to shut off access to Life. Obviously if you shut yourself off from that which gives Life, you will suffer and become weak and sick and die. So denial is the ego’s device for pretending that the truth is not true. Denial causes projection because it puts you into a state of mind where it seems *possible* to get rid of your sin without having to deal with the consequences. All death is suicide and no one dies without their own consent.

That means that if there is any sickness showing up in the body at all, or the person dies, it is PROOF, that the person believed in sin and separation somewhere in their mind. Their mind was not healed. This is absolutely rock solid bullet-proof cause and effect. Anyone who believes in separation will become sick in some way and they will attack their body and it will become sick and eventually die. And that will be a CHOICE. AND it will be implemented entirely personally BY that person who believes that. Hence "a broken body is PROOF the mind has not been healed."

Jesus describes it in that section about defenses against truth, that basically in the ego, having sided with it, we misperceive through it, we look at the truth and believe that the truth is not the truth. We see in it something false that we put there - sin. And make it out to be an attacker. This seems to "logically" then make sense that we need to DEFEND our life against this perceived attacker, and the seemingly sensible thing to do is to put up a defense against it. This defense is implemented by increasing the sense of separation between you and God/attacker, in your mind, psychologically. You put illusions of walls and defenses in place.

The problem is, that by doing that you inadvertently attack yourself, separate yourself from life, make yourself go unconscious, believe you have been attacked by God, believe that it’s God’s will that you die, and so SICKNESS or symptoms of sickness start to show up in your body. The ego’s advice, or its solution to the problem it perceives, always SEEMS like it will make things better for you, but actually makes it worse. So in an act of what seems like "self defense", you end up actually attacking yourself and hurting yourself. Then you get sick, then you die, and you did it to yourself. There IS no other CAUSE of sickness in the entire world.

Once you know this, you’ll realize as Jesus says, that there is a PURPOSE to your sickness. It was put there to deny God and defend your EGO-identified self against what it thinks is an attack. The key then, is recognizing that you only thought you NEEDED the defense, because you mis-perceive what the truth IMPLIED, because you were interpreting its meaning with the EGO, and the ego had a REACTION based on a false perception.

You can then become WILLING, to recognize that what you thought was some kind of sin or evil "IN" the truth, or in God, or some kind of malicious intent, WAS NOT THERE, that the truth really DID NOT mean you were going to stop existing, you had a misperception as a result of seeing the truth through the ego, the truth is NOT trying to hurt you, and therefore you do not NEED "protection". ALL sickness is an attempt to PROTECT yourself, and so it’s paradoxically hilarious that doing so REMOVES the natural protection that love would offer you. The ego’s protection is attack!

When you can realize you had this PURPOSE for your sickness, your defenses, and that you do not NEED them, because you can see clearly (with corrected perception) that the truth is actually supporting you, loving you, is on your side, and it was your alignment with EGO that was hurting you.... you are correctly RECOGNIZING the ego‘s illusory conclusions for what they are. You recognize the truth as TRUE, and you recognize the false as FALSE.

This makes it really OBVIOUS to you that you have no need for the defense whatsoever, and that KEEPING it would only mean that you are continuing to believe the truth is attacking you. You recognize how pointless that is, how meaningless and useless, and so you no longer have a NEED or a PURPOSE for the sickness. The sickness itself then will simply be DROPPED by you, you will stop USING it, you will stop attacking yourself with it, you will recognize it is futile and absolutely not working, is only making things worse for you, and that you have no further use for it.

You will also recognize that the ONLY reason it is there, the only CAUSE of it, IS YOU! It is only there because you WANT it to be, you put it there, you made it, it HAS no other cause keeping it in place, and if you do not WANT it, IT CANNOT STAY. Once you do this, you are withdrawing your belief from it, and IT WILL DISAPPEAR!!!!!! "Illusions recognized must disappear." It disappears because you SEE THROUGH the illusion, you no longer believe there is truth in the sickness, you recognize it was never real, you don’t believe in it, you know you made it up and it is a fantasy, and then it is EFFORTLESS to let it go. Recognizing it is ALREADY GONE, and WAS NEVER REALLY THERE, makes it vanish!!! Belief that God is truth, puts truth where it belongs and vanishes untruth. Belief that ego is truth, puts truth where it doesn’t belong and turns sickness and death into reality.

The sickness was ONLY there because your mind was maintaining it and thinking it needed it. That’s the ONLY cause of any sickness ever. It’s not caused by the environment or the body or other people or food or liquids or events or objects or anything outside of your mind whatsoever. It is cause solely by YOUR misperception of the truth through the ego. And since you MADE the sickness, you therefore can UNMAKE IT. "You made sickness and death and therefore can ABOLISH both". Jesus is absolutely 100% literally meaning that..... there is no sickness that will not disappear INSTANTLY if you no longer have a purpose for it and do not believe in it as being the truth.

This is also why a broken body proves the mind CANNOT be healed. And this is also why, when a healed body shows up, IT IS PROOF that the mind HAS been healed. Sickness, if it’s showing up In the body, always confirms that the mind MUST be believing it needs a defense against truth. And that means it is NOT in acceptance of the atonement. It is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE for the mind to accept the atonement and for the body to remain sick. The body HAS TO show up as healed, because the mind no longer has the guilt in it that the sickness was MADE OF. It also no longer has defenses against the truth, so simply those "defenses", which project as PHYSICAL DEFENSES, are GONE from the mind and therefore from the body also.

When you stop using the body for attack and stop believing in sin and stop misperceiving truth, the body BECOMES INVULNERABLE, because the mind no longer believes in attack or defense. IT needs no defense. Therefore it does not MAKE or support any, and so they do not show up. Recognize the mind is re-projecting an entirely fresh IMAGE of a body every instant. The "past body" has not properties of its own or ability to keep sickness in place. It has no will or power or conitnuity whatsoever. If the mind accepts the truth, it WILL project instantly a healed body which is not only "holy" it CANNOT BE SICK, and IT CANNOT DIE.

There IS absolutely a direct correlation between the mind’s belief and how the body appears. And there is no other cause for how the body appears. Healed mind, healed body. Sick mind, sick body. Cause and effect. Absolute mind over matter. You cannot be at peace and be sick. You cannot be at peace and die. Death is the opposite of a belief in God. There is no form of sickness that cannot be reversed if the mind accepts the truth and becomes clear about what is true and what is false.

We are supposed to not only demonstrate that there is NO CAUSE outside of us that justifies keeping the body in sickness or damaged or broken, that our brother HAS NOT attacked us, that we CANNOT be hurt, that we are NOT at the effect of the world, that MIND has power over the body (which every miracle demonstrates), and that the Son of God CANNOT BE KILLED. And we are supposed to demonstrate that IN THE FLESH. To use the body as a symbol of IMMORTALITY. For as long as it is useful to do so. Then we lay it aside by making it disappear entirely.

The body itself was a form of sickness. It was made from a belief in sin. "The body is the belief in sin made flesh and projected outwards." When we finally let go of ALL needs to defend against God, we will DISAPPEAR THE BODY - it will vanish, and then we will be entirely Spirit-identified.

The secret to salvation is.... you are doing this all to yourself. So if you don’t like what shit you made for yourself, STOP MAKING IT.

This is why you have to be 100% responsible for every single thing you experience and put in place. YOU HAVE THE POWER TO REVERSE DEATH AND TO MAKE DEATH IMPOSSIBLE. No-one needs to find a way to tolerate sickness, to put up with it, to suffer justifiably, to make do, to live in pain and fear, to suffer, or to die. No-one is supposed to be DYING ever! Use the body with love and, while it shows up, it cannot die. It will become a sign of immortality.

Jesus gave us a nice analogy this evening for how we reverse cause and effect, how the ego functions, how we create scapegoats, and how we do stuff to ourselves.

The analogy is that of a hand puppet or glove puppet. The ego is like a puppet we use.

By itself, the puppet has no will, no life, no power to do anything. It lies motionless when you are not using it. It doesn't do anything to you or to anyone else. It's just a tool that goes unused and sits on a shelf.

At this point, you know that you are the one who has all the power to make stuff happen, and you know that you are the only one who can do stuff to yourself. All the puppets are dormant.

You decide to pick up the puppet and put your hand into it. You're now wearing it. And immediately, you start to move your arm around to move the puppet. And then you start to move your fingers to make its little arms and legs wiggle and maybe make its face move. Maybe you'll even give it a funny voice to add to the illusion that it is alive. You are trying to bring it to life, to "make it real", and to imbue it with the belief that can really do something.

At this point, you start to make believe. You start to weave a fantasy where the puppet is brought to life, where it animates, it moves and makes noises, and inevitably, you'll start to make it do things. Maybe its suddenly able to pick up objects. Maybe its able to poke people or tickle them. Maybe it can do stuff even to your own body.

The issue here is, once you start to pretend that the puppet is the one that is doing these things, you've introduced a major error in your mind. You've placed a separation between you - as the source of all power and life - and this puppet, even though your hand is still animating it - which makes it now seem that the puppet is not getting its power from you.

So now the puppet seems to have its own power, its own will, its own life. It has become the culprit. And now it is the one that gets blamed for doing stuff to yourself or others. You have turned it into a scapegoat. You can pretend to do stuff to yourself or others, through the puppet, pretending the puppet is the one doing it, so that the puppet is to blame and not you.

So let's invent a scenario. Let's say that this puppet, which symbolizes the ego, as a tool for you to use and give power to, isn't really able to do anything at all. But you decide to use the puppet to punch yourself in the face. So you do it. It hurts. You've attacked yourself. But because you believe responsibility for the puppets actions is no longer your responsibility, its obviously the puppets fault. It should be apparent how it is insanity to blame the puppet or to believe it has causal power over you.

In this there are two things happening. You are now a victim of the puppet and your disassociation from being the puppeteer makes it seem as though YOUR OWN ACTIONS against yourself are not coming from you. So not only can you blame the puppet for hurting you but you can claim that you had nothing to do with it, which justifies anger. So not only are you victimized by yourself but you cover it up by scapegoating, but you also now justify that scapegoating because it seems you didn't do it to yourself.

This is literally what happens in life whenever you believe that someone else or something else has power over you, is causing you, is affecting you, is changing you, influencing you, making you, forcing you, attacking you, victimizing you, whatever. If there is any ounce of this kind of perception or belief, you have disassociated from your own participation. You're actually attacking YOURSELF, through the puppet/ego/person/attacker, and pretending its not you. You do this in your mind. You attack yourself vicariously.

As we reveal the truth of this, you can see that as you slip your hand into the puppet and bring it to life and make it seem to have its own will, and then you punch yourself in the face, you will probably believe you are not the one punching yourself in the face. You blame the puppet, the person, the attacker. But if you don't take responsibility for it, you are stuck in the victim mentality.

So what you need to do is, stop pretending that your own puppets are doing stuff against you with their own willpower. It is YOUR OWN POWER that is attacking you THROUGH these externalized puppets. You send out your own self-attack, self-guilt, projecting it out into the puppets in the world (also your body), into things you eat, into things you see, into things you say you don't like, and you ANIMATE these things to seem to attack you. And you fear the power they seem to have. But here's the secret...

The power that you fear is attacking you against your will, by these puppets, IS YOUR OWN POWER. Its your arm, in the puppet, that's punching you in the face. It's your mind, that's extending out through other people and then turning on you. So the power you fear is your own power. And you see it in other things but its really yours. And there IS NO OTHER POWER acting against you other than your own. There is no other arm in the puppet. There is no other puppeteer out to get you or trying to work against you. It's you. You are doing this to yourself.

Owning up to being the puppeteer is the key to salvation. Taking responsibility for making stuff happen to you. Being the mind that is choosing to see situations in such a way that you perceive it as though the puppets in your life are doing this stuff of their own decision. They are nothing more than tools that your mind is using for self-attack. And here's the good news...

If everything that attacks you is YOUR OWN POWER being used against yourself, and if everything you are afraid of IS YOUR OWN POWER being used against yourself, and if you CHOOSE to stop condemning yourself.... who's going to do anything to you? Nobody. Nobody else is out there to do stuff to you. This is all an inside job. It's you as your own enemy. You need to forgive yourself for what you have not done and recognize your innocence. You need to own up to being the puppet master and take the gloves off! Stop hitting yourself. Stop punishing yourself. Stop judging and condemning yourself. Stop finding yourself guilty and stop proceeding to punish yourself for stuff you have not done.

Take the puppet off your hand and own your power. It has no power of its own. Take it back. Its yours. It was yours all along. And then you can recognize.. this is the key to the atonement...

The puppet is just a puppet. It cannot and does not do anything. It never has. It is not real. It is not alive. Nothing has ever happened to you. Job done. The ego is a puppet. It's your puppet. That's all it is. Once you take back your power and own up to who you are, you put down the ego and it is lifeless and powerless. Cause and effect have been placed back in their proper orientation and you are no longer a victim.

Freedom.

The side-effects of having a mistaken perception are really quite understandable.

If you choose to attack yourself, and to then deny that you're the one who did that, you will disown it. This disownership is what we call projection. We displace it onto some sense of 'not me' or 'others'. Then we seem to see it in them as though they own it or they created it, convinced that we did not do it to ourselves.

Then because we perceive this about them, and still in denial that we're hallucinating our own projected crap onto them, whatever they do will seem to offend us. And then we'll experience it as though we're being attacked by them, but we're really being attacked internally by our own self-attack.

And then because we are still in denial and don't see our self-attack, instead believing that someone else is responsible for doing this to us, it will seem completely justified to be angry at them.

IF it were true that people attack you against your will, or that something is happening that you have not chosen, then it makes TOTAL SENSE that you would be justified in being angry and upset. And it is within this context that these feelings and reactions will happen.

BUT, it is a mistaken reaction, always, and is never really justified, precisely because it is NOT TRUE that someone else has attacked you. It was really YOU attacking you, you were just in denial of it and disassociated from your own responsibility. You did not SEE yourself attack yourself because you blocked it from your mind and shoved it onto someone else, so now it seems like they did it to you. If they had done it to you, yes, you'd be justified. And that's why people feel like they're always justified in being angry or outraged or offended. But they're not.

When you're angry or outraged or offended, it's usually involving a claim that OTHER PEOPLE ARE WRONG for some reason, and that all you're doing is innocently pointing out the obvious truth. Well, that's not the whole truth. The truth is YOU are being dishonest and irresponsible, YOU are an attacker, YOU have attacked yourself first and foremost AND you are now blaming that attack on someone else, so YOU are attacking them for your own attack, which is a double attack. So who is in the wrong here? Who is really mistaken?

Sometimes what "the secret of salvation" reveals is not pretty. It very simply means you do everything to yourself. On purpose. Deliberately.

That reveals some sometimes shocking and hard to accept truths.

Such as that, if I am not at peace *I* must have chosen not to be at peace. If I am sick, I must have made myself sick. If I am unhappy, I have deliberately chosen to be unhappy. If I am experiencing something that I don’t think I want to experience, it’s because I CHOSE TO and WANT TO.

These are hard to admit to when you’re in the thick of denial. You’d rather keep believing there is a reason outside your control that caused your suffering.

What Jesus is trying to get us to see, and this is very simple, is that as the dreamer of the dream, and as the ruler of the universe, we MUST be the one who makes everything happen. We PUT IT THERE. We decide what will and will not happen.

This calls for extremely responsibility. It is the total end of all victimhood. And it also means, total freedom. This is why it leads to salvation.

You can be free from ALL suffering, including all states of sickness and death, by simply CHOOSING not to create those states. You can reverse all situations and heal all problems. "The power of decision is my own."

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No-one dies without their own consent." "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

This is the ONE LESSON that the Holy Spirit teaches. When you have learned this one thing and live it fully, you are done.

There is no room in this for being a victim, OR being victimized against your will. It is YOUR DREAM, so if victimization happens, YOU MUST HAVE MADE IT HAPPEN.

Unless this is true, there is no way out of hell. Unless this is true, someone or something else has the power to end your peace and prevent your awakening. You do not want to ever undermine this truth, or you are giving away the only way to return to God.

Always remind yourself in any situation, I must be doing this myself. I must be choosing this. I must want this. No-one else is doing this to me. If I am not happy, I chose not to be. If I am hurt, I hurt myself. This applies NO MATTER THE FORM of the attack or who seems to be the attacker. Even if it doesn’t look like you did it, you did. And this of course is very radical.

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

*I* MUST have made a WRONG DECISION because I am not at peace.

*I* MADE THE DECISION MYSELF.

Nothing happens without your consent, not even death. You are either choosing life or death. All death is suicide.

"We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING."

Believing in separation from God produces a split in the mind. The mind becomes confused because it's trying to believe in both light and dark, or true and false, without distinguishing between them. The will becomes divided and the mind seems to form two areas. Being in fear (uncertainty), you are now "in two minds".

One area seems to become associated with "who and what I am", and the other area seems to be projected as "who I am not", seen as outside yourself in others. You can refer to these as the persona and the shadow. The persona is the accepted parts of mind and the shadow is the denied repressed parts.

In this dynamic, there's always two parts to what you experience. For example if you are in fear, where you believe that you are under attack by another, you are in fact also attacking them. But the part of you that is attacking them is dissociated and projected - kind of disowned. You don't want to believe it's still part of you. So you "associate it" with someone else.

So then in fear you see yourself as "only the victim" and you do not see yourself as "the victimizer". But your mind, as a whole, is actually playing both roles. It's just that the projected disowned role of victimizer seems like it's "not you", and the you that you think is being victimized is just one split off half of the mind.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth."

"Ideas leave not their source."

So the split mind has sort of become divided against itself and is now at war with itself. And various different properties seem to be assigned to one half, which you accept as "yourself", and the other half is denied and projected onto others as "not yourself".

Yet both parts are in your mind and don't go outside of it. So this whole roleplay of the two parts interacting, is happening inside your mind - ie you as a whole are actually doing it to yourself. This is the secret of salvation, to realize that you are NOT just one half of the equation. You are playing BOTH sides.

This is actually true of all things ego. If you take the position of victim, you are also victimizing. If you take the position of fear, you are also frightening and terrorizing. If you take the position of being sick at the hands of the world, you are also causing your own sickness. If you take the position of being helpless against death, you are also trying to destroy yourself from the outside in - which seems indirect.

So if i catch myself being afraid, I need to also remind myself that I am also the one who is scaring myself because I am the one who is doing the attacking. If I catch myself focusing on sickness, I need to remind myself that I am also the one causing sickness. If I am having pain, I need to realize I am making myself be in pain while pretending that it's not coming from me.

The stronger the state of dissociation, the less "oneness" there is with others. You'll see others as separated off from you, and you'll want nothing to do with them. You may even want to "get rid of them" at all costs, or wish they'd not exist, in extreme cases. The other seems to look truly "not me", to you, to such an extent that you think you are justified in blaming them for causing everything.

But what that means is that your mind is divided and strongly "taking sides" against itself. It's hiding from the other part of itself which it has projected through blame. You might think that the innocent victim self is the whole of your self, or your mind, because it's all you seem to be aware of as "within you".

This is because THAT part, thinks of the OTHER part, as OUTSIDE of itself. And therefore due to this separation between the two parts, you - this one part - believes the other part is "not you". And this is the major ego hurdle to be overcome.

Jesus describes ACIM as a course in "reintegration".

"To heal, or to make joyous, is therefore the same as to integrate and MAKE ONE."

"The purpose of this course is integration."

What is being integrated? The two sides of the split mind need to be rejoined as one whole mind. The sense of dissociation which splits you off from "your attacker" and frames others as "outside of you" needs to heal. It's not WHICH side you take that matters, it's the fact that you are taking sides at all.

We heal by becoming whole, moving from a state of "I'm playing the role of being on this one side", towards the recognition that you are playing BOTH sides. You play both sides of every conflict. You receive the effects of your own attack. What you do to others you do to yourself. What applies to them applies to you. This is the Golden Rule.

So if you find yourself "one sided", with you seeming to be caused by or at the effect of anyone or anything else, you know there is a brick wall of denial and disowning standing in front of you, behind which is the other half of your mind. And the wall needs to come down so that you can see that the part "in the shadows" and the part "in the light" are both parts of the same one mind.

By recognizing that both "sides" or "roles" or "personalities" or "identities" are existing within ONE mind, you recognize that NEITHER of them can be true. They are both illusions of separate identities - a victimizer and a victim. And the mind is pretending to be both of them. Neither really exists, and on seeing this both disappear, as the mind recognizes and "wakes up" to the fact that it is ONE MIND, not two.

"Opposites must be brought together, and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as YOU are."

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

"In our longer practice periods today, we will claim the peace that must be ours when the problem and the answer have been brought together."

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

"The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are brought together, NOT kept separate."

Such defenses are put in place on purpose. They are chosen. They have a purpose, to fulfill a perceived need. They have a function - a task that they are to perform in order to achieve a goal.

The goal of sickness is to defend you or protect you or counter-attack against something you have perceived which seems to threaten your existence. Isn't it strange that a retaliation against a perceived threat damages you?

Sickness is not just some thing that happens. It is a device, a deliberate mechanism or tool that you use for a specific purpose. Like a bandaid, you use it to help your little wounds to heal. Or a screwdriver, you use it to help screw screws into wood. Sickness helps you to be protected against what you perceive as an attack.

Sickness implements separation. It pushes away the attacker and creates a gap or distance between you, so that you feel a sense of perceived safety. You want to put distance between you and the threat. Or put up a really solid wall that blocks them. These blocks are blocks to awareness.

The result is what expresses as a materialization of physical form in a distorted configuration, which is what we usually refer to as "sickness", illness or disease. The mind is literally warping the body to try to turn it into a defense mechanism.

The ONLY purpose of sickness is to defend you. This is the only reason why you want it. And it is the reason why you really have an actual desire to keep it. If you were to remove the defense, and if the attacker is still present without having changed at all, then you will be in danger.

You will also go to great lengths to build an entire fictional story around the symptoms of sickness explaining and justifying why the sickness ITSELF is the problem that you want to get rid of, in order to DENY that you really want to KEEP it, because to truly get rid of it would expose you to your enemy. We will make a lot of noise about the unfairness of the sickness and about how we did not ask for it, in order to HIDE the fact that we did ask for it on purpose and we are the ones who put it in place. To admit that would threaten to undo it, which goes against the entire point of us creating the sickness in the first place.

You do not want to remove your defense because of this. It is creating an illusion of safety and protection, further covered-up by layer upon layer of denial and displacement of what the real problem is. Unfortunately, all defenses are attacks and your own defenses are attacking you as much as the other. Construct a razor-wire fence and you better be careful not to touch it!

The only purpose of that defense is to block a threat. You must look at what it is that you believe is a threat. Typically it is anything which your ego perception mis-perceives as the opposite or undoing of itself. Your sense of identity is at stake. Any suggestion of "truth" which implies that the ego does not exist, will threaten "you" when you are identified as the ego.

Your false beliefs are your artificial identity which you believe are the truth. You want to protect that truth as though your life depends on it. You see its opposite as false, evil, and an attack. So long as you remain loyal to those misperceptions you will defend them, even if doing so requires you to implement defenses which attack you as much as anyone else. All defenses are double-eged swords and you cannot escape their toxicity and potency.

What must be truly undone before you will be willing to let down your defenses, is to learn to accept the truth as it is and not as it appears to be when seen through the ego. This will have to mean that your sense of identity is mistaken and must be set free. It must shift from "I am this ego thing" to "I am holy and innocent". Forgiveness must happen of yourself, and healing must take place in terms of how you see yourself or who or what you regard yourself as.

You need to find a willingness to be open to being mistaken about who you thought you were, and what you thought was true, so that you can allow the truth to save you from this illusion. The truth will show you a new identity and reveal the truth about you. This will reveal how the ego is in fact the thing which is false, and that it is not who you are.

If you can accept the truth as helpful and welcome instead of as a threat to your existence, you will see no NEED to defend yourself against it. You will not see attack in it, having not attacked. You will see no justification for trying to prevent it or reject it. You will accept it and allow it to be in you. You will invite it in and it will be your Identity.

At this point you will be WILLING to accept that your device of defense and separation is no longer needed. It's function is irrelevant. The sickness was ONLY serving your purpose of trying to protect your "self". You no longer need this protection because who and what you are is not being threatened by the truth but is in agreement with it. The truth is your friend. You can now let down your defenses.

This means, you will now admit that the sickness only came into being because you put it there, wanted it, needed it, and it was helping you - or so you thought. You have now been corrected and you now RECOGNIZE that this sickness was just something you used to believe in and no longer do. It is now false. It is not the truth. It is not something you need. You have not purpose for it and you admit that it is just a way of attacking yourself more. You don't want it anymore and don't have any attachment to it.

Illusions recognized as such MUST disappear. All of the symptoms and consequences of that so-called "sickness" must disappear. "He will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him" - meaning that your willingness now to admit the truth (allow Holy Spirit access) can and will supernaturally UNDO and make disappear all forms and signs and symptoms and content of sickness. All of the expressions - consequences - of deciding poorly will be undone. Your lack of support or need for the sickness will let it go and it will just vanish.

Properly recognized as completely false, unhelpful, unneeded, unwelcome, pointless, futile, purposeless, meaningless, and utterly useless, the sickness will be recognized as having no reality or truth or validity and this will make it disappear. Literally. All symptoms will go if this is truly deeply accepted.

The sickness was nothing more than a temporary protective device which you wanted and needed. If you don't need it, you WILL drop it. If your will is genuine and you've become really really honest with yourself, that sickness will be undone. And sickness is nothing more than a belief that separation is the answer to God, or that separation can save you from the truth. Undoing sickness heals your mind.

Once the sickness - as mental illness - as belief in separation - AND as symptoms of defense - is gone, THEN you will be at peace. Not before. No-one can be at peace when they are at war with themselves or with the truth. No-one can be at peace who believes sickness is real and must just be accepted. No-one can be at peace who is using death as a defense against the wrath of God. True peace can and must be experienced as complete and total perfect "health" in mind and all the expressions of mind.

If you truly do not believe in separation from the truth, you will have no defenses and you will not exhibit symptoms of sickness. You will walk your walk and not just talk your talk. And you will demonstrate therefore, by example, living example, that you are immortal and invulnerable because you do not believe in separation or sickness and they are not real. You will thus teach others that sickness is not the truth and the truth needs no defense. If signs of sickness remain, you are teaching the exact opposite because, in all honesty, you have not completely undone your belief in separation.

Sickness must go. Disease must be healed. Death must be undone. Resurrection is the only truth. If you are sick you are attacking yourself, everyone else, and God. A guiltless mind cannot suffer, and a guiltless mind exhibits no symptoms of sickness or damage. A broken body is a sign that the mind has not been healed. Complete healing is not only possible but necessary. You must teach that nothing has happened to you and you can't do that intellectually. You must show it and act like it.

There are two sort of perspectives relating to perception that we seem to fall into.

1. There is an objective world with our perception OF it, and what we project ONTO it is to do with how we interpret it.

2. There isn't an objective world and we're just dreaming it up and not projecting anything "onto" it because we're projecting IT in the first place.

I am coming to see that neither of these is correct.

There is a third possibility.

3. I am having a dream, which is surrounding me with a fictional environment which is coming from my mind. Without my dreaming of it - my projecting it - there wouldn't be any world here at all. There is NO objective world. There is ONLY a subjective world. My projection makes my perception and makes "the world I see."

The important distinction here is that the world I am projecting/dreaming, is coming from my mind and SEEMS to be an objective world. AND yet at the SAME TIME, this world is being projected BY me. So it seems to be both objective and subjective.

The key is that the objective part does not exist at all, and that's what ACIM means by "there is no world apart from what you wish", and wishes are dreams.

So it's not just to do with hey, I'm projecting something "onto" the objective world. It's that literally I am projecting the world ITSELF - that I think is an objective world - with my dreaming mind. And when my mind dreams of a different world, I project out an entirely different world. The old world doesn't transform because it has no objective reality or continuity of its own. I just project a different dream and stop projecting the old one.

When we go into false perception, however, there is an additional LAYER of projection, which seems to project "onto" the dream. Like, you're filled with anger and hate and so this seems like it projects "onto" the objective world. But the objective world itself is still being projected from your mind at that same time. So in truth, you are not really projecting ONTO the world, you are projecting the world and your "bad projecting" is actually changing the world and making it appear like a bad world to you.

In this way, it would appear that ACIM is never really talking about "projecting onto" anything. It's entirely talking about you projecting the world itself, directly, and your "bad attitude" projects what later is perceived to be a world that you seem to experience in a negative way. You think there is some other objective world that is "not negative" hiding underneath your negativity, but there isn't! You think you're projecting ONTO the world, but in fact you're not. You're projecting the world, period. Projection makes perception. Not "projection makes perception makes projection makes perception."

Just as at night when you dream, your mind forms en entire environment/world filled with buildings and people and stuff, and you seem to show up as a single body person. But your mind is making the world AND your body person. How the body person seems to experience the dream is an illusion because the person is actually MAKING the environment. Any attacker in the dream is you. People in the dream are figments of your own mind. It's the same with "waking life". We are literally dreaming of an entire universe.

There is no world.

The entire content of the physical world is happening within the split mind of the ego. It is all happening inside the one mind of the ego, shared collectively by all individuals within it.

Every event that takes place always has some form of separation involved, where there is a cause and a separate effect, a victim and victimizer, some kind of opponents, enemies, conflict.

Every role, every side, every persuasion of someone being for or against or right or wrong, all of them are part of the ego split mind.

The ego mind is a vast mind spanning this entire universe. It includes all planets and stars and galaxies. Every single event that transpires is an expression of self attack.

In self-attack, a single mind is at war with itself. It has divisions within itself which have split it apart and now, what used to be a single will has become multiple wills. And each of these wills is slightly different and has a different focus or goal. And none of them agree with each other, and so all of them are in competition. Chaos is the result (see the laws of chaos in the Course).

This gives rise to all manner of illusions across a vast spectrum throughout the world and throughout all history. In every war there appear to be two sides, the good and the bad, the oppressor and the oppressed, the attacker and the attacked. And yet both of those sides are happening inside the one ego mind. The one ego mind is playing against itself, is at war with itself, and is both its own attacker and its own victim.

When you do not see this and you fall for the illusion that one of the sides is better than the other side, one of the viewpoints is more justified or righteous, one of the parties is better or worse, or somehow there is an inbalance or difference between them, you have become fooled by the ego's illusions. You are misperceiving and are now experiencing the ego.

There is a line in the Course which says literally, "The world IS false perception." It does not say that the world is perceived falsely by individuals. It says there is one mind, the one ego mind, which contains the entire physical universe, within which there is a false perception happening. That means there are illusions appearing, there is misunderstanding, there is division and separation, there are multiple wills, and now there APPEARS to be many different sides all who do not quite agree with each other. And some of those sides now seem to be defending various positions or opinions, and yet ALL of those sides are part of the ego's state of misperception.

The world, the physical world, IS mis-perception taking place within the one ego mind. The world, the illusion of a world appearing, with all of its events and people, is actually a picture in a single large mind, where that mind is hallucinating, and is experiencing self-attack, and is having a major war with itself. This is why the Course says that the world is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's Son" - an envisioning within God's Son of what it would be like if He were destroying himself.

Everything in this physical universe is at war with everything else. For particles of matter to even appear to exist there has to be difference and conflict, to allow there to be a fluctuation of some kind, which creates a localized point in spacetime where something shows up to demonstrate that what is true there is not true elsewhere.

If we are in the business of correcting perception, which the Course very much advocates, then we need to realize that this correction of perception cannot JUST take place within your little ego mind within your little ego body. Your little ego mind is only a TINY part of the entire ego mind. There is vast mis-perception occuring in and AS the entire world itself. THAT MIND, that large mind, which is dreaming the whole world, is mis-perceiving and experiencing self-attack all the time. THAT MIND needs to receive perceptual correction, beyond your own little PIECE of that mind receiving correction.

There is no world, by the way.

When you wake up to the `limits` of your own personal separate ego little mind, confined to a body still and subject still to the laws of the world, such as death and physics and biological processes and so on, and also spacetime itself, you have corrected the perception of a PART of the ego mind, but you have not corrected the grander perception of the entire ego mind, which is still hallucinating a universe-scale war against itself. This is the difference between waking up in the dream and having the war still wage all around you, versus waking up FROM the dream and ENDING THE WAR WITH YOURSELF, which means ENDING THE ILLUSORY UNIVERSE.

If there is a leaf on a tree which is not receiving quite as much sunlight today because there is another leaf above it which is blocking the light, this is a WAR on that leaf and will "cause" it to die off more quickly. If you accelerate what takes place underground as tree roots look for food, you will see that they literally fight with each other and try to fend each other off to secure ownership of food sources. The trees are at war with each other. When there is a cloud in the sky, blocking the sun, that is a war on everything beneath the cloud. I'm not kidding.

This entire universe is a state of war, a state of conflict, a state of self-attack. The one mind is dreaming of what it is like to attack itself and kill itself. It is a dream of dying and death. It's a desert where starved and thirsty creatures come to DIE, having hated a while. Do not glorify one little part of this world over another - that's still part of the ego thought system.

You do not escape this dream of death until you are able to completely transcend all of the laws of this universe and become supernaturally miraculous. You do not escape it by taking a side or seeing one thing as better or worse than another. You do not escape it by falling for the oldest trick in the book, which is that one thing is more spiritual or worthy or special or better or worse or more righteous or more justified or more ego or less ego than something else. EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD IS AN ILLUSION OF SEPARATION.

This entire world is a mis-perception, an hallucination, happening in the mind of the One Son of God. It is a vast ego delusion, where every single role or side that can be taken "against" another is taken, and all sides and all roles are played simultaneously by that one mind. NO-ONE is more justified than another, and no side that anyone takes is better or more righteous than another. All victims, all victimizers, all opposition, all enemies, those who appear innocent, those who appear guilty, it is ALL part of the same ONE MIND PRETENDING that it is multiple individual selves with different opinions. This is also why no-one's opinion matters to the truth.

Perpetrators of suffering and war and violence and murder and death are just as much a part of the ego dream as those who seem to receive those effects. Both sides are a team. Both of them need each other. Both of them depend on each other to exist. Both of them must exist together in order to exist at all. Look at the whole of the mind - the universal mind - the one mind. Look at what it is doing to itself, within itself. It's beating itself up. It's pretending to put on a performance where one part of itself attacks another part and pretends it doesn't know it's doing it. This is the illusion we need to learn to overlook. This is what forgiveness must teach us to see past and not fall for or be hemmed in by.

There is no world here. it's just one mind's dream of hurting itself. This is the CENTRAL THOUGHT the Course is attempting to teach. That there literally, right in your fucking face literally, IS NO WORLD. This world we seem to live in and on is NOT REALLY THERE. It's a lie. It's a big fat illusion floating in the one mind. It is mis-perception of Self, and mis-perception of God. It's an attempt to destroy who you are. It is the crucifixion of God's Son, of which Jesus's crucifixion on the cross was just a reflection or symbol within a symbol.

There is no world. Can you handle the truth?

Moving out of victimhood towards empowerment requires a radical shift in perspective. The victim mindset always involves a sense of separation from others. In this mode, your mind assigns certain things to them, and not to you. They're the one that's guilty, they're the attacker, they're the one doing something wrong. But in order to get out of this, we have to realise that everything "about" this situation is YOU doing it TO YOU.

That means that even when you think of someone like "that person is being evil", that is not actually a separate thought about a separate person. That is your mind attacking itself. Your mind splits off and invents a character to represent the other role, projects that character onto the other person, imagines that character being sinful and attacking, and then believes that the guilt belongs to them and not you. But this is YOUR mind forming a split personality, identifying with one part and not another, being at war with itself, and attacking itself from the outside in a kind of indirect way.

It is NOT TRUE that you can use your mind to just think casually about anyone and anything, with no effect on you. Even if you think you are describing what someone "is like", even if it seems based on their physical appearance, their behavior, or anything else that you think belongs to them, it requires you to still judge and attack in order to assign these labels to them. And when you do that, it's really your mind attacking itself. You cannot just sit there on a kind of fence having objective observations of condemnation and pretend that you're not hurting yourself by doing so.

It's kind of like a misuse of the equipment, like you don't know how to use your mind. You think that your mind is capable of operating in a mode where you can remain separate from others and cast judgements at them, label them, describe them, evaluate them. As if these perceptions have no effect. But what you don't realise is this is a totally incorrect way to use the mind. Mind cannot have these thoughts, labels, judgements, even if they map accurately to someone in form, without them being a form of attack. If I say "you did something wrong", I am literally telling myself that I'm wrong, I am split minded, have a case of dissociation, and am pretending to be a victim.

The major shift of believing that the problem is separate from you "out there", to recognizing that "you are doing it to yourself", requires a complete ownership of your thoughts, your judgements, your attitude. It's a total responsibility. It's a recognition that anything you perceive you have projected, because projection makes perception. Any labels you give to things are not neutral, they are a way that your mind is setting up an enemy within and as itself, to attack itself. It's your mind using the world vicariously to imagine that the world is doing something to you, when in fact this visualising is your mind doing something to itself.

So basically we have to go from believing that the stuff out there is not inside us, to realising that "ideas leave not their source". That any idea you have "about" anyone is about yourself. That you are included in everything. That you never escape any consequences, you are never separate from any judgement you make, what you do to others you are doing to yourself, and you are still bound by God's law of the golden rule. It's a shift away from a mind which is in two halves with two wills and two characters, to a mind which is single and whole and undivided against itself.

"I am not a body. I am free, for I am still as God created me. All that I do, I do unto myself. If I attack, I suffer. But if I forgive, salvation will be given me."

If you get angry or start blaming and pointing a finger at someone, you perceive as if it really is "about them". You see them doing something, you judge "them" for it, and your mind starts attacking them. But here's the truth.

When you do this, ideas do not leave their source. You might perceive that you're successfully attacking a "separate person out there", but the attack is actually taking place INSIDE your mind. It isn't leaving you. And this has two key parts to it:

1) The attack is taking place inside your mind

2) The "target" of the attack is also inside your mind

So both the attacker and the one being attacked are IN YOU.

You might have a tremendous sense of disassociation in that it seems you are just blaming xyz person for something, casually and easily, but you may not be realizing that even when you're hurling abuse at someone who obviously is "in the wrong", you're basically having a PRIVATE SELF ATTACK, inside a private bubble, in your mind.

So all that attack that you're trying to get rid of through projection and blame, although it doesn't seem like, is actually part of your mind attacking another part of YOUR mind. Which means that you literally are attacking yourself. You think "that asshole cut me off in traffic". Well, your mind there is saying to ITSELF, that it is an asshole.

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins". It's simple and easy to say, but may not always be obvious to recognize as what you're doing. In every case, every way that you seem to be "able" to attack someone else without experiencing the seeming effects and consequences, you MUST be in denial, MUST be mistaken, MUST have disassociation happening in your mind, AND you are attacking ONLY yourself.

So this is the thing. Your angry attack on another is NOT really an attack on another. The idea does not leave your mind. The thought does not leave your mind. The source of the attack (the attacker) does not leave your mind. And the thing that is attacked does not leave your mind. So while it SEEMS like you're "not targeting yourself", YOU ARE. In every case.

Underneath the illusion that it's not about you, it's always about you. Always. 100% of the time. Every time you think you can "get away with" having someone else experience the effects of what you're causing, without you participating in those effects, you are mistaken. Not only do you participate in the effects, ONLY YOU participate in the effects

If that other person chooses to be innocent and invulnerable your mental illness attack has absolutely no effect on them. If they choose to laugh in the face of your attempted attack, it has no effect on them. Whatsoever. You could be sitting there screaming at someone thinking that you're successfully attacking ONLY THEM, they could be totally happy and at peace and immune to it, and YOU are the only one suffering. And it's not simply that you are suffering because you're being angry, you're suffering because you are actually the THING that you are angry AT. You are RECEIVING the attack. What seems to aim "outward" actually goes inward.

See, your mind isn't only inside your body. Your mind is everywhere. Infinite. Bigger than the universe. And when you have a split mind of self attacking conflict, you position part of your mind seemingly "outside of your body". You disassociate from it and believe it is not inside you, is not your self, and is in fact another separate alien willed person who is doing stuff "Against" your will. Well, it's actually your will against your will. Your will is in conflict with itself and having a war. That "external" target is squarely YOU, INSIDE your mind.

This is sobering. Because simply put, it means that it is not possible to even attempt to attack anyone without attacking yourself. It's not possible to blame without hurting yourself. It's not possible to be angry at someone without accusing yourself of sin. So at some point you have to realize, it's got nothing to do with anyone else ever doing anything to you. It's ALWAYS about you doing stuff to yourself. Each time you attack and project and THINK it's not about you, it is. Each time you are annoyed about someone, it's YOU that you're annoyed about. And each time you retaliate, it's against yourself.

Which means that you've been hurting yourself, all this time. And it's never been about anyone else. And every single time in your life that you thought you were simply justified in reacting to someone else's bullshit, you NEVER WERE, you were hurting yourself. Nothing ever left your mind. Every argument was with yourself. And the question is, are you tired of hurting yourself? Do you want to keep doing it?

If you would simply be aware of this, and realize and recognize it, you'd realize the simple Golden Rule. Whatever you try to do to others you do to yourself. Whatever you think is true of others is true of you. It has nothing to do with whether they reciprocate or not. You do to yourself what you would have yourself do to you. Others never do anything. They are never the cause of you. Ever.

If you realized that you could not ever make a single effort to attack "someone else" without it being 100% an attack on yourself, you would not do it. It would be insane to do it. If you knew that it's not possible to attack another without hurting yourself, you would not do it. It hurts too much.

If you knew that you can NEVER get away with murderous behaviors without hurting yourself, you'd see the sense in never even considering attacking, knowing that to do so would hurt yourself. It's a kind of self regulating thing. All you need is the awareness that you are in fact INCLUDED in, and the ONLY one included in, receiving the effects of whatever you're trying to cause.

So the question simply is, if you are aware of this and can stay aware of it, do you really want to keep hurting yourself? It is in your best interests to only love. It is in your best interests to only ever be loving toward yourself and others. You can't have one set of rules that apply to others and another for yourself. You can't have it be that you are loved while others are hated. Its BOTH, or NEITHER. Either both you and others are loved or both you and others are attacked. There is no escape. And the ego is the thing that suggests there IS a way to get away with this without any consequences.

There is no escaping consequences. Whatever you do you do to yourself. This is the secret of salvation. All you need is awareness to SEE that any slight mis-step against "another" is REALLY a mis-step against yourself, and you do not want to do that because it hurts you. And it splits your mind. Which makes you disassociate from yourself and imagine an enemy, which makes you project, which doesn't REALLY project at all. External enemies are indirect self attack from your mind to your mind.

You've never attacked anyone but yourself. No-one has ever attacked anyone but themselves. You've never been attacked by anyone other than yourself. You have the power not to attack yourself. To not attack yourself you must also not want to attack others, because the fantasy of being ABLE to attack others will make you hurt yourself under the belief that it's having no effect on you. Secret of salvation. You're doing it all to yourself. Stop hurting yourself. Love yourself. Easy peasy.

Someone in your life that you are angry with or upset about, is only there as a skapegoat so that you can cover up your secret plan.

Your secret plan is to find a way to prove why God can't love you.

So you hire people, even before you incarnate, and you ask them to do stuff to you, for you. You ask them to play a role. And then they come into life and you come into life and you both play the roles perfectly. They do you a great service, even if the role they play is one of attacker or victimizer or hater or abuser.

While you have forgotten this sense of responsibility for orchestrating everything that happens to you, you will experience yourself being a victim - unfairly treated. Only by remembering 100% responsibility for this 'deal' you made, can you be freed from this victim consciousness.

Then, whatever that attacking person looked like or what they did to you, IF it's recognized as being EXACTLY what you asked them to do FOR you, then you can hardly hold them accountable or blame them. You literally asked for it. And whatever they did was done perfectly exactly as you requested. This completely lets them off the hook. They are just doing their job. You should be grateful.

Only in seeing it this way can you view the person as completely devoid of any guilt or of having done something against your will. And if they haven't done anything against your will other than perfectly carry out YOUR plan of self-attack, then you will recognize they have not really done anything TO you. It's really you that did this to you by hiring them to do it for you in the first place.

Then you can recognize this person is innocent. They have been faithful to your request. They've done what you asked. And they did not do anything you didn't ask for. So now services have been rendered. And for that you are grateful and you can recognize them as INNOCENT. No longer can you blame them for doing something 'uncalled for', having owned up to being the one who chose it.

Having thus taken back responsibility and power for the decisions against yourself, which were designed to give you really good justifications for being UNLOVABLE BY GOD, you will recognize that the whole point of being attacked/abused/hurt etc is so you will become so preoccupied with how worthless it 'makes you' that you will not be able to accept God's love. You will have really great justifications for why you can't be loved. And you'll have all this evidence and you'll be able to point your finger at this person and blame them for causing it. And all the while this affirms - God can't love me because I'm not lovable because of what this person did.

It's pretty convenient to stay in that mindset. And staying there won't make you happy. What will make you happy is dropping all the projection of blame onto the person who served you, taking full responsibility for orchestrating your life's events, taking ownership of the plan to prove to God that you're unworthy, and then becoming willing to allow yourself to be loved again. You have to drop the game you're playing. You have to get out from under the 'prison sentence' that the victimizer seems to hold you under. It's you holding yourself there so that you can stay way from God.

Then you let God in. You surrender. You drop the self-defeating attitude. You own up and admit to the truth. And then a smile can return to your face as you allow yourself to stop hating yourself and let yourself be loved by God.

If someone were to whisper in your ear, the one key secret thing which allows you to overcome the world, overcome death, be happy forever, and experience eternal life with God, you'd take that to be a pretty important secret, right? The ONE THING that unlocks the universe, sets you free from all suffering, and gives you back your real identity? You'd want that, right? And in a sense, you'd want to uphold that at all costs lest you lose sight of the way out of hell, right?

Well the "secret of salvation" is that you are doing this all to yourself, you cannot be hurt or attacked by anyone or the world, nothing causes you to suffer but yourself, and if you could fully OWN this you would be free from all forms of suffering forever and ever.

But this also means, if you want the way out of hell, and you want to ensure that it is POSSIBLE for you to get out of hell, then you're going to have to allow this truth to be true at all times, in all situations, without exception. Because if you compromise, or make an exception, or believe in any way that this secret is NOT TRUE, then you've literally taken the ONLY WAY OUT off the table, have hidden salvation from yourself, have made yourself hopeless and have disempowered yourself.

No matter how controversial it is, no matter how it flies in the face of societal norms, no matter how radical or extreme it seems to be, if the secret of salvation EVER seems to be untrue, then you are stuck in the hell of your making. If it EVER seems like you did not choose something or did not cause something or aren't the reason why you are experiencing something, you are lost, and you've lost sight of salvation.

If you did not do this to you, all of a sudden this means there is a power and a cause separate from you which determines your fate and your suffering, against your will. It means the dream is choosing for you. It means the day of your death has been decided by some seemingly external will and there' nothing you can do about it. And that means you have no power or ability to get OUT of it or be free of it, because it can do something against your will. That belief is the end of hope and the end of freedom.

This is why it's so important to realize, that this ONE SECRET is THE WAY TO BE SAVED. It is the core exit strategy. It is the ONLY way to leave hell behind. So it's pretty darn important that you don't compromise it or undermine it or believe something contradictory more than this. As soon as you slip into victim roles, victimizer roles, or belief in external causes, you are losing sight of the way home. Only by taking full responsibility for the power of your choice and 100% owning your freedom from YOUR OWN TYRANNY, can you be free from all suffering forever.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

I had a stream of realizations and insights and healing this morning, into how I used someone else abusing me as a way to deny God's love. It has to do with the "key to salvation" - which is that I "did this to myself". I'm skipping way ahead to the conclusion so I'll explain how I got there.

Years ago I was abused by someone close to me on more than one occasion and it hurt a lot. Emotionally I felt hurt, rejected, abandoned, unloved. I was angry at them and could not forgive them, nor did I want to. I thought it was all about them and what they did to me.

The past week or so I've been having intensified emotional releases (cries) really tapping into the core of these feelings. I wasn't in any way ready to forgive this. Sometimes you just have to feel the feelings fully first because the intense 'energy' really pulls your awareness away from any kind of clarity or willingness. And especially resisting releasing hurt feelings blocks any kind of desire to have insights. So I felt.

This then gave way to some readiness to take a closer looks so I invited Holy Spirit to help me to look at it. I looked at what the person did and how that made me feel. I saw that it made me feel unloved and unworthy, just feeling bad about myself like I wasn't good enough to be loved. Guilty. Sinful. But I knew that somehow I must've had a hand in these beliefs - that I must've gone along with them somehow. I was willing to admit that I believed and agreed to these views of myself. Since the other person was withholding love, it must've meant to me that they didn't believe I was loveable so I went along with that and saw myself that way.

But what I then saw was that this belief in unworthiness/unloveability wasn't just some kind of description of myself, but that it had BECOME myself. I believed it was WHAT I was - as though I was somehow made from unlove. I still at this point couldn't see how the other person being abusive could in any way be helpful to me spiritually, but I was willing to let Holy Spirit continue to guide me toward that awareness.

As I saw myself agreeing to the suggestion that I was unworthy - the 'proof' that I was unworthy - I began to realize this couldn't be true because, at least in theory, I am worthy of God's love. So I started to then go over some of the things I believed, but in a context of it being not true. So for example, it's not true that I don't deserve love, it's not true that I am made from unworthiness, it's not true that I am abandoned or rejected, it's not true that I don't deserve to be happy. A few things came out of this including the belief that I didn't deserve happiness, didn't deserve to express myself, wasn't allowed to be myself, should be afraid of expressing myself or being free in case it happens again, being afraid of punishment, etc. So I added these to the list of what is not true.

It was then that it started to dawn on me. I knew that in theory God wasn't the one who rejected me, and that it was me who had been denying God. Suddenly it was clear - this supposed belief in unworthiness, and the supposed scenario of it being put in place by someone else's abuse, was in fact a COVER UP. I actually wanted to believe I was unworthy. I wanted to believe I was not loveable. I somehow did not WANT God to love me. I saw that I'd chosen to believe I was not 'made of' loveable material so that I could demonstrate that what I was wasn't loveable by God. I was trying to prove that God couldn't love 'this' by portraying myself AS unworthiness, AS unloveable-ness.

And with this it became clear also, that I HIRED and USED the abusive person to not just do stuff 'to me' but to do it to me FOR ME - on my behalf. At some point I organized events so that this person would come along and be abusive because I wanted to have a way to JUSTIFY and explain and rationalize WHY I am not loveable. I hired them to act the part and play the role. And I had been blaming THEM for being the perpetrator when, all along, it was me that had ASKED them to do this. This was the key to unlocking the illusion that I'd been *unfairly* treated, victimized, or attacked against my will. Clearly if I wanted this person to be an attacker and to reject and hurt me, it would ALLOW me to position myself as not worth the love of God - so that I could fulfill my hidden agenda of denying God's will and being separate. Jeez.

So now it was possible to simply acknowledge/recognize the innocence of that person - to overlook seeing them as sinful or guilty (forgiveness) - that they had not done this to me against my will. And this is where the next thing came to me. If the attacking person is not guilty because I hired them to do this on purpose, because I wanted to be able to justify why I should be separate from God, and if God also was not involved because He remains unconditionally loving at all times... then... who is there left to pin this on? Who is responsible for this? I AM. When there is nobody to blame and I can see the choice I made... it was ME. I did it.

I saw myself as 100% totally responsible for having chosen this, having organized it, produced it, made it happen - in effect, as having requested it, WANTED it, and chose it. I did it to myself on purpose! I wanted to be unloveable so that I could be what God does not want so that I could have an ego life. The whole purpose of my conspiracy was to scapegoat the attacker so that I could cover up the fact that I 100% chose this. I can't very well keep blaming anyone else when I can see clearly that I asked for it, literally. So what did this leave me with?

If I'm 100% responsible for trying to deny God on purpose, and for arranging attackers to give me reasons to PROVE why I am separate from God, so that I can JUSTIFY my failure to forgive, then that means... I'm the one left holding the baby. I'm the one who made the choice. I'm the one who DID THIS TO MYSELF. And with nowhere else to go, and nobody else to scapegoat, and no way to blame it on God, being able to see I did this to myself made it immediately obvious what the next step would be. It was ridiculous to keep doing this. It was stupid to have done this in the first place. I simply had no choice but to ADMIT I made a mistaken choice, to STOP making this painful fruitless choice that I no longer wanted, and to LET IT GO. I could not let it go if I still wanted it, and nobody was forcing me to do so for any reason - I had to be willing to choose again, to decide, to surrender this choice I'd made on my own and let Holy Spirit choose for me.

The truth was I had been trying to deny and reject God with my secret plan and that I did not want to be worthy of love. I had always thought I had umpteen reasons why I wasn't worthy enough because of other people or wasn't able to be myself freely in case someone abuses me or whatever... And all along it was really secretly me making EXCUSES for why *I* didn't want to be loved anyway. It was all because of what I was doing to myself. It was all a smokescreen to cover up my decision to not be loveable. So. .. To let that go.... FREES ME, not because I'm somehow freed from other people's tyranny, and not because God suddenly changed his mind, but because there really WAS no one else making me be unloveable other than my DECISION to be that way.

I can choose again. I can choose to stop doing this to myself, this silly game, since it is FUTILE, and I DO NOT LIKE IT, so I can just drop it like a hot potato. And what's the result of that.... Accepting and admitting that I AM LOVEABLE and WORTHWHILE and perfectly accepted already by love. It was never about me not being actually loveable, it was always about ME DENYING the love. Denying God. Pretending there was a reason to not be loved. It's bullshit. I admit it.

So freeing - to set yourself free - to realize you were free all along. To reclaim love and be free to be who you really are. Game over.

This also interestingly parallels the discussion about the fact that we choose death - that all death is suicide. The truth was that my unloveability was MY DELIBERATE CHOICE because I WANTED to deny God. Everything else was a coverup job. This is the death wish. The decision to be beyond love's reach - beyond life's reach. And the reversal of this wish for death is a choice to BE ALIVE. This is a reclaiming of and a step towards accepting immortality. Immortality is already the truth, it's just a matter now of removing all of the denial and deliberate choices made against it.

This world is populated by egos. People who want to broadcast themselves but without listening. This results in a state of competition, conflict and war, where everyone is trying to overpower everyone else. Your brother attacks you by rejecting you. He transmits his illusions about himself and tries to accuse you of sins. He puts up walls against you. He hates and attacks you. And he tries to prevent you from loving him. You do the same and you "meet in the middle", but neither of you moves any closer than a standoff.

Most of the time, the ego in ourselves reacts to the ego in others by regarding them as enemies. If we fall for their illusions, if we believe their attack, if we hold it against them, if we regard it as who they are, the extension of our own mind stops at the obstacles we’re seeing. We fail to overlook these obstacles. In other words, we are being unforgiving. If when he portrays hilmsef as an enemy, attacks you in any way, or convinces you of your or his sinfulness, you fail to love him unconditionally, you too have an ego problem.

The challenge, and this seems difficult at first, is to "love past" their hate. And this means, learning to love absolutely everyone no matter who they are, how they act, what they look like, how evil they seem to be, or what they’ve tried to do to you. Even the really bad extreme cases. Yes EVERYONE. That is unconditional love. Always loving no matter what. That is the atonement, and atonement is forgiveness. Forgiveness overlooks errors and looks past illusions to the truth.

So what I’m finding is, per the Golden Rule, if I actually "have my brother’s back" or "look out for" them, for their HIGHEST SELF, for the truth about them, acknowledging that in truth they are a lovable, holy, innocent equal, sinless and guiltless, who deserve the utmost love, this will put us in a position of being above the battlefield. It means you are transcending all illusions, overlooking their unloving attitude, and upholding the truth about them FOR them. Which means advocating for the true nature of all your enemies. Turning every enemy into a beloved brother, regardless of what they believe or how they behave.

YOU ARE YOUR BROTHER’S KEEPER.

This is the same way that the holy spirit holds a vision of your perfection FOR you until you can recognize it yourself. It means looking way past your brother’s "protest", standing up for his true self on his behalf, extending your mind past his illusions, seeing him as truly an equal who has temporarily lost sight of himself, and taking nothing personally. Because all of his attack, is against himself only, when seen correctly.

It feels unusual at first. There’s your brother being an asshole. Or seeming to. Before you would’ve taken it personally, reacted, held it against him, made it real, and seen nothing else. But the challenge now is to shine your love so strongly that it dispels and moves past all that bullshit to the REAL brother. To the brother who is in pain, who is calling our for love, and who is attacking himself. Loving past the enemy, not becoming what he tries to make of you, and rising far above his delusions.

That means you no longer get to USE him as a scapegoat for your own self attacks.

This means loving the people who attack you, even if they continue to try to do so. Not loving the "attacker self", but loving the person who is behind the projection of pain. Moving past their obstacles to peace. Supporting, defending, standing up for, wanting to heal, loving, caring about, recognizing and remembering, the TRUE nature of that person’s divine innocence. FOR THEM. Because they have temporarily forgotten who they are and have lost their minds. Your remembering is his. Remember the truth about him for him, and help him to remember himself.

"But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God."

Sin is really an attempt to make out that God is evil. It’s an attempt to turn a "loving cause" into "an evil cause".

When you are projecting your belief in sin outwards onto other people, what you’re really doing is trying to push God away by projecting ideas of evil onto Him, pushing Him out away from yourself, and to see Him as an external cause who is acting "against your will."

Really, sin is YOUR attempt to act against God’s will. The result of that is that you PERCEIVE that God is against your will.

When you see sin in a brother, you are really seeing your idea that God is a sinner. You see "cause" in the person, but you also combine that idea of cause with the idea of evil. So you see it as an "evil cause" or a "cause of evil". That’s the exact same thing as seeing someone as sinning against you, being against you in any way, being an enemy, etc.

You think it’s just your projection of your idea that you sinned, but it’s really the projection of your attempt to turn God into something unloving. You see this unloving cause outside of you because you think God is an unloving cause who is separate from you and acting against you.

When you choose to die, if you do, and given that all death is chosen on purpose, a state arises where you perceive that an "external deadly cause" comes along and finally manages to INFLICT ITS WRATH upon you, "causing you to die". In this act, it’s really your attempt to prove or play out your belief that God wants you dead, God is an evil hateful vengeful attacker who is causing you to die, and that therefore God does not cause creations of Eternal Life, but that God instead creates death.

So it is actually God who we believe destroys us every time that we die. We see it as this separated off, externalizations, rejected, hated enemy who is evil and vengeful who wants us dead. Even if we don’t acknowledge that consciously, EVERY DEATH occurs on this same basis of belief. This is the ego thought system playing out. Every death will appear to be caused by anyone OTHER than you, because you still see yourself as the "effect of God", and God has been mis-identified as causing death.

So when you try to die, you are actually trying to prove that God is a murderer. That it is God’s will that you be dead. This is why in your death wish, you actually believe that God WANTS you dead because you sinned. Or rather, you are attempting to prove that GOD is the sinner and that He is sinning against your innocence. You lay down and "allow" his wrath to happen to you to attempt to prove that you are not the one who sinned against God, but that HE Is the one who is murderous. When you prove this through death, you are trying to say that you do not believe in death at all - that He is the one who has rejected you, abandoned you, and who wants to punish you.

This is so twisted and backwards. God could not possibly want you dead. When you believe in real sin, your own sin, you WILL believe that God is the sinner and that you are innocent. You WILL see that God is outside of you plotting to kill you. And you will experience yourself as though "cause" is outside of you acting against your will. God’s will could never be against your will, if YOUR will were not trying to be DIFFERENT to His. Your opposition to His Will is what makes it seem as though His Will is acting against yours.

You will see this played out in all your relationships, because ultimately, your ONLY relationship is with God. So those people you think are your enemies, that’s really your mis-perception of God. You are not recognizing God, and instead see IN Him a false God of death. The real God is love, Life, and would never want to attack you. The real God is never against your will, although you can be against His and think that you are at war.

Sin is not real. You. Did not sin. God is not your enemy.

In your whole mind, there is a split mind. It's kind of an artificial mind. It's made of illusions. It's a mental construct which blocks awareness by fooling you into thinking it is not all the same identity.

This split mind comprises two parts. One of the parts you are conscious of and you think is your entire self. You've identified with it.

The other part you are mostly unconscious of, having shut it out and pushed it out of awareness. You think that part is not yourself. You do not recognize it as you. And you project it onto/as 'others' to disown it.

The illusion is maintained so long as you are convinced that these two parts are separate, different, unrelated, and not one self. That means you fall for the illusion, the appearance, and the stories each has, that seems to suggest they're not `one`.

The best way to create that illusion is to set them against each other in a war of conflict, which makes them seem like enemies, or opposed to each other, as though they have absolutely nothing in common. This is a deception.

When you do not realize the two selves are part of one self, you are inside the illusion. You've bought into it. And you've identified with one part as your 'self'.

Awakening happens when you look more closely at the illusions which make it seem like these two selves are in fact separate.

Those illusions include any idea of victimhood or victimization, any idea of denial or blame or scapegoating, any irresponsibility or disowning of responsibility, any way in which you reject or judge or abandon yourself, etc. All forms of separation and attack. All of these attack ideas must be questioned.

What then happens is you realize that the 'other' that you thought was not you, IS a part of you. Anything you are experiencing IS chosen by you. And therefore, since you are the 'other' as well as the 'self', you have been doing all of these attacks to yourself. This is the key to salvation/awakening.

You have to get to where you can see that you are playing both sides of the experience. You are both the victim and the victimizer. You are both the attacker and the attacked. You are both the person running away and the person chasing.

And then you will see that both of these 'identities' both have a story. One of them (persona) has a sob-story about how it's just trying to be good and how the other (shadow) keeps attacking it. And the shadow has a story about how it's got nothing to do with the persona and wants to destroy its fake image. You need to look at both stories and realize, both stories are an illusion. The entire purpose of the notion that these two identities are 'separate' is to convince you that your Self - your identity - does not encompass both of them.

You are both of the parts of the split mind. Both of the false identities are within you. And this is where you have an aha moment of awakening. If both of these selves are within you, and if you are literally doing stuff to your 'self' ie you are making the shadow self do stuff to the persona self and vice versa, then you will realize that it is an ILLUSION that they are two separate identities. They are not separate selves. They are part of your ONE self.

Once your sense of self encompasses and is responsible for both of them, the illusion and story of each will be blown. You will see through it and recognize it is a deception. They're not really separate enemies after all, they're both you! And that means you see the sameness and oneness and unity of your identity. Your one self, rather than your dualistic selves. And overlooking (forgiving) these illusions of separation leads you directly to seeing your singularity, your wholeness. The oneness - singleness - of your identity. This is where you awaken.

You awake to a sense of self which encompasses all of the parts that you used to think were separate selves. And you therefore transcend all of those separate selves. You transcend the persona and the shadow. You see through the illusion that you were 'only' one small part of the contents of your mind - the illusion that you were the construct of a separate portion of mind (e.g. intellect). Seeing the oneness of the two becoming one, unifies you and reveals to you the true self.

You are whole, you are inclusive, you are unified, you are one self, you are not a split mind, you are not multiple personalities, you are not at war with your own self, you are not attacking yourself, you are singular, you are 'individual' not multiplicative, you are innocent and holy. Holiness means whole. Simply, awareness of this - experiencing it, is awakening. Letting go of separate selves and returning to one self.

At the BAFTA awards this year, the actor in the very good film "I swear", about a man with tourettes, won an award. It's definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it.

Later, there was an award being presented by two black men. While on stage, an audience member with tourettes shouted out a racial slur, using the "n word".

Now, some people have said that this is "unforgivable" because a person using a racial slur like this "under any circumstances" is intolerable and wrong. Indeed it's not ideal and something to perhaps apologise for.

But at the same time, we have to also remember that the person with tourettes doesn't have ANY control over their outburst. It's a brain condition that produces spontaneous eruptions of expression, which the person cannot stop.

So given that it erupted "involuntarily", the forgiving view should be with understanding and compassion, that it is not offensive because it was not intentional or controlled or deliberate. If people understood the tourettes condition they would be much more forgiving.

I thought it was interesting how this highlights the difference in perspectives of forgiveness vs unforgiveness. It's not about what happens, or what someone says, or the form that it takes. It's about how you look at it and how you use it.

A person could use the racial slur to attack themselves and thus believes they have been attacked by the other people. Or they could alternatively have a more forgiving attitude in which they recognize the disability or "call for love" in the other person and do not hold it against them, nor use it to hurt themselves.

We have to remember that if we see ourselves as attacked in an away, it is because of our USE OF what happens and what we make of it psychologically. And just because someone else might say something "potentially hurtful" it doesn't mean that we have to experience it that way, or that if we feel hurt it is "because of" what they said or did. We are hurt only if we choose to use it to hurt ourselves.

This is part of the secret of salvation, that no-matter who seems to be doing what to whom, who seems to be attacker or victimiser or victim, you are STILL doing it to yourself. Because that very same person who was upset about a tourettes person using the n-word, has within their capability the ability to forgive it and NOT see it as an attack, not use it to justify anger, not use it to hurt themselves, and to not give it any power over them.

But if they chose not to do that, they would instead attempt to accuse the tourettes person of a "sin", truly unforgivable, as though the cause of their own suffering. And this is the ego's victim consciousness. It is entirely up to each of us whether we will take full responsibility for everything we feel and experience or not, or whether we will hold other people accountable for "causing us" to suffer.

A person playing the victim role will see the mere "act" of the slur as an attack, and believe that it has direct causal power, and has placed within themselves a "hurt", which now justifies angry revenge. And this is the closed-minded view of the ego., which does not see that the victim is attacking themselves WITH what happens. This is the unforgiveness of false perception.

This is spiritual unconsciousness. It lacks empowerment and sees others as having power over them, wanting this to continue so that they can continue scapegoating and being a victim, to justify their anger. They could just as easily disregard the outburst as a forgivable mistake. Instead they see the physical act as "what it means", as though they are not contributing anything to its meaning at all.

The person who disregards it as nothing, and recognizes the full picture of why and how the event arose, sees no call for anything but forgiveness and love, and even laughter. How can immortal beings be attacked or offended by anything?

The Golden Rule states that whatever is true of one Son of God is true of another. Because all of God's children are perfect equals. This means that anything true of you is true of the entire sonship. You are created in the likeness of God and so what is true of God is true of you and all brothers and all creations. This rule, really a law, is always in effect regardless of how awake you are.

What this means is that in this world, when you believe you are guilty, you MUST also believe that everyone else is guilty. This rule is a LAW of God. It cannot be broken. But you can be deceived in believing it is not applying.

We talk a lot about projecting your stuff and then taking it back, as if to say, there is something confined to myself that I am ONLY doing to myself. We talk about being responsible for this self-attack, that all attack is self-made and we're not really attacking anyone else. We also talk about how I am the one who needs forgiveness and so on.

But there is something happening as a result of the Golden Rule. IF I attack myself, I AM attempting to also attack my brother. If I see myself as guilty, I MUST believe the whole sonship is guilty. If I find myself unworthy of love, I will believe everyone is unworthy of love. Whatever I see in my brother is a reflection of my own attitude about myself. Which means if I have attacked myself, I MUST also be attacking them.

This extends also to sickness, because while many believe that "only I am sick" or "the sickness is only in my body", as if separated off from others, the fact is that sickness is a two-sided affair. It arises because you accuse your brother of sin, which is an attack on him. Using the body to attack through, your body becomes sick. Your mind therefore HAS to believe that BOTH you and your brother are sick.

This also plays out on the level of relationship because when you are regarding your brother as being as holy as you are, you are in a holy relationship with them, seeing your own holiness in them. When you separate off, by ceasing to extend your mind to them, a gap forms in between you both, coming between you. It doesn't just separate you off from them, it also separates them off from you. It's a two-sided wall. What applies to you applies to them.

So what we have to realize is, while it's definitely beneficial to look at what we are doing "only to ourselves", we have to remember nothing ever really applies only to ourselves. Which means that if we are indeed in any kind of ego state, having any kind of guilt or sin belief, some aspect of that belief IS directed at our brothers. If we are attacking "only ourselves", we ALSO are attacking others.

This is part of the unhealed healer as well. If I have not received love, and therefore cannot give it, and therefore am unhealed, because I have guilt in me, I am going to have to see that guilt in everyone. And seeing it there, I will perhaps disassociate and think it's someone else's problem that I need to save them from. That blindness, that separation thought, where you think something applies to you and not them, or applies to them and not you, that is always ego. And there is temptation in the whole "it's all my own stuff" approach to not realize that it's not JUST about you as a "separate" mind.

Shifting blame from someone else back onto yourself does not heal it. It's a step in the right direction because it's sort of "coming from you", but WHERE are you? You think you are in a body, separated off from others. Assuming this is true, you will think your attitudes and your self attack are contained within the confines of your body/mind. That its inside you, not outside, and not in another. This is actually a false premise based on the belief that you fundamentally are a separated-off isolated mind-container.

Your mind is not really, ultimately, isolated to your body. That's part of the illusion. Your mind is shared with others, it is IN your brother, and it is everywhere. Your nature is to be an omnipresent spirit, like God. So when you are thinking in terms of, its mine, or its in me, or I am doing it only to myself, that still has isolation and separation in it. It doesn't mean that the problem is confined to the insides of your mind-body association.

It would actually be more accurate to say, the mind that is mine, which is united with my brothers and is everywhere and in all people, is temporarily believing that the entire sonship is under attack. I am temporarily coming between myself and everyone. My attack thoughts are against myself and them. Separation is coming between me and everyone. I am trying to apply unlove to the whole sonship to bring us all down together. My attack is upon the whole Kingdom. I am still thinking the same of everyone else that I think of myself.

So in this we start to realize, that while it's important I own what I'm doing to myself, I have to also realize that included in "what I'm doing" is actually an attempted attack on others as well. "You but accuse your brothers of your own sin" and "it can be but myself I crucify" are helpful in realizing that you are included in what's being attacked, and in fact that you ARE only really doing this to yourself (because your brother cannot be attacked because he's real). But as you crucify yourself, YOU DO attempt to crucify everyone.

This leads to the uncovering of the "second kind of scapegoating". Which is, the aspect of "what I am doing to others". Most often we are reacting to and trying to overcome "what they are doing to me". To blame them for attacking us. But let's say that this form of scapegoating is actually a disguise. It's a way to pretend that YOU are not doing anything TO THEM. That you are not the attacker. While yes, you are actually attacking only yourself, in truth, you ARE trying to attack everyone if you believe in sin. Including God.

And to project this and disown it is an attempt to cover this up and make out that someone else is the attacker and not you. To take back the projected sin means taking back the identification of WHO is doing the attacking, and this attacking is an "act" that comes out of someone and goes toward another. It's not just some lump of sin that sits there idly. It's not a commodity that you shuffle around or displace like "some guilt". We are either actively attacking others or believing they are actively attacking us.

So if we get honest, we're going to find out, that all our attack thoughts are kind of a form of murderousness, toward everything - me, my brothers, the world, and God. If I am projecting guilt in the first place, I am actually trying to attack. When I do not see the real world, I am attacking it. As Jesus says: "You attack the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot see it." and "God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. and "Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace."

So if you look at what sin is all about, it basically is "attack" or attempted attack. Attack thoughts. Judgement. The attempt to separate, push away, deny, reject, unlove, to cause irreversible damage to something in an effort to make it go away, to destroy it. It's part of the ego's murderous thought system. "What is not love is murder" says the same thing. And actually makes it very clear. If we are not being loving, which means to ourselves AND others, per the Golden Rule, we ARE attempting to be murderous towards ourselves AND others.

This is uncomfortable to look at because it reveals that we cannot have ego beliefs in "self attack" going on in our minds WITHOUT believing they also apply to everyone else. Whatever I see in myself I will see in everyone. As I enter into any sin or guilt, I am trying to separate, which means I am attacking both myself and others. As an unhealed healer, I will attempt to heal by attacking, by trying to give what I do not have, and by therefore giving attack as a remedy. And of course this cannot heal. Those who are not healed cannot heal.

So we have to get in touch with this. Look at it. What I'm doing to myself, I am trying to also do to others. What I think applies to me, I also think applies to everyone. Even if in my state of denial and unconsciousness, I am not aware that I think this. Because the ego's states of mind are always an imbalance where you think it applies to me not them, or them not me. That's part of the disassociation, which is the separation idea.

The ego is the denial of the Golden Rule, but denial does not overthrow the law. The law still applies at all times even as the ego does its thing. Everything always applies to everyone. When I think it does not apply to me, it does, but this also doesn't mean that because it applies to me, it doesn't apply to others. Ego is always the temptation to believe something is special or true of me that isn't applying to everyone. And "special forgiveness" of "only myself" is not forgiveness of the sonship.

Transitioning from ego thinking to Holy Spirit thinking entails shifting from the whole "me vs them" to "all of us". Wrong mindedness means I think things do not apply to everyone equally. Right mindedness means I recognize everything applies equally to everyone. So to get to right mindedness I'm going to have to admit along the way that I am actually trying to attack BOTH myself and others. What I'm trying to do to them I am doing to myself. We BOTH need forgiveness. We BOTH need to be recognized as innocent. And I need to learn to stop attacking BOTH of us.

Thinking that you only attack yourself can be a trap. It can disguise and hide the fact that you also think poorly of others. Or that you are secretly attacking them while trying to save them. It can cover up the fact that if you are attacking at all, you are also attacking everyone. Yet recognizing you are attacking everyone can also be a trap, because it can induce more guilt. You shouldn't be trying to "not attack" on the basis that you would feel guilty for doing so. And you don't need to.

All we really need is awareness. In awareness, you know that you are in your brother. There is an automatic vested interest in not attacking them, IF you are aware that you literally cannot do it without attacking yourself. It's the unawareness that you are included in the attack that makes you believe murder is justified and that you can get away with it without experiencing any effects. If you were aware of and not in denial of the Golden Rule, it would leave absolutely no room for attack of any kind, because to attack when you know it's yourself you attack would be insane.

If I am believing in attack I will attack myself and all of creation.

If I am only loving I will love myself and all of creation.

Father let me not attack myself or my brothers today and let us all be joined in complete holiness and unified will that you may resurrect us into your light and heal the entire sonship as one.

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."

If you dream that an animal is attacking you, you can hardly blame the animal for attacking you. If you believe it is not you that's making the animal attack you, then you might believe the animal itself its attacking you with a mind or motivation of its own. And then you will be scared it and believe you are able to suffer from the attack. But if you remember that the entire performance is coming from your mind as the dreamer of the dream, then recognize not only that it's really you attacking yourself, but also that you can't be hurt by a mere dream.

This places you outside the dream as the dreamer of the dream, and then you do not confuse the dream for something happening to you from some other source. If you will simply recognize what you are doing, you can no longer be lost in the dream or at the effect of it. You'd have absolutely reaction to it at all if you remembered you were the one making it happen. It would be foolish then blame the dream for doing anything, knowing that you're the one doing it. And then you can simply stop dreaming and be free of it.

What if the world - a world of dreams - is only doing what you are dreaming that it does? And what if you are the mind making the world turn and the animals move and the things happen? And what if anything that happens or seems to happen to you, is the result of you putting it there to do it? And what if you merely need to be aware of dreaming in order to recognize this is your dream of self attack? And by remembering you are the dreamer you can no longer blame the world for causing anything, knowing that you are the cause of everything.

And then the world has no power over you, because you are making the world according to your will. It can have no affect on you or upset you or disturb you in any way or bring oppression or make you sick or dead or anything at all. Because being the dreamer of the dream you are its sole cause and are beyond what the dream is. You are no longer confused with what the dream is, or thinking you are a figure in the dream as a dream body, or believing that you can be hurt by something that is merely an effect of your dreaming. When you decide to stop dreaming of being hurt you will simply awaken and dream no more.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes.

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."

Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees NO differences where none exist, and He will teach you how each one is CAUSED. None has a DIFFERENT cause from all the rest, and ALL of them are easily undone by but a SINGLE lesson truly learned. Salvation is a secret you have kept but from yourself. The universe proclaims it so. But, to its witnesses, you pay no heed at all. For they attest the thing you do not WANT to know. They seem to keep it secret FROM you. Yet you need but learn you choose but NOT to listen, NOT to see.

How differently will you perceive the world, when this is recognized! When you forgive the world YOUR guilt, YOU will be free of it. Its innocence does NOT demand your guilt, nor does your guiltlessness rest on ITS sins. This is the obvious, a secret kept from no-one but yourself. And it is this that has maintained you SEPARATE from the world, and kept your brother SEPARATE from you. Now need you but to learn that BOTH of you are innocent OR guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that you be UNLIKE each other; that they BOTH be true. This is the only secret yet to learn. And it will be NO secret you are healed."

One thing people in the world don't realize, is that when you make one part of the world 'special', it HAS to make other parts of the world rejected.

So if I say, I really love Mac computers, it tends to make me feel that I dislike PC's. Or if I say, I like sporty-looking cars, it tends to make me believe that other cars are 'uglier'. Or if I say, I like the summer, it tends to make me feel antagonistic toward winter.

We do this every day, but we just don't really realize how we are actually *creating* the enemies that we despise, indirectly, by elevating various other things to special/hero/idol-worshipped status.

If I worship an idol and put something on a pedestal and believe it is my savior, that's all well and good but I don't realize that simultaneously I've created a nemesis somewhere else. It may not even seem to be in my conscious awareness, but I can't MAKE something an idol without using a tool of attack on everything the idol is not.

So people are going around for example trying to be good, trying to people please, trying to have the right behavior, trying to choose the right political candidate, trying to be in love with a special something, trying to save a special group of individuals, trying to stand up for some kind of social justice, or trying to eat the right foods etc. And what does this do?

What happens in the mind when we say "only this part of the world is acceptable?". We reject the rest of it, which is an act of denial, which is an attack, which throws all kinds of darkness and secret hate onto the 'rest' of the world. And since this is all really about the MIND, it basically creates an unconscious mind filled with everything we don't want.

And then this unconscious mind turns around and projects into the world and manifests as enemies, examples of what we hate, examples of the kind of people we think are sinners, examples of behaviors and actions that we consider not allowed, etc. And the more we try to really intensely focus on what is 'right', we inadvertently keep CREATING what is 'wrong' and reinforcing it.

Then all this extra wrong stuff shows up in the world and we hate it more and try to separate from it more, which is secretly an ego ploy to reinforce and keep it. We go on our crusade and blow our trumpet in defense of 'all that is good' which is exactly what actually creates and manifests 'all that is bad'.

If we're not being neutral, if we're attached to outcomes, it we're judging something as right or wrong, if we're invested in seeing a certain thing be kept while other things are destroyed, we just keep creating a greater TENSION between 'right and wrong' rather than actually undoing what's wrong. And this tension grows the more we try to separate from what's 'wrong', because the pursuit of what's 'right' ISN'T a pursuit of the truth - its a pursuit of one-sidedness and is a spiritualizing of the world.

So everyone's on this ego rollercoaster of chasing after what they have decided means 'right' and 'correct' and 'not sinful' and not realizing that this is directly and explicitly creating even more of the stuff they are trying to get away from. Because all that they're really doing is trying to escape from, deny, and shut out, everything they consider bad. You can't have a happy life by being in FUCKING DENIAL!

The world is neutral. It's we who give it all the meaning it has and label it with all our made-up labels of 'oh that's ok' and 'oh thats not ok'. And this constant effort to separate out the ok from the not-ok is just more ego separation which leads to war, hate, anger, and attack. It does not WORK. And it does not lead to progress. If you want the kind of progress where you create a world where everything is only 'good' and nothing 'bad' happens, you will never attain it, because the very desire to do so is a desire to DENY that 'bad' exists and therefore create it. And so the world is spinning its wheels. Isn't it horrifying to realize that YOU are creating the very enemies that you hate the most, and that you will keep doing so while you keep trying to reject a part of yourself?

Have you ever had a dream at night where you're being chased by someone and you're running away in fear and you just can't seem to get away, and the more you run away or fight with the person the stronger and more adamant they seem to become? This is exactly this dynamic, because the person chasing you is YOURSELF who is only appearing as an attacker because you keep rejecting yourself. In your dreams, when you stop running, and you surrender, and you do what the ego would say is 'letting yourself be caught', the person stops chasing you, and they stop attacking you, and all of a sudden you are friends. How about that?

We have to become able to ACCEPT and ALLOW everything. Not split it out and say one part is ok and one part isn't. This is true equality. This is a value worth pursuing. Unconditional love, not conditional love. Not a love that's only given to friends and not enemies. Not a love that, in being given only to friends, turns everyone else INTO an enemy, for the sake of being able to reject them further.

What would Jesus do? He would overlook all sin and recognize the innocence and equality of everyone.

Ok.. stepping off the righteous soap-box for now.

Everyone is free. Everyone is entirely given total permission to be free by God. That means that even if you choose to deny God, you are free to do so. Even if you want to try to be evil, you are free to do so. Even if you want to hate and attack and murder and destroy, you are technically free to do so.

That doesn't mean that there won't be consequences that happen as a result of what you choose, however. If you hate you will be hating yourself, and cannot love yourself while you hate. If you attack and murder you are in effect attempting to kill yourself, and you will feel guilty and alone as a result, not to mention society's typical punishments.

But that doesn't meant you are not free if you so choose. God doesn't coerce. He does will your happiness and sanity but it's still up to you if you want to try to be insane and choose things which produce suffering. No i'm not condoning that anyone does anything harmful whatsoever, I'm just saying that you have the freedom.

If someone is being hateful and you start trying to resist their hate, you are actually trying to be affected by it. If you let them be hateful you will feel a sense of relief that you are not as affected by it. You are choosing whether or not you are affected by it. If you are not affected by it then you can feel at peace even as someone tries to hate, because it really is up to your own freedom as to what you experience.

It isn't therefore necessary to try to control or resist or stop people from being hateful or mean or vicious, because if you say that you need them to stop then you're also saying that your peace and happiness depend on their choice. And that means you're trying to deny your own freedom. And then you're trying to deny them their freedom, to imprison them, in order to control reality and try to make things be the way you want them.

You have no real right to control the free will of others, to imprison them for anything they think they do, to stop them or prevent them or resist them or attack them in the name of love. Everyone is always free, even what people call criminals or evil or abusers or enemies. This isn't necessarily a popular view but it's reality.

Jesus tells us in ACIM that we should let the people in the world be as vicious as they may, because the only way that we would be affected by that viciousness would by be forgetting that you had the freedom to dream the dream. If you are able to choose not to be affected, because you are free, and immortal, then obviously it's not really the responsibility of anyone else to "behave correctly" to try to make your world right.

You don't need, and shouldn't need, anyone else to change in order for you to be happy and at peace, otherwise your peace depends on them and now you are seeking outside yourself for salvation. Not to mention that you are shifting responsibility outside of yourself and placing the weight of guilt into the hands of others. Wanting the haters to stop hating is a form of scapegoating, and the projection of justified anger as guilt.

You don't need people to stop hating you, or to acknowledge you, or to recognize you, or to treat you well. You need to claim your immortality and invulnerability and stop using people to attack yourself. They have no power over you that you don't give away to them yourself. When you give no power to the illusion to cause you it has no effect on you. Only you can attack yourself, only you can make yourself suffer, and only you can really hate yourself. Let the world spin, let the haters hate, and let them have their madness. It's not yours.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

I'm having a really hard time trying to put a simple truth into words. So... for now, an analogy...

If it's dark and there seems to be a scary shape behind the door, you might think there is a monster lurking.

You turn on the light and realize it's just some clothes hanging there.

This is the same as the transition from believing that the ego is real, to recognizing it was just a harmless illusion.

It simply was not true that it was a real monster.

You did not need to do anything to the clothing in order to make it not be a monster.

All you needed to do, was switch on the light.

Because it never WAS a real monster to begin with!

Light is ALL that you need in order to be awake to the truth and free of the ego. That's all. Absolutely nothing else.

When there is light, you can see correctly. You can see everything as it is, without having to modify the scene at all.

You did not need to defend yourself against the monster. And you did not need to fight it off once the light was turned on, even though you might've been afraid that turning on the light would prove that the monster is real ;-)

All you had to do was turn on the light so that you could see correctly. So that you could have True Perception. Vision.

The light itself shows you, by comparison to the light, that what you thought was a real monster, was just an illusion. There wasn't anything real there at all.

It is this way with the ego and the entire world. It is an illusion that isn't real. You think there are real monsters and real tragedies and real death. That's because you are not seeing clearly. You are in darkness. You just need more light.

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

"You are only afraid of darkness because you believe it has the ability to hide the truth." - ACIM

So you actually don't need to defend yourself against the ego, or against illusions, or against attack, or against death. You ONLY need to be in the light, and all of those things will be very obviously shown to be NOT what you thought they were.

You will see that death was just a weird illusion. Attack was not really happening. Sin wasn't true of anyone. There wasn't any real suffering. And even what you thought was a "real ego" was nothing more than an illusion of an ego existing. There WASN'T a real ego at all, it was just smoke and mirrors looking like one!

It was all just a trick that your mind played on you because you were in the DARK and could not see the whole scene properly.

Taking vision out of context and focusing on only parts of the scene, unable to see the whole (the whole is God), produces insane fears that objects are really monsters, that inanimate objects are out to get you, and that you are not safe.

Turn the light on!

Light is all you need. God is all you need. Be in God and everything else will become clear and obvious as day. There is no ego, there is no death. They existed as hallucinations in the dark while you didn't have enough light to see what was REALLY going on.

"Now the light has come." - ACIM

"Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and your way will be made straight" - ie, be in the light, and you will KNOW that there IS nothing that can ever be against you. There IS no real enemy, no real attacker, no real war, no real sin, no real sickness, and no real death.

SURPRISE! It was all a wierd dream trip you had while you could not see the big picture, conclusions you came to that were false, and made-up explanations for things you only had partial evidence for.

This is awakening. Waking up to the awareness (light) which allows you to SEE (vision) the truth (God - the whole picture), which shows you that you're just hanging around in an illusory room that isn't really anything at all. You thought it was a scary place, it's NOTHING!

You will just laugh when you realize all that fear and pretend suffering didn't happen at all, and all that's left is you hanging out with God in love forever! Perfectly at peace, perfectly happy, perfectly safe :-)

In this world, everything which is held to be most true and cherished is actually the most false, fake thing imaginable.

It will be considered highly controversial and even insensitive and deranged to suggest, for example, that every victim wants to suffer. That even victim is an attacker, attempting to prove that others are sinful and who are using suffering as a way to condemn everyone else.

It would also be considered controversial to say that everyone who is sick is actually attacking everyone else with sickness and is using it to prove that others are sinful. That every sickness is a lie, and every sickness is an attempt to hurt other people.

It will especially be considered controversial to say that death is always chosen, that people who die apparently through absolutely no choice of their own, really really really wanted to be dead, want to destroy everyone else, and want God to be dead as well. How about that?

How about the fact that every victim is a victimizer who attacks others with their mind, or that people who are suffering the most are the most attacking of others? Or that people who complain are professional attackers? Or that people in fear and victimhood are the most toxic?

Those who are in the illusory position of being the LEAST likely to be thought of as vicious or a victimizer or the cause of anything bad whatsoever, are those who actually are the MOST murderous and the most "evil".

How about innocent babies who are victimized, surely they didn't come here to deny their unconscious guilt and portray themselves as completely innocent in order for nobody to ever suspect they are the one who attacked God?

The world would find these truths to be absolutely outrageous, even offensive, and downright upsetting to the average ego mind. People will react with ego defensiveness and denial and even hatred. You can lose friends and family over it.

We live in a world of tremendous illusion, a world filled with horrifying lies and PROFOUND pretense that those to whom bad things happen are the least likely to be the cause of those things happening. It is absolutely backwards to the truth of God. This is why the truth is so incredibly radical and often so difficult to accept.

What about people who are afraid, who are actually making an attempt to attack others and find them to be the cause of fear, so that they can have a great opportunity to justify anger and retaliation and murder?

What about people who seem to march for freedom and carry banners and go up again inhumane treatment and animal rights, who make suffering real and want to keep it in order to accuse others of being wrong, so that they will be assuaged of their hidden crime of killing God?

Or those who implement security measures in order to "protect freedom", while simultaneously implementing imprisonment on a a mass scale? Or people who create "antivirus" software who actively focus on and amplify the need to become a better hacker thus producing even more vicious viruses? Or how about all the so-called "treatments" that are applied through medicine and pharmacies which allegedly help but end up with worse side effects and increase the overall death rate because they don't really work?

Every thought and belief and value that your ego holds as truth and important is going to be completely overturned by the Real Truth of God, which is going to rub this world completely the wrong way. It goes entirely against the grain. It is not welcome here. And as you side with it, you may not be welcome here either.

Do you think Jesus had a lot of support? He really did not. People weren't ready or willing, not even most of the disciples. Their egos did not and could not accept the truth.

You might find yourself also at odds with what other people interpret the truth to be, and will constantly have to be pulling back from your ego allegiances in order to be true to yourself and true to the consistency of the Truth that is emerging in your mind. Eventually you may seem to stand alone against the entire world, with few willing to listen to anything you say. You are not likely to be popular with the ego mind's of this world.

But would you rather be ego, or be happy?

Some time ago, I did not even remotely recognize that I was choosing to be a victim. If I was afraid, attacked, threatened, hurt in any way, I would see it as the other person was entirely responsible.

Over time, as I've tried to apply forgiveness principles and the secret of salvation, taking responsibility for what I'm doing to myself and for choosing all feelings, my victimhood role has changed in appearance.

Now I see that when I "go into victimhood", this entails me deliberately trying to position myself as "at the effect" of others, trying to pull off a stunt of projection and blame, weakening myself, choosing to be upset, and generally being the cause of what I'm feeling.

As I practice this more and more, becoming "victimy" is recognized much more clearly as me descending into a funky state of "being affected", where I'm attacking myself and trying to pass it off as someone else's fault. I start to notice attacks coming out of me in an attempt to hurl it towards someone else. And I start to feel the typical feelings of fear and hurt that accompany this "role-play".

But I more quickly catch myself and take responsibility, to admit this stress and upset and suffering that I'm experiencing is solely because I've slipped down the slope into dishonesty, into projecting and blaming and trying to force myself to be affected by something. It's a way that I use other people to try to hurt myself. And I can no longer wholly accuse them of being the reason why I feel this way.

So the challenge now seems easier, to get myself out of this role and to stop "playing the victim", in recognition that I not only have the power of decision and responsibility to do so, I can do so and, when I do, no-one else can stop me doing so. It's up to me to decide that I want to feel better and to change my mind so that I do. This is especially much easier once you can see clearly and squarely that it's you doing this to yourself when trying to put forth the "lie" that it's not.

I now recognize much more clearly the component of self-caused suffering mixed in with what used to appear to be just the effects of attack. The unconsciousness of believing it was always coming from someone else is lifting. It's getting to the point where even if I do try to attack, project, hurt or blame, I simultaneously am aware of feeling that I am hurting myself, attacking myself, and am fully included in all the suffering I'm trying to get rid of.

I am seeing that this position of victim simply does not work, and I cannot escape what's happening inside my mind because "ideas leave not their source" even when I'm split minded and believing it's someone else who did this. I have "re-framed" the lie of fear enough to recognize that its entirely bullshit to claim I am afraid "because of" anyone or anything. In my fear is simply a dishonest attempt on my own part to disguise myself and portray myself as suffering, to try to gain the "reward" of passing off causation onto someone else through an accusation of sin.

As you become clearer and more recognizing exactly what it is you are doing, in your mind and attitude and choosing, versus what you thought you were doing when it was on auto-pilot, it simply becomes very obvious that you cannot move into egotism without feeling like shit, and you cannot escape the consequences of your choosing, nor can you blame without being blamed, or try to make suffer without suffering yourself.

The next step then is of course, in admitting to this charade, and recognizing its utter futility, simply stopping this "behavior" and lifting out of it, now that you "know better" and cannot pretend to hide from the simply truth that "you cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself." I am ceasing to play the role of victim and to instead step back into the shoes of Christ, personally empowered and stronger in the light of truth.

The victim role is not what it appears to be. It's not even remotely to do with what other people are causing or doing to you. It's entirely a fake postulating of yourself in trying to pull of a representation of you as "a sick and suffering you", so that you get the payoff of trying to blame someone else for it. Always always always you are doing it to yourself, and being in DENIAL of this fact is really the only problem.

Once you admit to it enough you can no longer put the cat back in the bag. And it's then impossible to even try to attack others when you're aware that doing so makes you hurt. If they are to suffer, you will suffer. The only way out is to stop hurting yourself. And when you choose your immortality and invulnerability, nothing can ever hurt you again.

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

Besides projecting your guilt onto others, you also project your WILL and your POWER.

You take a chunk of your own power, which is tied to your will, and you give it to someone else. As you shift ownership of the guilt into someone else's hands, you are not just handing over guilt but also "who is the cause" of the guilt. That causality, that power to cause, is your own will. So you simultaneously hand over your own will to the other person.

Then the other person now looks like they have an extra amount of willpower - an "alien will", a separate will. It seems like this will has power to do stuff, sure. But the problem is you now perceive that this will is separated from your own will and that it has power over or against what is left of your will. A split mind has a split will in conflict with itself.

This makes sense, because really you can only do anything to yourself, so YOUR OWN WILL that you put into the other person DOES seem to have the power to do something to you. IF it were really the will that belonged to someone else, it would NOT have the power to do anything to you.

So literally you are then acting against yourself, through someone else, using your own will as your own attacker. So even when you are victimized, it's still you doing it to yourself. Nobody ever does anything to you.

By disowning your will and handing it over, you strip yourself of seeming power, and become weakened or powerless. You have to do that because you can't see yourself as a victim if you are powerful. Nothing can happen to you but by your own will, so you literally have to lay down your own power and 'pretend' that you are weak, vulnerable, at-the-effect of the dream, and susceptible to being easily influenced. None of that is possible for those who are powerful, so you have to disown your power to do so. And since nothing happens without your consent, and BY your own will, you have to GIVE your own will to someone else in order for them to seem to use will against you. Otherwise they have no power over you.

You can't, however, get rid of power. Instead you displace it onto the people that you're projecting the guilt onto. You give it to them. And it is by giving them power over you, at least in your imagination, that you literally give them the 'power to do something to you'. They don't really have this power because it's really just your own will that you are afraid will attack you. But while you project and hallucinate that it is IN someone else, you associate it WITH someone else so that you can disassociate from your guilt, so now you think it is NOT your will that you see out there.

So really you are just afraid of your own will that you projected onto someone else, staring you back in the face and threatening to attack you. You think it's that person attacking you, but its really you. And you're afraid of the sense of power that they have, particularly the more you give it away and the weaker and more vulnerable you see yourself. They seem to loom large over you like there is nothing you can do and nowhere you can go to be safe from it. But it's really YOUR POWER that you're afraid of - the projected power that you need to reclaim.

So on the one hand, taking back that guilt and dropping your false innocence and letting go of victimhood seems like something you don't want to do, especially because it means you would have to own up to being guilty. But on the other hand, when you do take it back you are ALSO TAKING BACK YOUR POWER. You are literally taking back your own will, that you lost and displaced. The other person does not HAVE any power over you and the idea of an alien will was entirely an illusion. Nothing's stopping you from taking your power back. You just have to recognize IT IS YOURS and it is not theirs, because you gave it to them (or tried to).

So now you take back your guilt but also you take back your power, take back your will, and this renders you much less able to be victimized, or to believe that you are victimizable. Your sense of vulnerability will reduce and you will feel 'stronger' and more confident about being able to stand your ground. You won't NEED to stand your ground 'against' the oppressive others, however, because by taking your power back AWAY from them, they now are not artificially empowered and you no longer PERCEIVE that they have 'extra power' to do something to you. And so you are not threatened. And so you can now feel safe.

You are safe when you are in your own power. You are safe when you do not give your own will to other people. You are safe when you do not choose to be a victim. You are safe when there is nothing to be afraid of because the only thing you were afraid of was YOUR OWN WILL. You are only afraid of it when you disown it, and when you reclaim it you are EMPOWERED.

Then, when you take your guilt and you take it to Holy Spirit to let Him decide if you are innocent, and you ACCEPT that you are innocent, you will be even MORE empowered because you won't be weakened by guilt. Innocence needs no defense. True innocence is powerful.

"I am not weak but strong."

"I am not afraid but all powerful."

-ACIM

When your sense of identity has become confused with the ego or body, you see it as your SELF. You associate your existence with it as though it is you.

In order to then preserve your "own life", you will defend the thing you are identified with because you think it is really you. When it is threatened, you are threatened. You will therefore seek to maintain and preserve IT at all costs.

When the truth comes along to reveal that you are not the ego or body, your ego-identified self WILL perceive it as a threat. It’s a threat because IF the truth is true, it proves that the ego is not real. If YOU are the ego, that means YOU are not true and you don’t really exist.

What could seem more threatening than this implication that "you are going to be undone", or "your life" is going to end because what you ARE is being attacked by the truth?

In the name of protecting what you THINK is your life - your self, you will DEFEND your "self". Or at least, you think you are. You are defending the ego because you think it is your self, not recognizing it as not you, because you don’t recognize who you really are.

To defend yourself AS the ego, you will USE ego methods to protect yourself. The ego has only one tool - separation, which is the same thing as denial. In the name of what you THINK is protecting your SELF, you will implement MORE separation to try to put safe distance between you and the truth.

When you emphasize more separation, you split your mind, increase mental illness, and foster sickness in the body. This is unavoidable. Choosing to withdraw from truth is choosing to withdraw from life and health and wholeness. The defense that SEEMS like it is there to PROTECT you and save your life, with the purpose of self-preservation, is actually HURTING you. It makes you sick.

The ego is insane and every guidance it gives is a lie that does exactly the opposite to what it claims. It claimed that you protecting it (you) would make you safe from attack. Instead, it attacked you and now you are sick and worse off. The signs and symptoms of sickness start to show up in the body as well. You tried to protect yourself and you were attacked ("if I defend myself I am attacked").

In this state, you are WILLING TO TOLERATE SICKNESS and KEEP IT because, to your ego-body-identified self, the purpose of the sickness is to KEEP YOU SAFE. While you perceive that you NEED this defense, to keep your "self" safe from the truth, you will NOT be willing to drop the sickness. To do so would make you LESS safe and expose you to the perceived attacker. No-one in their right mind would want to become more vulnerable to attack, so it seems a reasonable to maintain and increase the sickness.

Even though the sickness is intolerable, and suffering is awful, you unconsciously chose it on purpose. Consciously now, because you are in denial and implemented denial in order to make the threat go away, you have blocked awareness of the choice you made.

You therefore don’t see that you did it to yourself. You then will see the symptoms of sickness as unchosen, unwanted, undesired and unacceptable. You will seek externally for possible "causes" trying to explain what caused the sickness to show up. It was you.

The secret to salvation is that you did this to yourself. The sickness is protecting you from God. The more you can make the body sick, the more pain it is in, the more you will focus on the body. You withdraw and contract yourself towards it, hugging it tightly in pain, because doing so reinforces your sense that you ARE the ego body. The more identified with the body you are, the more you are trying to make your ego-self strong. The more tightly you cling to it, the sicker it becomes.

The body is the primary place where you escape from God’s wrath, and yet escaping to it attacks it. An increase in confinement and isolation and body-identification seems to prevent God from stealing your identity away - your self, which you are trying to protect. But the more you BIND yourself to the body in suffering, the sicker you become. You simultaneously believe you are actually becoming SAFER from God, but are horrified that you also are in a state of suffering. The sickness seems to prove that the truth is attacking you, and that you do not want it.

The ONLY problem here is a mistaken sense of identity. If we did not believe we are the ego or the body, we would not perceive our SELF as under threat from the truth. We would have no reason to defend ourselves because we would be strong and truly safe. And recognizing ourselves as immortal we transcend the NEED for sickness. Without a purpose of protection, sickness HAS no purpose, and not perceiving a purpose in it, you will withdraw your belief in it. "Illusions recognized must disappear". Sickness will vanish.

Atonement cures because it removes the perceived NEED for the sickness. Accepting atonement is a willing acceptance of the truth without resistance or fear. In that willingness there is no more identification with ego or body. Nothing to defend, nothing under attack, nothing real can be threatened. In this is the TRUE escape from all sickness and death forever. Atonement is the resurrection of God’s Son to eternal life.

Jesus is telling us in ACIM to do the same thing he did in his resurrection. That is, if someone comes along and kills your body, YOU RESURRECT IT.

This means, no matter what anyone does, no matter how hurt or sick, no matter the effect of sin, you MUST resurrect the body to prove that you CANNOT BE HURT. And you should be doing this ALL THE TIME, to guarantee the body's health and restore its condition regardless of what anyone tries to do, to PROVE that you do not believe in sin.

This in fact is the true meaning of "turning the other cheek". You will literally be willing to allow anyone to do anything to you including "hitting you again", in the recognition that you will NOT be hurt by it, will HEAL the body, and will PROVE to him that you have power OVER the body. Your demonstration that you ARE NOT HURT PHYSICALLY, teaches him his innocence.

THIS is what real forgiveness means. Forgiveness is not real if it does not heal the body. It is not real if the body is still testifying to your brother's sins. It is not real if you have not forgiven AND UNDONE THROUGH ATONEMENT the effects of sin in the body.

Jesus literally meant that if someone hurts you, you should turn your cheek and invite him to DO IT AGAIN. Because you will be able to prove THROUGH MIRACLES that it has no effect on you or your body. This only makes sense given that you CAN perform miracles to undo physical damage. And because HE COULD, this is why he is teaching us to do the same.

Jesus had the power to NOT BE AFFECTED. Such profound confidence and fearlessness. That he would "allow" crucifixion because HE KNEW that what he really was could not be hurt, and that HE COULD DEMONSTRATE this by resurrecting and healing the body.

---

"You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. ***Show him that he cannot hurt you*** and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of "turning the other cheek."

---

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. ****IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt****, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.

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

---

THIS also directly ties into the secret of salvation. Jesus tells us that we'd be willing to allow people to be AS VICIOUS AS THEY MAY, that it can HAVE NO EFFECT ON YOU. This will set you free from suffering in ANY FORM. Thus will enable you to UNDO ALL FORMS OF ATTACK and demonstrate that you can repair the body just as easily as it can be hurt by someone.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

--

Thank about Jesus, totally aware that he cannot be hurt by anything, totally aware he is not a body, able to resurrect bodies, able to heal the sick and raise the dead, able to cancel all effect of sin and attack on him. Even DEATH was not able to be sustained and he re-manifested a complete human body just to prove that he had power OVER all suffering. No-one could do anything to him. They could seem to attack his body but he could simply override it. He had supreme confidence and fearlessness. Imagine how safe you would feel if you were in touch with this power of God, this supernatural protection, ABLE to work miracles to undo anything that happens. You would laugh in the face of any threat or danger.

What Jesus DID in "the resurrection" he was ALREADY practically doing prior to the crucifixion. He had already got himself to the point of being able to reverse death and sickness. He could barely be harmed. He could've undone any illness. And when the crucifixion happened which was him ALLOWING an "outrageous extreme assault" to occur, he knew that he would resurrect from it and prove that it had no power over him. He must've been laughing inside at the preposterous idea that he would have to suffer forever more or be caused to "stay dead" at the hands of some foolish attackers.

And so similarly we are asked to demonstrate resurrection principles HERE AND NOW, in the world, as teachers of God, proving that we are under no laws but God's!

"You're doing this undo yourself."? No way!!!

The ego objects to the secret of salvation. "I CAN'T be doing this to myself! There's no way I'm causing or choosing this! I don't want this, I didn't ask for this, I didn't do anything to make this happen."

Of course the ego thinks this because this IS the defense that is covering up the awareness that you are all powerful. That you chose and caused.

See, ego equates responsibility with guilt and it has absolutely no notion that you can be responsible WITHOUT being guilty. It sees responsibility as "where the blame lies", who is guilty, who sinned, who did it.

It doesn't WANT to be open to the idea that you could take responsibility and be INNOCENT. And so it has a lot of defences and denials and resistance to this idea.

When you start taking responsibility the ego is going to come in and say that you are guilty because of this. So you're going to have to learn to separate out the responsibility from the accusation.

It can really challenge you to be willing to consider that you might actually be choosing what you are experiencing. It means you're going to have to let everyone off the hook and not hate them. It means you can't be a victim, you can't be unfairly treated, you can't be being misrepresented or not heard or accused.

The ego sees taking responsibility as on par with admitting to a crime that's going to send you to prison. It does not want to do it. It sees confession of truth as totally against your best interests. It's like admitting to being a guilty sinner, tapping into your deepest hidden hurts and sense of regret and guilt and shame.

Who wants to admit to being the cause of something awful, or some suffering, or something unpleasant even? But this is what we're going to have to do. The ego has been judge and jury and has decided that the only way you can have the power to do anything is by having the power to be a guilty suffering attacker.

This is why it's a bit challenging, admitting to the truth. You suspect that you sinned, you suspect you're guilty, you don't even want to look at it in case it's true. Or it seemed true when you last looked at it, so you hid from it and vowed to keep it hidden.

But the truth is that you cannot suffer unless you choose to do so. And that's easy to say but a lot harder to totally own. It means you're going to have to look at and question how you might have actually done this. How you chose. The power of your decision. How you decided and the purpose you were trying to serve in your deciding. Why you wanted to suffer. Why you wanted sickness. Why you wanted pain and misery.

Probably you'll feel that the reason for this self-attack was some kind of horrible sin that you committed long ago, maybe an ancient sin, you know, like trying to kill God? Which you believe is true. So you're going to have to confront that at some point to find a path through so that you can get to where you are responsible without the guilt. Where responsibility can mean a verdict of freedom.

We are quite averse to admitting to what we think we've done because we don't want to. And we've become used to projecting it rather than owning it, because owning it feels like shit. But we are not being asked to own up to something terrible that we did, we're being asked to own up to having NOT DONE ANYTHING.

But the road to freedom requires the total acceptance of total responsibility. Without ANY sin or guilt entering into it. When responsibility is polished clean of all guilt, it simply means you are still as God created you, pure and clean, innocent and sinless. And cause for celebration.

"Loudly the ego tells you NOT to look inward, for if you do, your eyes will light on sin, and God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do NOT look. Yet this is NOT the ego's hidden fear, nor YOURS who serve it. Loudly indeed the ego claims it IS. TOO loudly and TOO often. For underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is NOT certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet ANOTHER fear, and one which makes the ego tremble. What if you looked within, and saw NO sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego NEVER asks. And you who ask it now ARE "threatening" the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to PRETEND it is your friend."

Sometimes it *seems* as if something happens to us that we did not choose. Let's say, something physical in the world comes along and hurts your body. Maybe its a car crash. Maybe someone is having a bad day and spills hot coffee on your body. Whatever it is, the question arises, did *I* cause this to happen? Am I a victim?

If ever the answer is that I DID NOT choose it, what are the implications? It means that there must be something that has power over me, I must be a victim, I must have no hope for a cure, I must be vulnerable to external attack, and I must be capable of being made to suffer against my will. This whole belief is especially wrapped up in sickness and death, via perceived external or bodily causes.

There is also the fact that we are co-dreaming this world with others, and that means some other brother, not in his right mind, might elect of his own free will to attack your body. Is this also asked for? Did I CHOOSE to be attacked? Have I harmed myself or used my brother's body in some way, perhaps in agreement with him, a mutual attack? Surely if I did not participate in its choosing, HE is the sinner, and my victimhood and proof of attack in my body accuses him. "Sick bodies are accusers." "Brother at your hand I die."

Jesus says this.

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

So EVEN if there is a seemingly completely distinct attacker, some other person who of their own free will seems to be trying to attack your body, EVEN THAT is somehow chosen by you. And if you are pain or are suffering physically or emotionally, it is STILL true that you are causing it. In essence, there are NO EXCEPTIONS to the secret of salvation, and the instant that you believe there are, there is NO WAY TO FIND SALVATION, because now you've ruled out of the possibility of being FREE FROM "unwarranted external powers" or an "alien will."

Jesus goes on to say:

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

Here he seems to me to be saying, if you were sitting high up and were dreaming of a world down below you, which YOU populate with figures, and YOU animate, and you make "do things", like a child playing with dolls causing the dolls to pretend to interact or fight, then you'd realize that YOU are not identified with any of these figures and so these things are not happening to YOU. By being spirit-identified, you are not dream/body identified. So any activities in the world - in your dream - which you made do what it does, has no real effect on who and what YOU really are. But this does require a total clarity and atonement-level acceptance of the awareness of dreaming and the fact that you're making the world happen.

Jesus continues:

"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."

So now he's telling us that the form of the issue does not matter. Whether it be a violent person or a car crash or a disease or unhappiness. There is ONE truth about them all, and that truth is that YOU are doing them to yourself, by identifying with the body and dreaming a dream in which you CAUSE the bodies to hurt each other. For this to be true, you as a dreamer has to be a really high-level, powerful position. Can you comprehend the power entailed in dreaming a planet? Can you accept or own that this entire environment is in your mind?

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

"Both heaven and earth are in your mind."

The issue with your body is a tiny speck of the dream that your mind is supposedly dreaming. Like in your dreams at night, where your mind invents an entire environment and then puts a little body in it, perhaps too it is true of this physical world. We dream up an entire ecosystem of events and activities and people and then make stuff happen and the only way we'd feel that we're vulnerable to any of it, is if we forget we're dreaming it and identify with some part of it, such as believing you are a body. Jesus is practically saying that what you are transcends ALL bodies. Is this too lofty of an interpretation? Too hard to relate to?

Jesus says to let them be as vicious as they may. And that seems to mean, even allowing the body to be attacked and damaged.

""In my defencelessness my safety lies." - You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the "gifts" it merely lends to take away again, attend this lesson well. The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

But somehow, if you were conscious enough of being the dreamer and not the dream, you would not be even slightly confused or believe that anything the body is experiencing is anything to do with what you are. That it is having NO EFFECT on you. It's not disturbing your peace of mind or happiness.

The problem with this is, "A guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body." So one moment Jesus is saying to let people be vicious, which presumably could mean your body is damagable, which is backed up by his statements about "only bodies can be attacked". And then the next he's saying that the mind should heal the body, and if it doesn't, the mind is not healed. "A damaged body is proof the mind has not been healed." Yet if another person did the damage, does that mean your mind is not healed? Is your mind not healed because YOU dreamed of the other person? Is your mind not healed because you made up another body to attack this body, in your dream, thus literally doing it to your body self?

Jesus seems in some ways to say, you can transcend all worldly happenings, all bodily situations, be fully spirit identified, recognizing you are mind not matter, and be free from every possible dream scenario no matter what happens in the world. BUT, he also seems to teach that a mind in such a position would therefore have the miracle-working power to UNDO or correct or heal, anything that arises. This seems to imply the body can be attacked and is vulnerable, BUT that the mind CAN heal it, and if the mind has not healed it the mind must not be healed simply because it's not sane to allow the damage to remain. "Forgiveness is not real unless it has brought a healing to your brother and yourself." "A miracle of healing proves separation (attack world) is without effect."

A question arises, is it possible to somehow supernaturally cause the body to be INCAPABLE of being attacked? Jesus speaks of a "protection" near the end of "sickness is a defense against the truth". He speaks of the body being unable to be sick, or to die. But if bodies can be attacked, would some other person come along in the dream and still attempt murder? And would it still produce a wound on the body? Does mind wield a power capable of essentially making the body literally immortal and undamagable?

Or would this be simply impossible, given the body is not real and only real things are free from threat? It would suggest the body can still be attacked, but that the mind could heal the attack. And that would seem to line up with Jesus's body being crucified in spite of his profound advanced mental state. If his mind has permanent projective power over the body, it would not have been crucifiable. The spear would not have been able to penetrate the hands and the nails could not be driven into his limbs.

It's true that, nevertheless, "the mind that made the body can make another". So in a sense, if the body is destroyed the mind, which is not the body, could manifest another illusory body, which also has inherent susceptibility. ie bodies fundamentally exist only as illusions, illusions can be attacked (illusions of attack) fundamentally, and so there is no way to render a body immortal or permanent. The mind CAN however heal the body, can project new bodies, and has the power to perhaps supernaturally manipulate events, utilize divine guidance and therefore find a "safe" path through the dream of attack.

One line says, "without the idea of death there is no world." Another says "to see a sinless body is impossible" and "the body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards." Which means, if the body seems to exist at all, it depends on death. It is made of death. And at best, it can symbolize eternal life but cannot BE it. Mind can maintain it and heal it. But there are limits - and short of a supernatural miracle, a body wouldn't survive a direct encounter with a supernova.

We know the body is just an image, an illusion, projected by the mind. It SHOULD, in the "movie projector analogy, mean it's possible possible for the DREAMER to NOT dream attack scenarios. In fact, "my self is ruler of the universe speaks to this."

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

How absolute does this sound? It seems to literally mean, as the ruler of the universe, nothing can happen without your consent. No events can occur, without you dreaming them. Wars cannot take place unless you make them happen. Not only does what you desire happen, what you DON'T want to happen does not occur either. ie, you have TOTAL CONTROL over the dream.

And if that is true, does it not mean you could organize that there will NOT BE an attack upon your body? Unless you CHOSE that there be one and made it happen, that perhaps Jesus orchestrated every aspect of his own crucifixion? But does not this also mean that he must've dreamed of the "rest of us" too? Why not just dream of everyone being fully awake and bring an end to the dream entirely? How are we co-dreamers? Through a shared will?

Jesus also speaks of the body disappearing upon awakening. This suggests, in a co-authored dream, when a dreamer wakes up, he stops making a body. The recognition of its NOTHINGNESS cancels its illusions, making it impossible for it to appear to exist at all. A light shines so brightly, the body vanishes. "And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar of the Son of God."

If mind has the power to make a world, it would seem mind could have the power to force the body not to age, be sick or die. That mind would take authority over any occurrences. Mind could supernaturally make it impossible for the body to be attacked. It could "sustain the body indefinitely, BUT within time, where all bodies exist. This would require an ongoing maintenance, a vigilance, in orer to maintain this projection. And this seems to be what is spoken of here:

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.

Yet this ***protection*** ***needs to be preserved*** by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer."

So Jesus is suggesting a potential for indefinite sustainability of the body's health and state, where mind is overriding any worldly causality. This feasibly could continue for thousands of years. And there are stories of certain masters who have accomplished this longevity. St Germain, Babaji, etc. These advanced teachers of God apparently have the power to reverse, heal, and resurrect the body. At least for as long as it is useful in the atonement plan. The purpose is the plan. And once fulfilled, bodies are no longer needed.

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand."

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

"This is the message of the crucifixion: there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This is the message of the resurrection. Illusion are illusions. Truth is true. Illusions vanish. Only truth remains."

So what's the conclusion?

Mind has power over everything. Mind is co-dreaming the world with others. All illusions are attackable IF the mind CONSENTS to it. Due to free will, other minds can use their bodies to try to attack your body. This possibly cannot happen at all if you do not consent to it. If it does happen, you have agreed to a mutual attack scenario, and now your brother seems able to attack your body. But now your mind has the power to miraculously heal it, and being sane it would do so. And this the body can be "protected" by the mind indefinitely while useful, eventually to be laid aside ie vanished when no longer useful. You can choose the body cannot be sick, age or die, by protecting it actively, or through miracles of healing. But the time of bodies will come to an end.

"He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive."

A Course in Miracles tells us that as soon as we cease to be forgiving, we enter into an unforgiving state where judgement is automatic. Judgement is attack. It is condemnation. It is required and necessary in order to implement separation, to come between You and God.

Typically we think of judgement as something you believe about others. But this is always an illusion. Judgement is always from you, towards yourself, happening within your own mind.

Judgement also does not judge something which is separate from you and outside of you, but it seems to make a part of yourself separate from the rest of you and outside of what remains of you. It establishes part of yourself as "other" and "not me", and attacks it.

Judgement is sin. It is an attempt to attack the Truth and split the mind. It also possesses two parts, one being the vantage point of "the judger" and the other being the vantage point of "the judged". It is not possible for a mind to be only a judger and not the judged. It must be both, because that same mind must believe that being judged is possible and real to it.

The mind entering into judgement is entering into separation. The mind becomes separated within itself. It forms a victimizer and a victim simultaneously. It engenders an attitude of superiority and inferiority simultaneously. It is not possible to therefore hold an "inferiority complex" without also possessing a "superiority complex".

To believe you are inferior can only come about by part of the mind skewing itself away from what appears to be superiority or worthiness or innocence, which is required in order for the other part of the mind to skew towards judgement.

Thus the mind splits into two simultaneous attitudes, victimization and victimhood, or judgementalism and being judged. You cannot judge without being judged, and all judgement is a judgement of yourself, not another. The mind thus simultaneously manufactures an experience of being judged, and an experience of judging, and then pretends not to be doing so.

It becomes easy for a judging mind to enter into denial that it is playing both roles, because it will either side with the position of judger or judged and deny that the other role exists within the same mind, in order TO judge or be judged. A sense of separation is needed between these two "false identities" to establish that one is what it is and the other is different.

The conscious part of the mind will likely see itself either as judged or as judging. When it sees itself as judged, it will see its judger as separate from itself and likely projected outward. It will be afraid of judgement coming from "other" than itself, which is thought to be other people. It will literally use other people to judge itself, even if they are not actively judging, trying to explain how "not myself" is the cause of this.

Alternatively, the mind can focus conscious awareness on the active role of judger, in which the role of being judged is more unconscious. It sees itself as judging only, and that which is judged is separate from itself and "other". It therefore sees judgement as being against others outside of itself, such as other people, even if other people are innocent. It believes it is not judging a part of itself, having split off the target of its judgements from awareness, through disassociation.

Both of these roles coexist within the same mind, as a split personality with two identities. There is an identity of a judger, superior and righteous and condemning. This is more clearly aligned with the act of sin, whereby to judge is to affirm that sin is real, that judgement is justified because of sin, and that it is someone else who has sinned.

Yet this condemnation is itself sin occurring in the mind, because sin is an attack just as is judgment. The attacking, judging part of the mind believes it is free from the effects of its own attack, having projected them onto another part of the mind.

Then there is the second identity of the judged, the victim who has been attacked from without, and the part of mind that sees itself as powerless, unjustified, weak, vulnerable and open to attack.

It sees itself being attacked against its will and having no power to judge at all. Seeing itself as unworthy, it disclaims having its own opinion or any sense of passing judgement upon others, and acts like a helpless victim. It is the receiver of judgement, open to feeling hurt and embarrassed and ashamed by the accusations which seem to come from beyond itself, typically projected onto other people as the cause because it doesn't recognize that the cause is within the same mind it exists within.

Both of these identities are happening within your own mind, and the interplay between them is happening entirely within you. The judging "you" and the judged "you" are both fictional, illusory identities. Neither of them are true of who you really are - a whole mind with no separation. Neither of them are your real identity, given that who you really are is wholeness and innocence and is completely free from attack, given or received.

You which are the HOST MIND to these two artificial portions of ego mind must gain enough awareness to recognize that you are judging yourself AND being judged by yourself, you are the one who stands in condemnation over yourself, it is you who is the source of your victimization, and "others" have absolutely nothing to do with this.

The only reason you believe that others i.e. other people are judging you, or are the target of your judgement, is because both the judger and the judged parts of your ego mind are unaware that they exist within a larger mind which hosts both of them. Both believe they are all of your "self" and that there is nothing more to your identity than the limits or confines of each false idea of identity.

Being incapable of seeing beyond themselves, both the judger and the judged thus see the "other" which is playing a part in causing or receiving judgement, as being "not myself" and therefore must seem to be "other people". It's easy to conclude this given that other people showing up separate bodies are readily available to "project" this onto, or to see them as sharing the same location as the "otherness" which is believed to be the problem. But this all has nothing to do with other people at all.

Whether it be others in the form of distinctly separate external people, or others in the form of the other part of your own mind, it is only the separation between these identities and the fictional story about how they see each other which is maintaining the split and projecting of the cause.

Your whole mind needs to recognize that it is bigger than and containing these two false selves, that neither self is the whole truth because its story is limited and partial, that YOU as the whole mind are choosing and playing these two identities against each other, and own up to the fact that since they are both WITHIN you, they must both BE a part of your one identity.

In order to return to a single identity, their separateness and distinctness must be dissolved and seen as an illusion. For both of these illusory selves to be a part of you, neither of them can be the whole truth. And in this light, the distinctiveness between them is overlooked and dissolved. Thus do they disappear and judgement and suffering ends. You must admit that you have been playing both roles, and therefore YOU are the one identity behind the ILLUSION of two selves.

Similarly, you must realize that all of your victimization, all of the ways that you believe others are doing things to you, all of the ways that you seem so suffer because of causes separate from you etc.. these must all be recognized as being because of another part of YOU, which is perhaps hidden behind denial and unconsciousness, attacking this second part of you. You've come to identify with this one split-off part of your mind, and are in denial of the rest of you.

It is you who has judged yourself, because it is you who have believed in sin and used sin to split your mind into multiple personalities. You are both the judger and the judged, and yet you are neither because they are both ego illusions.

It is no more true that you actually are being victimized by anyone else, than it is true that you are a victimizer of someone not yourself. You must realize that BOTH of these roles are not your true self, your real identity, or the whole of who you are. They are but an illusion of a separated, split ego mind, pretending to be an identities which you made up.

You are the one who has attacked you. You are the one who is attacking you. You are attacker and attacked, victim and victimizer. And yet you are neither of these, ultimately, because they are both fictional. The ego is always attacking itself and nothing else. The ego IS your self-attack, the scene in which a victimizer and a victim both play roles and cooperate to build a fictional story of interaction.

This is all taking place within you and has nothing to do with other people. It's only because of the split in your mind and your sense of there being a self that is "other" than your self, that you then become confused and accidentally project that sense of otherness onto other separate bodies. Really the otherness your are relating to as your enemy is just a part of your own mind, and your judgement of "them" is directly an attack on yourself, appearing to be indirect, or not at all.

To judge is to attack yourself. To believe you judge another not yourself is the very denial which makes judgement seem possible. You will judge yourself if you judge, and you will never judge another person. And if you are judged, rest assured you are not judged by another, nor should you fear the judgement of other than yourself. It is really your OWN "other self" which you are afraid of judging you, because YOU are the one who is judging you from within.

Surrender both of these positions, therefore, and return to wholeness, which is a mind of forgiveness. In wholeness you will not see an other to judge or to be judged by. Forgiveness cancels judgementalism and the belief in victims and victimizers. You have but done this all to yourself and have experienced all sides of your self conflict. Self conflict always contains two selves, who believe they each are all of your self and yet is limited in its self concept.

You cannot judge without being judged. You cannot be judged without judging. Both make up the state of sin, which is a belief that you should be condemned, or are being condemned. All of it is your own doing.

Judgment of another is a position of causality, in which you are squarely within the identity of the one who is doing something to another. Being judged then is a state of being at the effect of the judgement of another. Yet by entering into the drama of judgement, you become both the cause and the effect of it. And yet, you are not really the cause because none of it has been real. There are no real consequences from separation.

Following from the judging causality of sin, there is the result of guilt, which sees itself as the effect of sin. Yet from the perspective of guilt, as the victim of sin, the mind sees itself as separate from the sinner, and therefore sin is made unconscious and the guilty mind now sees itself as causal. It then proceeds to stand in the role of cause, continuing judgement against the self, determining that because it is guilty, it must be punished, and punishment is just another step on the road of judgement.

Judgement leads all the way to death in this manner, since condemnation calls for death to atone for what you claim you did. You will both suffer and want to suffer, will die and want to die, and will be victimized and want to be victimized. This is what comes from judgement - the entire ego thought system of sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death.

Learning not to judge is only important in terms of learning not to believe in real sin, and to place your mind back into a state of forgiveness. Of yourself. Wholeness, which is the end of judgement, cancels its illusory effects and they are undone.

It is not helpful to simply stop projecting judgements onto other people, if you are not recognizing that it was you that you were judging all along. That would only mean you continue to judge yourself but now are constipated with a censorship of the judgement that continues internally, trying not to shift it onto others but still believing you deserve it. Ceasing to project onto others is only the first step.

You must realize that you've been attacking yourself, judging yourself, being judged by yourself, and that you need to stop doing this. That you are willing to stop doing this. Generally speaking, an awareness that you have been doing this at all may be enough to shine enough light into your mind to make sense of what you have been experiencing, and to dismantle the ego's construct of self attack completely.

You need but a little awareness that it is you who has been both attacker and attacked, and that if you are both of these, then you must have a single identity, and therefore the illusion of separateness between them must be false and unreal. And thus, as an illusion recognized as an illusion of separateness, it will disappear. The mind is thus healed and restored to wholeness, awareness of wholeness returned, and along with it your FULL identity is restored to awareness.

When someone becomes afraid, they also become resistant to being helped. The fear and victimhood is really a choice to deny and resist the truth, and so they do not want the truth. This can make the situation very difficult if you're trying to help someone because they literally do not want to be helped, even if in the victimhood they are complaining and saying that they want things to not be this way.

In the Course for example Jesus talks about "requests for healing" whereby someone may seem to be asking for help, through complaint or even direct asking, but because they would be scared by a miracle, which would remove the very thing they themselves put in place, they could become afraid if this "treasure" were suddenly taken from them. In this case, it's not a real request for healing, it's just the form of a request, but really a denial and wish to not be helped.

One of the hardest things to deal with is when other people do not want to really be helped. And by that I don't mean people who actually are ready or willing to be helped, but those who say they are but are not. Those who are steeped in fear and resistance, and so are resistant also to anything that would help them. Resistant to ideas, suggestions, healing, advice, simply on the basis that their backwards perception makes it seem like "help" is actually "danger".

This happens when the thought system goes into egotism because what is true and false become reversed. Defenses are erected against the misinterpreted truth, which seems false, so understandably you'd not want it. Then the person will defend and side with the very thing that's hurting them, because they believe it's the truth. Whatever we think is true we will value and want to keep and protect. So when we're in the ego with this backwards perception, we'll actively fight against help and healing, believing it's not actually help but a form of attack. The ego thinks of the Holy Spirit as an attacker.

What can you then do but let go and let the person continue to suffer. I mean, that sounds awful but sometimes people simply want to carry on suffering, even if on the other hand some part of them is not liking it. It's really difficult to "allow" someone to make choices against themselves or against life and happiness, especially when you know that there are options and possibilities.

Perhaps at that point all that you can do is appeal to a higher power, pray for them, send them love or happy energy, try to lift them up by being a light around them, or be an example or demonstration of a better way. It's hard to let go of control and the desire to fix or save those who are destroying themselves, or at least who appear to be. Because we also have to remember that even those people are not really doing anything at all. Nothing real can be threatened, and every postulation of suffering is fake and illusion. Even if the person finds it to be terrifyingly real.

You can't force anyone because everyone has free will. Jesus even says in the Course that "your will is as strong as mine" and this is why he is not able to simply overthrow your errors or force you into awakening. You have to choose it willingly. No one comes to the atonement without being willing. It takes total willingness, not just a little willingness. "Heaven is a choice I must make". So if someone is hell bent on not choosing it, what can you do but choose it for yourself and try to extend it to them in any way they can accept? Even if all that is is you being kind or gentle or listening or whatever.

Everyone has free will. Everyone has power. Everyone is choosing everything that's happening. Everyone even those suffering are expertly manifesting whatever they want. Everyone is putting everything in place. And nothing is happening anywhere to anyone without their consent. Even in situations where it seems like they are not giving any consent, they are giving it 100%. Even when it is producing suffering or sickness, again they are literally electing for it to occur and are putting it in place. And they have that exact same freedom and power to do that, just as much as using that same freedom and power with a non-self-destructive choice.

Jesus is telling us we are free and we are choosers and we are responsible for everything. Even if we're practically dead, we are choosing to be, and no-one is going to take that away from anyone against their will. Some people want to be dead. Some people want to be sick. Some people want to scapegoat the world. Some people want to be in terrible fear all the time. And every person does not believe they have the power to do anything to change it, which is part of the deciding not to.

Keep praying for the lost souls. No-one is lost. Everyone is just finding their way. And sometimes that may mean that it takes a long time and a lot of struggle and mistakes to get there.

The ego is sneaky about projecting sin and guilt onto others. If someone else is not really doing anything wrong, it is riskier and perhaps more difficult for you to "unfairly" project your own sin and guilt onto them. If you do, it will appear much more obvious that you are the one doing the attacking, and that it is not called for. This is too "overt". Just picking some random innocent target and attacking it would indeed be vicious, but our ego tends not to do this.

Instead, we lay a trap and lay in wait, trying to find a target. A target is someone who, of their apparent own free will, is sinning on their own. Someone who is digging their own grave. Someone who is hurting, attacking, being at fault, choosing poorly, doing something offensive, believing wrongly, saying harmful words, punishing or whatever. So long as the person is, themselves, seeming to be clearly the one who is sinning.

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt."

Once we see this "proof of sin" in someone else, it becomes a strong temptation. It tempts you to believe it. It almost invites you to agree with it, to see judgement as justified, and to therefore launch an attack which reinforces the person's sinfulness. But this is a slippery slope, even though it's what the ego enjoys as its less overt tactic.

When it's clearly someone else who seems to be wrong, it presents a wonderful opportunity for your own ego. Since all attention is on the other person, and since they appear to be the one who is making things worse for themselves and everyone, your ego takes the "opportunity" to sneak in and USE it for its purposes.

If it can now condemn and accuse the person, based on "what they are doing", it seems completely justified. But the sneaky thing is that you aren't having to "invent" a sin for them to be accused of. They have already provided a nice sin for you to latch onto. All you have to do is "point it out". So now the ego simply seems to be mirroring what the person is already doing, rather than making a "fresh accusation".

By doing this, the attack upon the person becomes disguised. It hides in the darkness of the other person's actions. They were already sinning, so it seems like you're not ADDING anything to them. And so simply by "identifying it" and "pointing it out" and labelling it AS a sin, you appear to be not attacking them at all. But if you step back, you ARE still in fact accusing them of sin still, you are attacking them, you are compounding their own sin, and are being just as judgemental as before.

It's just that, when someone else provides the "material", you seem to not be the one who is "inventing" the sin, so your accusation against them seems invisible. It doesn't stand out from what they are already going. It's like you slip in a little sin of your own hidden by theirs. All the focus is on them, by their own doing, so your ego gets to hide from being the center of attention. It's still attacking but now it seems like you're not doing anything.

This becomes quite risky though, to yourself, because you can become quite blinded by this sleight of hand, even unto yourself as you're doing it. You may not even realize that you have been "tempted" by the sin of another, and that you fell for it, believed in it, and recognized it as a perfect opportunity to condemn without the implication fo yourself. You can then find yourself accusing the other of "doing what they're obviosuly doing", convincing yourself that YOU are not doing anything, and therefore are now are attacking even more unconsciously.

It's one thing to be more aware of your desire to project your own shit onto someone else. It's another to be attacking someone on the basis of what they are seeming to do, and then not even realizing that you're attacking them. When they are the "source" of the sin, you can easily lose sight of how you are contributing to it, or mirroring it. Your own attack becomes invisible to you, and then you believe that you're not even doing anything wrong at all.

Thus you end up in a pattern of not attacking people unless they sin first, and then when they do seem to sin, you take it as an ideal opportunity to scapegoat. Because you think no-one will notice what YOU are doing because they'll be so busy focusing on what THEY are doing. A good decoy goes a long way. Except that you even distract your own attention, and now you much more easily allow your mind to fall into a scapegoating mode.

Overall I personally experience this as "falling for temptation", in that the world is constantly presenting "opportunities" to focus on sin and make it real. It's a constant vigilance to try not to "take a cheap shot", when someone is obviously mistaken in some way. If I don't recognize it as "just a mistake", I will make it real and try to compound it, drawing myself away from myself, trying to displace my own guilt onto someone else. But only if "they started it."

No-one wants to overly be seen as an unjustified attacker, so we wait until someone makes the first move, before we pounce on it. Then the gloves come off and the claws come out, and rightly so, because now the other person has invited us to attack them. They want punishment, and if we agree with that we will give it to them, and benefit from doing so. It's much easier to "fall for" this temptation to "beat someone when they are down" than to look like a total a-hole hurting people for no apparent reason. This is why almost all attacks on others are "justified" as being "called for" based on what we think other people "did wrong first."

Of course, "only the self-accused condemn" and "we but accuse our brother of our own sins."

Here's something that may be very difficult to own up to. If you are upset by anything in the world, it is because you have attacked the world. And usually when you are upset, it is because you perceive someone else did the attacking. And then you recoil and despise the attack, and it affects you, and you become upset. And this all covers up the fact that you are attacking. Sin seems outside of you, not in your mind.

You see, you cannot see attack unless you attack. If someone seems to murder someone in front of your face, most people would be horrified. But that's the ego being horrified, about what the ego has done. The reaction has to be fake, because if you knew the truth you'd know nothing has really happened, would laugh at it, and raise the dead. Nothing real can be threatened. There is no death. You're just seeing a dream.

What's very hard to confess to or even be aware of, is that the only reason you are upset by a murder is because there is part of your mind that believes in murder, and is murderous. It reminds you of that, and triggers that in you. You are horrified by your OWN belief about YOURSELF. It reflects what you think is going to happen to you, and what you are doing to yourself. Otherwise you would dismiss it in an instant.

You might say, well, I'm a really loving person and I absolutely would never want to hurt anyone. I advocate for love and can only love. BUT, when someone gets murdered in front of my face, I may freak out. Why? How is that possible? It's only possible because I make it real, I believe it's true, and I value it. I see what I value, and value what I believe in. So I believe in the murder, and its horrors just reflect what I believe I deserve, because of my belief in sin being real, which I am perceiving outside of me.

There HAS TO BE something in my mind that is made of sin, in order for me to react to the "sinful behavior" of others. Otherwise I would be absolutely unmoved by this illusion. So on the one hand I'm claiming to be love/loving, but these events prove my love is conditional, and that means I MUST be in denial. Invulnerability is a characteristic of innocence and holiness, not reacting with ego emotional trauma. A peace that passes all understanding. The immovable rock of sanity.

So we have to be really, REALLY honest with ourselves. Are we REALLY loving, if we are so easily shaken by sin? Are we really awake, if we are still affected by the world we see? Something is incomplete if there is even a slight trace of upset. If we have any reaction other than love, we are in the ego. To the Holy Spirit, all things call for love, not fear.

Yet sometimes we split the world into two things. There are perceived behaviors which are "okay and loving" and other behaviors "which are evil". This is the result of a split mind looking at the world. And when the loving things happen we think, ok, that's love, I'm doing that, so I'm loving. Then when the unholy things happen we think, that's NOT love. But instead of recognizing it as a meaningless illusion we recoil in horror and pass blame and point a finger and make the person wrong. Because we're not really whole in our love. It's not unconditional.

If I derive my sense of happiness from what happens "to me" or what happens "in the world", then I am easily robbed of happiness when anything goes wrong. And there are plenty of things that will go wrong. Invulnerability and love can only come about by becoming CAUSE, not effect. By recognizing that you are NOT at the effect of the world, in ANY of its forms, any events, or when anything happens. If I want to be actively loving in this world, it can't be that I ditch love at a moment's notice when something alarming seems to occur. That's special love, and too much fear. Fear does not enter where it is not welcome, and fear is its denial.

And so it's possible to have special love for the world, which means that you value bodies and the planet and want to keep it and want to have "loving behavior" and so on, but without overlooking these illusions and without being consistent. Some actions are then considered acceptable, others are considered evil and are despised. That is not love. That's judgementalism. That's fake spirituality. That's the ego trying to spiritualize an illusion and make it real. It takes many forms, sometimes things such as "not eating meat", or "hating murderers", or trying to focus solely on "the positive", or wearing "spiritual clothes".

That is denial. It is the two-facedness of the ego. The ego is especially good at taking sides and making out that one "way" is right and one way is wrong. Still continuing to be affected by the world is a certain sign of unforgiveness. Forgiveness overlooks the world which is why it causes you not to take anything seriously in it, recognizing it is not real. This can be difficult to learn because many things in the world SEEM evil or unloving. But you can't have a life where you are "loving sometimes" and call it loving. You have to learn to realize that the unloving, hateful, vengeful things are NOT THAT, and see through them to the truth.

This is a course in Cause, not effect. The world is not a cause. Believing it causes anything produces effects in you and makes you sick. To suffer with upset or horror when bad things happen is sickness. To blame the bad things for causing it is sickness. To not realize what you did to yourself to make yourself experience upset, is sickness. A Course in Miracles isn't about putting on a nice facade of persona all the time and "looking loving", and then taking off the love and going into fear or judgement when the situation changes.

Beware of illusions of love. Real, genuine, deep love is unconditional in its application, sees ALL things in this world as unreal, recognizing NOTHING can change what it is, and has NO effects from worldly events. To love is not to take sides or to judge or to hate sinners. To love is to recognize the Christ in each is the only truth and all the rest is bullshit. "For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew YOU were dreaming."

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

It is easy to offer guilt as a way to atone for doing something wrong or not doing what you were supposed to. We give little 'gifts' of guilt. We're trying to say, ok, I acknowledge that I failed in some way, so to make it up to you, I'm going to enter into guilt and have a 'guilty conscience' (bullshit), and then to atone for this sin I'm going to have to SUFFER by doing some shit to make it up to you. I'm going to position myself as worthy of guilt and suffering in order to make it up to you, and this is my offering to you to atone for my mistake.

A 'guilty conscience' is actually a bullshit ego device designed to always find you partly innocent when you are not doing anything, and wholly sinful when you step out of line. It demands that when you make mistakes you should be punished mercilessly, and that you are supposed to be ashamed, and that you are supposed to feel guilty. It says you deserve this guilt because you made a mistake. This is absolute bullshit and is not true at all. It leaves no room whatsoever for forgiveness or unconditional love.

Mistakes call for CORRECTION, not punishment, and punishment in ALL its forms does not lead to correction. It can appear to lead to correct only by inflicting additional damage and suffering which can only later yield even more mistakes in retaliation and grievance. (This is why hitting kids is nothing other than pointless abuse - an illusion of obedience arises out of fear and trauma and now the original error persists and has been joined by a second layer of self-hate - an illusion of obedience at the price of suffering and unlove, which only leads to resentment and being even more error-prone.)

Being in guilt does not make it up to anyone. Being in guilt means you are offering guilt as a gift and are giving guilt as a statement of what you are worth and what everyone is worth. It could only possibly please a sick-minded person to enter into guilt in attempt to atone for an error. And entering into guilt can only reinforce and offer sickness to that person. If you are sane, you do not want people to be guilty on your behalf, you want them to ... as the bible terms it.... repent ... i.e., stop choosing sin and choose love. If the 'error' is that they chose not to love, then the correction you should truly seek is to see them being loving - for themselves, and for you.

It would be far better when you make a mistake or fail or do something 'wrong' to offer up your innocence and love instead, to position yourself as wholly worthy of forgiveness, and to choose-again to extend love instead of punishment. That would be loving. That would be an offering of love which could truly ATONE for i.e. UNDO what you think you did wrong.

It should be in everyone's best interests that when someone does something in error, they are loved and forgiven, and in turn they are encouraged to return to love and to offer love as a way to 'make up for' the error. (This is kind of like being forced to do pushups as atonement knowing that the exercise actually helps rather than hurts.) The error is hardly corrected by admitting to guilt or demonstrating that you deserve punishment. That is an offering to a false God of hate. God holds nothing against you and only wants you to claim your innocence, unconditionally.

It is also in everyone's best interests that you choose love instead of guilt or punishment, because, literally, we are all ONE, we are joined in the mind, we SHARE an identity, and what you do to yourself you do to everyone. This goes against the ego's law that everyone is separate and that individual can suffer in isolation. If you choose guilt for yourself, you DO choose it for everyone else as well, and that is not only an additional layer of attack but also an offering for everyone to join in your suffering. Nobody wants to first be attacked and to then have the attacker turn around and attack a second time to try to make up for it! How ridiculous is that. This is also why prisons are ridiculous - when an individual suffers everyone suffers.

Mistakes call for love and forgiveness, not punishment and despair. Look at your close relationships and notice all the times that you enter into guilt as a 'worthy' response and way of 'agreeing' that you have sinned, and how you wallow in guilt in order to atone for the mistake, thinking that doing so is actually giving people what they want. If people want you to suffer in guilt, THEY are in error and do not deserve your offering.

We all mistake guilt for love because this is how the ego's thought system functions. I don't want anyone's guilt. You should not want to give anyone your guilt. It is far better that you seek true correction through the truth of Holy Spirit and return to offering love, which is truly worthwhile and valuable. You do not have to be guilty EVER AGAIN. When you make a mistake, immediately remind yourself,

"because I did this [whatever the fuck-up was], it proves I am completely innocent and I choose to love myself instead".

(This doesn't justify it being okay to be an asshole - if you're heading to that conclusion, STOP and seek correction - it's level confusion.)

Choose only love, for that is what you are.

I'm kind of blown away right now, with this rapidly growing recognition that ALL suffering has ONE cause. That there is really only ONE lesson to learn.

The lesson simply is that,.... if you believe the world is REAL, YOU WILL SUFFER.

And so I look back at all the times I have suffered, all the upsets, all events, and I see that at the time I always thought they were DIFFERENT. And each form of suffering was caused by something specific. Maybe it was the situation, or the person, or the circumstances, or what happened, or the consequences, or the aftermath. Whatever it was, it always seemed specific.

But the truth is, that ALL suffering is caused by ONE problem, with one solution. If you make the world real, you take it seriously, you immediately enter into fear, and now you are suffering. And whatever then seems to happen in the unrecognized dream will be the form the suffering takes. And the ONLY thing that will stop you from suffering, is the RECOGNITION THAT IT IS NOT REAL.

And so either you are in the battlefield, lost and confused in amongst the many many FORMS of suffering, the many deceptions of suffering, OR you rise up out of the battlefield to the light in which you can see the truth, above it, the truth that IT IS JUST A DREAM.

Rising up above into the truth, it does not MATTER what the forms are, it does not matter who is doing what, it does not matter the situation or circumstance, this story, the details. They all become irrelevant. Because EVERYTHING in the world is recognized as EQUALLY UNREAL.

As soon as you change the PREMISE of the ENTIRE thing, which is the atonement, by recognizing ONLY God's truth is true, and only the false is false, it RE-FRAMES the entire world and everything in it. And now no matter what form or appearance the dream has, it does not matter. Because either you are immersed in a REAL dream, or an UNREAL dream. The question of its reality is the ONLY problem.

If the world is real, everything that "really is happening" is CAUSE for suffering. Just the mere suggestion that you see something that is not, hear something that isn't happening, or can sense something that isn't OF GOD, is enough to frighten you. And now you are suffering just by merely making the world real, ie believing that the world IS God. The ONLY solution is to make the world UNREAL, and recognize it is an illusion. There is no other way out, and this recognition of the SANITY of what is really true, IS forgiveness (overlooking illusions) and is atonement (acceptance of the one truth).

So now I look and I see.... a dream world, filled with obstacles, seeming problems, hassles, tortures, suffering, situations, dramas, threats, pain and sickness, and I remind myself... this whole world is not real, it's just a dream. And on this new premise I can base a true perception, that NONE OF IT EXISTS. And ONLY in that truth - "nothing unreal exists", can you be at peace.

And now suddenly I'm feeling not only peace and happiness and joy that there is no world, I'm feeling relieved that I don't HAVE TO be immersed and lost in suffering, in the battlefield, because the only reason I would enter into it is by FORGETTING that it is my own dream. And THIS is the secret of salvation.... the recognition that the dream IS a dream, and NOT a reality.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. ***For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming.*** Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This **single lesson** learned will set you ***free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes.***"

"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.""

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. 4 ****But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal.**** 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the separation from God, all that’s happened is we’ve gone into denial about what is true. We’ve tried to change the truth into somethiing false, and vice versa. We’re just a bit confused about what IS true and what is false.

Unfortuantely this also includes our sense of identity. We’re in denial of who we are in truth. This has resulted in trying to be something we are not, to replace our identity. Our sense of "self" has become identified WITH something that is not our self, and we now believe that "the truth about us" is that we are a body, rather than a spirit/mind.

Whatever you believe is true, you believe is your self. It’s where you see "reality", value, and meaning. You will also "naturally" defend and protect whatever you believe is true, because your investment of belief in it means you equate it with valuable reality - and thus with your "self". Anything which seems to contradict this truth, is taken as opposite to your identity, and is perceived as an enemy or "false".

The problem here is, since you will defend whatever you think is true of your identity, or what you are identified with, you will inadvertently protect "truth" and "self" even if it’s not really the truth or really yourself. Once you’ve come to believe you are your body, you will see IT as your SELF, and seek to protect it.

Defending a "truth" that is not really true, means you will side with something even if it is not in your best interests. In this way, identifying with the body means you are siding with what is false, which means you will defend, protect, reinforce and bring about death, because death is the opposite of truth/life. You will do this believing you are "saving your life" or as self-defense.

This is also why "sickness is a defense against the truth." In sickness you mis-perceive the truth as something false or an attack on your false-identified self, and you will then "defend" that false self against the truth because you misperceive it as an attacker.

You then think the sickness is defending you and protecting you and saving your life. Even though you’ll later perceive the sickness as unwanted or unchosen, this is only because you are unconscious of the desire to keep your "self" safe, and undoing the sickness will seem to threaten your safety if you maintain a false sense of self.

Another thing that happens is, since you see your identity as "body" or ego (or world), when "you" try to awaken from the dream, you try to pull your "self" into the light. You become willing to open up to some real truth. But because you are "bound" or united with the body/ego/false self, you simultaneously try to pull "it" into the truth. This is an attempt to "spiritualize the ego", by keeping your false identification while making it "appear more spiritual". From "its" perspective, you are trying to destroy it by bringing it into contact with a truth that proves its unreality. That part of your mind sees this attempt as a threat to your "self".

It’s kind of like trying to remain an ego-identified self, while simultaneously trying not to be. The truth is experienced as an attack on your self and now that part of you feels attacked, threatened, ignored, mis-treated and offended, as though you have betrayed yourself and hurt yourself. That part of you will then retaliate with hurt, justified anger, fear and reactions. This accounts for all "ego rebounds". Part of you wants the truth, part of you does not.

So as you go through purification, awakening, spiritual studies, trying to commune with God, or opening up to the Holy Spirit, part of you is honestly going to say "no, I don’t want that". It’s not so much the "ego" that says this. It’s YOU saying it, because of your allegiance to the ego. Or it’s your body-identified self protesting because your efforts to become spiritual are seen by "it" as an attack on "you". It’s all just you reacting to yourself.

Awakening to the truth, accepting the atonement, enlightenment as a recognition, returning to God, remembering your real identity as God’s Son, becoming aware that you are as God created you etc, basically entails "letting go" of your "holding onto" false lies and untruths - things which are not true of you - things which are not real - the body etc. As you let go of those things, you hold onto or identify WITH things which are real and true - your immortal spirit.

It’s kind of like, there are two things you can join with, or think of as your "self". Either the truth, or illusions. Either reality, or the ego. Either spirit, or the body. Either mind, or matter. "You", can choose WHERE to place your allegiance. Your mind, which is the mechanism of decision and the home of free will, can either place itself under Authority of free spirit, or under tyrannical rule of dictatorship and imprisonment. This determines whether mind is identified with spirit or with illusions, and thus how you "see your self".

For a time it will seem like giving up ego is going to destroy you. But being "in the ego" WAS a denial of your true self. It was a substitute identity. YOU do not end, your identification merely shifts from one thought system to another. You "leave" the ego world, and enter the spirit world. Either of the two thought systems "host" you.

Eventually you will realize and recognize that "only the truth is true", nothing that was untrue of you was true, what you thought was your self was not your self, you have given up nothing to gain everything, you have returned to your true identity as God’s son, and remembered God’s true nature. It is merely a recognition of what has always really been true.

You are still as God created you. You are not a body, you are free.

Time for a little refresher of the central CORE teaching in the course. It does not matter what your situation is. It does not matter how far gone your body is. It does not matter your state of mental health. It does not matter how terrible your life is or was. It does not matter what the world is doing to you. It does not matter what you think is causing any of this, and it ESPECIALLY does not matter that you believe there is nothing you can do about it.

The secret of salvation is that YOU ARE DOING THIS TO YOURSELF.

This applies in EVERY situation, without exception!!!!

And this is why it is hard to accept. I hear people suffering with sickness and exclaiming that it can’t be true that they have a way to heal it or be free of it. I see people talking about the reasons why it’s okay to die. I read the stories of folks who are adamant that the course isn’t so intensely clear as to the power and freedom you have. Let’s have a re-read of the secret to salvation, and digest the awesome simplicity of A Course in Miracles:

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

So whatever form your suffering is taking, be it a sickness or disease or terrible affliction or something you were born with or something you didn’t see to ask for or something there is no cure for or the most horrible victimhood situation or the greatest unfairness in life... ALL OF THESE FORMS..... YOU ARE DOING THIS TO YOURSEL!!!! ALL OF IT.

It doesn’t matter if your supposed enemy is your body, or a person, or a sickness, or the environment, or the government, or the weather, or laws of physics. Whatever you experience, YOU ARE CHOOSING IT. You ARE doing it to yourself. And here is the POWER that Jesus is trying to get you to own up to, to stop playing at being a victim and CLAIM your unlimited capability. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do." Ready....?

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING YOU EXPERIENCE.

YOU DO IT TO YOURSELF.

YOU CHOOSE ALL OF IT AND YOU DID.

This is further reflected in "My self is ruler of the universe". ... read it slowly and take it in. This is YOUR TICKET TO FREEDOM FROM EVERY FORM OF SUFFERING:

"It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

Read the first sentence again. IT IS **IMPOSSIBLE** that anything should come to me unbidden by myself.!!!!

You have 100% ABSOLUTE POWER over everything. You are NOT BOUND BY THE WORLD. You are not bound by your body, or your heritage, or your family, or your circumstances. NOTHING HAS HAPPENED AGAINST YOUR WILL. NOTHING. EVER!!!!!! Not since the beginning of time.

You ARE responsible for what you choose, what you experience, and what happens. ONLY by CLAIMING OWNERSHIP of responsibility for this FREEDOM, this POWER and this AUTHORITY, can you set yourself free from death and all other suffering forever.

Your self is ruler of the universe. NOTHING comes to you that you have not asked for. You DO NOT have stuff in your life that you didn’t put there, even if you had it since birth. No matter what the conditions, IT WAS YOUR CONSENTED CHOICE.

No exceptions, ever.

Only by owning this can you access SALVATION. The SECRET to salvation is that you ARE doing ALL of this to yourself, and if you would stop doing it to yourself, NOTHING ELSE has power over you to do it to you against your will. NOTHING. Listen to Jesus:

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

NOTHING EXTERNAL TO YOUR MIND CAN HURT OR INJURE YOU IN ANY WAY.

NO ONE BUT **YOURSELF** AFFECTS YOU. This applies to *everything in your life*.

You can make a nice long list of objections, denials and protests if you like. Go ahead and list the things you BELIEVE are NOT YOUR FAULT, you didn’t ask for, you can do nothing about, you have no power over, and cannot change. Then at the top of the page put a title: "ALL OF THESE ARE LIES I TELL MYSELF AND NONE OF THEM ARE TRUE."

Do you want salvation or do you want suffering. ? It’s your CHOICE. "The power of decision is my own". It is a black and white decision. No exceptions. You HAVE POWER OVER all things. So if you do not like your experience, "choose again". You must’ve made a wrong decision, if you are not at peace. YOU MADE THE DECISION YOURSELF, but you can choose otherwise.

This is why "you cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No one dies without their own consent." "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself." And a host of other supportive statements that not many people want to accept.

If you choose never to suffer again, YOU WILL NOT SUFFER EVER AGAIN! If you stop MAKING IT HAPPEN, it will not happen. If you wholeheartedly CHOOSE SANITY, you will heal your body MIRACULOUSLY. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do." You are a frickin’ SUPERNATURAL MIRACLE WORKER!

"This is a course in CAUSE, not effect." You are to be CAUSE ONLY. Cause is IN YOUR MIND, nowhere else.

Hands in the air, and admit the truth. "I DID THIS MYSELF AND I WILL TO CHOOSE OTHERWISE." There are no victims in the truth. We must take FULL RESPONSIBILITY if we are to claim power over death and reach the atonement.

"Swear not to die, holy son of God!"

The idea is simple. There is only one lesson. This one lesson sets you free from every form of suffering. It's simply this:

Take full responsibility for everything that you are experiencing.

What is this based on? It's based on the fact that you are an immortal being that cannot be changed by anything, because you are the will of God.

This means that nothing in this entire "universe" of spacetime, nothing in the world, can do even the slightest thing to CAUSE you in any way.

You have never changed, you have not changed yourself, God has never changed you, and you will never change. You are always the same and always perfect.

Because of this, it's not POSSIBLE for anyone or anything to do anything to you. This is the basis of forgiveness. Recognizing that sin cannot happen, guilt is impossible, and everything is perfect still.

If you are immortal then the ONLY way by which something can SEEM to happen to you, is YOU using your own mind and free will to put in place what seem to be illusions of suffering.

Because the truth is that you cannot suffer at all. Not even slightly. You yourself have to literally warp your own mind and dream your own dream and invent your own suffering, which is even fake suffering, in order to experience what seems like suffering at all.

It cannot be put in place by anyone else because no-one else has power over your infinite will. It cannot be caused by the world or anyone in it. Nothing that seems to happen can be the reason why you are experiencing what you are experiencing.

So it goes back to the secret of salvation, no matter how it looks, no matter who seems to be the cause, no matter what anyone appears be trying to do to you, no matter what reactions you seemed to have that you thought they caused, it is NEVER true that anyone BUT YOU is the cause of your suffering.

"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. And it is only here salvation is."

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

This means you can never pin blame on anyone or anything other than yourself. You can never truly believe that anyone or anything is the cause of you, other than God. God is the ONLY cause of you in all existence. There is NO OTHER POWER that can cause anything at all. Whatever happens is what you desire.

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

This is all tied together. You are ruler of the universe because anything that happens is by your will alone. Forgiveness is based on your immortality and the fact nothing can happen against your will. The secret of salvation reminds you that you can be saved only by admitting that YOU are the one willing it. And only by identifying with Christ can you fully claim responsibility for what you really are.

If in any way you are believing that what you are experiencing now, right now, is the result of, something other than yourself in any way, you are mistaken. You are deceived. If you think any person did this to you you are wrong. If you think the world or the body or the emotions or thoughts are doing it to you, you are wrong.

ONLY YOU can make yourself suffer.

"It means that you cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he CANNOT hurt you, and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself."

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"Father, Your Son can not be hurt. And if we think we suffer, we but fail to know our one Identity we share with You."

"Truth will correct all errors in my mind. I am mistaken when I think I can Be hurt in any way. I am God's Son, Whose Self rests safely in the Mind of God."

"Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?"

"For once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear."

"The Son of God could NEVER sin, but he CAN wish for what would hurt him. And he HAS the power to think he CAN BE hurt. What could this be EXCEPT a misperception of himself?"

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

"If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or BE hurt, but that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves."

"The Self Which God created cannot sin, and therefore cannot suffer."

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

"Your Name replaces every thought of sin, and who is sinless cannot suffer pain."

"How can he fear or doubt or fail to know he cannot suffer, be endangered, or experience unhappiness, when he belongs to You, beloved and loving, in the safety of Your Fatherly embrace?"

"Herein lies my claim to all good and only good. I am blessed as a Son of God. All good things are mine because God intended them for me. I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed."

"Love CANNOT suffer, because it cannot attack."

"Joy is the inevitable result of gentleness. Gentleness means that fear is now impossible, and what could come to interfere with joy? The open hands of gentleness are always filled. The gentle have no pain. They cannot suffer."

"I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

"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."

Fear is a psychological tool which you use to put yourself into the role of victim, where you then see yourself as being affected by something separate from you.

You are powerful, strong, confident, certain, loving, aware, filled with truth.

However, when you disown these properties, you do so by creating a split in your mind. You use separation to try to separate yourself from these properties, to disown and push them away, and you literally give them TO something separate from you.

So you take all your power, all your certainty, all your inherent love, and you separate it from yourself and push it outwards onto someone else.

This now means that in your perception, you see yourself as lacking confidence, lacking power, lacking certainty, and that will be experienced as "being afraid". It is a state of powerlessness and weakness and a vulnerability to be affected by a power greater than what you seem to possess.

You seem to them possess less power than what is outside of yourself, because you have displaced your own power out there and see yourself as having "less". Therefore those outside of you seem to have "more".

It will seem then that you are afraid because those outside of you have more power than yourself, ie have power over you, and are capable of causing you or affected you in some way. They seem to have control over you, able to decide against your will what you will be or experience. And that's frightening. But it's not the cause of the fear. It's just how the fear is experienced once it's put in place.

Fear is always an act of deliberately disowning yourself and giving yourself away, which RESULTS IN you perceiving that what you've given away is now outside of yourself in someone else's hands. It then seems frightening that they can use this power against you, which creates this whole victimhood story about what they're doing "to you" and why you don't have the power to stop them. But that's a cover-up for the fact that you are using fear IN ORDER TO see them as victimizing you.

That power which you perceive as being in them and not in you, is your own power, which you have disowned. You've tried to set up other people as more powerful than you so that you can appear weak and afraid and in threat of attack. To choose to be afraid is to deliberately position yourself a a victim and to see yourself as in danger of dying. It is a choice to try to bring about your own death. That it seems later as though someone else is going to "cause" this death for you, is a total cover-up lie which you orchestrate in order to make it seem like YOU are not the one choosing it.

Death is an attempt to relinquish the power and ability to choose, to cover up the power of choice, to disown everything about yourself and to allow the external separate imaginary source of power to decide FOR you what is going to happen TO you. But all along this fearful CHOICE is still a choice. It just looks like it's a loss of choice or of having no choice at all.

If you are afraid, you absolutely DO have a choice and you absolutely ARE using your choice, in a mis-creative and self-destructive way. To be afraid does not call for pity. It calls for you to get honest and reclaim responsibility for the power that you keep trying to make out that others are taking from you against your will. It's YOUR power that YOU have GIVEN to them BY your will! You need to take it back.

You only experience fear when you have disowned yourself and are being irresponsible for who and what you are - when you are unwilling to fulfill the FUNCTION that God has given you to represent Him and to extend love and power. When you try to give this function away, other people will seem to wield this function over you against your will. Or in other words, when you attempt to not want to fulfill this function, this function will seem to fulfill itself in opposition to you, because you are in opposition to it.

To escape from fear will NEVER be successful so long as you continue to believe your own lie, that the power you're afraid of belongs to everyone other than YOU. That the power you see in someone else is not your own power. If the power you see projected onto others is not your own, and it has power over you, then you will believe it is inherent to them and that it is real or true that they own it. They have not stolen it, you've given it to them.

Having made this seem real to yourself, which means you trust it (fear is trusting the ego), you will think that the only way to be safe in the face of something scary is to become "just as scary" or intimidating or have some sense of fake power or aggression or anger, in order to go up against this formidable foe to overpower them. It thus becomes a fight against a fictional enemy. The suggestion to stand up for yourself or to assert yourself then becomes a really frightening challenge, because it means being at WAR.

Confrontations with real-seeming enemies are not really solutions to the problem. Sometimes this seems to be the only thing you can do to stop them from attacking you, but this is according to the ego's rules. The only reason a so-called "attacker" is showing up in your life is to show you that you keep giving your power away and that you've put your own power outside of yourself. The challenge is not to make the enemy real and fight with them to "win", but to recognize that the power that you think is in them is YOUR OWN, to own it, take it back, be responsible for it, and thus return to a state of certainty and a stillness of confidence, a clarity about your power which makes you unmoved and unmovable, and a clarity in which you realize it was YOU that you have made into an enemy.

You don't need to fight an opponent to gain equal power. You need to realize it's your own power and reclaim it, to stop perceiving yourself as a victim, to stop using fear to project "cause" (really blame for causing sin) onto others, and to therefore become invulnerable. There is no need for the invulnerable to defend themselves or to fight or be at war. They are immovable, unchangeable, invulnerable, and cannot be attacked. That's what you really need to get to. And that means stopping putting yourself into the psychological perceptive mode of seeing yourself disempowered while others seem to be more powerful.

Ultimately you are doing this to yourself because it is a part of your own mind which you are up against, it's a part of your own power that you're threatened by, and it's a part of your own Self that seems separate from you and having a will of its own. This is all happening inside your own mind and has nothing to do with anyone else out there. There is no-one else out there. This fear is all just your own self-attack. Fear is a defense against the truth. Fear is denial. And no-one who is afraid is "innocent" of causing things to go wrong. It's all chosen on purpose.

"Be not afraid", Jesus would say... not because there is a real reason to be afraid, but because being afraid isn't becoming of you - it's a choice to be weak when you could be powerful, and it's not your best move. It works against yourself and is a way of you hurting yourself. You don't need it.

If you had NO blocks to awareness, you would be vividly, constantly aware, that anything you attempt to do to others, you do directly and immediately to yourself.

Anything you express towards others, you experience.

Anything you give to others, you receive.

"Giving and receiving are one."

You cannot move an inch in any way towards another without moving that same inch in your own direction.

Anything you do to them you do to yourself.

If you attack them, you are literally going into a state of a split mind in which your mind is under attack.

If you are angry at someone, trying to destroy them through guilt, your destructive hatred towards them is an attempt to destroy yourself.

In awareness, you and your brother have SHARED INTERESTS. It is in both your interest and the interest of another, that the way you treat them IS how you want to be treated. Because it is how YOU are treating yourself.

This is beyond traditional definitions of the Golden Rule. It is not mere wishful thinking or hope that another MIGHT treat you the same. It is in fact metaphysical law, completely inescapable, and applicable to everyone always.

What is true of another is true of you.

You cannot so much as send a tiny little zap of annoyance toward someone without YOU suffering from it.

When your mind IS blocked, and you are not aware of the fact that you ALWAYS have shared interests because you are literally ONE WITH your brother, you start to believe that how you treat others is SEPARATE from how you are treated.

This is the slippery slope of the ego, of inequality, and the breaking of the law of God. In attempted IGNORANCE of the golden rule, the ego claims that you can get away with murder because cause and effect are NOT connected (separation between father and son), allowing you to attack without being attacked.

Believing that you can have harmful attitudes towards others WITHOUT being harmed, is an absolute lie. You may not be AWARE that you are harming yourself, because you are in denial, and your mind is blocked. But you ARE DIRECTLY hurting yourself whenever you in ANY WAY attempt to hurt anyone.As the blocks to awareness become lifted and you can learn to SEE the unity and oneness with others, which is opening to the shared mindset of God and the Holy Spirit, it becomes much easier to see AND FEEL, the fact that when you try to destroy someone, you ARE destroying yourself.

Those who are hurt hurt others. Those who see themselves as abused abuse others. Those who hate feel hated. Those who cannot love do not feel loveable. Those who are sick are trying to prove they should be punished. Those who attack or blame believe they deserve to die.

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts."

"You are doing this to yourself."

Because you are one with your brothers, your MIND is IN THEIR MIND."One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."If you think that another person is NOT ONE WITH YOU, then you make them a "stranger". This is because you have become estranged from yourself. A separation or gap has formed, a SPLIT, in between you and another person. And this gap houses the body which becomes a separation device, keeping you isolated and alone.

Believing you are NOT IN others, you believe you can attack them and NOT attack yourself. This is a lie. It is based entirely in denial and unawareness. Anything you attempt to do to anyone you DO DIRECTLY to the part of you that is SHARED with them.

In every way you can imagine, any measure of inequality in which you and your brother are considered to be NOT ONE, or to not share, or to have different rules apply, or different truths for each, is EGO. Ego simply means inequality.

Believing you are not equal to others, not a brother, not an equal sibling of the same father, you will conceive of the many ways that you can be SPLIT OFF from them and thus from part of yourself. And you can then attack the split off part and believe it is not you. This is nothing other than dissociation in your mind.

"The separation IS the notion of rejection."

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation."

"the separation was and is dissociation"

Dissociating one part of your self from another, is the split mind, and is the ego. It IS the separation! And in this split minded state you are at war with yourself, and yet you belief and experience it as if it is NOT YOU that you are at war with. As if there is a SEPARATE PERSON who is the enemy or attacker or sinner. This is simply part of you which you've split off and disowned.

This means every attack you think is coming from another is coming from this split off part of your own self, and has nothing to do with anyone else. This is why the secret of salvation tells you that EVERY form of attack is self attack. And if you would NOT split your mind through attempts to create a SEPARATION BETWEEN you and others, you would not be sick or suffer or die.

It seems very strange to say this but, shared interests means that you literally are IN your brothers as part of them, and how you treat them IS how you are directly treating yourself. Which means there is NO WIGGLE ROOM or loopholes for how you can have an attitude toward or about someone else "separate from" your self. EVERY expression and every decision you make is to either attack BOTH OF YOU, OR NEITHER.

Having something in common is not a shared interest. It is a mutual agreed-to pair of separation devices which happen to clash the least. A true shared interest requires the recognition that you SHARE ONE MIND.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."This is VERY ALIEN to how the world thinks and acts. Because the world is riddled with divisions, separations and split minded people. Everyone with an ego is living in a state of DISSOCIATION. Every single person is against themselves and trying to kill themselves, but are doing it through such disowning of themselves that they think someone or something ELSE is doing it to them.

Imagine being so divided within yourself that you don't even recognize when you are destroying and attacking yourself, and you think it's someone totally separate from you that is your worst enemy, when all along your mind is split in half and at war with itself. That's what happening in the world.To share interests is to be of ONE interest. With an interest in oneness.

Being abused is not fun. Being punished or victimized or attacked is not fun. Being hurt by others, or by anything, is not fun. Being in pain and sickness is not fun. All forms of suffering suck bad.

Every episode of being hurt by the world always looks like you being victimized, against your will. You seeming not to choose it, not wanting it, and doing nothing to ask for it, yet alone deserving it. It always appears unsought and unfair.

When you look only at appearances, every abusive situation looks completely awful. Children being abused. Babies born with disabilities. Parents killed in a car crash. Someone being shot. Murder and rape and all manner of horrors.

However, when you read A Course in Miracles, we're told something which may not seem possible, yet alone true - that you are always doing this to yourself. Not matter who seems to be doing what to whom.

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

(Urtext T27I10)

In all seemingly un-asked for scenarios of suffering, it always seems that the problem began with attack by another. You were apparently doing nothing and minding your own business. Then along came the horror out of nowhere. You seemed to not even remotely choose it. You did nothing on the physical level to ask for it or to make it happen. You are a genuine victim.

However, such attacks in fact begin long before they ever manifest. And to realize this will take a lot of willingness and healing. Just even getting past the misery could take a lifetime. But hiding behind every experience of punishment is a secret decision, which happened in your mind long before the punishment happened.

Everyone who has believed in separation from God, attacked themselves first. They believed in their own sin and guilt. They tried to crucify themselves. Long before any abuser came along. each of us was responsible for deciding that we deserve to suffer and be punished. We chose to insist on a willingness to allow ourselves to be hurt. We literally wanted to be hurt. Or even worse, to die, because the belief in sin demands death.

"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death. The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."

Having decided you are sinful - the original sin, for trying to attack God, you quickly believe you no longer deserve love. Or even to live. You believe you should suffer and die to atone through the ego. To pay the consequences for what you did. And NOW you start to seek out ways to suffer.

Deciding you should suffer, you now attract, choose, hire, coerce, opt for and want, various people, scenarios and problems to bring the penalty to you. You elect freely and seemingly unconsciously to incarnate into defective bodies, broken families, abusive relationships and all manner of tortures. You arrange it all.

As each form of suffering comes to you, as you asked, and looking solely at the physical way by which it happens, it gives no hint that you asked for it. Especially not that you want it. Each blow is enacted by another body. Each attack appears unasked for. Stuff goes wrong seemingly chaotically and at random. Then the world seems to decide it's your time to die. Sucks to be you.

Who would suspect that you asked for this? That you consented to death, no matter how it came? Who would see the secret wish to suffer hidden behind the face of innocence?

"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. And it is only here salvation is."

No-one, not even the person suffering, thinks that they started all this. It always seems to begin outside of you, beyond your will. And then you can point fingers of blame and say, you abused me, you hit me, you hurt me, you punished me, you screwed up my life, you did this and I didn't choose it. Its all your fault.

And now the other is a scapegoat. Secretly someone you hired to hurt you on your behalf, they now take the blame for being the one who did it to you, so no-one notices the contract you signed. Ands so long as the projection of blame remains, it completely hides what you are doing to yourself. All power and responsibility is projected onto anyone except you.

You won't want to ever look at the fact you asked for this, so long as you don't see one key fact: You believed you deserved to suffer BEFORE you suffered. Before you were attacked, you attacked yourself. You believed it as soon as you left God. The denial of God was the denial of entitlement to forgiveness, happiness, health and life. You threw it all away and wanted life to suck.

And THEN you masterminded a lifestyle of awful things seeming to happen to you, inducing suffering while trying to achieve an illusion of redemption. You think if you suffer enough you'll pay off the debt. How much is enough? Only permanent suffering and death is an acceptable fee for your ego.

You chose everyone in your life. You hired them to not love you. You wanted to be sick. You wanted to be attacked, hurt and abused. Terrible lack of self love and respect happened before you brought a ton of bricks down upon yourself. You hated yourself.

Every hurt, every punishment, every abuse, every attack, IS in fact the working of your psyche to guarantee that you get what you think you desreve. It always appears that other agents are doing this to you, so that you can hide your death wish. But it is ALWAYS you that is deciding to orchestrate ALL forms of suffering. Your mind makes it happen.

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

(Urtext T27I10)

The ONLY WAY to be set free from ALL forms of suffering, is to recognize that in every case, the power of your decision begins the whole process. You decide you deserve to suffer, then you project abusers and punishers and prison guards, all of whome you hate and blame, in order to to hide how YOU feel about yourself.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves."

You can only suffer by choosing to. If you do not choose to, you CANNOT SUFFER OR DIE. Giving away your power to another to be the fall guy to disguise your self hate, is the only cause of ALL your problems. Choose to love yourself, and you will reclaim immortality.

All abusers, attackers, haters, hurters, punishers, terrorists, murderers and enemies must be forgiven. And to forgive them is a recognition that they were NEVER the starting point of any suffering. Spacetime began and ends with your decision. Nothing EVER happens without your consent.

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. ***I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die.*** I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concepts to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself."

"The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to ***change your mind about yourself***. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."

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

ACIM reiterates many times that WE ALONE ARE THE CAUSE of our own suffering. We are not ever at the effect of the world. We are the cause of the world, the dream, and everything we feel and think and experience. Nothing happens without our consent, and we cannot even be hurt unless we ourselves hurt ourselves.

When you take this to the extreme, it means that YOU ALONE are responsible for EVERYTHING you experience, and NO ONE ELSE has anything to do with it whatsoever. There are no causes in the world, your brothers NEVER cause you (God is the cause of you), and you cannot suffer unless you choose to.

You can't even die unless you choose to. NOTHING can happen without your decision. And Jesus is completely literal about this. If you do not CHOOSE to suffer, suffering CANNOT happen to you. Sickness cannot happen, nor can death. You have automatic innate power over death and suffering at all times, and ONLY YOU can bring them upon yourself.

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it."

This puts 100% of the responsibility on your shoulders. Which means that if you are ever tempted to believe that something is happening for a reason OTHER than your own contribution, you are in a state of being mistaken, and now you need correction. Because it is ONLY your contribution that is causing everything.

This sounds easy enough. You just need to realize and recognize that every time you are unhappy, upset, suffering, in pain, sick, angry etc, it is because you are making it happen. If you would just stop hurting yourself you'd be totally invulnerable and healthy and happy all the time. No joke.

What becomes seemingly difficult is the many ways that we might not recognize what we're doing, or that we're even doing anything at all. We can become so used to blame, and reaction, and emotional triggers, and powerlessness, and believing other people actually do stuff, and that it seems impossible we can be responsible for everything.

In fact it runs very deeply. Every single thought you have, every attitude, every belief, are all part of the confusion that "its not me doing it" and "they are doing it to me." In every way, it is really you, who are an immortal being who can never even be changed at all, becoming confused and believing that something outside of you is changing you against your will. This can NEVER be true.

Every time that we lose sight of being THE CAUSE, we fall into temptation. We deny the truth and project causality outside of us. And this is the same as projecting sin. Then we find others or the world to be the cause of us. And this is a defense against the healing God placed in our minds. It's a way to avoid being healed by displacing the problem and its source outside of ourselves.

We talk about teaching others, and helping others, and having relationships, and performing miracles and so on, but the foundation of all this is simply YOU BEING YOU. Are you attacking yourself, or aren't you? If you aren't, you are not under attack. If you are, you are your ONLY worst enemy. This is all due to the suicidal self-destructiveness which comes from believing you are sinful. Are you trying to destroy yourself and others, or are you extending creation?

If you were to temporarily remove the entire planet, and all the people on it, and leave just you floating in space by yourself, whatever is going on in your experience is SOLELY caused by you. There is nothing else to cause it. This really tells you that ALL your forgiveness work is ENTIRELY an inside job. IT has nothing to do with others. It's you versus yourself. Is you trying to master yourself. It's your mind playing tricks on itself. It's you alone affecting yourself insanely.

Weaning off of all the reasons, excuses, explanations, justifications, beliefs, projections, and all other forms of displacement of responsibility, is not easy. We have a lot of habits formed, a lot of assumptions made, and a lot of belief in being vulnerable. We position ourselves as victims on a minute-by-minute basis. We might think it's not even POSSIBLE to question whether these things are happening to us. That things can seem so extreme and lopsided that it seems impossible we can be the one causing it.

But even those things which seem convincing, tempting us, secretly our dissociated choice, we have to dig out ALL of them, to question every single mental activity which is leading you away from your invulnerability. Even the notion that if you are being responsible, other people can still do stuff to you, cannot be true. Even the notion that even if you're doing your best, you will still die, cannot be true. Even death itself CANNOT have power over you if you decide NOT to die. "You are immortal and you cannot die."

The aim here is that you become "strong in the truth". That you stand in your own light. That you know yourself and be true to yourself. That you be so certain of what you ARE, that you don't for a second displace yourself, make a bodily identity, project cause outside of yourself, or believe any temptation that you are threatened by the world. This is how you be the light of the world, by going WITHIN to the light that is in you, so that it can extend.

Ultimately it boils down to one simple thing. You are the one who is making your life hell. It's not anyone else, and its not the world. It's not your neighbors, not your boss, your politicians, your celebrities. It's not certain races or countries or the weather or food or where you live. It's not external activities or events or space or time. It's just YOU. You are the one who is doing it to yourself. Holy fuck!

Salvation has been placed IN YOUR MIND by God because he knows that the PROBLEM is in your mind. And so the solution is in your mind. Your mind is what needs to be corrected, and that is all. This will take care of everything else. You are the one who is against you. You are the one who keeps giving YOUR power away to others. You are the one who keeps losing yourself and confusing yourself with things which are not you. And you are the one who can use the power of your decision to get out of it.

"You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do.""It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace in any way.""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."

"Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way"

"Who could be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts himself?"

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

"If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or be hurt"

"You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness."

"I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events outside him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were not his choice. His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident."

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

You are attacking victims with your false empathy. It's time for some honesty.

When you see someone as a victim, such as that they are sick, diseased, suffering, afraid, being victimized by someone else, are disabled, weak, helpless, vulnerable, at a loss, unhappy etc... you might take the position of caring, wanting to help them, saving them, being their hero, or wanting their suffering to stop.

The desire to want their suffering to stop can become very strong. It seems justified. It seems like you care a lot about what they're going through and want all this stuff to stop happening to them. It seems like you want to take it away and that you would if you could. But this is completely fake.

Every time you perceive someone as anything other than perfect love, it is an ego attack and you are using them as a scapegoat to get rid of your sin.

It can seem like your reaction to their victimhood is justified. It can seem like you really want to help them and take away their pain. However, what you're not admitting is that you have a secret benefit from seeing them this way, and you positioning yourself as their savior is actually a cover-up for how you are using them for your diabolical plan.

Even if you are coming across as caring and wanting them to stop suffering, you actually deep down want them to keep suffering. You want their pain to continue. You want to keep seeing them as a victim, and to keep pretending that you are their savior and not in any way someone who would be hurting them further. You would seem shocked and horrified at the suggestion that you are attacking them with your attempt at salvation.

Secretly, you have a belief that you sinned, and hold a lot of guilt to go along with it. You want to get rid of it and deny it's you who did it. Along comes a nice victim which someone or something else has set up to be in a state of suffering and punishment.

Fortunately for you, they are already appearing to be punished by causes outside of you, so you don't have any need to attack them overtly. You don't need to turn them into a victim because they are already being one. How convenient! Now all you have to do is take the opportunity of their victimhood to keep them being a victim, so that you can use them to scapegoat your sin.

Therefore instead of reacting with justified anger, as though they attacked you and you need to now establish them as the one who is wrong, you've already seen that they appear to be wrong already. So all that's left is to keep them in their suffering while making it look like you are here to save them from it.

Your perception of them as a victim IS an attack, but it seems to be an invisible attack because its effects are already implemented by circumstances. By making their EXISTING victimhood real, you get to appear as though you were not the one who did this to them, even though your AGREEING with it is just as much an attack - a veiled attack, which seems like it isn't even happening. You join in the attack by agreeing that they are a victim. Then you react instead with false empathy, a false attitude of caring and wanting them to be better.

Your desire to want them to be better, while still perceiving that their victimhood is real, is actually a choice to perceive them as wrong for being the way they are. You think they should not be being victimized, they should not be suffering, they should not be sick, that it's unfair that they've been mistreated, and you just want to "help" the poor fuckers get out of their situation.

But you don't. Your belief that they should NOT be being real victims is actually an attack. You're trying to deny them and get rid of them. You can't accept them the way they are. You will position yourself as the innocent hero who comes to save them, while secretly using them to prove that THEY are the one who is a sinner and not you.

Even though you might label a victim in such a way as to frame them as guiltless and sinless, as though innocent and not wanting their situation, by making their victimhood real and reacting to it with false empathy or false compassion, you are actually condemning them.

Your ego really wants them to stay being the one who is sick, to keep suffering, to maintain their diseases and their strife, because if they were to genuinely stop being a victim you wouldn't have a way to get rid of your unconscious sin and guilt.

So long as you can see them as a victim and pretend to care, you can enjoy a secret gladness that they are the one who is worse off and not you. "There but for the grace of God go I" - or rather, "I'm glad those fuckers are suffering because they must be guilty and not me." They are the one who must have sinned, in order to suffer, and you are clearly the one who didn't.

Even if you go to great lengths to help them and want to alleviate their situation, you're really doing so on false grounds. You do not recognize that they have attacked themselves. You do not recognize that they have chosen to suffer. You do not recognize that they want to be a victim. You don't see the ways that they are being vicious and attacking and using their ego illusions of victimhood to accuse others of sin. You do not see this because you do not want to admit to doing the same.

Eventually, someone who becomes very "helpful" in this way is actually an under-cover attacker. A wolf in sheep's clothing. A devil appearing as an angel. Helping disempowers. Helping takes away, it does not give. Becoming a fixer, and becoming addicted to fixing, simply indicates that you want other people to be broken as much as possible so that you can remain in denial about your own brokenness.

If they are the one who needs the help, it's not you. If they are the victim, it's not you. If there is something "wrong with them", then you get to look all innocent and have an illusion of being "loving". Your seemingly sincere wish to take away all their suffering and pain is actually making it real and adding to it.

YOU are causing them to suffer more. That's hard to look at and admit to. Your ego WANTS them to suffer so that you can use them and make yourself look innocent. Every time you move into false empathy and set yourself up with an ego reaction of "oh poor them, they're so sad", you are attacking them and keeping them imprisoned. You're not shining truth onto them or really helping them. Your "help" is actually HURT.

To be truly helpful can only mean that you apply forgiveness. Whatever their victimhood appears to be, IT IS NOT THAT, and something else is going on, both with you and with them. There must be a lot of denial involved and there must be a lot of self attack involved. Victims are not victims. They choose to make themselves appear to have stuff happen to them "unfairly", tragically, awfully, so that their ego can get away with murder. Your belief that their victimhood is justified and unfair is you getting away with murder as well.

Only through a correction of your perception, which is going to require you to own up to what you are using this person for, and admitting to the truth of WHY you want them to suffer, i.e. to keep your own self-attack hidden behind denial, will you then have any hope of helping YOU, OR them. You can release them from their prison by NOT agreeing with their victimhood and NOT seeing them as suffering needlessly and NOT believing the appearance of the story as to how things are happening against their will. Behind every victim is Christ pretending to suffer.

False empathy is deceit. It is not justified. It is an ego reaction. It is a tool to get rid of your own sin. It does not work, because it keeps your own sin intact and creates more. Only forgiveness of yourself will work.

Various things seem to happen in the world. Sometimes seemingly happy things, sometimes tragic. Sometimes things seem to be going well, sometimes they fuck up. There are dramas. There's emotion. People seem to be well, others seem to be dying. There is a whole lot of "material" to react to, respond to, deal with, manage, etc.

It all seems plausible and true. It seems to have reality. It seems like it's something to be taken seriously. We seem to have to care about certain outcomes. It seems like there's real problems and real solutions. But this is all within the context of "the world is real".

IF the world is real, it makes sense that we should be taking things seriously. We should be caring, paying attention, reacting, dealing with issues, trying to control things, etc. This all seems "valid". It seems justified. It even seems to make sense. If someone is struggling with something it seems like there are certain courses of action. If there is a problem that seems serious, it seems you should be quite upset about it.

But here is the thing. This is all based on the assumption that the world is real. And that's a big assumption. It's a framework or a basis. A logical premise. It's a starting point on which to derive all these conclusions, evaluations, judgements, strategies etc. But what if the world isn't real?

What if the the world is in fact just a dream? You see, if the world is a dream, this changes the ENTIRE context of everything that seems to be happening. If it's a dream, nothing is really happening here. If it's a dream, even if it seems like some person just died, they didn't really die. If it's a dream, sickness is also an illusion and is completely fake. If it's a dream, everything that occurs is just some made up fantasy.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

In a dream world, it's as though there are just scenarios, situations, scenes, fictions and stories, which come and go fairly randomly. They don't actually have any particular rhyme or reason or meaning. Over here is the scene of a person at work. Over there is the scene of a person battling with disease. Over here is another person waking up in the morning. Over there is another person tying their shoes on a subway train. Just strange little vignettes of activity, drama and story.

If it's a dream, none of these things are really happening. The dream reframes the entire and every episode as not being what it seems to be. Are we to keep taking it seriously when something shows up that seems serious? Or should we laugh at yet another strange episode of dreaming in which we seem to be experiencing strange events and people?

Yes, if its real, then we probably should react to it. But if it is ONLY a dream, this lifts away ALL of the reasons and rationale for taking it seriously, believing it means anything, reacting to it as if it's posing real threats, buying into its illusions. And don't think the illusions aren't extraordinarily creative and well made. They are designed to deceive and tempt you and distract you and disarm you. But even a scenario of a person standing there trying to destroy you, it laughable in the context that it's ONLY a scene within a dream and you are not the body nor can you be attacked.

If you could observe the world, from outside of it, from outside the dream, it would be a radical change in perspective. What you once thought was being really threatened is now recognized as nothing but some illusion pretending to threaten an illusion. Nothing REAL can be threatened. You'd know that the whole world is one big fake fairytale. There aren't really any bodies, there's no real sickness, no real death, on real war, no tears or upsets or problems. It's all made up.

And changing your frame of reference, your point of perspective on this world, is how you forgive and develop true perception. Learning to see from a vantage point of the truth about the world, that it IS a dream, rather than the perspective that it's really happening and worth being alarmed about. False perception shows you the world as if it's NOT a dream, but a terribly real-seeming nightmare with tragic events and threat and danger. In such a world there is no safety, if you have identified with the dream figure.

This is why it's very vital to dis-identify from the body. Not just because bodies are distracting and act as anchors to bring down the Son of God, but because they are INSIDE the dream. They are part of it. They are just characters and costumes. So you, who are dreaming the world from OUTSIDE of the world, if you start to believe you are one of the characters in the dream, a body, you're going to lose sight of yourself, lose track of the truth, and believe that the world is happening to YOU because YOU are now believing you're a body. "What you are cannot be seen nor pictured".

Becoming spirit identified merely means the same thing as recognizing this is just a dream. It means remembering who and what you are, which is, that you are the dreamer of the dream, NOT the contents of the dream. You are not the body or the house or the family or the children or the job or the role-play. You are outside the dream bubble. Outside of spacetime, in heaven. In the awake world, the reality of the Kingdom. Attaching your "self" to "world stuff" just makes you believe you're under attack from a dangerous world where everything is chaotic and destructive.

Jesus's approach to the world is to learn to recognize that it IS only a dream. And being a dream, it should not be taken seriously. It should not be afforded any kind of reality or truth. Any kind of "it's really occurring". Any kind of artificial meaning or implication. In fact, he tells us that this is the secret of salvation. If we would recognize it's JUST a dream, we should be laughing at every part of it, realizing that it's complete fiction. Like some movie on a screen.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, ****they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream.**** This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes.

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.""

I'm learning recently that my mind and attitude may well affect other people. I think this is part of being more responsible for what my mind is doing "to itself", and extends to others, in that whatever I am doing to myself I am also attempting to do to others. Whatever sense of sin or guilt I have about myself I am likely to project. And this projecting is a kind of psychological attack that accuses and weakens others.

I notice that all the various thoughts I have about a person, all the fears, wonderings, ideas, visualizations of what may or may not happen, form a kind of "broadcast" that I experience as kind of "in front of me". Perhaps I experience it as being outside of me or coming out of me, due to the disassociation of projection.

So there is this whole "wall" or screen filled with ego thoughts that I am pushing out of me. And so by even having these thoughts at all, "about" someone, it's as if I am putting those thoughts onto the person and holding them within it. Framing them in my ideas about them, and trying to make it apply to them. Even if these thoughts seem harmless in the thinking of them.

Whatever I think about them is a form of framing them, interpreting them, deciding what to see in them, having an opinion about their condition etc. And the thing is, the ego has this really sneaky way of suggesting that "all thoughts are neutral", "you can think anything without having any effect", "your opinion is unbiased".

Early in the workbook we're told that "I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts". That's a pretty major deal right there. And it also taps into the fact that our minds are powerful and our thoughts have effects. It also says "I have no neutral thoughts", so the ego myth of a neutral unbiased objective opinion or evaluation of what something is or is not doing, is a lie. Every thought is biased and has an influence and an effect and is a DECISION to see or believe in a certain way, NOT an impartial detached idea.

The power of the mind to affect real consequences is something which Jesus says we are afraid of.

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them. Therapists try to help people who are afraid of their own death wishes by depreciating the power of the wish. They even attempt to "free" the patient by persuading him that he can think whatever he wants, without ANY real effect at all."

So you could put it this way. Either you are broadcasting love to people, or you are broadcasting fear and attack to people. How's that for responsibility? The whole collection of ego interference, predictions, controls, visualizations, imaginings, worries, concerns, etc that my mind has, are all forms of attack. So if I'm not loving, I'm attacking. "What is not love is murder." Gotta get honest here. We are either healers and blessers, or we are attackers.

I see that if I'm in attack mode, which is unto myself but also now seems to be "about someone not myself", and is still an idea in my own mind, that can't exactly be helpful to others. In fact it's what Jesus refers to as imprisoning your brother. And he even goes as far as to say that we're capable of cursing people with this.

""Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

So if someone is already in some ways cursing themselves, weakening themselves, and you then start to go into a reaction, and start to join with them in this belief, and fall for ego illusions, and have fears and other attack (non-light) thoughts about them, you are cursing them and reinforcing their errors. Your thoughts are NOT idle or private, they are having effects. Fortunately, negative ego thoughts are likely "weaker" than light-filled miracle thoughts.

Most likely it's accurate to say, we are all pretty sick minded and spend most of our time attacking each other psychologically. If I am in sin and guilt, I am not really going to be very helpful to others. I am likely cursing people all the time, not blessing them. If I want to be a miracle worker, in which I express love to people which actually has the power to affect them positively, to heal their minds and bodies, to set them free from imprisonment, then I am going to get my own mind healed so that I can bless, not curse.

When you withhold or cease to attack/project sin with the mind, when you are not being in fear, when your ego isn't running wild with interference and planning and deciding everything and playing God, when you are listening and following God's will and trusting Him in love, you effectively "take off of" others the chains of imprisonment and the curses you have been putting onto them. This DOES appear to have an EFFECT on them. You are now "not supporting" THEIR own self-curse and are not reinforcing their own weakness. Instead you supply the lack and strengthen them through your miraculous blessing.

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

So there is this pivotal message in the course. Either we are in a state of attack upon ourselves and others, which imprisons us AND them, in which we actually act like a prison guard controlling and isolating and defining people's confinement to ideas of limitation, OR we are setting ourselves and our brothers free by shining freedom onto them which actually HELPS them. By not supporting their self curse, we can perform miracles to alleviate their own imprisonment. Your loving mind CAN HEAL OTHER MINDS!

"The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal."

So we have to ask ourselves a humble question. Do we want to be a prison guard, controller, attacker, limiter, interferer, free-will denyer, and curser today.... or will we get out of the way and be miracle working healers who can only bless and extend love and who can literally bring about the release of others by our willingness to ONLY bless with thoughts of light, strength, support and love? We can resurrect the dead by believing in our own life. We can heal our brothers. This is the goal.

Our thoughts exert real influence. This is why we have to learn about the power of the mind. This is why we have to learn to be careful and responsible about what we think. Even our so-called "private thoughts" are being received by others. If you think poorly of someone, watch how they start to act negatively in return, because they DID receive your broadcasts even if you didn't speak in person.

If you take back all your projected bullshit and stop attacking yourself and others, watch how people start to miraculously awaken and heal in your presence. The strength of the Holy Spirit's light in you is powerful enough to resurrect the dead, waken the sleeping, and cure the sick.

"Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind. Nobody remains fully aware of it all the time. This is inevitable in this world, because the human being has many things he must do, and cannot engage in constant thought-watching. However, if he hopes to spare himself from fear, there are some things he must realize, and realize them fully, at least some of the time.

The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."

"While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don't really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains. "

"Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation."

"Now is Christ's power in your mind to heal as you were healed."

"The thoughts which the mind of God's Son projects, HAVE all the power that he has"

"Forgive them for they know not what they do" applies to anyone who believes in separation, because literally a state of ego-mindedness renders you unaware of what you are doing or why.

When you are whole minded you'll see the whole truth. Everything will be in its correct perspective. The truth will be obvious and you'll easily recognize it as true. And in contrast to it, anything that is not true will be very obviously false. There is no effort required in that, only awareness of the whole picture.

In awareness of everything, you need do nothing about the ego because you will recognize it is not real and doesn't exist. It merely needs to be seen for what it is, an illusion, which has disappeared and never was. It is made of nothing and is nothing.

But when separation is introduced to your mind, something else happens. It makes you unconscious to some degree. Separation is a form of denial or a block to awareness, so it blocks out awareness of some parts of the whole picture. It leaves you in a state of partial perception. It's like someone just hid a bunch of facts.

In particular, the truth, which was clear and obvious, becomes obscure and hidden. And without a clear awareness of the whole truth, you don't have a barometer to compare and contrast everything else to in order to find out if its true or false. It's like you forgot what reality is like, so now you're confused about whether what you're experiencing is reality or not.

Without the truth, and with key facts concealed by denial, your mind is now in a state where it is semi-conscious. It does not really realize it is not fully conscious, because it isn't aware of the stuff it isn't aware of. So it thinks it is fully conscious. Even a mind which is severely unconscious and limited still believes that it is fully aware of everything.

At all times, we believe that we're aware of the whole truth, every fact, every detail, and every piece of evidence, regardless of whether we are. Whatever we are perceiving we always believe it is the whole truth. And we are always assuming that we are 100% objective in our perception. We also assume that we are completely unbiased and perceiving clearly and without distorting anything at all, which is far from the truth when the mind has blocks in it (there are no neutral thoughts).

On the basis of this, we also then "make sense" of what reality seems to mean, based on the extent of our awareness, or the facts that we do still have access to. But if we don't actually have all the facts, something strange happens. We come to conclusions, trying to make sense of what we're seeing, based on what we are aware of. And if that means, that we are not aware of what is really causing something, we will try to come up with an alternative cause for things.

So because we're unconscious, we don't "see" that we actually cause everything, that we made the world, that we have orchestrated all events, and that we have attacked ourselves. The causality or the act of choosing to do that, is outside of awareness. So then it seems to us, in partial consciousness, that stuff happens seemingly out of nowhere, unjustified and uncalled for and unfair, as if it happens against your conscious will. It seems like another will has willed stuff to happen, without your permission, and so now you are victimized by it. Yet it it is your own will, unconsciously, making poor choices.

Based on this unawareness, and given only the limited information you have, you'll then try to make sense out of it, you'll assess the evidence, look around you, seek inside you for any sign that you made something happen, and failing to find awareness of such a cause or intention, you'll "rationally conclude" that it must've been someone else. You will then be convinced it's an external cause, or someone else willed against you, or the world did it to you, making you an unfairly treated victim.

This will all seem to make total sense to you. Because you're always trying to make sense of what you perceive, or to understand what it means based on the limited truth. So it seems to make sense, based on not having all the evidence, that other people are guilty sinners and they're attacking you and you are justified in revenge and anger.

You don't become angry on a basis of just being an angry person or as a random thing or just some reaction. You only become angry because to your consciousness, unable to see the full picture, it seems to make total sense to you that it is justified and correct and a truthful conclusion, based on what you're aware of. You look around you and do not see what you did to yourself, or any other signs that you chose it, and so this leads to obvious yet false conclusions about the scapegoats who must've been the cause.

You can't help it, either. In essence, you are not doing this on purpose to be an asshole. You're not intentionally, in your right mind, trying to be hurtful or scapegoat. You are actually simply acting very "naturally" in accord with the scope of your awareness and the resulting effect on your thought system. In essence, anyone who comes to believe in separation, MUST see themselves as being victimized. The mind simply cannot see itself attacking itself so its only option to so believe someone else is responsible.

It's pretty much automatic. Anyone with an ego will react with anger. Anyone with an ego will see themselves treated poorly. Anyone with an ego will hallucinate and be convinced that there are causes outside of their own will doing stuff to them. Anyone with an ego will see themselves as not the cause of problems, but rather at the effect of them, helplessly, and that this is indeed an unfair attack.

There is nothing special at all about the conditions and conclusions that arise in ego mindedness. It is completely predictable, and it applies to absolutely anyone who enters separation. It's like, if you choose separation, you are guaranteed to see yourself as being victimized. And anyone who does this will see themselves this way and will then react to these false conclusions of external causes.

This is why all ego behaviors are forgivable. They are forgivable because, literally, anyone acting in the ego in this way, as a victim or victimizer, MUST NOT see themselves correctly. They are mistaken. They are not aware. They are not aware of the evidence, they don't see the whole picture, they're not aware of what the truth is, they cannot see their own causal power, they are unaware of their own influence over their own perceptions, they don't even recognize their own identity, and they are very confused about what is what.

Any behaviors or attitudes that stem from this state of unawareness HAS to be forgivable, if you can be aware of the larger picture yourself and recognize the simple mistakes that people are making. A person is not trying to be an asshole attacker. They are actually quite naturally reacting and trying to make sense of their distorted reality, based on an inability to see the whole truth. They're literally doing the best they can, or at least are reactive very predictably based on their mental illness.

This is why anyone in the ego is forgivable. Anyone in the ego is simply mistaken. It does not call for attack or revenge. It does not call for condemnation or judgement. It does not call for making guilty or sinful. If you can be in the whole picture and aware of the whole truth, it is obvious once again what is what.

It's obvious that people hurt themselves. It's obvious that people think they know what is true when they don't. It's obvious that they are calling for help. It's obvious that they are confused and hallucinating. It's obvious that they think they sinned when they didn't. It's obvious that they are following perfectly logically consistent conclusions based on the limited information they have. And it's obvious they are not trying to be "bad" or evil on purpose, they're simply unconscious and mentally ill.

People are upset and angry and confused and lashing out only because they have come to believe false truths about what is really happening. They do not see. They are asleep. They think that something bad has happened to them unfairly and people are out to get them and they need to be afraid and defenses are justified and counter-attack is survival. They're acting completely logically and predictably based on their state of awareness, or rather their 'ignorance' of the whole truth. They simply do not know what they are doing.

This is why from the highest levels, you can only have compassion and be forgiving. Forgiveness is justified in the big picture because it recognizes and sees the whole picture, has all the information, can see who does what to whom, sees no victims, does not believe any of the distorted illusions or false conclusions, and simply recognizes that people are mistaken. Awareness of the truth shows you what is true and what is false, clearly and obviously.

All sins are forgivable, because even the idea of sin is just another part of being unconscious and not aware of the whole truth. Sins are forgivable because in truth they cannot cause consequences and have no real effects. Sins are forgivable because no-one can really sin and no-one has really sinned, they just think they have, because there is key information unavailable to them. Blocks to awareness are responsible for all mistaken conclusions.

We simply need someone to tap us on the shoulder the middle of our hissy fit,to remind us, hey.... that thing you thought happened, it didn't happen. You did not hurt anyone. You did not make bad stuff happen. Other people are not trying to destroy you. You actually are doing this to yourself. There is more truth that you do not see or realize. Everything is actually ok. God has taken care of everything. Nothing is out of place. You are still worthy of love. Everything is still exactly in its correct place and everything in heaven is still continuing without missing a single note in heaven's song. It's all good.

It seems to you that there is a separate power, a separate will, or a separate cause, which is "outside of your mind", which you seem to have no control over.

This power or will seems to show up in the body becoming sick, or stuff happening against your will, or things occurring which you complain about or seem not to want to happen.

But it's not a matter of there actually being a separate power that's acting against you. There is no separate will in the sickness doing its own thing out of control. There is no causality outside of your mind or in the world that can do anything to you without your consent.

So then you have to realize, whatever power, will, reality, force, unchangeability, intention, causality, or any other attribute of power that you see as being "in" that thing, or in the body, or in the sickness, or in the events, it CANNOT BE that these things are separate from your mind.

It is YOUR MIND, out there, separated off, seemingly turned against you, as if it is a separate cause or will or person. So now your body is showing sickness because your mind put the sickness there. And now the part of your mind which put the sickness there is at war with the rest of your mind. And now the rest of your mind sees that it seems to have an enemy who is willing against you.

You do not have an enemy.

Every enemy, every external cause, every illusion that it is "not you doing this", is actually YOU. It's YOUR MIND doing it to itself. This is the secret to salvation.

The sickness in your body is being maintained by YOUR MIND, some part of your mind, which has "turned against yourself" in unlove and denial. And now it seems there are two selves or two minds or two wills operating in conflict.

So then you get all of this impression that "you", the remaining part of your mind, is up against this foe who is "not you", and has a mind of its own. And it seems to have power over you, is causal, has will, is making decisions that you do not want.

There is no such thing. There is only YOUR MIND pretending to be two minds. Your have a split mind. You are divided against yourself. That means you are UNCERTAIN about who and what you are, are not loving yourself WHOLLY, and there is some belief in separation and denial in your mind which is making it SEEM as if a separate mind is attacking you.

So if that sickness is actually something YOU ARE DOING TO YOURSELF, and if that sickness is actually coming from your mind, and that "enemy" that you perceive is actually YOU, because you have regarded yourself as a sinner or attacker or vicious ego or separate sinner, then by you RECLAIMING this part of your mind into your whole self, you are alleviating and taking back and undoing this split in your mind.

So now if there is no split in your mind, this sickness has no mind to drive it. It has no mind to believe in it, because the sickness is just a symptom of SEPARATION, ie the idea that your mind is separate from itself. Or that there are two of you. Or that there are two decisions being made. Or two wills competing against each other. You are simply fighting with yourself.

So then, to the degree that you believe this separate cause/mind is out there and not you, to that degree you will think you have to "fight with it", and rise up against it, or find the power to attack it, having made it real, in order to free yourself from it. But that now means, you are attacking this other part of your mind, attacking your enemy, and thus attacking yourself.

Because that separate "source of will" out there, or in the body, is actually YOU. So to go against it simply reinforces the presence of the "sickness", or the symptoms, because the symptoms are just showing you that there is separation in the mind or you are attacking yourself. To attack the attack is not healing.

So what needs to happen only, is your RECOGNITION that the will and power and mind which you PERCEIVE as being "not in you" and "beyond your control" and "not you" and "I did not choose this" and "I am not causing this", must be TAKEN BACK, and reintegrated into your identity and your whole self, so that you are no longer attacking yourself or at odds with yourself. So that you are WHOLE MINDED, or SINGLE MINDED. That also means, so that you love yourself.

There is no enemy. There is no separate external cause. It's YOU! Take your power back. Nothing has power over you other than the power YOU GIVE IT by putting YOUR SELF INTO IT, by giving yourself away, through disownership, denial, and irresponsibility. You take what is in you - will, power, mind, causality, and push it away from you. Then it shows up as an enemy willing against you. No wonder! So now you need to take that back, reclaim the power, re-own yourself, stop denying yourself and be whole. This wholeness is healing. This wholeness undoes the belief in the SPLIT in your mind, and that split is the sole cause behind all symptoms of sickness.

This therefore means two very important things.

1) The symptoms of sickness can ONLY show up when your mind is split and divided against itself, and it is only by seeing part of your OWN WILL outside of you, against you, that you have level confusion and thus separation beliefs and sickness shows up. Also death. So you are the ONLY CAUSE OF SICKNESS AND DEATH.

2) When your mind is whole and not divided and is not seeing part of itself as outside of itself, THERE CANNOT BE ANY SICKNESS SHOWING UP. It *MUST* disappear. "Illusions recognized must disappear." Once you've taken yourself back and owned up to things and accepted the truth, there CANNOT BE SICKNESS OR DEATH.

Sickness cannot linger around. It's not like, ok, you fucked up and made a mess of things and sickness resulted, and now you get your mind into a happy place, and now you have to "live with" the results or consequences of your mistake. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! No fucking way. This is NOT what the course is teaching at all, and many people believe this IS what the course says - that you must become at peace with whatever shit happens. NO! You must STOP MAKING SHIT HAPPEN.

The condition of your body is a DIRECT REFLECTION of the state of your mind. "A broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this". Sickness cannot last when the guilt behind it removed, making sickness impossible to return. A body not used for attack CANNOT BE SICK NOR CAN IT DIE.

It's all about you being the enemy of yourself, you having split-off parts of your mind which are seeming to "will against you", but it's really YOU WILLING AGAINST YOU. That means YOU OWN THE POWER that is causing sickness to happen. And that means YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND and stop making the sickness show up.

"You made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both."

This is LITERAL. A sick body proves the mind is still sick. The body cannot show up as sick or dead if the mind is whole. Period. Anyone who if REALLY FULLY Integrated the whole of their mind fragments will no longer have level confusion and will no longer express a sick body from the mind, thus demonstrating a perfectly healed and healthy body, to PROVE that the mind REALLY IS believing that it is the SINGLE CAUSE of the body, more powerful than the body, and is thus miraculous.

Sickness must go. It is a lie. There is no such thing as real sickness or sickness that should remain while you wake up. If the body is still sick YOU ARE NOT AWAKE. If the body still dies YOU ARE NOT AWAKE. Reclaim all of yourself and you will regain awareness of immortality AND DEMONSTRATE IT.

Your only enemy is yourself. You are the only cause of everything you experience. You are doing this to yourself, and can choose again.

Consider the idea of a script for your life which you fully planned, consented to, and passionately wanted, before you came into this lifetime. Imagine that you organized and orchestrated every single interaction. You created agreements with every single person you would ever meet and you asked them to do to you every single thing they were to do, with which they would comply. Imagine also that only what you planned would happen and nothing else would happen - except you would also forget that you planned it.

ACIM does speak to this, in that it says that nothing happens to you that you have not asked for, and that you get *everything* you ask for, and that you get *nothing* that you did not ask for. It also speaks to this when it says that nobody dies without his own consent. NOBODY DIES WITHOUT THEIR OWN CONSENT.

At some point, somewhere, whether it's in this life or before this life, but somewhere, for ACIM to be TRUE on this matter, you ****MUST**** have consented to every single thing that has ever happened in your life. ABSOLUTELY ALL OF IT. Not only consented to it but created it, asked for it, wanted it, designed it and even set it in motion YOURSELF. Not by any outside force or coercion or ANY amount of victimhood whatsoever. (this is somewhat described in the "song of prayer" pamphlet as well)

Remember the Course also says the key to salvation is this - that you are but doing this to yourself.

IF the Course is telling the truth (and it is), then everything that has ever happened in 'your life' has been exactly designed by and asked for by you. All of it. So this takes quite a lot of 'fessing up', which also means your life must become totally void of victimhood.

If you look now, and you look back at some things that you recognize as having 'happened' in your life, particularly events which involved people where they seemed to influence you in ANY way, and in particular in what *looked like* any kind of negative way, then you need to now reinterpret that. If you can allow yourself to ACCEPT that you planned and asked for every single detail of what occurred, then a few insights must arise:

1) You have to realize there was a REASON WHY you planned what you did, and that reason was FOR YOUR GOOD. Every single thing that you designed must have been for an intended purpose of, ultimately, leading you to a spiritual awakening. Every single 'lesson' or scenario that you put together, MUST have been intended to HELP YOU in some way.

2) With the information that all events are helpful, this must then shed a new light on all of these tragic past experiences, to show you that SOMEHOW, whatever happened, and no matter how it looked at the time, somehow that event and that person were ONLY doing what was in your script and they performed it perfectly. Therefore they weren't REALLY a victimizer. And you weren't REALLY a victim. At the time, yes, you believed you were, but here's the thing. You only believe you are a victim when you are UNAWARE that you are a script-writer.

3) This now gives rise to the insight that every way you've experienced being a victim in the past, was a result of a lack of awareness on your part, in which you experienced something designed to HELP YOU but interpreted it initially as HURTING YOU. This symbolically is the same thing as being loved by God but believing that you're actually being attacked by God. Ie it seemed against you rather than for you. So all of the ways that you STILL hold onto past events with a grievance, thinking of them as 'wrong' or 'unwanted' or 'bad' or 'unpleasant' or whatever, blaming the other person, all of that INTERPRETATION of events came about ONLY because you did not remember that you wrote the script. It looked like you didn't ask for what happened, which, IF it were true, WOULD justify your anger and hurt and offense. And that means, you need to to be more truly forgiving, ultimately accepting the atonement.

4) This now helps you to see that, ultimately, everyone involved is INNOCENT, because nobody has done anything outside of the contract and nobody ELSE is responsible for having done anything TO YOU against your will. Your will is embedded in your script which YOU WROTE, so even if you now find yourself unaware of this and experiencing victimhood, YOU DID STILL WRITE IT. So you can hardly blame the other person. So now you need to go look at all the unhealed grievances that you still haven't let go of, and which you still interpret in a victim consciousness that says "I didn't want this to happen", "this wasn't fair", "they did it to me against my will" etc.... you HAVE to reinterpret that.

5) This now leads us to TAKING RESPONSIBILITY. This might seem like a step which places a shitload of guilt on your shoulders, blaming yourself for what happened, bla bla bla. That's ego. What it really means is actually a doorway to FREEDOM and RELIEF. You see, if you scripted all this, and you asked xyz person to do what they did, and you can admit that and own that fact, then you can let them off the hook. You can realize they did not victimize you. YOU victimized you. You hired them to carry out your wishes. If you are responsible for writing your script (and maybe you had help on the other side to do this gently/realistically etc), then you can no longer blame anyone else for what happens, in the past or in the future. It also means you can no longer view experiences as unwanted, bad, against you, unhelpful, hurtful, something to resist, as an attack, or any other form of victimization. That means, yes, whatever they did, whatever happened, you wanted it and got what you wanted, FOR A REASON, to HELP YOU to wake up.

6) Having now admitted to this responsibility, and started to access the sense of RELIEF and freedom that this gives you... because dropping the whole victim drama is a RELIEF from suffering, you can now enter into GRATITUDE. You cannot be grateful to an attacker while you think you didn't ask them to attack you. But you can be grateful to them when you realize you DID ask them to AND you can turn your mind to look at the situation as helpful/for you. It's like looking for the silver linings. What's happening is NOT a terrible tragedy or a horrible event gone wrong. That's illusion. What's happening is trying to help you to be steered in the right direction or to keep you safe or to help you learn who you are or to guide you to remembering whats true or to learn to love and care etc.. whatever the purposes are in your plan for spiritual "growth."

7) Finally then you have to learn to change the 'direction' or angle from which you look at events. If you're responsible and everything is for your good, then you need to learn to 'take it' that way. Look for the helpfulness. Look for how it is 'positive'. Look for the silver lining, the learning, the opportunity its giving you. Look at how it is making you grow or what you're learning from it. Ultimately then there is only one LESSON, in the form of all lessons. And it's this. You need to overcome the NEED for the lesson by recognizing the truth, owning up to the responsibility of who you really are (owning your innocence), entering into the mindset of the Holy Spirit which shows you that you are never a victim, and reclaiming your FREEDOM from the dramas of the ego. Ultimately this translates to you OVERLOOKING (forgiveness) all of the ways that you get LOST in the 'game' that you set up, so that you literally are no longer CAPABLE of playing the game. Once the truth is revealed, you can never forget it. And so you no longer need to create these dramas ever again.

Remember, nothing happens to you against your will. There are no accidents. Nothing happens that wasn't planned at some point in time BY YOU. Nothing is being forced upon you against your will.

You might find yourself 'inside a lesson' in this lifetime and feeling stuck in it, victmized by it, limited by it. But you might not also remember the benefits of this situation. Maybe it has indirect effects on the spiritual growth of other people. Maybe by suffering a sickness you HELP other people to learn compassion. Maybe by being afraid you give others an opportunity to learn to nurture. We're all this big soup of roleplay and side-effects and responses.

Also let's just finish by saying you're not stuck with a lesson. Holy Spirit WANTS you to learn the lesson. The answer to it is not being hidden from you. Often Holy Spirit tells me, in the midst of some frustration and confusion, "its a lesson". So them I'm like.. hmm... what is this lesson, what am I meant to learn? And it's not like Holy Spirit is withholding the answer, but I need to experientially becoming willing to accept some measure of truth in order to complete the need for the situation. The lesson may not be obvious.

In fact a recent lesson for me was to learn to DROP the idea of miraculously healing a problem with my eye, so that i would let go of false ideas about control and spiritualization of my ego, even though this outcome seemed at the time to be totally the opposite of what I thought I needed to do. Holy Spirit eventually revealed, when I was at the readiness to admit to it, that the whole point was to help me to 'see' the truth - that I was trying to do/be something beyond what is asked of me.

Also I can't begin to tell you how much I have learned compassion and a heart-opening as a result of various challenges that a person close to me has been through. For which I'm grateful, even though it sounds 'sick' to say you're grateful for sickness.

Holy Spirit said to me, "there is a plan". I'm learning to trust that more. And thus learning to take responsibility for my part in that plan, and thus relinquishing all of the support for victim mentality and blame. Even now as I start to look back at past events in 'this new light' I can see that I need to become grateful to people that I thought were against me or who I thought did the wrong thing. They were only helping and they only DID help. I just didn't recognize it.

Ultimately you want to get to where you have no more need for writing scripts, having learned everything they offer. Then you are free from the cycle of reincarnation forever.

Salvation is EXTREMELY simple.

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

In this one sentence is the whole course. Just stop hurting yourself!

Let's try to make this extremely clear.

You are an immortal being which cannot be affected by anything. Nothing real can be threatened. You cannot be hurt or attacked or damaged. Nothing can happen against your will. You are absolutely invulnerable.

No-one else can do anything to you. No-one else can cause you to feel anything, experience anything, think anything, have a reaction, or make you do anything at all. There is no power, force, causality, mind, will, agent, or any kind of manipulative source in the world capable of making ANYTHING happen to you. Nothing can change you in any way, to any degree. You are absolutely permanent.

SO...... the ONLY THING that seems to be able to happen, is that *YOU*, and only you, can decide to begin to hurt yourself. All attack is self attack. And this attack MUST be an illusion that YOU made up, because you CANNOT BE HURT in reality.

YOU, can decide, to accuse yourself of sin, to have an attack thought, to deny your reality, to suppress your love, or whatever form it takes. But let's be 100% clear. It is COMING FROM YOU. You are the one choosing it and are always doing it to yourself. No-one else is to blame. No-one else is involved. No-one else has caused ANY of it, not even a tiny bit.

If you would just stop attacking yourself you would stop suffering forever.

If you would just stop denying what you are you'd be yourself.

If you would just stop hurting yourself, or believing that you have, or that you even can, you would never have to suffer ever again.

So what can't we get this? It's so incredibly simple. There's only you hurting yourself. So if you are upset, you are doing that to yourself. If you are unhappy, you are choosing that. If you are suffering and sick, you are making it happen. If you are dead, you consented to it and chose it and wanted it.

The PROBLEM IS.... we are UNCLEAR, CONFUSED, about WHO is responsible for making life miserable. WHO IS THE CAUSE. Who has the power. Where is the cause. Who is the one to blame. We are CONFUSED about this. And we are mistaken about it very often - if not most of the time or even all the time.

This confusion, alone, is the reason why we think that there is something more complicated about being at peace, or saved, or happy, or healthy. In any scenario, wherever we are or with whom or whatever it involves or what form it takes, IT DOES NOT MATTER. If we think THEY are doing it, THAT is causing it, THIS is doing it to me, THAT's the reason I'm upset, etc... we're wrong. Very mistaken. We are never upset for the reason we think. And it is NEVER EVER EVER because of anyone other than ourselves.

This is so extremely true, that you can practically accept that if you are anything less than totally joyous and peaceful and healthy, it has NOTHING to do with this entire universe. Nothing to do with other people, or places, or events, or happenings, or body states, or reactions. It's not coming from anywhere else other than YOUR SELF.

Your brother is not the cause of you. God is the only cause of you. All people on the planet and beyond are NOT the cause of ANYTHING you experience. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Not one single attack, hurt, damage, upset, accusation, nothing. None of what you experience has anything to do with anyone but yourself.

You are invulnerable. Either you accept this invulnerability OR you pretend that you are vulnerable. You pretend by disowning your invulnerability, which requires you to DISPLACE it onto something else. You have to GIVE IT TO someone. You give away your power. You give away causality. You give away responsibility. You give away strength. You give away your self. And you put it into the hands of a seemingly SEPARATE something, anything, so long as you think it's not yourself. This is the ENTIRE problem that CLOUDS your judgements and confuses you into believing YOU AREN'T THE CAUSE.

We probably spend 90%+ of our time in this state of delusion. Perceptual distortions derived from false beliefs, attempting to assert "I'm being caused by something not myself." "There's an alien will". "That person made me" "I'm upset about". etc. This is always not true. Sifting through the massive stockpile of LIES that this produces, is 99% of the effort entailed in purification and correction, trying to get to a state of forgiveness. Trying to dig yourself out, to dig real causality out, from underneath this huge pile of confusing rubble.

This is what it always comes back to. What am *I* doing. Why am *I* doing this. Why did *I* choose this. If I am upset, why am I choosing to be upset? If I am unhappy, why did I make myself unhappy? Why am I choosing to have attack thoughts? Why am I believing I'm sinful and then disowning it and projecting it onto someone else?

"You but accuse your brother of your own sin" tells you that your brother HAS NOT SINNED EVER. It's you that thinks YOU have sinned, and now you're lost in scapegoating someone for something you think you did, and subsequently positioning yourself as their victim SO THAT you can maintain the DENIAL that this is ABOUT YOU, BY YOU, and has nothing to do with them at all.

If we could just become clear on this. If we could just sort out, who is really doing what to whom. Who is causing all this. Where is it coming from really. Am I responsible. In every case, you are. 100% full responsibility for everything you experience. Which means 0% of what you experience is "because of" this entire universe or anything in it.

We have to peel ourselves away from this immersion, entanglement, confusion, binding, with other people, in which we lose sight of who is really doing this to us. We have to realize, any time I am upset and thinking it's because of ANYTHING to do with another person, I MUST be mistaken in believing this, because I've now lost sight of salvation's fact - that right now *I'm* doing something TO MYSELF, and what *I* am doing is the SOLE CAUSE of what I am experiencing. If I do not like what I am experiencing, I must choose again. And whatever I choose must be my experience.

"At least I can decide I do not LIKE what I feel now."

"And so I HOPE I have been wrong."

"I WANT another way to look at this."

"Perhaps there IS another way to look at this. What can I LOSE by asking?"

Get a clear picture here.

1. I am not affected by anything beyond myself.

2. No external causes EVER cause me.

3. I cannot be hurt or upset by anyone or because of anyone's situation.

4. Whatever I am experiencing, I WANTED to and CHOSE to.

5. I am free of ALL causes of sickness and death. The ONLY cause of sickness and death is my choice to be sick and dead.

6. No-one has EVER done anything to me. I have NEVER done anything to anyone.

7. I am not at the effect of ANYTHING in the world.

8. If I think anything but myself caused WHATEVER, I'm mistaken.

9. If it's all about my own FREE WILL CHOICE, which not even God can oppose, no one can stop me from choosing whatever I want to experience.

10. Heaven is a choice I must make, and when I choose it, nothing in all the world can stop me.

This would seem to be EXTREMELY SELFISH. To the ego. To emphasize that YOU AND ONLY YOU has ever had any effect on you, and all those effects were imaginary. And that by focusing on the love of yourself, and accepting atonement for yourself, you become the most UNSELFISH towards others. And then will proceed to treat them as you treat yourself, with miraculous expressions of love.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

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

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

"Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes.

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." "

Your main problem is one of identity. You've attempted to change your identity from Christ, to take on a new identity as an ego.

Your sense of your "Self" has become associated with, attached to, and confused with, an alternative model of identity.

The ego is nothing but a device, a contraption you invented like a vehicle. It's something for you to cling to and to try to model yourself on. It does absolutely nothing on its own. It is lifeless.

It's not until you attempt to become joined with the ego, as though becoming one with it, that it becomes a problem.

If you think of it as a costume (like the body), it's not until you actually wear it that it seems to change how you express yourself.

Or, like a pair of goggles, it's not until you put the goggles over your eyes that your perception is changed. You can put them down again at any time and immediately resume normal vision.

You, as a Child of God, bring your sense of Self with you wherever you go. Your Self is your identity. The ego has no real self at all. However, if you bring your sense of Self to the ego and merge with it, you combine your sense of Self with its way of filtering reality. You then see "through" it, and see in the way that it would see if it had its own ability to see.

It is only your own ability to see - awareness - that you combine with the ego, that seems to give the ego perception. It is only your own ability to experience - being - that you combine with the ego, that seems to give the ego the ability to experience. It is only your own power which you share with the ego, which seems to give the ego power. It only shares any of this with you while you are joined with it, and as soon as you take it off, it would just drop to the floor lifelessly. Just like the body.

The problem is, when you've put your ability to experience and your sense of Self into the ego, trying to cling to it tightly as though making you become like it, you will now experience life through its eyes. Whatever it sees or how it looks at things or what it wants or how it values or what it believes, now becomes your experience. And you will see reality as very frightening when you look with the ego!

That's a problem because the ego's way of looking at reality is completely backwards. Seeing life through its eyes you will instantly reject God. God will suddenly seem to be an attacker, an enemy and a threat. The truth will suddenly seem like it is against you. The truth will come across as being the complete opposite of what you are, because it does not contain any separation, and the ego identifies with being made of separation. So the truth will then seem to be an affront, highly offensive, dangerous, hideous, and like some monster come to destroy the ego.

You, as immortal spirit, using and attached to the ego, ... if you attempt to become more spiritual while still wearing the ego identity, ie still joined with the ego mind and still looking through the ego goggles, will have a pretty interesting experience. You will not want to wake up. You will see any efforts to wake up as harmful and hurtful. You will interpret efforts to wake up as suicidal and sacrificial. And you will become afraid that the truth is coming along to destroy you. This can potentially provoke you to put up defenses against the truth, producing sickness and ultimately death.

This is precisely what you will experience each time you try to open up to more truth. Each time you let in some light. Each time you want to become closer to God. You, attached to the ego, inadvertently try to bring the ego into that light with you. It cannot go there and it won't go there. It will see it as you trying to destroy it. And it will put up a fight. Part of you which seems not to be in the ego gets closer to the light, and the part of you which does not want to let go of the ego - believing it is your Self - kicks and screams and resists and hates you for it.

This produces the ego rebound. Essentially, the ego rebound comes from trying to make the ego more spiritual, by attempting to bring it closer to its opponent. While you are identified with it, your attempt to go visit God without leaving the ego behind will create an elastic effect which will snap you back into the body and you will subsequently rage because of how you did such a horrible thing to your "self".

Waking up must entail the letting GO of the ego, recognizing that it is not your identity. Otherwise, each time you pull your "Self" into the light, and thus the ego with you, it's going to hurt. The ego cannot see the truth in any other way. It only sees the opposite of the truth as being true. It will never change. The ONLY way to be free of it is to let it go, to stop being it, stop wearing it, stop looking through it, and stop using it. We have to learn that the ego is NOT our "Self".

So this is purely a matter of identity. Are you made of ego? Is your Self really separate from God? Who are you? Are you Christ? Are you a body? Are you part of the ego thought system? Are you made of sin and guilt and fear? Do you believe in what the ego believes in? It's only because you have become CONFUSED about what really is YOU, and what is the ego, that you are having to go through this struggle of "awakening'. You literally believe, through the ego, that you are trying to destroy yourself by waking up.

Sometimes when you are exposing yourself to "too much truth" or "too much Course", you'll have these ego rebounds. You kind of can't help it. You are still holding on tightly to the very thing which is clouding your judgement, while simultaneously trying to be free of it. This makes you torn. Trying to be in two thought systems at once, or two canoes. There is part of you that sincerely believes you are the ego and you are the body. The suggestion that these things don't exist frightens you.

Letting go, letting go, letting go. Stopping being ego. Surrendering the false identity. Remembering who you really are. Accepting the truth that you are Christ. Relinquishing your belief in, trust in, faith in, confusion with, and reliance on a false self that isn't really a part of your identity. You literally believe the ego is who you are. It's not. Just some clarification needed. Some discernment. Is this really true about who I really am, or is this just a misperception caused by me using the ego goggles? Is this really who I am, or is this just a body I'm wearing temporarily?

Sorting out "who you are" is what this entire process is about. Each effort to "find out" will likely be partly fruitful and partly self destructive. Each time it will potentially offend you. Gradually you will inch towards awakening. Jesus says, "most of you will come in tears".

Each time you have a rebound, try to focus on LETTING GO. Just stop to recognize that you - part of your Self that's still identified with the ego or body, has become deeply hurt and offended by what the truth said about it. IT believes that the truth is vicious and mean and disrespectful. It is scared and freaking out because it doesn't understand what the truth really means or implies.

It, seeing through the ego, sees your efforts as blasphemous and an attack, and so it feels attacked and guilty. And that's what you'll feel like when you get a rebound - attacked and hurt and guilty. Recognize that in you and have compassion for that part of you. Try to get that part of you to let go of being ego.

Try to reassure your "self" that the truth doesn't mean YOU don't exist because YOU are not the ego. Be gentle with that part of you which is just like a confused wounded animal in the corner. Be kind to it. Don't push it too far too fast, that will just hurt more.

Likely you will have to feel the feelings of the hurt that was created by "its" mis-perception of what you did. Your attempt to wake up was like an abandonment of the ego self, like a self sacrifice. It doesn't have the ability to see any other way. So take your time and rest and recover and stop pushing yourself so hard.

Gradually and gently you need to learn to just LET GO of the ego because it is not who you really are. What you'll learn about your real identity is going to be quite a surprise!

If you were completely certain and confident in who you are, you would have a sense of invulnerability.

If someone were to come along and say something potentially hurtful, you, in your complete certainty and confidence, would be clear enough on where you stand with yourself to know that it is not true of you. You would in fact be unmoved, unchanged, unaffected, and you would maintain a sense of inner peace. In fact you would probably laugh at how ridiculous the claim was.

If this is truth, then what is it that really is happening when someone seems to 'hurt' our feelings? How can we actually become hurt, if we are in a place of invulnerability? To become hurt, some part of us has to take seriously what the person said, has to believe that in some way there is some truth to it. We then recoil in horror and shock as if hurt 'by' the person.

But what we are really hurt by is our own wavering on what the truth is about ourselves. If we did not have any uncertainty about our own self, we would not experience their words as hurtful. Instead we'd discern that that person actually has something going on with themselves, they don't believe in themselves or they think poorly of themselves, and they're trying to project it onto you.

So this is what it boils down to, and this is going to be a major stretch for many people to accept.... You cannot be hurt unless you are in agreement with the other person. You also cannot be hurt unless you believe there is some truth to what they say, even if you do not like what they say. You also cannot be hurt unless you believe that their hurtful words actually have some grounds, or footing, or 'power', and the only way they can do that is if you are upset by the prospect that they're actually telling the truth.

What we do not want to admit, and what is very difficult to overcome (but not impossible), is that we ourselves are our own attacker, and we ourselves fail to be true enough to ourselves, and we ourselves abandoned ourselves to lies about ourselves, beliefs in unworthiness, beliefs in lack and so on, which are an attack on our own selves by our own selves. And we like to bury these beliefs underneath a facade. And then when someone comes along and seems to provoke us with their words, what happens?

Well what really happens, if we're honest, is that something rises up inside of ourselves that feels like hurt and pain, and it just so happens that it seem like this arising of pain happened right after the person said something. And so we come to conclude, that this means, they are the one who put the hurt into us. But this is not true. If we're really honest, this is not what happens. Instead, what happens is, our own pain, our own self-attack, our own lack of certainty about what is true about ourselves, comes up within, triggered off by the person's actions. It's our own hurt that we feel. And, hard as this is to admit, it is our own self-attack which underlies our feeling of being hurt.

What this means is, that we can only actually be upset by someone's 'attack' IF we agree, on some level, deep down, that there is some amount of truth in what the person said. And that means, that in some way, we must have come to believe something negative about our own self, entirely on our own, completely separate from that person. And as horrifying as this seems to be, it's actually true that we're upset and 'hurt by' someone because, deep down, we agree with what they said about us. That's extremely hard to admit to. It takes tremendous honesty to look at this and to admit to it.

But the truth is, if we were not so readily quick to abandon ourselves, if we were not so down on ourselves already, if we were not so upset about who we think we are, if we did not believe things about ourselves which are false which are hurtful, we would actually live in a state of *invulnerability*, happiness, peace and certainty. We would live in a state of not being deceived when someone says something upsetting. We would live in a state of discernment about what the real truth is about ourselves, so certain of it that we wouldn't be even slightly moved to upset when someone says something negative about us. We would instead clearly discern that this is simply not true - without any upset about that fact - and that instead it is the other person who is hurting and who needs love and healing. They are acting out of their own hurt and are actually asking us to heal and love them.

Now, this is quite an advanced position to hold, and I'm not saying it's easy. It's not common at all. Very few people reach such a state of psychological strength, certainty, and knowing as to what the real truth is about their, their ultimate worth, their livability etc. Most of us are riddled with dark, negative beliefs about ourselves, which thoroughly undermine our own feeling about ourselves. When people come along and provoke or attack us, what's really happening is we're being RE-minded of what we already think of ourselves. And that's why we're upset. We're upset because we think it's true. We're upset that the person pointed it out, as if they are rubbing it in.

If we are honest, and if we are responsible, and if we are mature, then we will have to admit that it does not help to blame the other person or to believe that they have the power to hurt us. Nobody has the power to hurt you. You actually can become completely invulnerable, and this is how you should be in your natural state. When you are not in a state of invulnerability, something has gone wrong with your own attitude about yourself. You've become your own worst enemy. And if someone comes along and points that out, you're much more likely now to claim that your hurt is their fault. It's not. Your hurt is YOUR fault. It's what you've done to yourself.

Now I do recognize this is going to maybe push some buttons in people, which actually completely demonstrates my point, but it's not at all my intention to upset or hurt anyone with this information. If you are ready to listen and if this is helpful to you, I'm glad, but if you feel upset by the mere suggestion that your pain has been caused by yourself and not other people - you might for example be the victim of serious abuse or trauma - then please disregard and move on. It's not my intention to upset anyone but I know in this sensitive group this is probably going to happen. So I apologize in advance.

But for anyone else, if you will let yourself feel into this and be open minded and willing to be very honest, I think this will ring true and you'll realize that this ultimately means, you cannot be victimized unless you condone and agree to and choose it yourself, and that then you actually are the one who does it to yourself. This is an advanced spiritual teaching and I hope some will be willing to listen to the possibility of this. It is all of our natural birthright to be completely invulnerable to all forms of suffering, to be incapable of being upset, and to experience complete and permanent peace at all times as a result.

I am not yet honestly able to practice this myself 100% of the time, or even most of the time, but I am working on it and it's my goal, to become completely invulnerable. If I am completely honest, this is what is assured for me, and for anyone willing to take full and total responsibility for what they are experiencing.

All it does when we blame other people for hurting us is it gives our power away. We need to take that power back and be more empowered by the truth about us, rather than disempowered by lies. But we can't do that while we think other people are the cause of our upset. We have the power to hurt ourselves, and nobody else does. And that also means we have the power to decide not to hurt ourselves, and to live in perfect invulnerability at all times.

Peace.

(...and why a sick body means the mind has NOT been healed)

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies." - ACIM

Think of the body as a blank canvas, onto which you can paint a picture representing who and what you are.

If you are in the business of believing in sin, you will deny it and attempt to project blame onto someone else. Perceptually you will see them as causing you in some way, and simultaneously your mind MUST implement the "effects" of that causality onto yourself.

You therefore put in place, or paint a picture of, an identity which has been affected by something external. You show yourself as suffering, you position yourself as looking like you are sick, you damage yourself, and you take out this attack upon yourself. You do so in an attempt to show everyone that THEY did this to you.

It's really the insight that we implement the EFFECTS upon ourselves BEFORE we blame the cause of those effects onto something outside of ourselves. This also would tie into the fact that in this case, cause and effect have been reversed. We express effects of sickness, suffering, damage, etc in order to attempt to accuse others of doing this to us. We actually sort of wear the costume of looking like someone who has been hurt, and then walk around trying to find someone to blame for causing it.

Projection makes perception, and denial makes for projection. But how about.... we first believe we are attacked and implement the effects that the attack would produce, and then project the cause outward?

So what we do is, we make ourselves sick, we show ourselves as a picture of suffering, and we do this with the body. The body is our canvas, our "picture" of our Self, our identity. We make the body sick in order to accuse our brother of making us sick. We say, "hah, look at me, you did this to me you fucker. It's your fault."

The fact is, it's not possible to accuse another of doing something to you without YOU experiencing the effects. The ego says, no, if you do something to someone else you can escape the effects. But in truth, the mind does not work that way. Whatever applies to you applies equally everywhere. So in order to accuse someone of attack and sin, YOU must picture yourself as attacked and sinful.

YOUR body is like a picture which YOU hold up in order to show to OTHERS what you believe THEY are! It is not just a picture of yourself, it is a picture of BOTH OF YOU. This is because the body is a device for separation and that is two-sided, the selves on both sides are kept apart and affected equally - as within so without. The body then as a separation device is a picture of YOU AND YOUR BROTHER in a state of attack!

You can't hold up a picture of THEM and say, you're sinful and I'm not. Instead you hold up a picture of your "self" (the body) in an attacked state as if to say to someone else, "this is what you are". You're talking to yourself, accusing yourself, and picturing yourself as suffering.

So you can't accuse without attacking your body, meaning you're trying to USE the body to attack someone and the result is that your body MUST become a picture of attack, showing symptoms of a belief in attack. If it applies to your brother, it applies to you. You try to take them down, and take yourself down in the process. This is why all death is suicide. As Jesus says, use the body for attack like this and it will appear weak and it will die.

The opposite of this is that if you do not attack "through" the body, you do not project sin, you do not accuse yourself of sin, and you see the equal innocence of yourself and another, you will not "picture yourself" as attacked, and thus the body WILL SHOW a picture of you in a non-attacked condition. Your mind will project a body which is "healthy". It must.

When the body is not used for attack, and is used only to express/extend love, the body will appear "lovely", or a symbolic picture of a self which has no attack in it. Thus all signs of sickness and disease must vanish from it, and it will demonstrate what you believe is true. You can't project an image of a body which is sick while being truly in the truth, any more than you can project an image of a healthy body while your mind is attacking.

Essentially, this also leads to the realization that when someone dies, they literally have committed suicide, but they also have attempted to "attack with death". Their attempt to die is an attempt to accuse everyone of being dead, to affect everyone, to make everyone suffer as well, and is an attack on everyone. The body becomes a picture of death to show that the mind is using it for attack. It is like a suicide bomber or a kamikaze attacker who is attempting to throw their own body at their enemy in an attempt to eradicate them.

Death is the ultimate attempt to destroy EVERYONE as well as yourself, except that it is only yourself that ends up suffering. It's like saying, I so hate everyone and so believe in separation, that I am going to completely cut myself off from all Life and therefore shrivel up and be weak and die, because this is what I think of myself and you, and I believe that both of us should not exist. What applies to me applies to you, and if I am dead so you will be as well! But the result is that the person's body itself dies, and other people's do not.

Whatever you attempt to do to God, you do to yourself. If you believe that God should be dead, you will destroy yourself. If you try to kill God, you will kill yourself. If you try to make out that God is sinful, you will become sinful. If you try to assert that God does not exist and you have escaped from God's Life, you will die. God won't, you will. Just as other people will not die when you attempt to kill them with your death, but you will. You will do it to yourself. YOU CANNOT ATTACK WITHOUT HURTING YOURSELF FIRST. All attack is self attack, and all attack will destroy YOU and not your so-called enemy.

This is why this is so ridiculously obvious, that it is in YOUR BEST INTEREST not to find anyone sinful or guilty, because it MUST mean that you are sinful and guilty, and YOU will suffer terribly. What you do to another you do to yourself. What you accuse your brother of you have accused yourself of. And what you would have them experience, you will experience. You cannot escape from the law that what you do unto others you literally are directly doing to yourself. You cannot get away with murder without you dying as well. You should recognize it is in your best SHARED INTEREST to not hurt or accuse anyone else, because doing so directly hurts and accuses you.

If you attempt to hurt someone else without hurting yourself, you are buying into the ego's thought system, which is a lie, and you will still receive the effects of your own attack. It is the ego's grand illusion that something can apply to you without applying to others and vice versa. The truth will always be true, and the law will always be in place, that the only way to attack another is to attack yourself and show your attacked self to them, and they may not even be attacked at all. All attack separates you from the other, which protects them in a way. This is why attack on God did not affect God, but affected you greatly.

Death is a weapon that doesn't work. It is always an attempt to prove that someone other than yourself made you be dead, accusing them of sin. Sin is punishable by death alone, in the ego's thought system. To die is to make a statement that everyone is a sinner, all are evil, and they have caused you to die. No-one dies without being a victim, and no-one dies without accusing the world of doing it to them. This is also why death is futile, because it is self-destruction which has no real effect on anyone else and only makes yourself worse off. To choose it is insanity.

It's fortunate that in the metaphysics of truth, there is a kind of protection against death. The illusion of death cannot assail the kingdom of God. God cannot be affected by what is unreal. Attempted attack or death is actually a movement away from Life and a movement away from existence. It is withdrawal, not attack. All forms of attack or illusions of attack seem to be outward expressions but this is an illusion. All forms of attack are withdrawals away from everything. Death is a collapse away from Life, and therefore confines all of the effects of death to the one who dies, not to who they were attempting to make dead.

God has been completely unaffected by our attempts at using death to hurt him. God cannot be changed whatsoever. This is also why death is merely a state of denial. It is powerlessness, weakness, is completely ineffective, and literally does nothing. It is a state of a lack of all will to live, and therefore all will is absent from it, and as such it is a state of total unwillingness and can produce no real effects at all. It is not a cause at all, being purely a state of being at the effect of everything. How WEAK it is then, this weapon of death which is supposed to be the ego's most extreme form of attack possible... the stronger the attack, the weaker the attack. Death is the most pathetic attack of all, causing nothing real to happen.

We do not need to die. We do not need to be under attack. We do not need to be sick. We do not need to suffer. But if we want to be free of these things, we cannot be accusing ourselves and/or others of sin. We USE OURSELVES to show our brother what we are accusing them of, which turns us into shriveled up sickly prunes with no ability to do anything. We cannot escape our own wrath. Accuse others of causing sickness and you will be sick. Blame them and you will suffer in guilt. Try to get rid of God and you will get rid of yourself. Your body is your picture of your state of mind. All of its sicknesses MUST GO if you are to show that you fully believe in your innocence and invulnerability. To be invulnerable is to not be at the effect of anything in the world, and therefore not to PUT EFFECTS into your body.

You need not attack yourself today.

"You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of turning the other cheek." - ACIM

"This is a course in cause, not effect."

"The power to work miracles belongs to you."

In order to awaken spiritually, we have to take total responsibility for everything we experience. This is based on the core truth that we are immortal beings, and being immortal means nothing outside of you is responsible or capable of causing you. You have total freedom and you hold the reins of destiny. You are only ever an effect of God, and nothing else.

This means that we cannot be attacked, hurt, destroyed, made sick, upset, suffer, be killed off, or altered in any way. Literally there is nothing in the entire universe which can do anything to us whatsoever.

"He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world."

Because of this, we have to learn to regard the whole world as being not responsible for anything we are experiencing. The world cannot have hurt us, it cannot have attacked, it cannot be guilty or sinful, and it certainly cannot end our eternal life.

In any way that we find ourselves believing that something in the world is responsible for how we feel, what we experience, what happens, or any notion of victimhood, we are lost in a state of irresponsibility. This means we are disowning our divine responsibility to be immortal and are pretending that it's someone else's job to own the power.

Being irresponsible means giving your power away to someone or something else other than yourself, so that you can play the role of being powerless, which means portraying yourself as a victim. The victim role includes all forms of belief in being attacked, hurt, damaged, made to be sick or dead, any upset, any emotional reaction, and any belief in being unworthy of absolute permanence.

Jesus is telling us that our true nature is to be a completely powerful, causal, purely creative being, who exercises the will and power of God to extend and create life. There is no room in this role for the slightest measure of powerlessness or victimhood. It is entirely a position of OUTPUT, of radiance shining outward, of extension without holding back. This outward expression is so strong, it is the strength of the spirit and it makes you utterly invulnerable. It shines outward with such power that nothing can enter to harm you.

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father."

In victimhood, or false perception, we reverse the cause and effect and believe we are at the effect of something external, that we are taking INPUT from the world. This is entirely backwards and false. It is a delusion to believe it, and it is nothing more than a state of insanity and irresponsibility. It means you are not owning your power, and instead are giving it away to the world to try to make yourself a victim. If the world can do anything to you at all, you can be destroyed against God's will, which is impossible.

"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. And it is only here salvation is."

Our true functioning is deliberate and powerful. You look out from a state of innocence and holiness, making absolutely no attack (sin) against the world, knowing that it is nothing but your dream, coming from your mind, and is exactly how you want it. Nothing happens without you choosing it to happen, nothing happens against your will, and everything you decide is completely intentional with guaranteed effects. You are the dreamer of the dream, and you cannot hold it accountable for what you have caused it to do.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences."

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

"My self is ruler of the universe." This is not a grandiose ego claim or a fantasy. You have power over the whole world, capable of surmounting, reversing and undoing death, of breaking all the laws of physics and defying its whole reality.

"What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it."

Consider for a moment the idea that the world is not responsible for anything you feel. It has done nothing to you. You are not frightened by spiders down the side of the furniture. You are not upset about elections. You are not grieving the loss of an external body. You are not damaged by food or weather. You are not upset about groups of judgemental people. Nothing whatsoever in the world has any power or causation over you whatsoever.

You cannot be hurt by anything in the world because you are not in the world. You are in heaven in God as immortal spirit. You are not a body. The world is your dream which you are putting there on purpose, and it does not exist without your wanting it. You are not upset for any reason that you think. No-one in the world has ever done anything to cause anything you are feeling or experiencing. Your upsets have nothing to do with anyone and solely to do with what you are doing to yourself. This is the secret of salvation.

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"It can be but myself that I crucify."

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

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

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

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

As soon as you begin to believe the world is the cause of you in any way, you are being a victim. You are disowning your power of decision and causation, are projecting it out and accusing something else of causing you. This requires a blocking of access to your power, which makes you feel powerless and weak and afraid as the world looms over you. But it is your own power looming over itself. You have to take back that power.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering."

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it."

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God." "I am in danger nowhere in the world."

Ultimately our aim of reaching true perception and moving beyond the world entails a complete ownership of who and what we are, a complete identification as Christ, a total relinquishment of every form of victimhood, a total letting go of all attempts to suffer. This includes letting go of all notions of being upset by the world, attacked, threatened, in danger, made to be sick or unhappy, or made to die. This includes ceasing to believe in death and dying and destruction and murder.

The world is not responsible for ANYTHING you are experiencing. No-one is guilty. Nothing is to blame. You're doing this all to yourself and you can stop whenever you like. Whatever you're experiencing you have chosen and you want. Your prayers are constantly being answered and you are always receiving what your giving is asking for. You can end this game of death and victimhood at any time and go home to God. "This is the ONLY thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain, and the COMPLETE escape from sin, ALL to be given you. Say ONLY this, but MEAN it with NO reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:

"I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear."

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love. Forget your dreams of sin and guilt, and come with me instead to share the resurrection of God's Son. And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."

If you do not choose to die you will never die, and if you do choose to die it will be fake. There is no death, the son of God is free.

"Swear not to die, thou holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One."

It can be very difficult to forgive abuse. Typically in abusive situations, both persons are identified with their bodies. One person does something to the other person's body, which is taken very personally and hurtfully.

It seems that one person has power to affect the other, to do something to them against their will. And the whole scenario seems to paint a very closed picture of unfair treatment, unwilling participation, obvious fault on the part of the abuser, and total helplessness on the part of the victim.

If you look solely at what is happening at the physical level, and if this is believed to be reality, then all of this makes sense. The abuser physically does do something. The victim physically or emotionally or mentally does seem to receive the fallout of the abuse. The separation between the bodies and wills seems to portray the victim as "not wanting it" etc. At a purely surface-appearance level, this is all very real and threatening and traumatic. As if the is the whole story.

But viewing the situation purely in terms of surface appearance, is actually an unforgiving perception. It means the form of what happened was blinding. It means you were identified with your body, such that anything happening from the outside in seemed to affect your actual self. There is no recognition that "its just a dream." And there certainly doesn't appear to be any hope of escape from the hellish nightmare.

The difficult part comes when you start to explore how to heal this, forgive it, undo the consequences, or to become free from the aftereffects, some of which can be debilitating and even life threatening. But at some point, there has to be a willingness to entertain the possibility that there was "more happening" than met the eye, and that there might be a different way of looking at it. It is this unwillingness to remain in pain, that inspires the beginning of opening up to spirit.

"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."

Even if you are left with pain and scars, emotional hurt, physical damage, psychological wounds or forms of insanity, carrying this baggage around forever becomes intolerable. Pain is not pleasant. Constant fear is a nightmare. The sheer weight of suffering can potentially inspire a person to try to find a way out of hell, unless they become so distraught that it leads to suicide.

For those who do find at least "a little willingness", there becomes a glimmer of openness to at least the possibility that, just maybe, there is some way to heal and be free of this. That maybe if you look at it from a different vantage point you might find out some hidden facts, previously unrecognized influences, or even some ways that you might have caused it. Of course, for abused people, leaping to "I did this to myself" is a pretty huge leap, when everything the physical reports testifies to "they did everything to me and I did nothing."

It can even seem horrendously offensive to a person who is very heavily believing in "what appeared to happen" as the only reality. When pain backs it up, when suffering seemed to come from it, and when the person didn't seem to want any of it, there is tremendous resistance to healing and forgiveness. It is in fact, part of the pyschological blindness that placed their mind in an unforgiving experience to begin with, and this denial may even have been increased through the abusive experiences.

This is why it can take time, a lot of willingness and gradual transformation, to work through the ins-and-outs of everything that happened, all the pain it entailed, to be able to purge and purify the suffering, to even get to a point where you might be open to another way of looking at it. But if there is to be another way of looking at it, it can't be at the physical level. It can't be just another attempt to frame the situation in terms of "it was real, but the person had their reasons."

True forgiveness has to entail moving away from the sheer physcality of the abusive situation, away from appearances and forms, and away from the illusion of causality. It has to rise above the "he did this to me" and the "she did that to me". And it has to go into the "Maybe I had something to do with this." Given how intense and horrifying abuse can be, and the seeming unhealable wounds it leaves behind, even being open to that suggestion can be a seemingly insurmountable stretch.

The key factor which lifts a person out of perception of abuse, is becoming identified with spirit instead of the body. And that all by itself is a journey. And it also requires that you recognize that you can be free from suffering, even if people seem to be vicious and hurtful. As the Course says:

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true.

Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

To allow there to be a maximum amount of viciousness and attack by others, yet to be in such a state of mind in which this has NO effect on you, seems like a very tall order. But it is not impossible. It entails the recognition that this world is a dream, and not a reality. Yes it will seem like the abuse was VERY real, with disturbing memories and wounds to show for it, but in the really big picture it nevertheless was still part of a dream.

Jesus suggests that if we can approach the awareness and recognition that this IS a dream world, and not a reality, we will become more identified as spirit, or as the dreamer of the dream. We are the mind/soul that is beyond the dream which houses it within ourselves.

With willingness, it's going to become apparent that the events in dreams are something WE are contributing to. This produces a profound shift in how we look at what the other person "did to us", because now we're starting to question not only whether it really happened in reality at all, but also who was really causing what.

It can seem to be a bitter pill to swallow, that we would be hurtful to ourselves, that we ourselves might've agreed to or arranged or produced suffering, that in effect we wanted to be abused for some other purpose of scapegoating. It's especially heinous to many people to suggest that someone in a victim role is not entirely faultless, that they in fact are using the opportunity to position themselves as victim in order to be ABLE to find the abuser guilty. And as the course says, this has a tremendous payoff in allowing us to position ourselves as innocent, as a way to asuage our OWN guilt for our own sense of sin.

Could it be then, quite a shocking but deep truth, that we may well not only consent to abuse but even encourage it and bring it upon ourselves, because of the benefit to us psychologically - that we can convince ourselves that if the other person is especially evil, it portrays us as especially good. And given that we are loaded with uhealed guilt over the separation from God, it provides a wonderful opportunity to exonerate ourselves by finding someone else to be especially sinful. We may in fact be using the abuser as a fall-guy for our own sin.

This then completely turns the tables on the situation, and is the secret hidden truth that the abusive situation seems to reject. While the situation said, "they did this to me, I did nothing", in truth the fact is "I did this to me and used them to make myself look better." That is not something that is easy to admit to, but it has to be admitted to if you want freedom.

Here is Jesus saying that we are even willing to BE KILLED, if it means the payoff that we can find someone ELSE to be the sinner and to exonerate ourselves. And that we may even welcome being highly severly abused, attacked, afflicted, murdered and destroyed, as a tremendously opportunistic bargain, if it means we can be found guiltless. Even that what WE get out of it is even MORE than they get out of it - a great deal!

"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

This isn't simply a teaching about sickness and how we use the body to try to show proof that our brother caused us to be sick, so that we'll be exonerated of sin. It's a general teaching that in many ways, abuse included, we try to position ourselves as victims in order to get a great payoff. That we're even willing to enter into highly abusive, detrimental, suffering situations, with terrible power loss and mistreatment, if it means that secretly this causes the OTHER person to seem like the sinner. What did abuse turn you into, if not someone justified in anger and blame?

Jesus doesn't hold back, in that he is even saying that we are WILLING TO DIE, if it will provide us with an opportunity to point a finger at the CAUSE of death, other than ourselves, and say "look there, that's where the sin is". And thus to say, "Look at me, I didn't do anything at all." We even lay down in death in a kind of passive way, totally hands-off, making ourselves appear to be COMPLETELY at the effect of something outside our control, so that it paints a very vivid picture of unfair destruction, un-asked for killing, and unwanted torment. In which we appear innocent.

The driving force behind all of this is the guilt that WE feel in OUR mind, over a situation which doesn't even have anything to do with these abusers. It's the fact that we are bringing some very heavy shit, TO the situation, from our past. And we're causing and involving ourselves in relationships and situations which afford us opportunities to PROJECT, dissociate from, and disown this hidden secret suffering, in order to try to deal with it.

What could be so big and deep and hidden and painful that we would want to go so far as to ALLOW ourselves to seem to be destroyed by another, if it would mean escaping it? What possible severity of sin could we have possibly either committed tor accused ourselves of, that we would ENCOURAGE sickness in an attempt to be seen with pity and favor? What kind of hideous act did we commit which could possibly require death as the only "solution", in which by accusing anyone OTHER than ourselves of TERRIBLE mistreatment, we can try to make a dent in it and be seen as the innocent one?

Don't doubt for a second that the ego's entire drive is to use denial to its full extent. It denies who you are, it denies God through sin, it denies sin through guilt, it denies guilt through the face of innocence, and it denies the face of innocence by destroying the body through "a will of punishment not my own." Denial upon denial upon denial are used to gradually remove you from existence and to disown everything. Even in abuse we are disowning the way in which we are abusing ourselves.

All of this is really based on our secret sins and hidden hates, the self accusation, the condenation upon yourself BY yourself, the belief in the reality of sin, the authority problem and desire to overthrow God, and indeed the belief that you HAVE attacked God against His will. It is really the original sin, the belief that you opposed the entire Kingdom of God through evil, that you are running and hiding from. And it is the unforgiven guilt for that perceived sin that you try to push onto others when you form abusive relationships.

Those who feel particularly guilty are apt to not only cause physical sickness, they are also apt to be vicious and very accusatory. They project heavily because trying to dissociate that unconscious guilt from their minds seems like the only way to hide from it. By putting it onto someone else and framing them as an abuser or attacker, it SEEMS to make it look like they are more evil than you, thus you are partly exonerated for your belief in sin against God. And those who are especially OPEN to being a victim, unfairly treated, abused, in fact are the most deceptive and blameful. He who has "been destroyed against his will" has gotten away with the crime of the century.

So now as the tables turn, we find out that a person who on the surface seemed to be the innocent party in the abuse, who was purely victimized, who asked for nothing and who made no contribution to it at all, actually turns out to be the ONLY one who was really doing anything at all, who did it all to themselves, and EVEN went so far as to USE the "abuser" for their own aims. What more benefit could a guilty person find than to position themselves as helplesly suffering, if it would create the illusion that SOMEONE ELSE is guilty? And how sick is it that we would actively WANT to do this, even if it meant we had to suffer to pull it off?

You can see why the truth of these situations is so hard to accept. It litearlly suggests that "the abused" are abusers, that victims are in fact victimizers, that those who are afraid are vicious, and that this is all a secret plot to GAIN from suffering. Even that we would happily die if it meant someone else would pay for what we've done to God.

"We said before that those who are afraid are apt to be vicious. " On the surface, the world being so back to front, it always seems at first glance that those who are suffering are NOT the ones doing the attacking. And that those who are seeming to be the cause of the suffering, are NOT the victims. But this is literally what Jesus is telling us. And it is this complete "180" that our minds have to go through in order to heal this psychological conditioning. And that's not easy.

If I was abused, even if the abuse and the emotional pain tells me that it happened, it was unfair, I did not ask for it, the abusers were evil monsters, and they ought to receive a death sentence, my act to MAINTAIN this position is in fact driven by a motive of wanting to keep BENEFITING from it. And that is not an easy thing to admit to. Yet alone to look at the fact that I was the one doing the abuse to myself and to the abusers. That I was USING them as a scapegoat, and WANTED to be abused in order to get away with FRAMING THEM for my own murder.

It's even harder to admit to any of this if the victim is a helpless innocent young child who appears, at the face of it, to be utterly devoid of sin and guilt, and who has no power or ability to stop anything happening. This all sets up the perfect scenario for the ego to manipulate the situation and USE it to its advantage. Not o much to cause the child to suffer cruelly, but to cause the child to WANT to suffer in order to develop a wonderful collection of scapegoats. Of course, saying something like this is NOT going to be popular with most of society.

Admitting to all this is, nevertheless, the eventual place our mind has to get to if we truly want to be free from pain and suffering. We have to approach the secret of salvation. We have to be willing to admit to what we are doing and the part we play. And we certainly have to completely let the abusers off the hook, otherwise we cannot experience psycholgoical repair. So long as we are looking to project and get rid of our own inner guilt onto these people, we keep ourselves in a prison of denial and suffering. And we can't feel happy while we're AVOIDING the original guilt that we were using the abuser to try to get rid of.

It begs the question, far more importantly, not "why did they do that to me"... but "why did I do this to me?". That's the really deeper issue. Why did you accuse yourself of sin FIRST, before you arranged for someone to sin against you? Why did you believe in sin, at all, before inviting others to seem to sin against you? Why did you fall into the authority problem, prior to ever needing an external authority to pretend to have power over you? Why did you attack yourself first? Why were you overtly vicious against yourself and God, before portraying yourself as a helpless victim? That's the bigger deal to heal.

"I but accuse my brother of my own sins."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts."

"You are doing this to yourself."

"There is no sin."

Self destruction and self attack and self victimization and self punishment, are far more the problem and death-inducing than the two-times removed scapegoats that we find externally. The abuser isn't even the beginning of the process, they're a device that we use later down the line to try to deal with what we've done to oursevles. And the ultimate freedom can only come when you find YOURSELF to be innocent, having never sinned in reality, forming the basis for the total lack of NEED to have an "abuser" take on the burden for you.

These external influencers are not even the cause of anything. They're scapegoats that we use to project sin and disown responsibility. And until this power is taken back and reclaimed, a "victim" cannot feel empowered or free of victimization. It's kind of a two-way street. You can't be secretly victimizing, which all victims do, if you want to be free of being victimized. If you believe in victimization you become a victimizer and pretend you are the opposite. Obviously that's not a sane position to take.

There is hope for healing and true release from all suffering, all abuse, all symptoms and effects, all baggage and all pain. But it does require that you take full responsibility for your choices and your participation on making happen what you thought happened against your will. You cannot see yourself as being an unwilling participant if you want to find the power of the wil. And the only way to be truly free is to accept the atonement truth that you never sinned in the first place, such that you don't need anyone to exonerate you through suffering.

Who is the abuser who really needs your forgiveness? It's you.

The ego mind is a mind of separation and conflict.

The ego mind always has two faces - a persona and a shadow.

Within the ego mind itself, one part of itself is against the other part. The ego mind attacks itself, being an idea of self attack.

The persona portion of the ego mind is what most people most often identify with, thinking that this is their entire 'self'.

The shadow portion of the ego mind is the part most people disassociate from, project onto others, and hide unconsciously. This part of the mind we do not identify with, and believe it is not even a part of ourself. Therefore we scapegoat it onto others and accuse other people of being it.

But at all times, both the positive and negative are within the confines of our ego mind. Both the stuff we think is good and the stuff we think is bad are within our mind. And the stuff we think is our 'self' and the stuff we think is 'not self' (i.e. 'others) is still within our own mind.

Both the enemies that we perceive as 'not me', or 'out there', and the innocent victim that we try to position ourselves as 'in here', are both a part of a single mind which is at war with itself.

This war is taking place between your mind and your mind. It is a war of self-attack. Within the arena of your mind, you have these two sides, comprising the persona judger and the shadow retaliator. Or, the persona victim and the shadow victimizer.

Most of the time the shadow is projected and disassociated from, meaning we see it outside of 'our self' (the persona self) and disconnected from it. We literally believe through disassociation that it is not our own self, we want nothing to do with it, we try to get rid of it, and we use the persona part of our mind to attack it. Even though it's a part of (not apart from) this one mind.

We become so deceived by this 'split' in consciousness, this mental delusion of two selves, that the persona part of us, which we most typically believe is the whole ego, does everything it can to disassociate itself from the projected sin/guilt/fear/wrongness. It wants nothing to do with it, entirely because this attitude increases the sense of *separation*, or the severity of the 'split' within the mind, between the good-favoring and bad-favoring parts.

We need to learn the secret to salvation, according to Jesus, which is that "you are doing this to yourself".

What this means is, our whole mind is a container in which there is both the ego persona and the ego shadow. The stuff we deny, reject, judge, project, and attack is the shadow part, but it's still a part of our own mind. And the persona part which tries to reject that part is also in our own mind. It is not that the good parts are good or that it is being attacked by the bad parts that's the issue. That's not the problem. The problem is the sense of *separation* between these two parts.

The sense that the 'bad stuff in me' is 'someone else', is our major error. The accusation of sin onto someone else, which is really our own sin, is a mistake. The belief that someone is not One with us, is a mistake. The projection of our darkness outward, and our cutting it off from ourselves to create an enemy, is a mistake.

The darkness of the shadow ONLY appears to be dark and unwanted because of how intensely the 'good-seeking' persona part of us, that we retain identification with, tries to increase the 'contrast' between the two. The darkness would not appear AS dark if this separation or rift or split were not as pronounced. But this would also have to mean that the good-focused part of the mind be diminished in its exclusivity, its favor and its judgement.

See it is not just the bad icky shadow stuff that we need to 'get rid of'. In fact it is the ego persona that tries to get rid of that stuff, which means the ego persona is kept, and therefore the ego is kept, making this a trap. The more you try to get rid of stuff the more you manufacture a story about how dark that stuff is, and it will grow stronger as an enemy of the persona. All enemies are pretty much tied into the persona's idea of what it does not want, in order to make itself look better. But if the persona is going to attack the shadow, then the mind is going to become more split, and both parts are still going to stay within the confines of the single mind. So you will suffer.

Enemies are not the problem. Separation between good and bad is the problem. Separation between good-loving persona and good-hating shadow is the problem. And not realizing that both of these parts of your experience are entirely WITHIN your own mind, and has NOTHING to do with anyone else, is the big realization here.

You need to come to a perspective, an awareness, where you are looking at the contents of your mind, and realize that both the persona part of your mind is within you, AND the shadow part - the enemy, the attacker, the things you don't want, the parts you think are 'other people', that is ALSO in your mind. And you need to get to where you can see BOTH at the same time as being part of YOU. It is that awareness, where a sense of Self 'spans' and INCLUDES both parts, that you are in the kind of space where you can see that you are, literally, doing this to yourself. You are the victim and the victimizer. You are the persona and the shadow. You are both parts of this separated ego.

When you see this, and hold this perspective for a moment, where you can see both 'characters' if you will, both parts of you at once, you will see in that light how ridiculous it is that you are against yourself. The awareness that who you thought was an enemy, is YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that you thought you were against some other person but were in fact against YOU, will wake you up. The awareness that the behavior of the enemy, which you thought you had nothing to do with, is actually just another puppet - another part of YOU, that YOU are using against yourself... seeing that will wake you up.

You have to get to where you can see and accept that both sides of the split-mind war are WITHIN your mind and are both parts of what's going on inside yourself. This awareness will show you the utter ridiculousness of the war that you are waging against yourself, the roles that you are playing in your mind which you thought were distinct, the Self that you are - the awareness which encompasses the persona and the shadow, which is your real PERSONALITY. You are the awareness in which you see the war that you are waging, and the fact that you are playing BOTH SIDES, that you are literally against yourself with two artificial personalities.

You have to see that you are BEING both of those fake personalities (persona and shadow, victim and victimizer), and that it makes absolutely no SENSE that you can possibly be truly both at once unless you lose sight of this awareness. And since you are in this awareness, the 'illusion' that you are only one of these two parts cannot be maintained. It's like realizing that two characters in a play - enemies - are both being played by the same actor. And that awareness will set you free from the illusion of a separation.

This awareness is the key to salvation, because in this awareness and in the admitting that you are both the victim and victimizer, you will see how utterly futile and ridiculous that is, as well as owning up to the awareness that you are the one doing this... nobody else is involved, because the 'other person' was actually your own shadow, which is part of your own mind, part of your split identity - one of two parts of you. This UNIFIES your awareness, because you are likely willing to drop this stupid activity as soon as you see it, because it is so obviously insane and self-defeating.

When you see this... just wait to see how long you need to have this awareness before the entire thing just disappears ... it only takes a moment. It only takes for you to glimpse this, and both the persona and the shadow will cancel each other out. As soon as you see that you've been doing this all to yourself, both sides will collapse. The awareness that saw both these parts as parts of itself, is the light which will dispel this darkness. The darkness was the *illusion* of a separation between these two parts - the idea that one of these parts was 'not you'. But it is you. And that undoes the separation, so both sides have to now cease to be separate. They come together, unify, all contrast disappears, and ONENESS is restored. And it will be like nothing even happened.

The secret to salvation... you are doing this to yourself.

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

Here's the thing about why the body HAS to be healed.

It's simply a matter of cause and effect. The mind is the cause of the body. "The mind makes this decision as it makes every decision responsible for the condition of the body." The mind PROJECTS the body. At all times. Think of the body as like an image which is being projected by a movie projector. It's nothing but a 3D image. And it has no power to determine its own condition. It can only be what the projector projects it to look like.

So now imagine that your mind decides to attack your brother. By doing so, and in order to do so, it projects an image of a body which exhibits signs of attack, in one way or another. And thus the image itself now depicts the attack, by showing up as having damage, deformity, malfunction, sickness, symptoms, death etc. The body is used as a weapon to demonstrate the attack thought. And because the mind is ALWAYS the cause of the body, with the body as its effect, this IMAGE can only persist in the world so long as the mind is CAUSING it. There cannot be effects without causes.

The mind is responsible for the body showing up as sick or damaged. So long as the body therefore is showing up as sick or damaged, the mind that is projecting the body IS responsible for CAUSING it to show up as sick and damaged, which means the mind IS STILL USING IT FOR ATTACK. And so long as this image is being projected into the world of an attacked/attacking body, it PROVES... beyond all doubt.... that the mind HAS NOT BEEN HEALED. Because so long as there is an effect sitting there in a damaged state for everyone to witness, it proves THERE WAS A SIN. And it also proves the sin is still ONGOING.

The mind is having to constantly "hold" the body in a state of suffering in order to KEEP SHOWING a picture of crucifixion to your brother, which is how you attempt to accuse him of putting the effects into the body. Your body being sick shows him what HE DID TO YOU, because you can only have this attacking attitude when you perceive your brother is the CAUSE of you, which is what produces effects of sickness due to level confusion. So long as your body is sick in any way, YOUR MIND DEFINITELY IS STILL ATTACKING. And so long as the body remains in that sick state, it not only proves sin is real and attack has and is happening, it also proves the mind is not healed.

"A damaged body is PROOF the mind has not been healed."

There is NO ESCAPING THIS LAW. Your body is YOUR responsibility. If it is sick, you are making it sick. If it shows up as suffering, you are constantly maintaining the suffering. If it shows signs of damage, you are constantly putting the damage there, as the movie projector. If it seems attacked or has symptoms, YOU WANT THEM TO BE KEPT. This is all basic cause and effect. Your body as an effect of your mind CANNOT HAVE EFFECTS WITHOUT YOU CAUSING THEM. And so if the body IS still showing up as sick, YOU ARE CAUSING IT. Which means you are still attacking yourself and your brother!

You cannot simply think you have made a mess of the body and that the body now is in a state of sickness and it will just stay in that state of sickness "by itself". It does not stay sick or well by itself. It is just an image you project. YOU determine EVERYTHING ABOUT IT at all times. EVEN when it is dead. And so this means that so long as there is still evidence and PROOF in the dream, that sin has occurred or is occurring, CAUSING there to be effects of suffering in the body, THE SIN HAS NOT BEEN UNDONE.

This is a vital fact to realize. So long as the EFFECTS are remaining, THE SIN IS STILL HAPPENING. The causality is still happening.

And this means that quite literally, if you are going to have a mind that is healed and is free of sickness, YOU CANNOT keep maintaining sickness in the body. You cannot keep putting sickness into it, or projecting sickness, or showing sickness to anyone in any way. The ONLY way you can do so is to STILL BE SICK mentally. If there are effects, there is a cause. YOU are the cause. If the body does not "get healed" or rather, if the mind does not heal and thus CAUSE a projection of a body IMAGE which shows up as free from suffering, then your mind IS NOT healed.

So long as there is proof, evidence, demonstration, witness, testimony, or attesting of attack and sickness WITH AND IN AND THROUGH the body, YOUR MIND IS STILL ATTACKING YOUR BROTHER. The only way for you to stop attacking your brother, therefore, in this world, is to PROVE that you are no longer attacking by REMOVING THE EFFECTS, ceasing the demonstration of death, UNDOING the sickness, cancelling the symptoms, reversing the suffering and DEMONSTRATING a body which is completely free of sickness and pain. UNTIL YOU DO THAT, YOUR MIND IS NOT HEALED. Because if that body is STILL showing up with sickness, YOU DID NOT HEAL IT, because you do not WANT to heal it, because you are STILL attacking.

"Damaged bodies are accusers". They testify that your brother is a guilty fucker and has sinned against you. It is your PROOF of his sin. And you hold this proof in front of his eyes for all to see to PROVE that he HAS DONE THIS TO YOU, and to demonstrate his sinfulness and testify against him. You cannot be doing that if you are going to be a teacher of God, a healer, or an extender of love.

When the mind is truly healed, it will testify to its healing by expressing MIRACLES OF HEALING to the body which result in the body being projected AS HEALED, free of sickness and pain and suffering and damage of all kinds. PHYSICALLY. "A guiltless mind cannot suffer. The mind, BEING SANE, HEALS THE BODY." "A sick body makes no sense."

This is the teaching of A Course in Miracles. It is basic cause and effect. If the effects are still there, SO IS THE CAUSE. Until the effects are REMOVED, literally, the cause MUST still be happening. You do not merely make decisions at one moment in time and then keep the consequences. Decisions are CONSTANT BELIEFS. Until the belief is corrected and undone and ITS CONSEQUENCES ARE REMOVED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT THROUGH MIRACLES, the mind is not healed.

And that does literally mean that, if the body is sick, it PROVES the mind is sick. If the body is healed, IT PROVES the mind is healed. There is no exception to this. No escape from it. No loopholes. Mind causes the body. You are responsible for the state of your body as much as your state of mind. This is why "Only the mind and body need atonement."

The body IS a symbol in a dream, a teaching device, a device for communication, and what you use it for IT BECOMES. Use it for attack and it is attacked and shows up as sick. And it will STAY in that state as long as it is being USED for attack. And when the body is used to extend love and healing, the body will be HEALED, and it will show up as healed so long as it is used for healing. This is all in A Course in Miracles. This is not some magical fairytale bullshit that I made up myself.

This is also why you must "swear not to die". If you produce a dead body, it is because you have ATTACKED SEVERELY. And the body is PROVING that your mind is an attacker. If you do not attack, the body CANNOT BE SICK, NOR CAN IT DIE, because YOUR MIND IS CHOOSING that it only depict healing and health and harmlessness. This is why the body CANNOT DIE unless YOU CHOOSE to make it dead. And if you choose to make it dead, you are not doing God's will and are PROVING your mind is not healed.

"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

This is one of the more radical teachings in the course which is hotly defended against by many people. Not only the idea that you have to heal the body in order to demonstrate the Holy Spirit's purposes, but also that you MUST NOT MAKE DEATH HAPPEN otherwise you are failing the curriculum. No-one in his right mind would attack himself and his brother so severely as to SHOW a picture of total DEATH to another person in order to PROVE THEY ARE SINNERS. That is what dead does and is. It is a testifying that your brother is the cause of you and sinned and made you dead. Every death is an accusation of sin. YOU MUST NOT DIE. You must demonstrate only symbols of life and immortality.

To accept the Atonement is to accept that God's truth is the truth. It also means accepting that nothing else is true.

Jesus demonstrates this when He speaks of His own state of Atonement:

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you."

We would be perfectly willing to accept God's truth, IF we did not believe that something else is true. We have been listening to another "voice", the voice of the ego (untruth) rather than the Voice of God (truth).

If we believe the ego has some truth to it, it means we agree with it. We will defend it, protect it, want to keep it, and will shield it from God. We'll use it as justification for "why" we believe we cannot accept God's truth as true. This literally makes us perceive that God's truth is NOT true.

This is the meaning of "He who would not forgive MUST judge to justify his failure to forgive." We are busy justifying WHY we cannot accept atonement/forgiveness, in order to keep and protect the ego that we believe is sacred and true and worthy of us.

No-one in their right mind would want to accept something they believe is not the truth. No-one would want anything to do with something they regard as "false". The ego attributes all qualities of falseness to God, including perceiving Him as evil, as a threat, as an attacker, and as willing that we be dead. That's quite a lot of false belief to "reverse" - thought reversal - if we are to become genuinely WILLING to want to be with God.

An unwillingness to accept God's truth comes solely from a willingness to accept the ego's truth. Another way the Course puts this is in terms of faith. We have "faith" in the ego, we have come to TRUST it, we think it is helping us, protecting us, defending us, acting in our best interests, and is "working" for us. We think we WANT what it is offering. This is because we do not RECOGNIZE the ways that the ego is deceptive, a lie, a form of attack, self defeating, suicidal and fixated on death.

When we believe the ego is the truth, we literally become "blind" to the truth, and incapable of discerning that God's truth is true. We see falseness IN it, because there is falseness in our perception. We see reflected in God our own "evil" content, thinking it is his.

For example, whenever we misperceive the truth through the ego, we see it as attacking us, we put up a defense, which implements blocks to life, which produces sickness and death. This production of sickness is an attempt to "save our life" by protecting us from life. This is obviously insane. The ego's efforts to "help" us is actually an attempt to deceive us, to trick us into hurting ourselves "in the name of" helping ourselves. In other words, the ego's advice produces the opposite result from what it promises.

While we believe the ego has truth to it, we will not be WILLING to accept the atonement. In fact we'll not be able. We can't ACCEPT it, to really deeply abide in it and feel it and welcome it and want it and admit its truth and ALLOW IT to love us. That's because we have allegiance to the ego and "want" what it is offering instead. AND YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH! You have to choose. This valuing of the ego's offering produces DOUBT. Being in two minds, or even entirely in ego, will make us very uncertain about whether the truth even IS true, and whether we even DO want it.

Failure to discern what IS true, and what IS false, forms the basis of this confusion, which makes us unwilling and unable to accept it. No-one wants to accept what they think will destroy them. It's just that, believing the ego we will believe GOD is the one who is going to destroy us, and the ego is our savior. It simply "makes sense" to us not to accept God's version of events, because His truth does not "make sense" when the ego perceives it.

If we believe there is really death, really punishment, really fear, really victimhood, really guilt, really sin, really separation, really sickness, really suffering, we will not be WILLING to accept the atonement. The atonement says the exact opposite is true. This means we WILL have to become willing to RECOGNIZE all of these illusions for what they ARE, how we are using them to support the ego, and how they are not TRUE or real.

So we are going to have to systematically let go of all belief that there is such a thing as real sickness, real death, real sin, real guilt, real fear, real suffering, real victims, etc. To do this, we will have to be a LITTLE WILLING to believe that the ego beliefs do NOT contain truth, they in fact are FALSE, and something else is MORE TRUE. If any of this ego stuff - illusions appearing to be real - is within our perception, i.e. within our attitude or beliefs about ourselves, it has to GO, BEFORE we will genuinely, deeply, feel WILLING and READY to accept the truth of God.

Each time that we are attempting to perform a "forgiveness", i.e. we're upset and suffering in some way and we want to get back to the truth, to apply the Course principles and heal ourselves, it's going to have to entail the UNDOING OF FALSE BELIEFS. i.e. the undoing of listening to the ego's interpretation, stopping listening to its voice, stopping believing its bullshit is true, discerning HOW and WHY it is not true, and RECOGNIZING the illusions - i.e. the lies - that you are perpetuating. This can take tremendous radical HONESTY. Honesty admits the truth - allows the truth to enter.

Applying forgiveness SHOULD also therefore mean, that you start with wherever you're at, with whatever you are experiencing now, and you need to transition from there ALL THE WAY TO THE ATONEMENT. If you do not go all the way, if you stop short and keep some beliefs, you will not "complete" the forgiveness because you're not getting to the point where you FULLY ACCEPT the truth and FULLY LET GO of the ego.

While over time you generally will move gradually towards truth, on the whole, you actually can take yourself ALL the way to the atonement at any time, on a SPECIFIC topic. For example if you have issues with a parent or a coworker or something, some belief that is getting triggered... to FULLY forgive that issue, or at least a big chunk of it, you need to look at the beliefs involved and undo them, ALL the way until you get to "sin did not happen in reality, there is no sin at all, therefore I'm still innocent".

Taking back a projection, for example, is only a FIRST STEP in forgiving. It only means then that you recognize some measure of responsibility, that it's actually "about you" and not "about" another person. That's a vital step, and taking of responsibility is essential to any application of forgiveness. But that's not the end of the story.

The problem is, even if you can recognize it's not about other people, you may still believe you are afraid, you are guilty, and you are sinful. These beliefs have to be uncovered as well. Part of the problem is, there are various stages of separation: sin > guilt > fear > punishment > death and each stage entails a shitload of DENIAL. That denial makes content in your mind UNCONSCIOUS. That means you don't even REALIZE that you have this stuff in your mind somewhere, buried, behind a wall of illusions.

So if all you do is take back a projection and then sit with it and don't really realize how you have unconscious guilt lurking in your mind, which your state of victimhood was made to cover up and distract away from, you may not even get to the stage of becoming AWARE of that guilt, to undo it. And even if you get to where you are undoing the guilt, you may not even be aware - there is such a things as UNCONSCIOUS SIN. That has to be undone as well. Only when all of these layers of DENIAL in the mind are undone, ONLY then will you find yourself actually WILLING and able and ready to wholeheartedly ACCEPT that the Atonement is true. That is the point where forgiveness is COMPLETE.

You can do this on any given topic. It doesn't have to just be the overall whole issue of separation. Every time you forgive all the way to the atonement you receive a miracle, and then can offer it. Every time you make a genuine effort to becoming WILLING to accept the truth - your innocence, that literally nothing happened in reality - your mind gets healed one more giant leap towards God. As much as you can accept at the time. This will have PROFOUND healing effects on your perception.

There was a woman that I couldn't stand, a social worker, who had poor sense of boundaries and was always overstepping her role. I had fear about seeing her, anger about her behavior and various other upsets. I thought she was the problem. Later I became willing to see how I was actually seeing some unhealed stuff about ANOTHER person, in this person. I applied forgiveness through various steps and went all the way to atonement on this issue about that person. This was a strong healing.

Later, when I saw this woman again, my entire perception of her was so different. She seemed like a completely different person, as though I'd never seen her before. I had no reaction to her and saw no "sin" in her. She didn't seem to bother me and I knew that I'd been accusing her of something that I thought someone else was guilty of, but which *I* was guilty of. The interesting thing is, when you lift off of other people your own sin, it doesn't necessarily make that person disappear. Instead, you see them more clearly for what is there, and what is theirs. It's interesting then how their OWN call for love suddenly becomes obvious, distinct from anything going on in yourself.

Anyway. I have many other examples where when I've gone all the way to really thoroughly undoing false beliefs and accepting God's truth, it's healed my mind in a major way and really cleared up my perception. It has allowed me to see "truth" where once I saw a distortion. Or rather, to see correctly and accurately where I once only saw what I wanted to see.

If you have been forgiving in some way but not going ALL the way to atonement, I recommend giving it a try. Even if it's on just one small topic. Forgiveness is only complete when you recognize there literally has not been a "real sin" in reality, that whatever it was only took place in a dream, and therefore has had no real effects.

Atonement DOES cure everything. There was an accident that happened years ago where I hurt someone. It produced tremendous guilt. A lot of things happened because of it including a major depression, ostracision from society and various other nightmares. I healed a lot of it over the years and rationalized in various ways why it was ok or not ok or whatever. But I could never QUITE really let go of it. That is, until I went to the atonement with it.

Going to the atonement on this, I FINALLY got to the point of realizing that what I thought happened DID NOT HAPPEN in reality. It only happened as part of a dream. All of my other healing efforts had been to somehow justify "what happened" or to explain "why" it was ok. That never healed me fully. I had to undo the belief it happened AT ALL. When I finally could accept and SEE and RECOGNIZE that it is TRUE, and makes sense, that I REALLY DID NOT DO ANYTHING, and nothing real can be threatened, I could actually willingly ACCEPT that God's truth is true. I could ACCEPT how God sees me. I could ACCEPT that I must still be innocent. And then there were tears of joy at FINALLY being able to LET GO of this "sin" and RECEIVE GOD's LOVE!

Only atonement can be said to cure. Miracles express from the atonement.

Disassociation plays a big part in making your forgiveness seem much more difficult.

Disassociation means that you are "not associating your self" with something. You're trying to put distance between you and something.

The problem is that you use disassociation on your SELF. You split off a part of your own self, the content of your mind, by having an unforgiving attitude of judgement. Then you try to reject that part of yourself, label it, judge it, hate it. You try to think of it as something you don't want, that is not your self.

You use these tools of separation against it because this helps you to have the impression that it's got nothing to do with you. You want nothing to do with it, like you want nothing to do with an enemy.

It is possible with your mind, to so thoroughly disassociate yourself from this "part" of yourself that you've decided to hate, and to have such a strong sense of rejection against it, that you come to believe it is NOT YOU.

So now that this part of you seems like it is not you, you quite literally perceive, experience, and belief that this thing is 'someone else'. You believe it is "not me".

If you've ever had an enemy in the form of a person, someone who perhaps seemed to abuse or hurt you a lot or who you were really angry with, or who over time you built up a hate towards, it could be a family member or an old friend or lover or a politician etc... notice how you had this sense of wanting nothing to do with them. You did not want to associate yourself with them, didn't want to be near them, even wanted to "get rid of them" from your experience. Maybe you even wouldn't have minded if they were dead or something.

Well this is what happens with a part of yourself that you disassociate from. You attack this part of yourself so strongly and pull yourself away from it, split yourself off from it, and there is this seeming "rift" between you. A separation. You use denial and illusions to make it SEEM like it is not part of your "self". You dis-identify with it, and form a different sense of identity that shuts it out. And the way that you perceive this part - which now appears like an 'other', with an alien will - looks to you like someone completely separate from you.

So as you break off parts of yourself and reject them, you form an attitude of tremendous rejection and attack towards them, and this makes them change how they appear to you. They look like something you don't want, like an enemy. And your sense of 'self' is disconnected from it. You say it is not you. You perceive it not you. You isolate your sense of "self" from it so much that you really believe it is not you. And that means, it's not "inside you". It's not part of yourself. And therefore, it has to be NOT YOU. So... if it's not you, it must be someone else's stuff, right? It must belong to someone else.

So this is where you then perceive that this rejected part of yourself is in fact intimately tied into someone else. And as you walk around the planet and meet people, you will still continue to experience this condemned part of yourself, within yourself, but you will have disassociated from it so much that you will perceive it's part of other people. You will think it is theirs. And this is what we usually refer to as "projection". This is how you seem to project things onto other people. You overlay your disassociated self onto others.

So then when you're in this situation where it seems like someone is an enemy, and you hate their guts, they really have nothing to do with this. There is a portion of your mind that you hate the guts of, and you're seeing this on top of the person. And you're so dis-identified with that part of you, that you think it's not you, or yours.

Like, it seems like it the other person is quite literally the one who is doing this stuff to you, because you think that this hated part of yourself is attacking or enemy of what remains of your "self". And so is born the idea and perception that you are being victimized by "other" people, by "not me". And this also means, you are now completely irresponsible because you are allegedly not the one who is doing this to you. And simultaneously this paints whats left of you as "innocent" - the innocent victim who has nothing to do with this evil thing.

But you are not really in a victim/victimizer relationship with other people. You're in this relationship with this broken-off part of your own self, which you hate, which is STILL within the confines of your own mind. So the question arises, who are you? What is left of you, if you are not this part you rejected?

Well when you've broken off part of yourself and judged it and disowned it, the part that remains is what we call the ego persona. You think it is the part of you that you are identified with and which is your "self". You think it is all of your self, your whole self, because it's the only parts of you that you have accepted and allowed. It's the parts of you related to what you want to be, how you want to be seen, the good citizen, the successful achiever, the strong personality, whatever. The parts you "keep" are the parts that you have not disassociated from, so you think this is still you. You don't realize that the other parts you've cut off within yourself are also you.

So now within your total mind, there is this small portion that remains, the persona, which is who you THINK you are, and this persona self focuses on including what it wants and rejecting what it doesn't want. And what it doesn't want are the things that it judges and attacks, within you. So this persona attacks you. And it relegates part of you off as not worthy, not allowed, not acceptable, not lovable, not forgivable, not good enough, bad, evil, etc. All of those parts form this disassociated self, another word for which is the "shadow".

This shadow portion of your own self is still within your mind, and there is a war going on between it and your persona. The persona wants to get rid of it at all costs, and does so by continually refining and trimming down what's left of you, chopping off parts it doesn't like with goal of artificial perfection. If it were to succeed with that goal, there would be nothing left of you because it will have relegated so much of you to the hated shadow. The shadow part of you, the disassociated self, which you think is in other people, is really still within your mind, and there is a war waging between these two parts.

So the stuff you hate about you, projected onto others, is believed to be attacking the stuff you exalt about you, which now sees itself as under attack and needing to defend itself. But the hilariously ridiculous, insane thing is, both of these perspectives, these two identities, are both inside of YOU. You have a split mind. Everything you think is inside you, inside your body, you have kept, and now the surface of your body shows this 'mask' of the persona to represent where you stop and where "otherness" starts. And anything outside your body that you think of as "not you" is where you DUMP all of the parts of you that you cannot love. And by relegating all these parts to "not me", "other", "external", it is very easy to perceive that this stuff belongs to someone else.

So now it's someone else'e fault that you nice tidy ego persona is being attacked. Or someone else is doing it to you. Or there is a cause outside of you - so you think. Or you are being affected and upset by something, some separate self, some alien will, that is outside of what you think is 'you', attacking you and trying to destroy you. But it's really part of you. It wants to be integrated and it wants to be unified and it wants to actually cancel out the persona so that your IDENTITY can become WHOLE.

The separation between these two parts of you is the problem. The fact that the persona attacks you by saying only a part of you is acceptable, and the rest is not, creates a split in your mind and therefore creates the shadow. So now the persona has become the defender of a false idea of self, and the shadow that it ITSELF has created, now becomes its apparent enemy.

This makes forgiveness difficult at first because you walk around this planet constantly perceiving that everything to do with "other people" has nothing to do with you, is not your stuff, is not your problem, is not in your mind, is not something you put there, you can do nothing about, you are a victim of it, and you want nothing to do with it. This is disassociation. It IS your stuff. It IS your self. It IS your content. So you have to see that your upset about so-called "other people" has NOTHING to do with them. It's your upset about a part of your own self. It's your persona being upset about the shadow. Part A being upset about Part B, of you.

So you are at war with yourself. And you are attacking yourself. And both sides of yourself are attacking each other. And there is a separation between them. And you hallucinate that the separated-off you is not yourself. So this has to be healed somehow. The separateness of these two split parts needs to be undone.

The only way this can be achieved is when you become willing and able to see, and recognize, that this whole drama is taking place WITHIN YOU. It's really not outside of you. It's got absolutely nothing to do with other people. The problem you see in them is YOUR STUFF. It's your power. It's your attack. So there's this victimizer that you think is out there, and this victim that you think is in here, and BOTH of these characters are inside the whole of your own mind. Both of them are being PLAYED BY YOU. You are simultaneously being the victim and the victimizer. The part of you that you think remains - your persona self, is being animated by your mind. And the part of you you think is not you, the projected shadow, is also being animated by your mind - like a remote puppet on a string.

Now, when you see this, it is very powerful because no longer are you paralyzed by believing in disassociation. No longer are you locked in from being able to do anything about this as a result of believing it's totally under someone else's control, is not within the realm of your mind and is not something you can wield control over. By seeing that you are the actor who is playing BOTH SIDES, the person and the shadow, the wanted and the unwanted, the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, the innocent and the guilty, the attacker and the attackee, you will see this war going on INSIDE YOURSELF.... and recognizing that YOU are the one who is playing both parts, that must snap you out of falling for this ILLUSION that it's got something to do with someone else. You must see that your identity, your actual identity, is "behind" both of these split characters, and therefore YOU are doing this, YOU are creating this 'performance', and YOU are the one who is having a war with yourself.

So if you can see this, that you're doing this to yourself, that you're playing both roles, and nobody else is involved, then this AWARENESS unmasks both characters, because it is so utterly ridiculously that you can no longer be deceived by it, and you recognize that they're both you. So now you have become INCLUSIVE, instead of exclusive. Inclusivity is healing, unifying. The awareness in which you see both characters simultaneously shows you that it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to have been one and not the other. It's impossible for you to be maintaining this position of "I'm the victim who isn't doing this to myself". And it's impossible to also maintain the position of "I'm the victimizer who is doing it to the persona". The cover is blown. The illusion is broken. They're both you. And you're doing it to yourself. It can be shocking to see this. But it is liberating. It sets you free to see the truth of what's going on.

Anyone who sees this, that they are doing this to themselves, will be set free. The persona and the shadow both will be undone, and an awareness will take their place. This awareness is your real self. Or in other words, your WHOLE SELF, which does not have these parts disassociated from each other. Your whole self is not stuck inside the illusion of victim/victimizer roles. It is not deluded that someone is doing something to it, or that it is doing something to someone. So now you are set free by the light of truth.

This also then means, automatically, that you will stop believing that this has got anything to do with other people, and that they're not really your enemies, and they really had nothing to do with this from the start. You thought it was to do with them because you were projecting your shadow self onto them and accusing it, attacking it, trying to get rid of it. Jesus describes this completely clearly in the course, that we project our own sin onto others and then attack it in attempting to destroy it. But other people are all innocent. This war was never with anyone else, it was with yourself.

This is the secret to salvation. You are doing this to yourself. You are your own enemy - but not just the receiver of attack, but also the one who attacks. You are both parties. And its you that needs healing and forgiveness between what has become two parts of you.

Taking TOTAL responsibility for EVERYTHING you experience is the ONLY way to find salvation! It is the meaning of forgiveness.

Throughout ACIM there is a simple theme. You are doing this to yourself. You are responsible for everything you experience. Whatever you're feeling, you chose to feel it. Nothing in the world is causing anything that you expeirence at all. And this means you have to own up to full responsibility for choosing all your suffering, in order to stop suffering. It means you have the POWER to make yourself suffer, and to stop the suffering.

This also means that it is impossible for you to be in a victim role, its impossible for the world to hurt you or attack you, no-one is EVER doing anything to you, no one is EVER responsible for causing you to feel anything at all, nothing happens without your consent, you can't even die without your own consent, your own thoughts are the only thing that can attack you, and if you would stop hurting yourself you would never be hurt.

This simple fact of your TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY for everything you experience, is the central truth that all forgiveness is based on. It is really owning up to the fact that YOU ARE IMMORTAL. And because you are immortal and eternal, you never change, you cannot change yourself, and nothing can change you. Any seeming changes you experience YOU must have decided to pretend to have, and nothing OTHER than your own mind can cause these to appear.

If you were to say, there are no other people in the world, you are the only person left in existence, and absolutely nothing happens except what YOU decide, you'd be close to the truth. This is not to say people don't exist, but this is the kind of mindset you need. You can't blame anyone for anything. You are THE CAUSE OF EVERYTHING. And this is described as the Holy Spirit's ONE all-inclusive lesson, which would eradicate ALL forms of suffering.

If you want to know about what forgiveness means, here it is. Forgiveness is simply the total ownership of the power of God, in which you are purely causal, and in which you recognize your immortality and that of everyone. Since we are all immortal, no-one can sin or attack or hurt anyone including themselves. And this means that no-one can be blamed, no one is a victimiser or a victim, and nothing is happening to anyone. In this view, there is no sin, and everyone is innocent and forgiven. It is the recognition that there is nothing TO forgive because nothing real can be changed, and therefore you need do nothing.

It's as simple as the fact that, if you are suffering in ANY way, you ARE the one who is choosing to suffer in this way. As an immortal being, NOTHING can happen to you or change you in any way. Which means no-one can be responsible for ANYTHING you experience, and nothing in the world does anything to you at all. It therefore means that if you seem to be experiencing any kind of suffering, YOU must have chosen it and put it in place yourself. And because you have that power, you can also undo it.

This includes all states of unhappiness, all sense of fear and threat, all sicknesses and pain, all bodily conditions, cancer and disease and death, all forms of attack, all grief and loss, all despair and depression, every kind of victimhood, all roles, all states of stress and upset, every offence, every hurt, YOU MUST have put it in place yourself.

Sometimes it is very hard to RECOGNIZE that this is true, and indeed this is all about recognition. Because without recognition you will not see that you are the cause - that the cause is in your mind. And then you will seek somewhere else, outside of you, in someone else, for the cause of your suffering, to explain how it got there, having disowned responsibility.

Without recognizing what you are doing to yourself, you will just keep doing it to yourself. And this lack of recognition will turn into projection and blame and victimhood and more suffering. If you do not take total responsibility, you will require someone or something else to be responsible. And then you will want someone or something else to change in order for you to be better off, which is the ego's "forgiveness to destroy." You would seek to destroy another in order to make yourself feel better.

This is also why anger is never justified because it's always a reaction to a faulty perception that someone ELSE is responsible, someone ELSE is having the guilt, someone ELSE has the power of causation and has caused you against your will. This is a disowning of YOUR power and making yourself a victim of your own power. Through projection your mind splits and dissociates from your power and puts it outside of you, and then subjects yourself to it, and now you are affecting yourself and at war with yourself, but you will believe that someone else is doing it. This all hides the fact that YOU are responsible for it.

All effects you experience, you put there. All forms of sickness, you chose on purpose. All suffering, you wanted. All guilt you intentionally chose. All fear you subjected yourself to by threatening yourself. All shame you piled upon yourself. All sense of unworthiness you deliberately tried to convince yourself of to keep God and thus power and responsibility away from you. All unhappiness and loss and despair you wanted on purpose to justify why you were powerless and not responsible.

The ego exclaims, someone else did this, not me! I'm not the guilty one, they are! Look at what's wrong with them, look at their sins and errors, I can't be the one at fault, this isn't my doing, I am not the criminal here, other people are accusing me falsely, other people are blaming me, they are all doing it to me, they're out to get me, they're so evil and wrong and guilty, how can they think they are better than me when they are just as bad if not worse, it's not me at all, poor me I am suffering as a victim because of other people and the world, they are all responsible for my happiness, they are all choosing wrongly and choosing unhappiness for me, why won't they just love me and worship me and make me happy against my will?!

That is unforgiveness because it is powerlessness and irresponsible. There is no ownership of CAUSATION in that view. It is false perception. Only by OWNING CAUSE and BEING THE CAUSE can you be free from suffering, reclaim your immortality and eternal life, enter a state of forgiveness, re-identify as the pure Christ being that God created you to be, recognize there is no sin, reclaim innocence, and therefore find SALVATION from suffering and death forever.

YOU ARE DOING THIS TO YOURSELF!!!!!!!!! STOP IT!!!!!!! TAKE YOUR POWER BACK!!!!!!!!! OWN UP TO WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!!!!! LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE DONE!!!!!! CHOOSE AGAIN!!!!!!!

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

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

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

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

"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. And it is only here salvation is."

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

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

"YOU CAN BUT HURT YOURSELF."

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself."

"Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise."

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one."

"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do. -- My holiness is unlimited in its power to heal, because it is unlimited in its power to save."

"Say ONLY this, but MEAN it with NO reservations, for here the power of salvation lies: --- I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked. --- Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear."

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing. Suffer, and YOU decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you GAVE the power of decision to Him Who MUST decide for God for you."

The big secret behind the ego's illusions, is that the ego is entirely a mode of SELF-attack. And this exactly ties into the revelation that "the secret to salvation is that you are but doing this to yourself."

The ego mind and its entire thought system is not just a separate chunk of regular mind that is split off from God. The ego's only weapon is separation. The purpose of the ego mind is to attempt to destroy the Son of God.

To the ego it is not enough to simply separate from God and be some kind of "self-contained identity", like a whole individual.

The ego mind is a state of mind of constant self-attack. It is a mind of division, separation, fragmentation and splits. Within itself it attempts to break down the Son of God by constantly dividing and separating the mind into as many disjointed pieces as possible.

That means, this ego mind is in a constant state of self-attack. Within itself, there is a war waging, between various aspects of the ego mind. It is not just at war with God, it is at war with itself.

The ego mind doesn't just set out to attack you or be your enemy. It is actually attacking only itself.

When there is a war in the world, whereby some group of people seem to be the evil attackers and some group of people seem to be the helpless victims, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

When there is an argument happening in a special relationship, where both people believe they are right and that the other person is wrong, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

When there is an apparent victimizer doing something terribly abusive to someone and the victim seems to be innocent, even then, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

Simply by virtue of the fact that the ego split mind is riddled with multiple separations, these separations produce the ILLUSION that there is opposition. Based on appearances, it then seems that one part of the ego mind is one identity and the other part is another identity, usually identified by some kind of "difference" between them, or a difference in form.

These differences make it SEEM like there are two separate individuals, at least, and these individuals will inherently be against each other. This is why people identified with separate and different bodies are INHERENTLY racist and sexist. To not be so would threaten their identity as a separate individual.

So take a look at the world and you'll see various examples of parts of it which seem like its "good" and parts that seem "bad", and you might only think the ego is the bad parts. The ego is all parts of this world.

The ego takes both sides of every argument. It takes both sides in every war. It is rooting for both people to be destroyed in every conflict and delights in the fight. It wants both victims and victimizers to hate each other. It believes in all its parts and identities that it is right and all others are wrong, even though those others are part of itself.

The ego has this very "sick" twisted mixture of self-attack and violence against itself. It actually tries to hurt and destroy itself, while at the same time enjoying doing so. It takes "pleasure" in producing "pain" within itself, which is why both pleasure and pain are a part of the same self-attacking mind. It is both the sick person who seems to prey on the innocent, and also is the "innocent victim" of such attacks.

It does not care whether one particular side of any situation is better or worse than another. Its only aim is to get all split parts of the fragmented ego mind to be separate from each other, different from each other, at war with each other, and wanting to destroy each other. Its plan of attack is that by destroying "Self". .. which really does mean "itself", it will destroy the Son of God.

This is simply because the ego IS the Son of God's attempt to destroy His Self. This is self attack. This is how the Son of God is doing everything to Himself, and why underneath ALL of his claims to be an innocent victim He is always secretly wanting it.

It is why behind all fear there is a choice and a desire to be punished. It is why behind all sickness there is a decision to be sick and to use it as both a defense and an attack. It is why victims are also victimizers, why the weak would seek to destroy, why death is both feared and welcomed, and why people are perverted and sadistic.

You are not looking at a world where some parts are pure and some parts are impure. You are not looking at a world where the "good guys" are trying to genuinely be free of the "bad guys". You are only looking at an ego world, which is INSIDE the shared collective ego group mind, the entire ego dream of death, which is RIDDLED with self attack all over the place in every way imaginable.

It always LOOKS like there are many separate individuals operating independently, when in fact it is ONE ego mind operating against ITSELF.

The ego loves to hate Self. The ego loves to destroy Self. The ego loves to pit self against self and be against itself. It should be fairly obvious how this is INSANITY, to be both for and against oneself and to be actively trying to destroy yourself. This is why the ego is suicidal and this is also why all death is a choice to die, in which your "ego self" will both avoid it and cause it, and both want it and be terrified of it.

It is ONLY your own self-attack and desire to destroy yourself that makes you afraid of anything. You are not afraid because of what others might do to you, but because of what YOU plan to do to you through your belief in your deserving of punishment. You are your own attacker and you plot your own death, even if you are kicking and screaming to escape it at the same time.

A split mind is having a battle of wills, because there are multiple conflicting wills operating against each other within it. It wants one thing but also wants another. It always wants everything that it does not want, and does not want everything that it wants. It cannot make up its mind or be decisive or make a genuine decision at all, being an attempt to STOP being decisive and certain or committed to wholeness in any way.

Taking sides is falling for the ego's lie. Participating in an "argument" is separating yourself off from your brother. Your brother is simply another part of your Self as Christ. Christ is the non-split, non-fragmented, non-self-destructive Real Mind of which we are all really a part, and not "apart".

So be careful not to fall for the ego's LIE, the ILLUSION, that one side of a story is right and another wrong, or one part of the world is spiritual and good and another is evil. The ego does not care whether you support the good guys or the bad guys. You are not winning against it by siding with only the good and positive. You are also not winning against it by siding only with the dark and negative.

The ego has no preference for whether you choose to believe that a "cause" is righteous or that your hated political party is "wrong" or that your opinion matters. Your opinion does not matter whatsoever because opinions are a symptom of ego insanity, in rejection of the One Shared Truth. The ego couldn't give a shit who wins an argument or what side of a war is victorious, because those things are NOT what drives the ego.

The ego is driven by SEPARATION. Its ONLY tool is separation. It seems only to separate, within itself. It seems only to split the Son of God up and make him be multiple selves - multiple personalities, and multiple personalities within personalities.

Think not that a regular human being has a "single mind". ... a regular human being has a large COLLECTION of pieces of mind, of sub-personalities, often which are actually in CONFLICT with each other. The ego mind is very complicated and self-contradictory. Even within one person there are countless separated aspects of identity which are not even consistent from second to second. People are different in different scenarios, experiencing constant shifts in persona based on the situation.

Only a whole mind is a sane mind, and a whole mind means Christ mind, which is not a mind that has won or a mind that defeated an opponent, but is a mind in which OPPOSITION does not exist. It is a mind free for a war with itself. It is a mind that has recognized that, this whole time, it has ONLY ever been at war within itself.

The secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself. Your own mind, as ego mind, is attacking itself. It is in conflict within itself. It has been split up into parts and different parts of it are opposed to each other and are not even communicating well. Many parts of your mind are in the dark, many are experienced by other parts of you as an "enemy", and you actively fight with your own hallucinated demons and opponents within your own sense of fragmented self.

It is this state of self-attack and self-conflict and self-war and self-denial that we are healing from, so that we can return the mind to a state of PEACE. Peace is only possible when you are not playing ANY of the ego's games, you are not falling for the illusions or appearance of differences, you are not taking sides, you are not buying into good/bad or right/wrong, and you do not believe any longer in a SEPARATION between victims and victimizers.

You are doing this all to yourself. The whole world is doing this to itself. All wars are self attack, by the one "human race". This is the condition of the ego. The world is destroying itself and always has been and always will be until it disappears, having been recognized as unreal. This is why peace on earth is not possible, because peace would reveal that the earth is not a "real separate thing". Even the idea of separate planets is an ego idea of self conflict.

Beware the ego's intention to get you to fight with someone else, which is really the temptation to fight with yourself. This is all about what you're doing to yourself, and has nothing to do with what anyone else is doing to you. Wake up and see the ego for what it is. It is nothing more than a mind at war with itself, and in that war it is playing every side, because it is a mind of self-destruction.

In the ego's war, nobody wins. There are no survivors. There are no victors. It is always the "Self" that dies. It is always sanity and wholeness that is sacrificed. It is always the ego mind that wins and loses. It is always both parties who suffer. Anyone who plays the game of opposition or righteousness or judgement or rebellion or justification or revenge or any other ego modality, has already FAILED to recognize the ego's diabolical plan. It couldn't care less for winning or losing because in its perception, EVERY part of itself loses. In a war with yourself, YOU MUST LOSE YOUR SELF!

The only way to escape this is to return the mind to wholeness, overlook the ego's illusion of self-attack, own up to the fact that your mind IS attacking itself and that there has not BEEN any other form of attack, and that therefore you have another CHOICE. A better way. A way to be free from your own self destructive dream. A way to be permanently free of the ego, and of all symptoms of suffering and sickness and death, which are merely expressions of self attack.

If you cease attacking yourself, you cannot die. There are no other causes of death but this.

Be free.

The entire ego thought system is an attempt to deny and get rid of God, ourselves, and truth. It is an attempt to displace responsibility for who and what we are, what we are experiencing, and how these experiences were chosen, onto someone other than ourselves.

The culmination of this behavior if death, in which we seem to successfully displace/project/disassociate ALL responsibility for living onto some external power, which decides FOR us what our fate will be.

Death is the ultimate statement and attempt to get rid of all will to live, all responsibility for choice, all power, all blame, and all sin. Turning the tables and having something external "cause you to die" can only happen by completely refusing to make a choice, to create an illusion of having no choice, and to then play along with that lie by "letting" something destroy you "against your will."

All victimhood speaks of the disownership and denial of self, the projection of sin onto others, the unwillingness to choose or to admit to anything, and the deliberate placing of all POWER into the hands of anyone other than ourselves. This has been our ego agenda since the beginning of the separation from God, which was an attempt to deny all power, to deny what we are, and to destroy what God has created.

The only tool the ego has, since it cannot change reality or make it truly be destroyed, is to "cover it up" with illusions of denial. This denial attempts to displace away from the present, away from Self, away from God, everything that is HERE to make it be "not here". This is simply an act of DISOWNING RESPONSIBILITY.

The antidote to this, and everything that comes from it, is to TAKE BACK YOUR POWER by taking responsibility for everything that you are experiencing. This requires that you learn that NOTHING can happen to you against your will, EVERYTHING you are experiencing is what you have ASKED FOR, and you HAVE received exactly what you wanted. This also means that you MUST have chosen whatever it is you are experiencing.

This ties in directly to the secret to salvation, which is the realizing that you are DOING THIS TO YOURSELF, which means that you cannot ever be a victim, no-one is EVER the cause of anything you are experiencing or feeling, no-one can attack you, you are invulnerable, and therefore you are SAFE.

It also ties into Jesus saying that "no-one dies without their own consent". This literally means that if you will take full responsibility, you literally CANNOT experience death unless you choose to. And this also means, that literally, nothing outside of you has ANY ability or power to CAUSE you to die, against your will. This is nothing short of immortality.

The benefits to you and your mind by taking full responsibility for everything is profound. It takes some practice, especially since in most ego dramas there is some perception that SOMEONE ELSE is responsible for what you are experiencing. It can seem that your body is sick because of something that happened against your will, or someone called you some names, or they attacked you, or there is something wrong with them etc. These are LIES.

These are ways that you will GIVE POWER to other people, which means DISOWNING that power, which means you will then *experience* a sense of POWERLESSNESS. In that powerlessness you will see yourself as weak, vulnerable and attackable, and justified in being constantly afraid because now you perceive that "a great power" is outside of you, able to do something to you against your will. A power so strong that, in comparison, the "lack of power" you see yourself as having is no match for it.

Being a victim is a deliberate act of giving your power away. It also reveals in *every case* that you MUST have chosen incorrectly, must have asked for what you have experienced, and therefore have done it to yourself. There is no wiggle room here. We're not able to maintain a belief in "justified victimhood" or "being unfairly treated" at the same time as being empowered. Believing in these reasons why anyone is justified in being a victim or projecting blame for it, is nothing less than a continued CHOICE to disown our power.

We may not realize how much power we have attempted to GIVE AWAY, especially if we are in a very afraid state of victimization. We have been so used to being POWERLESS that we think this is normal and natural. However, as you start to take back responsibility for *everything* you are experiencing, taking back all blame and all belief in an external cause, you will be pleasantly surprised as how EMPOWERED you feel, how much it boosts your confidence and certainty, and how much LESS AFRAID you are.

Essentially, by giving away responsibility, we are attempting to make our life the responsibility of someone else. Then we will seek for them to DO TO US how we want them to treat us - which is specialness. If they do not treat us right, and given we believe what we experience is THEIR responsibility, we will then blame them for failing to live up to our expectation. You can see this in almost all parent-child relationships not to mention all other special relationships.

Also, in this act of placing blame for sin onto SOMETHING SEPARATE AND EXTERNAL, we actually attempting to separate *GOD* off, make him be other than one with our identity, to make out that He is the sinner, that He is now an "external, separate cause", that His Will is now acting AGAINST our will, and therefore we are justified in being angry at God. And then when it SEEMS as though an "external cause" is the reason for why we die, against our will, we are literally acting out this accusation that we are dying because IT IS GOD's WILL. Having made our will be against God's we now see Him as acting against us and trying to kill us. This is what happens when we try to kill God.

The truth is, God is NOT separate from us, His Will is NOT opposed to ours (ours is opposed to His), and He is NOT a separate cause out there doing stuff to us against our will. It is OUR authority problem which makes God out to be an attacker. Every death is a statement that we should die because it is God's will, which is a completely unfounded claim against God, trying to make God out to be a sinner and us His innocent victim.

Now, when we are in our ego and we're getting all caught up in some argument or drama with someone else, what happens is our mind forms "connections" to the other person. These are ego connections. They are psychological distortions resulting from false perception, which perceives that what you are experiencing is "caused by" something outside of yourself.

Seeing cause outside of you will ensure you see "effects" inside of you being directly "tied to" that external cause. So long as you keep visualizing that there is an enemy out there, you will not be able to let go of this sense that you "haven't let go" of this. The person will keeping popping up in your mind and you'll keep having FEAR about what they are doing to you. This is because you believe THEY are responsible for what you are experiencing.

This can become quite heightened, because the ego attacks itself and through conflict it attempts to "join" separate pieces together. The more you are being irresponsible by projecting others as the "cause of you", the more you will not be at peace because you can't LET GO of the perceived situation. Your perception needs healing.

Have you experienced how when you are concerned about what someone is doing, you just can't stop thinking about it? It keeps coming back into your mind. This is because you have become ATTACHED to this enemy, which keeps haunting you. Attachment means the ego is holding on tightly to its vision of an external cause. To let go of that attachment requires one thing .... TAKING FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT YOU ARE EXPERIENCING.

Since all ego dramas and fights and wars and conflict involve this "attaching" process of making YOUR wellbeing dependent on something external, the antidote is to SEVER THE TIES OF CAUSALITY with that other person. This means, making statements or at least having a willingness to admit, that they are NOT THE CAUSE of what you are experiencing, they are NOT responsible for what you are experiencing, the power you see IN them is NOT THEIRS it is your own which you attempted to GIVE to them, and to TAKE BACK YOUR POWER.

Here is an example.

Pick some person who you think of as being an enemy, against you, threatening you, accusing you, attacking you, blaming you, judging you, or in any way somehow acting against your will.

Recognize now what the content of your perception is. Somewhere in your perception you have DISPLACED a sense of power onto the person. You see them as HAVING POWER OVER YOU. And in that same perception, you see yourself as having LOST power to them.

Recognize also that you feel that THEY are responsible for how you feel, what you are experiencing, and what's happening to you. It's their fault. They are the one doing it. Cause is outside of you, and you therefore are being turned into an EFFECT. Note that all emotional reactions from the ego are the result of seeing yourself as AT THE EFFECT of the world. Perceiving a cause outside of you automatically means that YOU have to adjust to "become the effects" that this cause is projecting. These "effects" show up as emotional disturbance and reactions of hurt, fear, anger, etc.

Recognize also that you are attached to this person, they seem to have a way to ACCESS YOU, they are connected to you in some energetic way, and you can't seem to be at peace about them. You feel threatened by them, unsafe, unable to muster enough power or courage to stand up to them, and you feel like you are being victimized.

Now. Here is the good part. SEPARATE YOURSELF FROM THEIR CAUSALITY. Say some things which confirm the truth, that there is NO TIE OF CAUSALITY between that person and you. I am now going to demonstrate an example and if you follow along using a person in your life, you WILL NOTICE how this changes your mind and your feelings.....

I am not being affected by that person. That person is not being affected by me.

I am not being caused by that person. That person is not being caused by me.

Nothing I am experiencing is coming from that person. These experiences are my own. I am choosing all of these experiences. Everything I am feeling I am choosing to feel. They are my own feelings and I put them there. This other person did not put them there.

Nothing the other person is experiencing is coming from me. Whatever they are experiencing is their own choice. They are choosing all of their experiences. Everything they are feeling they are choosing to feel. Those are their own feelings, not mine, and I did not put them there.

My feelings of hurt any upset are not being caused by them. Their feelings of hurt and upset are not being caused by me.

I am not responsible for anything that person is experiencing. They are not responsible for anything I am experiencing.

They have done nothing to me. I have done nothing to them.

I am not at the effect of that person. That person is not at the effect of me.

That person hasn't done anything to me against my will. I have not done anything to that person against their will.

I completely forgive that person because they have not done anything to me at all. That person completely forgives me because I have not done anything to them at all.

Everything I am experiencing is my own choice. I have put these reactions and feelings into my own body. I am the one who did this to myself. They did not do this to me. I must have chosen it.

(this ties directly into..) "I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace. I MADE THE DECISION MYSELF,

but I can also decide otherwise. I want to decide otherwise,

because I want to be at peace."

You can go on and on like this for as long as you feel you need to, SEPARATING CAUSALITY from seeming like it is coming from someone other than yourself. Or rather, deprogramming your false perception of an external enemy, and TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT so that you realize you are only doing this to yourself.

This puts all POWER back into your own hands. You will REGAIN POWER, you will feel stronger, you will feel less afraid, you will feel like you have LET GO of the other person, you will stop having obsessive thoughts about them, you will not FEAR being victimized by them or what they are going to "do to you", and you will gain a lot more confidence.

Essentially, this is a process of forgiveness, whereby you are admitting the truth and owning up to NOT being a victim, to having simply made a mistaken choice, and that you no longer want to see someone else as attacking you. Blaming anyone else for attack is a lie. All attack is self attack.

It is YOU who needs to stop attacking yourself, not other people. Putting the blame for attack onto others SHIELDS YOU from admitting that you are doing it to yourself, because projection comes from DENIAL. Admitting the truth, taking responsibility, and owning up to WHO YOU ARE, gives you back YOURSELF, and empowers you greatly.

What Jesus is teaching us in the Course is simply that all attack is self attack, we have accused ourselves of sin, and we need to admit that this isn't true. The things we do after accusing ourselves of sin, to deny and project it on others, isn't even the main problem. It's part of a cover up. We need to learn to STOP DISOWNING OURSELVES. Stop giving YOUR power away to external causes that don't exist.

When you take back all of YOUR power, which you share with God, you will not be able to see yourself as powerless, or needing to be afraid, or a victim. Stuff won't bother you. People won't be able to attack you. You will gain STRENGTH in the truth. True innocence is STRONG, not weak and vulnerable. You are truly innocent when you take responsibility for everything because it simply means there is no blame or guilt, just a mistaken choice, which can be undone.

As you take back this responsibility, you will find AT FIRST that it seems to your ego that you are taking "the blame" for everything. This is a hurdle, because you still believe that you really did do something wrong. Not blaming it on someone else simply blames you. This has to be undone through forgiveness. If I say, "I am responsible for this", my ego will take it to mean, "I really am a sinner". This is its defense against the truth. We must go past this to realize that it is possible to BE RESPONSIBLE without being guilty.

Jesus talks about this in the urtext, not sure if FIP etc, but He mentions how as you start to take responsibility, your ego will at first perceive it to "imply" that you are the one who is truly a sinner. And this can feel painful. But gradually, the MORE you take responsibility, the more you take back your POWER, the more you will NOT believe in real sin and will more easily stay in your strength. Your strength will shine a stronger light and will help you to SEE that you are simply taking steps to BE YOURSELF.

Taking 100% responsibility for everything you experience is the key to salvation. It can take you all the way to the atonement. It will give you back so much power you will be surprised how invulnerable you feel, how much less afraid you are, how easily you approach people and are not put off by doubts or anxieties.

Taking full responsibility ultimately also means, YOU CANNOT DIE unless you make it happen to yourself. No-one dies without their own consent. It also means NOTHING CAN HURT YOU against your will. It also means YOU CANNOT BE SICK, and neither can your body, because sickness of the body is all an attempt to BE IRRESPONSIBLE by projecting sin onto others. Sickness accuses your brother of being a sinner. That's not responsibility. Taking responsibility will HEAL YOU AND YOUR BODY.

You could say, if you like you think of miracles as shifts in perception, say that taking responsibility will SHIFT your perception miraculously towards the truth. This isn't the full story of what miracles are (expressions of love, able to do anything) etc... but your holiness CAN do anything if you will OWN UP TO IT. It's kind of like an act of COMING OUT AS CHRIST, admitting that YOU ARE THE SON OF GOD, revealing yourself, stopping hiding, stoping distracting away from whey you are, BECOMING VISIBLE, and therefor becoming INVISIBLE to the ego. The ego cannot attack you when you are responsible and empowered.

The power you will gain and share with God by reclaiming your right to it (miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first), will astound you. You literally are plugging yourself back into the Power of God. And there is nothing you cannot do.

YOU NEED TO FIX OTHERS BECAUSE YOU ARE BROKEN

This has been a major eye opener for me.

If you have a belief in your mind that you have sinned, then you'll believe that you are responsible for some kind of attack. And because you attacked, you will feel guilty. This means that your mind is now sick because it believes something untrue about itself. And your mind now needs healing.

But chances are that you'll deny this in order to try to resolve it the ego way, and this will then project onto someone else. You'll see someone else as in need of healing. You'll see that there is something dire and wrong with them. That they are seriously suffering or in trouble. It can turn into what appears to be a nightmare where you are constantly upset that there seems to be no way to solve the problem.

The problem is that you feel you are responsible for causing the guilt, the brokenness, the unhealed-nature, that you're seeing in someone else. You'll believe you caused them to suffer, to be sick, to be upset, etc. You'll seem to feel guilty for this as though your own sin has led to someone else suffering. And this puts you into a bind.

Since you now feel guilty, and you think you're guilty for making someone else suffer, you'll become compelled to want to fix them. You'll develop a strong need to change them, control them, manage them, coerce there, or get them to do something, or to make something happen, in order to make the suffering go away. You'll even feel upset that they are suffering and that you want it to end any way possible.

You then find yourself in a position where you believe you are responsible for causing someone to suffer, they need to change in order to not suffer, you need to force them to change, and you'll try anything you can to "fix it". But a problem arises, because they will now start to resist your efforts to control and dominate them. They'll see your attempts to fix and help as actual attempts to attack them. Because now you are not accepting them or allowing them freedom.

This is all driven by a need that you have developed. By seeing yourself as sinful and guilty you have entered into a needy state where you lack love and health. So you now see that if you can get the person you projected it onto to be restored to health and happiness, this will "solve" your need for healing.

But this is a big dependency and it comes with a major pitfall. If the other person does not comply, if they do not want your help, if they resist your constant attempts to fix them, and if they refuse to play along, you will not be able to get your artificial needs met. And being left in a situation where you see yourself as needing something but are denied it, the ego now goes into its dark hateful vengeful angry mode because it has no other options.

You will then start to turn to anger and force and more aggressive control in an effort to push the person into doing what you think you need them to do, in order for you to be relieved of suffering. You'll also start to believe that the reason you are now suffering is because of them. Their suffering, and their seeming inability to be healed, and their seeming unwillingness to make choices towards healing, is taken like a slap in the face.

You can't find peace because you are making peace depend entirely on whether or not the other person is free from suffering. All their suffering ties into yours and it now seems their suffering is causing you to suffer. And if only you could get them to stop suffering, you'll supposedly be happy and overjoyed.

As you make efforts or suggestions for what they must do, need to do, its very serious to do that, must comply, etc demanding they follow along, and as they fail to comply, you will just become more and more lost and exasperated and upset and stressed.

Because no matter what you try, it seems you keep hitting a dead end and nothing is working, it seems hopeless and, according to you, if these resolutions are not adopted, the person is going to be in far worse condition. You develop a progressively stronger need to fix them the more you believe they are the one with the problem. This is disassociation.

What's happening here isn't really so much to do with the other person, what their condition is, their willingness, or anything to do with whether or not they are actually in need of fixing. The real problem is that you've entered into a dynamic of believing in your own guilt, you feel responsible for causing the suffering, this is exacerbated every time they seem to refuse your efforts, and how dare they not be healed the way you need them to be healed. Why do you even need them to be healed in the first place? What's it to you?

What this means is you're trying to resolve a sense of "something is wrong", by trying to address it outside of yourself where you THINK it is, in another person, as if that's where the problem is. Not realizing you are even projecting anything at all. In fact the more you focus on the problems of the other person the more you will go into denial and unconsciousness as to it being you who needs healing. It will seem as if they are the one who clearly has all the problems, all the suffering, and not you, and all you're doing is trying to "help", trying to offer suggestions, trying to make their life better. But this really all has nothing to do with them.

This is really not much different from when you are just generally scapegoating someone due to them seeming to attack you. You blaming people for doing stuff to you. You finding them to be guilty. You judging them. The need to fix is based on the exact same dynamic except that it doesn't seem like scapegoating, because it seems like whole whole intention and desire is for the person to actually get BETTER and improve and be healed and happy.

It seems you want the best for them, but this is an illusion of healing and still a major ego trap, based in denial of your own guilt, that promises salvation in an external form rather than where it's needed. It's an illusion of a desire to truly heal, and is really an attack in disguise. You think all you're doing is wanting the person to heal, but all you're doing is seeing them as more and more in need, which means the ego is seeing more and more distance between the problem and the solution. The more you deny your own sickness the more you want to heal the supposed sickness of others.

The real issue is that you yourself feel guilty, and in an effort to get away from this guilt, you are instead seeing brokenness in another person instead of fixing yourself. The "need" to fix is still there because you believe you need fixing, but the approach to resolving it isn't working. Trying to get another person to heal in order for you to be healed, is not going to work. Trying to get another person to follow the rules or play along with the prescription or do the steps you come up with for how they must behave and act, is not going to make even a dent in how or why you feel so guilty about their condition.

It all goes back to causality, and the sense that you actually believe, deep down, that you cause other people to suffer. And this is based on the belief that you caused sin to happen. You think you actually are making someone sick. You think it's your fault that other people have issues, or are unhappy, or are sick and suffering. That because they are not loving themselves, and therefore are not loving you, there must be something wrong with you. And your wrongfulness must be the reason for their upset. This kind of stuff even goes back into childhood beliefs and wrongful conclusions.

What you really need, is a clear and definite sense of what the real cause of the situation is. And this means forgiveness clearly needs to be applied, to dismantle all sense of artificial cause and effect on the horizontal level. All sense that you are the cause of their suffering, or that their suffering is the cause of you. Because this really has nothing to do with the other person at all.

You have your own belief that you are sinful and guilty. Before the other person even becomes involved. You think you are lacking and unworthy of love. And this in turn is a state of need or lack. And this neediness will now project onto someone else as though they are the one who is lacking and in need. The more in need they seem to be the more likely they are to "map onto" your projection and be a perfect fit for you to target. You'll then be able to use them to try to fulfill your ego ambition, which is to fix something, so long as its not the real problem or where the problem really is.

Within your own mind there is a problem. It's a belief in sin and guilt. And this is based on a skewed sense of causality. Somehow you believe you are the cause of suffering in others, because you think you succeeded in sinning against God. You also believe you have caused yourself to suffer. Unresolved guilt you have about the false illusion that you caused the sickness or suffering of someone else (which does go back to the separation idea) can easily project onto another target. That you even seem to EXIST on a physical level "suggests" that you are part of sin, because the world of bodies is the world of sin.

You have to learn to become clear about the fact that you are not causing other people to suffer. The only reason you get so caught up and lost in trying to "help them" and "fix them" and "save them" is so that you won't keep feeling guilty. If you COULD save them, you think you'll be delighted. That all you want for them is to be happy. All you want for them is to be healthy and well and living life. But is this all you really want? Because behind this desire for their highest good there is really a NEED, a desire to elevate them SO THAT you can keep your guilt and continue to hide from it, because you think you are guilty for what THEY are experiencing.

If they do indeed become saved somehow, healed, healthier, holier, happier, that's all well and good and will seem to lift the burden of the sense that you need them to be this way. You might feel temporarily, fictionally better about yourself, as if you achieved something. As if they are now better "because of you", and you get to be the hero.

When they go along with your wishes, as if going along with your agenda, you'll feel your ego float in pride and success as if you won a victory and managed to coerce someone into doing what you wanted. Your ego becomes a tyrant in this, incessantly demanding conformity and compliance. So if they comply, suddenly the ego is all happy and elated. But it's fake. It's a facade of gloating and being pleased with yourself that you seemed to "cause" someone else to be in a better position, even against their will. How dare they not be happy when you need them to not be sad. How dare they be sad when you need to be made happy.

The egoic dependency on another always ends up this way. Terribly unhappy when they aren't complying, unnaturally inflated when they are finally doing what you want. But never simply at peace or calmly happy. Or detached. You have to let go of the person and honor their free will. But you'll only do that when you can realize that you've been using them to try to resolve your own issues. Otherwise if you keep intending to use them to meet your own fake needs, you won't allow them to be free of your tyrannical rule.

Recognizing you did not cause the suffering of another, gives you freedom. It's what you really need to realize. YOU DID NOT SIN. You did not cause suffering. If in particular you can pinpoint what the cause of their suffering is, and realize it is not you, that can help as well, even if on a superficial level of fake cause and effect. But mainly you need to get to the point where you admit that you are the one who needs healing and realize that this is all to do with your attempt to at "self healing" which you're trying to accomplish outside of yourself instead of within.

You have guilt in you, which shouldn't be there. It's based on beliefs that are false. Guilt is always a lie. It's based on some sense of sin - something you did or did not do, which was not what should or should not have been done. Sin is always a lie because there is no sin in reality. But there is something you have accused yourself of. Something you think you are responsible for. Something you think you caused but didn't. This is where you need forgiveness. And that's what your entire "need to fix" is coming from.

If you are not sinful or guilty, and did not cause your brother to experience anything at all, then you are not in need. You are not lacking love for yourself. And so you do not project the guilt onto another person. And so you do not see them as lacking. And so you do not see a need to fix "what's wrong". And so you do not start trying to control them. And so you do not become upset at their lack of willingness or the inability to heal the terrible problems that have now turned into a nightmare in your perception of the situation. Stuff that, if it doesn't get fixed, you think will lead to death.

Thinking you are responsible for not only making someone suffer but for also reversing the suffering, is a terribly slippery slope. This doesn't mean you can't offer miracles or that the Holy Spirit cannot heal the person and their body. But you have to get yourself healed of this distorted form of healing first. This attempt at healing is not true healing. It's the ego's form of healing. And just like "forgiveness to destroy", it is "healing to destroy."

Your ambition is not really to heal, in this condition, it's to create an illusion of healing in another person so that your own sickness remains hidden in your mind and thought to have nothing to do with you. If they get fixed, you reason that this will fix your life. But it won't. Because you yourself need healing as well and don't realize it.

The need to fix another becomes a trap and a prison, because the only way out is the way you came in, within yourself. Free yourself of the insane belief that you are the cause of suffering, an attacker, a sinner, guilty, ashamed, unworthy, or any other false belief. This will lift away from the other person all of your projected suffering and neediness, which will be a relief to both of you. Especially given that your attempt to heal them is probably hurting them more, and inducing even more guilt.

And now in your perception that you are not really sick, because you are not really sinful, you become the light of the world, in a position to now work ACTUAL miracles, TRUE healing, to be truly helpful, and to offer the kind of support that actually works. Now the person is more likely to respond, because everyone responds to love. Love can be trusted. Love is worth cooperating with. And love heals.

Now you are a miracle worker, alleviated from your own insane belief that you are deeply in need of healing, which you no longer see in others. Now you can recognize their illusions of sickness only for what they are, and offer genuine healing to cure and reverse their suffering. You're now in a position to allow the Power of God to work through you, to shine a light into their mind from your healed mind. And now you are capable of giving the miracles you have received.

"It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."

"The ego's plan for forgiveness is far more widely used than God's. This is because it is undertaken by unhealed healers, and IS therefore of the ego. "

"By definition, he is trying to GIVE what he has NOT received."

"I give the miracles I have received."

Catchy title eh.

"God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself."

Ok so, this is quite fundamental. Who you are, one with God, is INSIDE of you. God is in your mind. The truth and the love are in your mind. ALL suffering is induced when you go AWAY from God within you, see a lack of love within you, seek to not find it somewhere outside of you, and start seeking externally.

"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace."

The instant that you go AWAY from God within you, you go "out of your mind" towards hell. You go into sickness. You go into suffering. You go into the body. You go into the world. You go into insanity. And you go towards death.

At the same time, you feel that you need salvation from your problem. The problem seems to be a lack of love inside of you. You think you cannot find the solution there. So you seek outside of you to GET an answer. To solve your problem.

You want salvation from a location where salvation is not. What you do is you set up things - the body, the world, and all its contents, as your savior. As the cause of you. And you position yourself as at its effect. And then you seek to be "affected by" the world. And now you want to be its victim, and its lover. You want it to give you what you want. You want to get everything you need from it. You depend on it for salvation.

All the external sources that you think will SAVE YOU, now become your everyday experience. You are now entering into IDOL WORSHIP. That is, the worshipping of "false Gods". These false Gods are everything external that is not of God. Everything separated off. Everything illusory.

This includes the body, the world, special relationships, special objects, made-up values, special places, buildings and cars and houses and stadiums and forests and mountains and oceans and cities and all manner of external things. All of them are there as idols for you to worship, to get your "needs met". Your need for love, which you formulated inside yourself.

So now you reach out to the world. On the one hand you have special love for it because you want it to save you from hell. Even though the world itself is hell. Then on the other hand you have special hate for it precisely because, deep down, you CAN'T find the love you're missing there. In fact you suspect the world has stolen it from you.

Those who worship an idol have a two-faced attitude, in that on the one hand they seem to put the idol on a pedestal and worship it, wanting it to save them - to do something to them. But at the same time they want the idol destroyed, in order to take everything they have, there is jealously that they have what you lack, and you think they are the one who stole your love.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

So now, everything external is considered the source of you getting your fake needs met. You think you will find YOURSELF outside of you. You think you will find the LOVE you lost (within) outside of you. The source of your SALVATION. The world is now going to SAVE YOU, from suffering. From unhappiness. From a lack of love. And even, from the many symptoms that arise as a RESULT of looking to the world to save you. By trying to get salvation from the world, you are SELLING YOUR SOUL in an attempt to GAIN the world. You want to have the world to substitute for God.

"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing. To invest in something WITHOUT profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost TO YOU is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality, by DENYING YOURS, and gives you nothing in return. You CANNOT sell your Soul, but you CAN sell your AWARENESS of it."

By seeking outside yourself you take yourself AWAY from health and sanity. And then you ask the world to save you from this sickness and insanity, which you think it has induced, and which you induced by making the world your savior. On the one hand the world seems to attack you and hate you and is trying to make you dead. On the other hand the world seems to be offering special magical solutions, potions, medicines, foods, drinks, environments, toys, money, success, playthings, people, bodies, revenge, as a way for you to get saved.

You then become deceived in that you think the world is not the thing attacking you. And instead you try to skew your vision, to select the aspects of the world you think are there to help you, and reject the parts you think are there to hurt you. You gravitate towards making a special life, with a special house, and a special bank account, and a special relationship, while trying to avoid the nasty signs of evil and murder creeping in around you. To create a nice little bubble of artificial safety to keep you protected from the grim reaper.

"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made."

But you know on some level that the very same world that seems to save you and gives you everything you want and meets your needs, is also the same world that is seemingly the source of ALL your suffering. It hates you and loves you. You hate it and love it. The two of you tango back and forth in a love-hate dynamic of mistrust and absorption. Fighting to be free from it, fighting to keep it. Wanting it, needing it, depending on it for your life. Hating it, rejecting it, wanting nothing to do with its insanity.

But even in the midst of this scenario of the world being both your attacker and your savior, its actually true that the world is NEITHER of these things. The world cannot attack you, nor can the world save you. It is really YOU in your mind who has decided to go away from peace and happiness and safety and love and power, and has "thrown away" this inheritance, and wandered off into "enemy territory", where you are then left fending for your life and trying to make allies.

"It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace, or upset you in any way."

It's really your choice to go away from God, that leaves you in a position of "sleeping with the enemy". Better the devil you know, and all that. You think you can trust the world but you can't. You think you can trust the body to protect you from love, but it doesn't. You love it for seeming to save you from God, but you hate it for its weakness and its inability to do anything. Nor can it ward of the ultimate self-attack - death by suicide.

Salvation from the darkness that appears WHEN you leave God, can only be found by NOT leaving God. One problem, one solution. You think you are separate from God, and this has given rise to EVERY problem in the world. Even to the world itself. You have invented all the problems around you. You are their source. And the only way to truly find salvation from the "attacking world" and its fake offerings of "help", is to go back within to find God. To reunite with your REAL safety. Where you have no needs.

These then are your only choices. Either stay with God and need nothing, or leave God and form artificial needs which cannot be properly met by the world you invent. In neediness you are always lacking and nothing is ever enough. And the world can never fill the void or the gaping hole in your heart. Nothing the world can do can really SAVE you from your own self induced secret journey to move AWAY from salvation. The world cannot attack you, nor can it give you peace. What you need is a solution from another world - an inner world.

Getting a good job is not going to save you. Eating the right food is not going to save you. Having the right house is not going to save you. Hearing the best music is not going to save you. Traveling to see all the special places is not going to save you. Earning lots of money and getting all the good toys is not going to save you. Finding a special someone in a body is not going to save you. Having lots of sex or drugs is not going to save you. Special tv shows are not going to save you. Harming the body is not going to save you. Fighting with people is not going to save you. Magical medicine and treatments and surgeries are not ultimately going to save you. The world HAS no solution for death because it is made of the idea of death itself.

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

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

This is no idle small thing. The ENTIRE world was set up as a place to suffer and die. And the ENTIRE world is offering you salvation from itself. And the ENTIRE world CANNOT solve your problem. And the ENTIRE world is not the CAUSE of your problem. The cause is inside of you, in your attempt to leave God and throw away your inheritance of happiness. That is THE ONLY problem and the source of ALL needs and problems. And solving that problem will NEVER be done by getting anything from the world.

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."

"Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons."

"The worlds nothing that I want."

The world cannot give you ANYTHING real, or anything of value, or anything permanent, or any real solution to your only problem. All it can give you are fake bandaids which look like solutions but ALWAYS have side effects, because they are attacks shrouded as helpfulness. Nothing in the world is devoid of a two-faced counter-attack. Everything it does has the MOTIVE of death.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

The only real salvation is found within, moving in the direction of God, not outwardly away from where He is. "What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can it be corrected by any device which can be physically seen. As long as a man believes in what his physical sight tells him, all his corrective behavior will be misdirected."

"Salvation is our only need. There is no other purpose here, and no other function to fulfill. Learning salvation is our only goal. Let us end the ancient search today, by finding the light in us and holding it up for everyone who searches with us to look upon and rejoice."

"Salvation does depend on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. One problem -- one solution."

"Above all, remember that you have one problem and that the problem has one solution. It is in this that the simplicity of salvation lies. It is because of this that it is guaranteed to work."

"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."

"Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."

"Begin these practice periods by repeating the idea for today, adding a statement signifying your recognition that salvation comes from nothing outside of you. You might put it this way:

"My salvation comes from me.

It cannot come from anywhere else."

"My salvation comes from me, and only from me."

"For the short and frequent practice periods today, remind yourself that your salvation comes from you, and nothing but your own thoughts can hamper your progress. You are free from all external interference. You are in charge of your salvation. You are in charge of the salvation of the world. Say, then:

"My salvation comes from me."

"Salvation comes from my One Self."

"Salvation comes from this One Self through Him Who is the bridge between your mind and It."

"Salvation comes from my One Self.

Its Thoughts are mine to use."

"Each time today you tell your frantic mind salvation comes from your One Self, you lay another treasure in your growing store."

"Salvation comes from my One Self."

From my One Self, Whose knowledge still remains

Within my mind, I see God's perfect plan

For my salvation perfectly fulfilled."

"My salvation comes from me."

"The search implies you are not whole within, and fear to look upon your devastation, and prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are. Idols must fall BECAUSE they have no life, and what is lifeless IS a sign of death."

Is there a power OTHER than the mind that can cause things to happen to us? What causes sickness? What makes death happen? Do we actually have any control over this world? Do we have a power, to such an extent, that we can actually determine what happens or doesn't happen? Can we actually CHOOSE to cause or not cause sickness and death?

This is an important issue because if we are not the ones orchestrating everything that occurs, everything we experience, then that places us in a rather vulnerable position. If there is a power or cause or law or something that drives stuff to occur, without our consent, without our choosing it, this basically means we are capable of being victims. Stuff can happen to us against our will.

It may seem SUPER radical to suggest that you could be in a position of having so much deliberateness, so much choice, so much power, that you could be orchestrating an entire dream. That the things that happen are what YOU decide will happen. That nothing else happens, because you haven't chosen it. It really then boils down to, are you actually able to choose not to suffer, to not be sick, to not die? Can you choose that events don't occur at all? Do you have the power to CAUSE these to not happen, and do you have the power to cause them TO happen?

This then really becomes a question of RESPONSIBILITY. Who or what is responsible, in every case, for what happens in your life? Do you shift responsibility and therefore "blame" onto others, onto the body or the world itself? For what seems to happen TO you? Who is responsible for whether you are attacked or not? Who is responsible for whether your body becomes sick, or is healed, or just carries on being sick without hope of relief? Because ultimately someone or some "thing" HAS to be the cause. It's either you, or it's something else. There are NO effects without causes.

If you look at the teachings of ACIM closely you will see that there is a huge theme of EMPOWERMENT. This empowerment is saying that you are so powerful that you literally are the dreamer of the dream. It says that you are ruler of the universe. It says that you can be attacked by nothing but your thoughts. It says you cannot die without your own consent. It says that you are not the victim of the world you see. All of these themes point towards you having POWER OVER what happens. YOU CHOOSE!

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power."

Indeed it leads to what ACIM calls "the secret of salvation". This is quite a radical passage because it basically says that unless you were to go into a kind of unconscious state of denial in which you disown power and see the dream as "happening against your will", NOTHING In the world can do anything to you - no matter how vicious it seems. And in fact, that the secret to being SAVED FROM all forms of suffering, is to realize and own fully that you are "doing it to yourself." That takes great OWNERSHIP of power.

We immediately start to bark with objections about how this can't be true in all situations. But the passage tells us that no matter who is the victim or victimizer, it is true. No matter who seems to do what to whom, or what the apparent severity, it is still true. So it's then telling us that despite any appearances, despite what may look like external causes or separate people acting in certain ways, no matter what it looks like on the surface, it is ALWAYS TRUE that you are doing it to yourself.

And it calls this the "secret of salvation" because it talks of how this is the ONE LESSON the holy spirit is teaching to SAVE YOU from ALL forms of suffering. That the cause of ALL forms of suffering, no matter what form it takes, including physical sickness, is the fact that you are the one doing it to yourself. And because you are doing it yourself, you can change your mind and STOP doing it.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise."

Because in truth, really, UNLESS you are actually the one with the power to CAUSE anything to happen, you would not be in a position to be able to USE that power to NOT cause it to happen, or to undo it. It is because you DO cause it, that there is IS hope for salvation. There is a way out of hell and suffering and sickness and death BECAUSE you are the one that keeps putting it in place. And if you weren't the one putting it in place, you'd be stuck having to tolerate it, experience it, suffer from it, and go through it, without any hope of relief, ie no salvation.

This is quite a radical teaching and it is extremely central to the entire A Course in Miracles view of cause and effect, of who causes what, and of how POWERFUL you are. It rests on the fact that you are an immortal being, a permanent changeless being, who is always the same and is incapable of change or of being changed. A being that is NOT AFFECTED by the world.

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did."

Forgiveness rests on this immortal fact, because obviously if you are immortal nothing can happen to you, so you have no grounds for playing at being a victim, no grounds for believing that something is happening against your will, and no grounds for suffering. If you are immortal then you quite literally are invulnerable to the entire world, and there is not a single thing in all the world that has even the slightest power to cause anything that you do not want. In fact it means you have power OVER DEATH, because you cannot die.

This is what the entire teaching of ACIM is leading to. The total identification with spirit as Christ, the immortal son of God. The total owning of RESPONSIBILITY FOR BEING CAUSAL - a causal CREATOR. The total reclaiming of absolute unlimited POWER, which can do literally anything. The reclaiming of the power to work miracles, to heal sickness and to prevent death, and to change the world if needed. It is asking of you to reclaim a role and position of nothing LESS than TOTAL ABSOLUTE POWER.

By having such a power, a power so great that literally the entire dream is being dreamed up BY your mind, a power that puts the world in place and makes it spin, a power that materializes bodies, a power that causes events to transpire, we're talking about you being extremely DELIBERATE and CHOOSING everything that occurs or is experienced. And this does mean without exception. Not one single thing occurs that you do not choose, and because the power of decision is yours, you CAN CHOOSE not to have the body be sick, or die. YOU make the world go round.

This isn't a course in leaving any room open for some kind of fictional "alien will", a separate power, an external power, some kind of power the "dream" seems to have over you, some victim consciousness, some kind of external causation that can do things to you against your will, some kind of power that puts sickness into your body without your asking for it, or some kind of power other than your choice that seems to make death happen.

These are all the views that the EGO has, in its sense of weakness and powerlessness and vulnerability and fear. It sees itself as utterly at war with a separated-off power not within itself, that does things to it against its desires. And it sees itself as having no control or real power over anything, so instead to uses "force" and "doing" to try to make things happen.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

We are being asked to own up to being immortal beings. Beings who are purely CAUSAL and CREATIVE. Beings who express from love and whose expressions come out as what you want, and as what you create and thus as what happens or exists. Where you are constantly choosing WHAT shows up and what occurs. There is no room in the mind of a creator/co-creator for stuff happening "by some other means", or of your choices being unheard, or of your decisions lacking power, or of your causation lacking effects.

This is a course in TAKING BACK YOUR POWER. And that means and includes the total responsibility and ownership of being THE CAUSE OF all your suffering, in every form it takes, INCLUDING the condition of the body, all of its forms and sickness and suffering, and even over death itself. You even have the power to literally move mountains and to make worlds. Only in this extreme of absolute ownership of the POWER OF GOD, which is your inheritance, is victimhood and vulnerability and pain and misery snuffed out forever. There is no power OTHER THAN the power of God that you share with him.

The question is whether you are willing to go all the way to accept this power, to take on this role and position of being ruler of the universe, whether you are willing to OWN this power and regain access to USE it consciously. Whether you are ready to let go of all victimhood roles and all sense of not choosing or not being the one who makes things happen. It's putting you in the hot-seat. If you are to reach the resurrection and FINISH the curriculum, you MUST gain the absolute power over death, which gives you the ability to cancel and reverse and prevent it EVEN on a physical level.

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

If you believe that sickness happens through some other reason, by some other cause, something in the world or body, something environmental, something someone else does to you, if events happen on their own chaotically or randomly, if death chooses for you when you will die, if sickness happens to the body, if sickness can remain within the body against the mind's choice, and if you believe that you do NOT have the power to do anything about this, that IS an egoic position of victimhood and powerlessness. And we are all-too comfortable playing this role.

It means you are "playing the game of death", as an immortal being, PRETENDING that you do NOT have the power of God, and trying to pull off a stunt of making it look AS IF you are not the one causing everything to occur. When it appears you did not choose something, it is an illusion. You are ALWAYS choosing what you experience, what you feel, what happens with the body, what events transpire. NOTHING happens without your consent. This is because you are an infinitely powerful being with an extremely powerful unlimited mind capable of creating entire worlds.

"There are no accidents in salvation."

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

Owning up to this power - the shared Power of God - which is UNLIMITED, and there is NOTHING that this power (thus your holiness) cannot do .... places you in a position of being co-creator with God. For a creator there is nothing that comes IN to you from the outside, there is ONLY an outflowing from the inside outward. An extension so strong it cannot be stopped. The unlimited will of God.

You cannot have things coming at you, attacking you, changing you, affecting you, choosing for you. YOU are the master. You dominate everything. You are the ultimate cause. YOU are in charge of your destiny. You are NEVER a victim, and NOTHING happens without your choosing it and causing it. OWN THIS, and you will be free from suffering and death forever.

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

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

"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. And it is only here salvation is."

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest you, but YOU cannot. YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW, for if you did, you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack, and His peace surrounds you silently."

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

"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."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."

"Say ONLY this, but MEAN it with NO reservations, for here the power of salvation lies: ... I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked. ... Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear."

"A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at ALL levels. Illness, which is really "not Right Mindedness", is the result of level confusion in the sense that it always entails the misbelief that what is amiss in one level can adversely affect another."

"All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion which created magic rested on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter, which can control the mind."

"It was the first level of the error to believe that the body created its own illness. Thereafter, it is a second mis-step to attempt to heal it through non-creative agents."

"The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else. ... To use a medium of communication as a medium of attack is an obvious confusion in purpose. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously WITH THE SAME THING, and NOT suffer?"

"The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

"LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect. What you would prove to him you will believe."

"All sickness comes from a confusion of the levels."

"Sickness is but another form of guilt."

"Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what is not true. Free your minds from the belief that this is possible. In its complete impossibility, and your full awareness of its complete impossibility, lies your only hope for release."

"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself."

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"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."

"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it FOR."

"The ego SEPARATES through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches THROUGH it to others. You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies AND YOURS solely as a means of JOINING THEIR MINDS and uniting them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has NONE. If you use it for attack it is harmful to you. But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you. If you use the body for this, and ONLY for this, you CANNOT use it for attack. In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion IS. "

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you.Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition."

"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it. ... "You THINK you are PROTECTING the body by HIDING this connection. For this concealment SEEMS to keep your identification safe from the "attack" of truth. If you but understood how much this strange concealment has hurt your mind, and how confused your own identification has become to you, BECAUSE of it! You do not see how great the devastation wrought by your faithlessness. For faithlessness is an attack, which SEEMS to be justified by its RESULTS. For, by withholding faith, you see only what IS unworthy of it, and cannot look BEYOND the barrier to what is joined with you."

"Sickness is but another name for sin. Healing is but another Name for God. The miracle is thus a call to Him."

"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."

"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. "

"Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make the separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it can not surmount."

"Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health, is to recognize in hatred the call for love."

"What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to this, and you will see all pain in every form wherever it occurs but disappear as mists before the sun."

"Only the wholly insane could look on death and suffering, sickness and despair, and see it thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly, fearful, and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there."

"Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and death, to their believers. The form in which they are accepted is irrelevant. No form of misery, in reason's eyes, can be confused with joy."

"Any form of mental illness can truthfully be described as an expression of viciousness. We said before that those who are afraid are apt to be vicious. If we were willing to forgive other people's misperceptions of us, they could not possibly affect us at all."

"Pain, illness, loss, age and death seem to threaten me. All my hopes and wishes and plans appear to be at the mercy of a world I cannot control. Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"For example, do not say, 'God did not create illness', but, 'God did not create cancer,' or heart attacks, or whatever may arouse fear in you. ... This is your personal repertory of horrors at which you are looking.These things are part of the world you see. Some of them are shared illusions, and others are part of your personal hell. It does not matter.What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning."

"The gap IS little. Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a WISH to keep apart, and NOT to join. And thus it seems to give a CAUSE to sickness which is NOT its cause. The PURPOSE of the gap is all the cause that sickness has. For it was made to keep you separated in a body which you see as if it were the CAUSE of pain. The cause of pain is separation, NOT the body, which is only its EFFECT."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

"Pain is the thought of evil taking form, and working havoc in your holy mind. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. In pain is God denied the Son He loves. In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity and Heaven. And the world becomes a cruel and a bitter place, where sorrow rules and little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain that waits to end all joy in misery."

"Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud, obscuring voice, whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Him, and focusing upon itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means TO MAKE THE BODY REAL. What shares a common purpose IS the same. This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who share in it within itself. Pleasure and pain are EQUALLY unreal, because their purpose CANNOT be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning that their PURPOSE has. "

"Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. For EITHER witness is the same, and carries but one message, "You are here, WITHIN this body, and you CAN be hurt. You can have pleasure, too, but ONLY at the cost of pain."

"Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes which will not disappear if seen aright. For pain proclaims God cruel. How could it be real in any form? It witnesses to God the Father's hatred of His Son; the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death. Can such projections be attested to? Can they be anything but wholly false?"

"Pain is but witness to the Son's mistakes in what he thinks he is. It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassailable. It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love Which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love."

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE. Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

"Of one thing you were sure; of all the many causes you perceived as bringing pain and suffering to you, your guilt was NOT among them. Nor did you, in ANY way, REQUEST them for yourself. This is how ALL illusions come about. The one who makes them does NOT see himself as making them, and their reality does NOT depend on him. Whatever cause they have is something quite APART from him, and what he sees is SEPARATE from his mind. "

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes. "

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

"Delay will hurt you now MORE THAN BEFORE, ONLY because you realize it IS delay, and that escape from pain IS REALLY POSSIBLE. Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this. You could no longer find even the ILLUSION of love in ANY special relationship here."

"This makes it an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this ALWAYS means YOU STILL FIND SIN ATTRACTIVE. No-one accepts Atonement for himself who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your one responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who PREFER pain and destruction."

"You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of displacement is to hide the REAL source of your guilt, and KEEP from your awareness the full perception THAT IT IS INSANE."

"This is the only thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain, and the complete escape from sin, all to be given you. Say only this, but mean it with no reservations, for here the power of salvation lies: "I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

"I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am. My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son."

"Every illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness. Yet, in these dark and heavy garments, are those who seek illusions covered, and hidden from the joy of truth. Truth is the opposite of illusions, because it offers joy."

"No risk is possible throughout the day except to put your trust in magic, for it is only this that leads to pain. There is no will but God's."

"And to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause, and with no power to accomplish anything. It cannot purchase anything at all. It offers nothing, and does not exist. And everything you think it offers you is lacking in existence like itself. You have been slave to nothing. Be you free today to join the happy Will of God."

"To the ego, the body IS TO ATTACK WITH Equating YOU with the body, it teaches that YOU are to attack with, because THIS IS WHAT IT BELIEVES. The body, then, is not the source of its own health. Its condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function. "

"These are not laws, but madness. The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself. The body suffers that the mind will fail to see it is the victim of itself. The body's suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers. It would not understand it is its own enemy; that it attacks itself and wants to die. It is from this your 'laws' would save the body. It is for this you think you are a body."

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

MY SICKNESS IS MY RESPONSIBILITY

OTHER PEOPLE'S SICKNESS IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY

YOU CAN’T WAKE PEOPLE UP FOR THEM

Jesus has the power to undo all sickness in a brother right now, BUT WILL NOT if they do not want it. Love cannot enter where it is not welcome!

I am responsible for everything I experience. Other people are responsible for everything they experience. This is directly supportive of the secret to salvation, that "we are doing this to ourselves".

All sickness we are experiencing is something we are doing TO OURSELF.

Right now, God is 100% awake, and because of this, it IS IMPOSSIBLE that there be sickness in any mind anywhere. In reality anyway. However, Sons of God have the illusory "ability" to DENY GOD. When they do so, they put denial in place, which is a block to life, which implements sickness. This is a FREE WILL CHOICE.

Love does not force anyone to be healed of this against their will. Jesus will simply WAIT for us until we are ready to accept the truth.

This is also why we must have A LITTLE WILLINGNESS, because only when we are WILLING to receive the truth, can the Holy Spirit take the opportunity to heal us. And he WILL take any opportunity we give him, no matter how small. But if we do not give that willingness, we will stay in our illusions of sickness for as long as we choose to against His will.

If we are not willing with God, doing God's will, we are willing against God. That's the entire point of the separation, the idea of sin being that we willed against God (yes, its fiction). If we BELIEVE it, individually, we will enter into a dream of suffering and death. And sickness will feature heavily in that dream because it is what we choose. It won't be real sickness at all, but we'll believe it is, using it as a device for keeping God's love at bay. Sickness is a DEFENSE against the truth. A block to awareness.

To understand this correctly REQUIRES that you believe that there are multiple sons of God, each with their own individual free will. Because if you don't, it will not make sense. To be able to have "your own choice" as to whether you are WILLING to receive healing, your own choice as to whether to ALLOW LOVE IN, is necessary in order to have a "separate will" which acts against God's will. There are many separate wills.

This is also required in order to understand how Jesus could wake up completely and yet that the rest of us are dragging our feet in snoozeville. We do not have the free will to set the curriculum ("learning to love"), but we DO have the free will to DELAY it or to choose WHEN to take it. That means we can choose NOT to accept God's will or God's healing. We can deliberately KEEP sickness if we want to, against God's will, and against Jesus's will. And it is true that there is NOTHING they will or can do about this, except gently lead us to see the error of our ways over time.

Jesus tells us that our will is AS POWERFUL as His, and that this is why he cannot forcibly take away our fears or sicknesses against our will. If we want them or hold onto them, he cannot take them. We have to be WILLING TO LET GO. Just because we are using our powerful will to make an illusion of being weak and little and powerless, doesn't mean our will is diminished at all. Mind retains its creative power at all times. Jesus CANNOT and WILL NOT go against this.

This means that even though AWARENESS OF LOVE can be complete in one brother (e.g. Jesus), it can be highly absent in another, at the same time. "Miracles are gifts given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less." This is because IT IS POSSIBLE in illusions for some individuals to be MORE AWAKE THAN OTHERS. That means, it is NOT TRUE, that one person's healed perception automatically heals everyone. It does not. It OFFERS healing to everyone, but other people CAN REFUSE IT. And they CAN retain forms of sickness as long as they want "against your will."

Awakening to the awareness of love's presence cannot extend to the entire sonship UNTIL the sonship is FREELY WILLING to receive it, every single "individual son" has to choose it and be willing to accept it. IF they do not, the sonship remains incomplete, and there's nothing it can do about it other than to keep OFFERING love and waiting patiently for the rest of the sonship to wake up. Love is not forceful. It has INFINITE PATIENCE, which would not be NEEDED unless people weren’t so resistant.

It is true AT SOME LEVEL that your mind is ONE with the mind of others. That you share a mind. You share a mind with Jesus. However, awareness of that sharing can only be fully experienced when both of you are completely purified and healed. And then you will SHARE that state of love.

But until then, it is perfectly possible within illusions for you to REJECT that union, to deny reality, and to choose against God's will. Thus you will retain your own freely chosen sickness and problems, regardless of whether you are surrounded by infinite love and healing or not. God surrounds us RIGHT NOW with unlimited healing, and yet we STILL keep projecting images of sickness in order to REFUSE IT.

This is also why it was possible for Jesus to go around giving a GIFT OF HEALING to those who were suffering, sick, missing limbs, blind, even dead, unable to help themselves due to their own unawareness that they were doing this to themselves, and yet who had enough FAITH in HIS ability, enough trust, enough willingness, to ALLOW Him to heal them for them. You do NOT need to be fully awake in order to receive a miracle! And you CAN only receive it if you TRULY WANT IT.

"The miracle is taken first on faith, because to ask for it implies the mind has been made ready to conceive of what it cannot see and does not understand. Yet faith will bring its witnesses to show that what it rested on is really there. And thus the miracle will justify your faith in it.."

Having enough FAITH i.e. trust and WILLINGNESS to receive HELP, from outside of yourself, from a brother who has more love than you do right now, who is more ABLE to help right now, is enough to RECEIVE help from beyond your own current abilities. All you need is ENOUGH trust to allow the Holy Spirit HIMSELF to perform the miracle FOR YOU, from beyond your awareness, showing up as demonstrations of TANGIBLE CHANGES (witnesses), which helps you to learn that HE REALLY IS THERE, and HE REALLY CAN HEAL. This develops trust.

Jesus went around performing miracles for those who temporarily had less, who temporarily were blind, who temporarily were sinful, who temporarily were UNAWARE of the whole truth. He did NOT do this by having a mind which was "pure yet contained sick people". His mind could NOT have been WHOLE, if it was "one with sick people", or had "sick parts" in it. The presence of sick parts in his mind would've rendered him UNCONSCIOUS, just as the presence of ego persona/shadow in our own mind right now renders us UNABLE to be aware of the WHOLE of our identity. Mis-identifying with ego BLINDS YOU. Jesus was WHOLE MINDED, and yet could still perceive the "unwholeness" others were experiencing, without their unwholeness affecting HIS.

Jesus had true perception. Jesus could SEE. He was aware of the truth. He was able to RECOGNIZE that sickness is a complete illusion, not real, and posing no problem whatsoever. This gave HIM this ability to extend the HOLY SPIRIT who is the mechanism of miracles, to perform a healing WHERE it was welcome. And where it was not welcome, HE COULD NOT PERFORM ANY MIRACLES. He had to leave entire villages in suffering because their minds were too resistant to receive healing. His state of awakening did not FORCE anyone else to wake up!

Even if He saw those other people as one with Him, even if He knew them to be "himself" or "ourself", even if He was connected to the entire Power of God, there was NOTHING he could do to help those, at that time, who DID NOT WANT IT. This is because, YOU are responsible for YOUR sickness, and for your willingness. If you are unwilling, healing will not "happen to you". Sick people, with broken limbs and defective organs, will not be healed by your true perception, UNLESS they want it. And thinking that you are "healing yourself" by healing what is showing up "as their sickness" is NOT going to work if they do not want it, because IT IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY. THEY MADE IT, NOT YOU.

You are responsible for choosing the atonement for yourself. You are responsible for being WILLING to REJOIN the sonship's oneness for yourself. You are responsible for every sickness you experience within yourself, NOT outside of you in others. You are responsible for your own belief in sin. You never attack anyone else, you never affect anyone else, you never do anything to anyone else. And the reverse is true. No-one ever affects you, no-one ever does anything against your will. You are not at the effect of the world. And no-one is at the effect of you. Your attack does not affect others whatsoever, and nor does your love, unless THEY CHOOSE WHAT THEY WILL EXPEIRNCE.

Love can be shared, WHEN it is welcome, and when it is welcome, the person is effectively giving it to themselves. It can be given to those who have a "lack" of it, BY those who have an abundance of it, BECAUSE people are in different states of perception simultaneously. This IS possible because people have an individual will and mind, even if at the highest level they are the One Son. Jesus’s resurrection DID NOT CURE EVERYONE because they did not want to be cured. YOU MUST CHOOSE IT.

Trying to bring about healing by assuming that other people are "you" and therefore their sickness is "your sickness" and that if you undo "that sickness" it will heal the other person, is a twisting of what happens. First of all, it's true that you and your brother are one, yet you are BROTHERS, with your own free will. Secondly, "their sickness" is THEIR CHOICE, not yours, and it is NOT PART OF YOUR MIND, and it is NOT YOUR SICKNESS OR SIN.

When you project YOUR sin, it DOES NOT LEAVE YOUR MIND. Ideas leave not their source. IT stays inside of you. You become split minded and perceive this sin as a separate attacker, attacking some other split off part of yourself. You interact with it as though it is outside of this part of you, as though not yours, but it is ALWAYS IN YOU. It never ever even leaves you and goes over to someone else.

It does NOT put sickness into other people against their will! To suggest you can heal someone else’s sickness "because its really your own" is actually to suggest YOU CAN MAKE SOMEONE SICK AGAINST THEIR WILL AND TAKE IT AWAY AGAIN. This is FALSE! If someone else were choosing never to be sick, your attempted projection of sin could not put sickness into them. And if someone else was choosing never to be sick, YOU COULD STILL be believing that you are a sinner and STILL be trying to project your sin and STILL seeing it in the other person. Your projection has NOTHING to do with other people’s state of mind. Withdrawing your projected sin WILL NOT HEAL THEM, if they have chosen to be sick on their own and want to keep it. Go ahead and try to heal someone who does not want to be healed. It will fail!

Otherwise, if someone could be causing someone else to be sick against their will, which is an EGO BELIEF, someone's sickness would INFECT JESUS by the power of their will. This is an extension of the idea that we CAN sin and hurt God, which is impossible. Our sickness is OUR CHOICE against ourselves. Thirdly, just because you RECOGNIZE that their sickness is entirely an illusion, that does not disappear it FOR THEM if they continue to WILL TO KEEP IT. You cannot override their will. You getting healed WILL NOT wake everyone up. You will wake up FROM them, FROM the illusion, FROM the ego, INTO a state of awareness, but if other people choose to stay in the ego, THEY WILL.

The ACT of attempting to undo that sickness, by cancelling it or not believing in it or asserting it is not there or pushing it away or shining love onto it or whatever, that ACT of trying to FORCE IT TO GO is actually the EGO attempting to have power OVER something it made real. This is the attempt to "heal to destroy", to first make real then try to undo what you made real. That’s you fighting with your own sin. It won’t heal the person’s sickness or yours.

The Holy Spirit MUST BE INVOLVED in all miracles, because He is the mechanism of miracles. HE is the one who heals. HE is the one who is capable of raising the dead. He must be the one who performs the healing of the mind because healing must come from outside of separation. While He does not perceive sickness as REAL, He still nevertheless KNOWS that people are experiencing nightmares and that they NEED HEALING, in spite of the fact that HE is already in a state of TOTAL AWARENESS AND LOVE. He will not FORCE himself onto anyone, and just because HE is healed/healing it does not mean PEOPLE WANT TO RECEIVE HIM. This is why we have to CHOOSE to be willing to listen to his voice rather than the ego. It’s up to us.

It is difficult to accept that some people DO NOT WANT TO BE HAPPY. It is difficult to accept that some people WILL AGAINST GOD AND REFUSE TO ACCEPT LOVE. It is difficult to accept that PEOPLE CHOOSE TO BE SICK and that they want to keep being sick to protect themselves. It is difficult to accept PEOPLE DON'T WANT A MIRACLE, and they DON’T WANT YOUR HEALING. And that's their right. And their freedom. And we are to respect that and be patient in waiting for them to BECOME willing. Love isn't forceful. Miracles don't happen to people against their will.

Believe me I've tried... I've tried many times to heal someone who is very sick, and who was not ready to heal, and it did not work. It was very upsetting to me that I could not heal it. It was a difficult lesson personally, but a necessary one, because until we can see how healing might FAIL (be blocked by the recipient), we may not come to LET GO of the belief in sickness for ourselves.

I eventually asked Jesus why this wasn't working. Despite many prayers and attempts at miracles. Even one time I did a miracle-working act where angels came to help and I felt it was very powerful, and Jesus said that "it was fully given". But.... just because it was fully given, DOES NOT mean it was fully received. I asked Him, why didn't it seem to work.

Why was the person still sick?! And I don’t mean... why was I still believing in sickness... the question was, why did that person still maintain an illusion of symptoms of sickness.

His answer simply... "they are not ready to receive it."

This was discouraging, because I used to believe, like many, that it SHOULD BE POSSIBLE to HEAL EVERONE if I just learn HOW. But it does not work that way. It was, however, encouraging to me to also be told that at some point THEY WILL become ready to receive it, which is heartwarming, but we still have to learn, just because WE are waking up to love and are willing to be miraculous, it does NOT mean other people will suddenly stop being sick or unloving. It is their lesson. It is their choice. We have to allow other people to be sick IF they want to. It's not God's will, but it's that person's will. God does not condone sickness, he offers to HEAL IT RIGHT NOW, but people refuse.

Trying to heal everyone, or to "perform miracles indiscriminately", is what Jesus tells us NOT to do. He knows WHO is willing and ready to receive them, and He will send the appropriate WILLING people to us. This won't be EVERYONE. It will only be those who are ready to receive. Some people are, some people aren't. We won’t get to be hero saviors or "ego healers" because other people are NOT playing along with our fantasy.

And just because Jesus COULD POTENTIALLY heal everyone in an instant, THEY DO NOT WANT IT. I asked Jesus time and again to heal someone and do you know what he said, "I cannot". And I asked why - why would someone so powerful and capable and miraculous NOT be able to heal it. "They don’t want it."

Sorry to say... this is why TIME is still ticking over with events happening and lessons being learned RATHER THAN God simply snapping his fingers and waking everyone up RIGHT NOW "against their will". God ALLOWED US to have our free will dream illusion of separation, knowing that at some point we would return to him unscathed. It is not happening because God wills it. If God had his way we never would’ve even DREAMED of separation. But WE had the free will to choose to pretend it’s possible, and it’s still our free will to keep doing that, EACH OF US, if we want to. Individually.

So please let's get off this perspective that if you heal YOUR perception, everyone else will suddenly be free of sickness. That if YOU don't perceive "sickness", you will not SEE anyone suffering with sickness. That if you gain true perception for yourself, you will be incapable of seeing anyone suffering. Or that their sickness is part of your own mind and therefore you need healing. You are only responsible for what YOU DO TO YOURSELF. And even though at a HIGHER LEVEL they are one with you, THEIR CHOICE is their own.

You will still see the form of people’s bodies being projected with sick characteristics, because that's the will of you brother! But you won't see it AS real sickness, you'll see THROUGH it, and recognize it is JUST AN ILLUSION. Just because you don’t believe sickness is REAL, doesn’t mean you will be incapable of seeing that OTHER PEOPLE still think it is real, or that they are still projecting bodies that are sick. Jesus was perfectly CAPABLE of SEEING people who were in need, people who were suffering, and people who were dying or dead, EVEN THOUGH His perception did not INTERPRET those things as reality. Your recognition of it being an illusion WILL NOT BE SHARED by them until they are WILLING AND READY.

Believe me I've tried many many times to heal indiscriminately and to alleviate suffering and it's not necessarily because I can't, but because the people involved were not willing to be healed. THEY HAVE THE POWER TO REFUSE LOVE. They already HAVE refused love. They already DID reject God's eternal life and totally healed condition. They already HAVE attempted to block miracles and to reject life. (Yes, its an illusion) Even GOD did not overthrow their free will to do this. (yes I know its an illusion, didn't happen)... but God RESPECTS free will and will ALLOW people to keep being sick IF THEY WANT TO. And so did Jesus.

This unfortunately is a hard lesson to learn, that some people simply do not want to be well, want to be sick, want to keep being sick, and there IS nothing you can do about that right now. All you can do is keep praying and offering and extending love that MAYBE they will accept and receive it BY their will, and therefore CHOOSE to be well BY THEIR OWN WILL, and therefore CONCUR with the will of God, and thus RECEIVE the love that heals them. Receiving is a choice. You can still attempt to perform miracles, but even if you give a bucketload of love, it STILL won’t produce effects if it is not welcome or goes against the person’s will.

Until you can receive the atonement or even a small piece of atonement on one particular issue you will not be willing to RECEIVE LOVE AT ALL. The first time that I did a really thorough forgiveness and took it all the way to the atonement principle, becoming WILLING TO ACCEPT THAT IT IS TRUE that I was innocent on a particular topic, I became willing to RECEIVE LOVE FROM GOD finally on that topic, and Jesus said to me "Now you will be able to perform miracles". Because I had be WILLING TO RECEIVE for myself. "You can only give the miracles you have received".!

We can offer healing. We cannot force it. We will not undo everyone’s suffering just by undoing our own. Even if we go to Heaven as Jesus did, knowing sickness is impossible, brothers will STILL be dreaming of sickness for as long as they want to. We can but OFFER love to them and pray for them and send miracles to them, but it’s up to them to let go of their resistance, to CLAIM the healing that has already been given.

God has ALREADY GIVEN ALL HEALING, He has already given eternal life, and yet we refuse it. It’s our choice

This will be a touchy and controversial subject. But we need to be more honest about death and what exactly is going on when spiritual people keep getting sick.

When someone's body dies, and when people have believed that the body IS the person through body-identification, there is a sense of loss. And this makes sense.

Something "real" seems to have been destroyed. If this were true, it SHOULD induce grief. If a real being has ended, it is definitely grounds for grief. This perceived "real death" can induce horrifyingly intense feelings of loss, massive waves of grieving and anger and hurt and loneliness etc.

All of those experiences and feelings can be extremely difficult to go through. Pangs of grief that come out of nowhere. Constant floods of emotions causing huge amounts of crying. A sense of missing and longing, an unfairness, and a justified anger. All of this accompanies the belief that something real has died.

Because of this, it then becomes very difficult to say ANYTHING about death, about what the person chose, about how the sickness came about, or to QUESTION in any way whether the person themselves had something to do with it. To even suggest that someone wanted to die, caused it to happen, chose it, or used it on purpose, seems like a horrible slander against the central character in the dying.

Indeed, when some body person dies, the dying, as the ego interprets it, appears to be the loss of an innocent victim. Ego beliefs tell you that they did not ask for this, they could not stop it, they did not want it, it could not be avoided, it happened unfairly, it victimized them, the person suffered greatly, it was horrible to watch, it was so sad and such a loss, etc. All of this appears to be true when a person is regarded as a body.

In light of this, when we are framing a person as the face of innocence, an innocent helpless victim of death "happening to them" or of diseases being "acquired" from the world, or the environment hurting someone etc, we make it look like the person is "untouchable" in their innocence. We start talking about them as if they were an angel. We go into a total denial of anything they seemed to do wrong. And no-one then dares to say a single word which might imply the person was anything OTHER than absolutely pure and perfect.

As a result of this behavior and this "falling for" the APPEARANCE that the person died against their will, death itself becomes protected. It becomes shielded by a facade of innocence and victimhood, helplessness and powerlessness. As if the person couldn't lift a single finger to influence anything that happened, and as a result was completely unfairly ripped away by forces beyond their control.

Death itself benefits from this view. By framing "dyers" as innocent victims, it puts up a powerful shield of denial, which seems impenetrable. And because it is framed as innocence, everyone suddenly is watchful of anyone even remotely suggesting that the person was "not innocent" in any way. There is a protectiveness that suddenly comes over people, which then justifies immense anger and projection, if anyone should dare to even HINT at the idea that the death was not how it appeared to be. As if death is an innocent baby that no-one can touch with a bargepole.

To even then question death at all, to suggest a person might've chosen it, that they caused it, or wanted it, or made it happen, or used it to try to kill the Son of God, would be considered a kind of blasphemy. And anyone who speaks out against death then is considered some kind of horrible insensitive accuser, victimizer and attacker, who has come to trample on the very carefully laid picture-frame of death-encrusted jewels that surrounds the tomb. To question death then seems completely off-topic, inappropriate, un-asked for, unwanted, and an act of war. How dare you suggest death is a lie or that all death is suicide?

By doing do, we never really get to question death itself. We keep hiding it behind this shield of illusions. We keep framing people as innocent victims who never wanted what happened. We keep denying that anyone ever chose any of it. And all that revolves around false perceptions, perceptions of a person AS a body, and AS a victim of the world.

It is a fact, however, that A Course in Miracles takes a radically OPPOSITE view of death than this. A view which would actually reveal a lot of activities taking place by the egos of not only those who die, but by those who mourn for them also. Those who are in grief and loss, as horrible as those experiences may be, are revealed to nevertheless be mistaken. Jesus even goes so far as to quite blatantly point out that those who attend funerals and who grieve over dead bodies, are completely going against God's will. He basically calls them death-worshippers.

"But what of those whose dedication it is NOT to live? The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death."

"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, ***Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it.*** And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, ***damned by its maker***, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself."

So the way Jesus describes this is that, those who die, AND those who react to the death on the basis of body-identification and ego loss and "something real died", which is a mistaken perception, are death worshippers. They are people who are themselves dead. The walking psychologically dead, who are actually worshippers of death and sickness, who make bodies real, who react to body deaths in horror, but whose egos are secretly celebrating the proof that yet another Son of God has been slain.

These truths are underneath the grief and the loss and the horrible aftershocks of "someone dying", and as such remain buried in the minds of most people. These truths are so opposite to "how terrible it is that someone died" attitudes that it would embarrass and likely induce guilt in someone to whom it were revealed. And that's because people who are circling around death like vultures are trying to perpetuate death and keep it going.

Jesus is very clear in A Course in Miracles that this is a course in life, in living, in resurrection, and in the surmounting of death. We are being asked to "swear not to die", and to be so committed to the goal of LIFE, that we completely blot out and make death IMPOSSIBLE. Even that our bodies should enter a state of completely healthy functioning, not merely devoid of sickness but actually INCAPABLE of becoming sick or dead. Where they are locked into health because the mind is healed.

Jesus once told me personally, that the entire purpose of this life, is "to eradicate death in all its forms."

Such a teaching is obviously completely diametrically opposed to death, to sickness, to suffering, and to any kind of pity party about someone's body seeming to come to an end. We're even told that the Holy Spirit will produce a "picture of you" (a body) which has never been hurt or suffered pain in any way, and therefore symbolizes eternal life and immortality, teaching your brothers who look upon it that they are sinless.

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

There is even an entire radical teaching in ACIM about the fact that when you project sin or use the body for attack in any way, the body itself becomes sick. And the body is thus used as a messenger to try to communicate to those who look upon it that they are the CAUSE of its sickness. Thus, a body which is sick, broken, damaged, diseased, or in any way defective, in fact physically ACCUSES others of being sinful. It is what the course calls "a picture of crucifixion", which you show to your brothers in order to condemn them and be contagious in negatively affecting them.

"This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

As a result, Jesus is EXTREMELY clear that any amount of sickness in the physical body at all IS PROOF that the mind HAS NOT been healed. That if there is still physical sickness, there has NOT been a forgiveness. The forgiveness is not REAL, unless it has brought a healing to your body and to the body of your brother. That if the body remains broken, it CONTINUES to accuse your brother of sin, and teaches by double messages. That no-one can learn from this contradictory demonstration because a) mind is claiming to be healed and b) body is proving otherwise. No-one will listen to such a hypocritical assertion.

So basically Jesus is saying that we need to put our money where our mouth is, and we need to become genuinely healed in the mind, SO THAT the body is FORCED to be healthy. And by doing so, we make all physical sickness and death IMPOSSIBLE. So much so, that the body can no longer become sick, be made to be sick, be caused to die against your will, or in any way decay. That it cannot even age and grow old, or become decrepit over time, or malfunction as a result of "natural processes."

Jesus wants us to learn that we are NOT at the effect of death. That we have power OVER death. And in fact that we MUST gain power over death if we are to reach atonement and resurrection. If there is any way, any loophole, any exception, in which the body could potentially still be made to be sick WITHOUT your consent, there is still a power in the separation that can KEEP the son of God in hell forever. The notion that there is a force in the world that can MAKE you die, against your will, is nothing more than a fantasy belief in death and an attempt to GIVE it power over you.

"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."

Whether you are an ACIM person or not, if the body is sick, it is simply because the MIND is sick. And if the mind is sick, it projects its sickness onto the body. And therefore the mind has to be healed. And when the main is healed, the mind DOES ALWAYS heal the body. And the body cannot resist this, it cannot maintain its own sickness, it cannot keep dying on its own, and it cannot stop the mind from forcing it to be well. A guiltless mind HEALS the body and makes sickness and death impossible.

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication."

THIS ..,. is what everyone is supposed to be achieving...

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live.""

If you do not reach this state, then you have not reached the resurrection, and you have not finished the curriculum of ACIM. The curriculum of ACIM ends in resurrection, NOT death, and resurrection means LIFE, which is the opposite of death. Anyone who produces sickness in the body HAS in truth CAUSED it to be sick on purpose, for the purpose of hatred and attack and murder, in an attempt to prove that the son of God is guilty and deserves to die. Anyone who HAS died as a seeming "effect" of physical sicknesses such as cancer, HAS NOT HEALED THEIR MIND fully.

So to put it simply, people keep dying because they have not reached resurrection. They keep dying because they keep identifying with the body. They keep dying because they have not fully healed their minds. They keep dying because they are not done with the curriculum. A person can become closer to not dying, for sure, and can still cause death while being mostly healed. But until a person is fully healed the body will be attacked. Only in TOTAL RESURRECTION does a person reach a state in which they can be said to be "fully awake" and able to leave the dream permanently. "A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

In such a state, the body is INCAPABLE of being sick or becoming sick. It cannot rot or decay. It cannot contain cancers or any other malfunctions. In fact, the only way to remove it then is to make it disappear. And this is precisely what Jesus did in his resurrection, causing his body to DISAPPEAR because he recognized it was NOTHING. This happened because recognized that the body IS an illusion of death (separation) and that it was not true. He erased the body and erased the separation in his mind, attaining total resurrection.

We need to drop the idol worship, we need to stop thinking that death is natural and inevitable, we need to stop buying into body identification which is guaranteed to induce grief and loss, we need to stop thinking that death is God's will, we need to stop believing that you OR your body can die as a result of causes outside of your control, we need to question death and recognize it as a lie, and we need to STOP CHOOSING IT. You do NOT have to die!!!

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"To witness sin, and yet forgive it, is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof (a sick body) he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well."

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"Here the curriculum ends."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

Jesus "My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

In terms of the truth, these are our only two options: either accept it as it is, or deny it. Denying it is an attempt to reject what the truth is, and to replace it with something else.

Jesus says denial is an act of 'positive creation' not just an attempt to negate the truth. By denying, we substitute the truth for something else, and invent or make some other illusion to take its place, to try to prove that something else is true. We actively erect barricades and something else to fixate on and believe in.

In the Atonement, we accept the truth as it is, as God has established it, without any desire or need to change it.

The opposite of Atonement or resurrection, is death, in which there is an attempt to reject all truth (life) and prove that something opposite is true (death).

Denial produced the physical universe. Denial implements all forms of sickness. Denial is death. Denial is also fear. "All forms of sickness even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening." Or to put it another way, when you do not want to accept the truth, you invent fear to try to explain "why" you cannot accept it. The fear is fake, just as death is fake. Death does not END real life, it DENIES IT and paints a picture which PRETENDS the immortal son of God has been killed. ("You have made a bargain you cannot keep.")

Denial was the attempt to reject the fact that you cannot sin, by trying to replace it with an attempt to prove that sin can and has been accomplished. Even in that attempt, it is a state of denial. It hasn't changed the truth. Denial has no power to actually alter what the truth is. But, being denial, denial is "in denial" of this fact, and so attempts to change the truth anyway, believing that it is possible. Such is denial.

Denial also represents unwillingness. When we attempted to deny God's will, or to deny that we are as God created us, we moved into unwillingness. This was an attempt to suppress our own will. We became unwilling rather than willing, or imprisoned rather than free. Death is a state of unwillingness, as are punishment, suffering, fear, guilt and sin. This is why it takes "a little willingness" in order to move towards acceptance of the Atonement (truth) because denial has to be undone.

Blocks to awareness are denial. Since the truth cannot be changed (it's established by God's will permanently), denial cannot actually change the truth into something else. And the only way to "believe in" something else being true, is to block out awareness of the fact that the truth is true. While you are still aware that only the truth is true, you cannot bring yourself to believe or be convinced by an alternative. So you have to "block awareness".

Denial does this by putting up an illusory psychological barrier, comprised of a "will to reject", which makes the truth go unconscious. Conscious awareness is cut off from accessing the truth, hidden behind this wall of denial, and so now all that you are consciously aware of is "whats left" that hasn't yet been denied. The stuff that has been denied now forms the unconscious mind, hidden from awareness and kept in the dark. Consciously, since you are no longer aware that it is present, or still true, or an unchangeable fact, and you cannot "find it" when you search around with your awareness, it SEEMS not to exist.

Many false conclusions are made based on this unawareness - based on incomplete information. For example if you are not aware that you yourself chose to believe in sin, you made the sin unconscious by implementing denial and inventing fake guilt to cover it up, you will now be unable/unwilling to see that you are the one who made you guilty. Instead you will now search elsewhere for a "cause" of the upset, and inevitably blame it on someone else, because that seems to make sense given that you are not aware of the hidden key fact of what you did to yourself. This is why Jesus said "Forgive them father for they know not what they do" - as soon as you go into denial, you do NOT KNOW what you are doing, because you don't have all the facts in awareness.

The secret of salvation lies in your willingness to remove the block to awareness, so that you can become able to SEE the chain of causality coming from yourself, the choices you made, and thereby realize that none of your conditions are caused by anyone else. Your mind is the sole cause of your experience. But this block to awareness, in order to remove it, MUST entail the willingness to remove denial. The layer of denial which literally blocks awareness - blocks the ability to SEE, must be undone. And that will only be undone through honesty and willingness.

Denial takes on many forms, and indeed all forms. It includes the belief that you are already innocent even if you have unconscious hidden hates, secret sins, unhealed wounds and layers of self-repression that you don't want to admit to. This can produce a state of "fake innocence" in which you don't SEE that you are the cause of something and so become justified in blaming it on someone else - scapegoating, accusing your brother of your own sin. It also then justifies anger, and this is why anger is never justified - to become angry is ALWAYS based on denial and unawareness of the facts. If you knew the facts, the truth, you would have NO reason to conclude that you should be upset.

Denial also accounts for this world - Earth - this universe. Jesus says in reference to it, "a world that denies itself cannot exist." The world denies itself, because it is made OF denial of God's Kingdom. All denial is self denial, and so this world is made of denial. That is why it is a BLOCK to awareness. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form." This is also why, when denial is lifted, and we are willing to see the whole truth, this world must disappear because, being made from denial AS a block, it is merely an illusion preventing us from seeing, and once you see PAST it and become AWARE that you are the cause/dreamer of it, you will stop USING IT to make God's Kingdom unconscious.

Another expression or use of denial is in the ego's motto of "seek and do not find". By denying that you already are perfect, you don't SEE the perfection in yourself so you think it is not there, and so are now empty, and are in need, and this need compels you to search for a solution to the emptiness somewhere ELSE, outside of yourself. This sets you on a "spiritual path" - ultimately the journey without distance. Here you will pursue FAKE SPIRITAULITY, fake peace, produce a spiritualized ego, spiritualize the world, spiritualize the body, and seem to side with one half of duality (ultra positive or ultra negative).

This also produces the PERSONA, which is a fake identity or fake mask which forms this idea of who you think you are, which is made of the denial of yourself. Even your physical body is a fake image, designed to make people believe that they are seeing YOU when they see IT, when in fact it is made to HIDE YOU. The body and persona then become filled with fakery, lies, self deception and dishonesty, resulting in a veneer of "looking spiritual" or "acting spiritual", decorated with spiritual clothing and performing fake rituals, which are all really designed to maintain the denial and block you from being AUTHENTICALLY YOURSELF.

The facade of innocence hides unconscious guilt, and makes a person seem holier than they really are. The main problem is the person themselves is unwilling to admit to why they are overcompensating for a deep belief in unholiness, by pretending to be holy and trying to convince everyone that they themselves are convinced of it. This "spiritual seeker" has to be undone just as much as any other denial, because it takes you away from yourself. You do not need to seek. You need to *acknowledge* what is already TRUE about you, and be grateful that God's creation has not changed.

Denial also plays out in the unwillingness to accept what is happening in your life. I spent many many years in denial that I was unhappy, afraid, angry, and it wasn't until my mid-20's when I started to admit that the way I was feeling was even those things. I did not recognize the mountain of upset in me AS fear or AS anger, and didn't even know that I was afraid and angry. Such was the denial. Denial obscures, making reality seem twisted and not what it is, so that you do not *recognize* it, and so remain in a state where you think it IS something ELSE. This failure to recognize the truth is what keeps us in the dark. Yet "illusions recognized must disappear". They can only be recognized by not being in denial.

Denial also produces various kinds of blindness. The unwillingness to see the truth. Even though people may be walking around in bodies talking and performing activities, they can be in various states of awareness ie various states of denial, thus various states of unconsciousness. Just because someone is working in a job and playing on the internet and chatting to their friends, does not mean they are aware or awake. Denial indeed is sleep. It is a suppression of awareness.

Since denial is unwillingness, it also produces justification for fear whenever the truth comes along to challenge the denial. If you are in denial and you are believing that the truth is not the truth, you've made it out to be evil, and have replaced it with a lie that you believe is your salvation. When the truth comes along, you see it as an attacker, a threat, and thus USE denial once again as the ego's only tool to reject, shut out, or put distance between, you and that truth. You bury your head in the sand to avoid it and to pretend it is not there. This induces all forms of sickness, because sickness is a defense against the truth. So yes, sickness is denial of life, as is death.

The funny thing about denial is that instead of being able to actually change the truth at all, you instead hide from the truth and block your awareness of it, reasoning that if you are not AWARE of it, it must not BE there. This is clearly denial because you are simply hiding your vision. Pretending that something is not there, does not make it go away. But in the ego, we become convinced by this delusion and think "out of sight, out of mind"... that if we can't SEE something, or cannot be AWARE of it, then it must not exist.

This way, we've told ourselves that we actually UNDID God, reversed creation, cancelled Heaven, and erased our true self. By believing that our denial of truth CAN change the truth (that darkness can hide the light), it's very easy to make the tiny shift from "I'm in denial of it" to "It's actually gone." Therefore we have come to believe, in ego denial, that we ACTUALLY HAVE changed the truth because our awareness does not show it to us and it seems not to exist any more. This way we came to believe that sin is real and has had real consequences. We think that we actually HAVE hurt God, produced a new truth, got away with murder, and destroyed ourself and our inheritance.

This belief then leads to the distorted perception that we stopped being innocent, CHANGED into a different state, our innocence went away, and now all that we're left with is guilt. And in that view it seems as though we have become unworthy, have transformed from sinless to sinful, or from innocent to guilty. The blocked awareness viewed from inside denial, makes it SEEM as if this is true. And so in denial, we automatically come to believe that our denying is actually WORKING, and is CAUSAL, and has power OVER the truth to change it. And so we think we have sinned, are really a sinner, deserve to be guilty, should be punished for it, and are worthy only of death. Denial produces the death wish.

From this side of denial, not seeing that our denial HAS NOT changed reality, we're quite convinced that we actually are guilty sinners who don't deserve love or forgiveness. And so we think we are working on or in or with this guilty "ego self", which has not only replaced our real self, but is the ONLY self left. In denial, we are not aware that our real self - our innocent self - still as God created it - is STILL THERE, still fully alive, still perfect, and has not changed whatsoever. That real self is right here with you now. That real self is already in heaven and never left, nor did it change anything in reality.

And so now we're in this strange position where we think we are only this evil self who can never go back to being holy, while all along our true self is perfectly undefiled and holy forever, existing in parallel to this false idea of ourselves. Your "higher self" therefore exists right NOW, even if your sense of identity is all caught up in denial and confusion and ego. This is why "enlightenment is but a recognition and no a change at all". It merely entails the willingness to be AWARE of what is ALREADY TRUE. And to reach that awareness, ALL layers of denial MUST be removed from the mind so that you CAN be aware of it.

To admit to being in denial, or even to admit to wanting to stay in denial - wanting to keep your denial - is still an admittance. It reveals a willingness to allow the truth to enter. Even if you say, "I admit I do not want to wake up", that is better than an unwillingness to even admit that. To admit, is to permit access. It means you are willing to let truth be said or expressed about whatever the situation is. And this truth then sets you free. Even if just a little bit. Even if you are just admitting to being in denial and that you don't want to do anything about it, admits more truth than to not even want to admit to that.

This therefore takes some willingness, and it takes honesty. It requires a willingness to be mistaken, without implying punishment. It requires you to get honest with yourself, to stop being in resistance or avoidance, and to LOOK AT what it is that you don't want to see. And looking at it with the truth, is looking at it with the Holy Spirit. He represents the state of mind in which there is no denial. Your willingness to dig out and offer up secret sins, hidden hates, grievances, and also ways that you don't want to admit or accept something, allows Him to shine away those lies and release you.

Now, in ACIM circles there are various forms of denial and blindspots and each person is different. I've seen the most denial circling around topics to do with the body not existing, and to do with the world not existing. These are two of the major sticking points because the ego denial has

built a fortress to protect belief in these two things, and believing you "are" a body or that there "is" a world are the two most fundamental "givens" in this world. The body is the hero of the dream, and the world is the dream itself. To question belief in either of these seriously pushes the ego buttons and seems to "threaten your establishments."

There is a lot of denial around these topics and a lot of refusal to accept them. Accepting that there is no world is one of the hardest things to do, because denial makes the world seem true, real, valuable and desirable. Denial that the world is a cruel place, for example, leads many to believe God created it. And with that kind of a conclusion, who would want to question God's reality? Yet we are still in denial until we are sure to have removed all denial. And we will be in denial that we are in denial, because we don't SEE that there is something unconscious to us that we believe does not even exist.

There are also good and bad forms of denial, or uses of denial. If denial is used to reject the real truth, that's not a good thing. If denial is used to reject lies, that IS a good thing. Or rather, if denial is used to reject the belief that denial is true, using the mind to ADMIT that the denial is there, or that it is FALSE, that is a worthy form of denial.

There are unworthy forms of denial, which usually entail either a direct 1st-hand rejection of what is real, OR a 2nd-hand rejection of the illusions that have arisen due to the first level of denial. For example it is denial to produce a body. The body was made to deny God and shut out sharing with the Sonship. This denial needs to be undone. But additionally, on a second level, while you are making a body, if you KEEP making it through denial, but then pretend in some way that it does not exist and try to "separate from" it, THAT is also an unworthy form of denial. Up to a point, "the body is merely a fact of human existence." But at some point, human existence (bodies) is also denial of Spirit. These denials are at different levels.

Jesus also tells us in ACIM that "the separation HAS happened." Many people DENY this, mainly due to confusion about "nothing happened" as the atonement principle. This is level confusion. We did have the tiny mad idea, and we did share it, and it did produce imaginary worlds of illusion. Jesus even says, that to deny this fact is an unworthy form of denial. But to "accept" that it has happened should only be done in order to quickly realize that atonement is the only meaningful "correction" for the separation, and that it should be done as soon as possible.

It is also possible to have denials on top of denials on top of denials. For example when you are in fear, you are pretending that you have good reason to be afraid of something outside you. But the fact is, the fear is a decoy to deny guilt. Fear is protecting you from guilt and deflecting attention away from it as the "reason" why you are afraid. Fear makes guilt unconscious and blocks the guilt. The only reason you are afraid is because you think you are guilty and want to punish yourself. But without awareness of that, in fear you'll look for causes of the fear externally. To undo fear you must remove the denial behind it, become MORE AWARE of what you denied, reveal the guilt, and fix the guilt. So you can see there are multiple layers of distortion surrounding the guilt, and even guilt itself is denial.

The ego only has one tool. "Deny what is." The one antidote is the atonement - "accept what is". But to accept what is, you have to first remove the denial, so that your awareness of "what is" increases. So this doesn't mean just accepting the world "as it is", because how you are perceiving it is NOT the fullness that's present. You are NOT seeing it for what's really there, and are not recognizing it as an illusion. Blocks have to be removed in your mind, so that you can SEE. By seeing accurately and fully, you have true perception, which shows you the truth about this world, that it is not real and doesn't exist. Without removal of denial you will try to accept it, but won't be able to recognize it or accept its unreality.

The ego used denial to hide God, by making sin. The ego used denial to hide and keep sin, by making fake guilt. The ego hid the guilt behind fake fear using more denial. The fear produces self punishment but by denying that you are doing so. And eventually death is denial even of punishment. At every step the ego is denying, denying, denying. Denying who you are, stripping away layers of what remains, until eventually there is nothing left to deny. In death there is TOTAL denial of the truth, and no-one who goes through death is in their right mind.

It all boils down to this simple dynamic. Either you accept the truth - God's truth as God established it, or you deny it. You have no other choice. And because denial does not change the truth, denial MUST be a lie, where you are PRETENDING that the truth is not true. So either you are pretending to be something you are not, or you are being your real authentic self - as created by God. It's your choice, whether to accept or deny. But no-one gets to define what the truth IS. Only God can do that. And being in denial DOES NOT redefine the truth, even though those in denial believe that this is precisely what they're achieving. This is the authority problem, which is nothing but denial and an unwillingness to be honest.

The freedom we have is one of accepting or rejecting, not establishing, but anyone in denial with an ego will be in the business of trying to establish what the truth IS, acting as a gatekeeper to have to "approve" or "disapprove" before anything is permitted into awareness. Only when we are willing to give up our attempt to be God, to make the truth, will we be willing to simply open up to ACCEPT and RECEIVE it. Accepting the atonement is like throwing up your hands and admitting, only the truth is true, and only God's will is possible, and only God's way will work. Nothing else works. The ego is a lie and death is failure. Nothing else is true. I might as well accept it and go with it. And this takes TOTAL SURRENDER.

Thankfully, the truth is on our side, and loves us and has created everything for us. A perfect home, the inheritance of eternity, immortality, absolute peace and total joy. Not too shabby an option to accept, when you realize you stand to gain everything and give up nothing by letting go of denial.

"No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

"The truth shall set you free."

I'd like to try to explain from my point of view what a miracle is. However, I have to acknowledge that there are still some aspects of miracles I do not understand. So this is a work in progress. Take what you like and leave the rest.

Firstly, there are two levels. A higher level and a lower level. Think of each level as a realm of existence. The higher level is where God hangs out. In-between them is the idea of separation, and then below is where the ego hangs out. You could equate these to heaven and earth.

In truth, the higher level is the only causal power. In this higher level sits the Son of God who is dreaming, and in His dreaming he makes the lower level. He sort of projects it downwards from above. Mind, as cause, produces the picture of the world, an effect.

This picture of the world contains *everything* in the world, and he simultaneously puts in place everything that moves or seems to have affects on other things, plus the effects that those causes seem to have.

There are no causes inside the dream, only effects. So he is actually like a puppeteer pulling the strings to make BOTH the "causes and effects" or "victims and victimizers" do everything that they seem to do, and the "story" of how one causes the other is FICTIONAL.

In this perspective, cause and effect are VERTICAL. What is above, causes what is below. So this means everything in the world below is only an effect of the dreamer above.

Within the world below, however, there are illusions of separation, and many of these illusions make it SEEM as if there are independent causes within the dream. An example would be that the wind blows and makes the leaves on the tree move. Or a person kicks a ball.

The wind DOES NOT blow the tree - the wind AND the tree moving are BOTH dreamed SIMULTANEOUSLY by the higher level mind. The person does NOT kick the ball, the person kicking and the ball moving are BOTH dreamed simultaneously by a single mind, to create an ILLUSION of cause and effect when viewed in "linear time".

In this perspective, cause and effect are HORIZONTAL. Or in other words, there is an ILLUSION that something in the dream is able to "cause" something else in the dream to be an effect. In essence, this turns the "effect" of dreaming into a cause in its own right. So then we believe that this world contains "causes" which produce "effects". In the horizontal, causes are VICTIMIZERS, and effects are VICTIMS. And it is possible for victimizers to be affected as causes transform into effects and back again, because they are all the same ILLUSION.

Someone kicks you in the leg and you develop a bruise. If you are a body, this puts you AT THE EFFECT of the world, making you an instant VICTIM. Being born "by" the world into a body is an ILLUSION which makes you an instant victim, but in truth you are NOT at the effect of the world, and you are NOT "created by" your parent's bodies.

This horizontal perception of cause and effect is ENTIRELY illusory, because even the things which seem to "cause" other things, and the "effects" of those causes, are actually BOTH EFFECTS of the higher level mind which is the only cause of them. The higher level mind, in its vertical causality, manifests both the person kicking the leg, and the bruise on the leg, simultaneously, making it SEEM as though there was a horizontal cause of the bruise.

In the horizontal perception, we come to believe there are thus illusory "laws" which SEEM to describe what we are seeing happen from within this level, without being awakened to the true nature of cause and effect. It SEEMS to us that every action (cause) has an equal and opposite reaction (effect). The laws of physics are based on this. Science has gone to great lengths to describe the APPARENT way in which stuff happens at the level of being inside the dream, unaware of the higher level.

All of these ego laws, horiziontal laws, are SHOWN to be completely false and illusory, when the higher level decides to DEMONSTRATE that IT is the cause of everything. It is therefore possible for the higher level to decide to project a different image or dream, below, which is unlike the condition it was in previously, WITHOUT OBEYING any of the lower level illusory laws. Because the higher level "overrides" the lower level, any illusions of how things are supposed to happen, or what is supposed to be possible, are completely ignored.

The higher level is the level of love. But it is not just love as we think of love "separate from" other qualities. It is also joy, peace, life etc. In particular, it is ALIVE. God's love is a LIVING PRESENCE, which contains within it life-giving, eternal-life giving qualities. It is able to extend life forever. It is able to express SO MUCH "livingness", that it is permanently in a state of incorruptible "health", it is absolutely impossible for it to become sick or die, and it is therefore a state of immortality.

The life-giving quality of God's love, naturally EXPRESSES at all times. God is therefore ALWAYS giving life and continuing life. God's love is so life-giving and restorative and absolutely refuses to include any form of death or problem, that if any kind of illusion of sickness or death were "exposed" to it, it would be so INFUSED with life, that all signs of decay or sickness or death will be completely reversed. Health (light) will totally obliterate suffering (darkness), shining it away permanently.

This life-giving quality of God, is what we refer to as MIRACULOUS. It literally is 100% unlimited in what it can do, and there is absolutely nothing that can deter it or prevent it from healing, ie being in a permanent state of perfection. God is PERMANENTLY MIRACULOUS. Permanently life-giving. And so is His Son. It is completely NATURAL for God and His Son to be permanently miraculous. If they were to seem to be not miraculous, something must have gone wrong! Miraculousness does not ever stop. It is an eternal aspect of God's creative power.

With this in mind, when we "descend" into the darkness, going down to the lower "level", into the ego world, hell, we are attempting to put distance between ourselves and God. The further we become distant from God, as though descending further downwards towards death (eventually to be buried in the ground), the more we will be blocked from the life-giving properties of God's loving expression. This will result in a mind which believes sickness and death are reality, and it will project a body which is sick and later dead.

Death, in the ego's world, is the final statement that God's life has ended, or that we are so distant from God's Will to Live, that "our" will to live is no longer a will to live, but a will to cease living, ie to die. This means we believe we are becoming *completely* separate from God. Death of the body and mind is the ego's final attempt to completely escape the realm where God's light shines. Only complete "non-existence" can seem to fulfill the ego's wish to be separate from where God is.

In the dark, our mind is believing in separation, and is therefore sick. We have blocks to awareness, so do not see the light very well. This causes us to attack ourselves and our body will show this. Forms of sickness will appear, and eventually the body will die because we have attacked it. In order to UNDO this and reverse it, even to reverse what shows up as physical death, we need a miracle. We need some of the miraculous life-giving radiance of God's love.

Exposure to such radiance will RESURRECT us back to life, first a restoration of health and life in the mind and body, and then later the completion of the resurrection in which the body disappears, because the mind has become SO pure that it can no longer be bound by a body image. There are degrees of darkness and because the body is an outward picture of an inner condition at all times, if the mind resurrects, the body will also. Any "symptoms" (fake effects) from the illusion of horizontal causality, will be UNDONE by the shift to vertical perception (true causality - mind over matter).

A "miracle" as we tend to think of it, seems to be a step towards God. Or as some people call it, a "shift in perception" from death to life. However, we need to be clear that God is permanently miraculous and so is His Son. The miraculous life-giving property of God never stops. The ability to do absolutely anything never comes to an end. The creative power of the mind never ceases. And God is ALWAYS being loving. Anything that comes from love as an expression of love, IS MIRACULOUS. This means that God is ALWAYS MIRACULOUS.

A miracle then, CANNOT BE defined as the shift from death to life itself. The miracle is the LOVE which EXPRESSES in order to PRODUCE a shift from death to life. The shift is an EFFECT. The shift takes place entirely in the realm of the ego's world, the lower level, the level of EFFECT, because a miracle is an expression from the higher level of love, shining down onto what is below, and lifting it upwards towards God.

A helpful analogy, is when Jesus says beautifully:

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

What this is saying is, miraculous healing love shines "down from above" onto the illusory world below where stuff seemed dead, giving it life, pulling it closer to itself, and "life" erupts to show SIGNS (symbols) of the immortality that has been extended from love. Love expresses, the dead come back to life, even forms and bodies and objects come back towards life. As far as forms of life can, being limited as symbols in a dream.

Corresponding to this then, realize that miracles come down from heaven, from the higher level, FROM LOVE, as an expression of Love, and BLESS what is below (the dusty dead world), bestowing upon it the MIRACULOUS radiance of love's life-giving properties, and therefore "bringing life" to what is there, RESTORING to being "more alive".

Jesus says in his analogy that the signs of life now spring up. Simply, what once was seemingly dead or even partly dead, has had some measure of its "dead-ness" lifted away, that thing has been RAISED upwards, vertically, towards God, and therefore is now in closer proximity to the life-giving power of God's love, and therefore COMES BACK TO LIFE. This even means that ROADKILL can be brought back to life, all "effects" of war can be undone, and all death reversed. The body can even be made immortal, incapable of sickness and death, because it is SO infused with the life-giving power of love. A miracle indeed.

Miracles are also referred to as a shift in perception - FROM HORIZONTAL TO VERTICAL PERCEPTION. As I described, when the mind changes how it sees things, and no longer sees things entirely in a "horizontal" way in terms of cause and effect, is no longer believing that one thing in the dream caused another thing, it shifts its VIEWPOINT by moving awareness VERTICALLY up towards God.

Vertical perception is the awareness that the higher level (love) is the ONLY CAUSE, and everything "below" that seems to be in the world - bodies and such, is ONLY EFFECT. This so-called shift into alignment with how God operates, is a shift into the recognition that cause is inside you not outside you, or to put it another way, cause is above, and all effects are below.

The "shifting" itself IS NOT the miracle as such. The shifting itself, the transition from darkness to light, is not really what causes healing. What causes healing is God's LOVE expressing FROM above, shining down onto what is below, causing what is below to be partly dissolved, such that the mind seems to shift upward.

This has to be true, because if the miracle itself - the miraculousness of love - were ONLY the shifting from horizontal to vertical, then once the "shifting" itself had been completed, the miracle would be ENDED, and that means, love would stop being miraculous. Love is PERMANENTLY MIRACULOUS. It cannot stop being miraculous.

What happens is, once a shift to vertical has taken place and healing has been RECEIVED FROM ABOVE, and the level of communication has been raised (oneness increased, separation decreased), there are simply LESS BLOCKS to the extension of love. More love is allowed to SHINE from above, through the mind, and to extend outward.

It extends outward completely naturally because that is what love does all the time. So when you remove your block to awareness, whether you call it a shift or not, you REVEAL the presence of love in the mind, you open up to the higher level and allow it to shine through you, and therefore love can now EXTEND THROUGH YOU.

Removing blocks to love, is an act of removing blocks to the AWARENESS of love's presence, because love is ALREADY FULLY PRESENT, being miraculous all the time. Correction, shifting, purification, or removal of blocks, simply UNCOVERS the love which was trying to express, allowing it to express more.

Shifting perception DOES NOT CAUSE A MIRACLE and DOES NOT CAUSE LOVE TO EXIST. Love, miraculousness, already exists. That is the *ego's version of miracles*, which it thinks IT causes, because IT thinks that IT has power over love to make healing happen! The shift is seen by the ego as a cause, but it is an EFFECT from a higher level. A gift. A sign that the mind is WILLING TO RECEIVE LOVE, not an ability to 'make love happen'.

The shift merely puts us closer TO it and allows us to EXTEND it, thus RECEIVING healing FROM love. "We" do not cause healing by shifting perception, LOVE DOES ALL THE WORK. And this also means, that being open to RECEIVING LOVE from God is important in healing, not just doing stuff with your mind on your own. You do not have to do everything yourself, God WANTS TO HEAL YOU FOR YOU.

The INCREASE in the expressability of that love through you is what HEALS YOU. The shift does not heal, the unblocking does not heal, LOVE IS THE ONLY HEALER. Love is the miracle.

After a while, when you have removed enough blocks to love that you are starting to RADIATE LOVE on a more constant basis, or at least something approaching towards love, YOUR MIND is now being restored as a conduit or medium through which love can naturally extend.

This means you will now be willing and able to extend love outward. And since you're still in the body at the moment, that means you will be able to DO GOD'S WILL ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN, ie you will be able to express the LOVE OF GOD, here, which means expressing God's LIFE-GIVING POWER, here, to HEAL and undo absolutely any sign of "non-life" you encounter.

In other words, you do not simply perform a miracle in order to shift your mind towards love. You shift your mind towards love SO THAT you can be miraculous. Otherwise it would mean that someone who is heavily steeped in ego lies, upon making their first little shift, is suddenly a full-blown miracle worker. That is pretty much impossible.

"Miracles are everyone's right, but PURIFICATION IS NECESSARY FIRST". This means that your purification efforts will have to happen first, possibly over a prolonged period of time, BEFORE you will GAIN ACCESS TO the right to perform miracles. This is because you need to remove quite a lot of blocks to love BEFORE love can flow through you fully enough to show up as miracles in your life or on behalf of others. If you have a lot of blocks to love, you are GETTING IN THE WAY of the extension of love and therefore are blocking miracles.

You are not miraculous just because you start studying the course or doing the workbook, or "shifting your perception". Miracles come LATER, after much purification work ie correction of your mind, letting go of ego, applying forgiveness etc. Shifts in perception are not miracles, but eventually they LEAD TO miracles. If you could suddenly shift your perception very much to a highly vertical perception, you could conceivably perform a miracle right now. But it is uncommon. Usually we have to "prepare" to be able to do that.

You will OPEN UP TO miracles over time, the more you release blocks to love, because you will be placing yourself closer to God and therefore regaining access to love, a willingness to extend it, and therefore miracles can work through you from God. You can then perform God's WILL, but you are not going to be able to perform God's will after a few perceptual adjustments.

However, at some point, you WILL get to the point where you are spending much more of your time IN vertical perception, not believing in the horizontal ILLUSION of causality, and will become much more miraculous. When miracles are not happening ALL THE TIME, something has gone wrong. This means that miracles are a PERMANENT PART of the NATURE of the Son of God. And of God. It is a natural part of love and life. When we are not being constantly miraculous, constantly loving, we are not performing miracles all the time, so something is wrong.

When we do become more consistently aligned with God's Will, the Power of God will now extend through us. We will now be ABLE to EXPRESS LOVE. And since we're still in this world, this means, we are able to render the MAXIMAL SERVICE to our brothers, which is what every miracle does. At this point, "miracle working" does NOT simply entail shifting someone's perception towards truth. It entails utilizing the vertical perception of the higher level (God/Love/Life) to OVERRIDE any and every illusory "effect", or "cause" in this world.

This means your holiness is very powerful and there is literally nothing that it cannot do in the world. Miracles expressing from the higher level, love, do not see orders of difficulty because they do not believe the lower-level illusion of cause and effect. They overthrow ALL physical laws because all laws on the horizontal level are FICTION. What appears to be a cause in the world is NOT A CAUSE. Any state or condition or sickness or form of suffering or even physical death, CAN BE REVERSED.

Why would you do this? Well, you're going be expressing a LOT OF LOVE. And it is NATURAL for love to be miraculous. It is NATURAL for love to want to HEAL, to reverse suffering, to undo ego pain, to heal the SEPARATION, and so if separation is showing up as physical sickness or broken bodies, LOVE WANTS TO HEAL IT. It is not God's will that ANYONE suffer or die. It is God's Will that EVERYONE experience perfect health and resurrection and permanent happiness.

Why express miracles in a world which isn't real? First of all, that's level confusion. Second of all, it's because this is what LOVE WANTS TO DO. Love wants to HEAL THE WORLD to resurrect everything to a reflection of perfect health and incorruptability, and to then bring everyone home across the tiny gap between that "real world" and heaven. The world NEEDS miracles of healing from love. And third of all, it is our FUNCTION in this world to HEAL, a function which we share with the holy spirit, and while we are here, it is our natural RIGHT and PURPOSE to heal at all times.

This means PERFORMING MIRACLES EVERY SINGLE DAY. God wants us to BE MIRACLE WORKERS, in the world, helping our brother, healing our brother SUPERNATURALLY through the Holy Spirit, DEMONSTRATING that vertical perception is the truth, demonstrating that ego laws DO NOT APPLY, and teaching everyone by EXAMPLE what the TRUTH OF LOVE IS. We ARE supposed to be going out and healing the sick and raising the dead and teaching everyone that God is Love and all limitations are fictional. Miracles are the MAXIMAL SERVICE you can render your brother, and that means, extending God's love TO EVERYONE, which WILL HEAL THEM.

And what will the nature of these miracles be, will it be that we help someone to see differently? Perhaps. ANY expression of love is miraculous. But love is also capable of healing the sick, raising the dead, reversing death, undoing all suffering, curing all incurable diseases, even transforming bodies into different bodies. Love has so much power that it also is capable of DEFYING ALL PHYSICAL LAWS, including laws of gravity and space and time and size and mass and properties of matter and anything else which is an ILLUSION on this level.

This means, if necessary, you will have the ability to DO ANYTHING if it is helpful and loving. If it demonstrates that the egos' horizontal laws are COMPLETELY UNTRUE, and easily proven to be false, you will be willing to do it. If that means, lifting up a car with your mind to show that gravity means nothing, so be it. If it means, moving an entire physical mountain in order to show that the mind has power over the world, so be it. If it means manifesting food out of thin air to feed 5000 people, so be it. If it means making your body walk on water to prove that the laws of physics are bullshit, so be it.

You will walk this earth PROVING that cause and effect are VERTICAL, proving that love has the power to GIVE LIFE to the dead, curing what everyone says cannot be undone, proving that resurrection is God's Guarantee, and there will be literally NOTHING that your holiness cannot do. You will heal sick people, you will raise the dead, you will move mountains, and you will SAVE THE WORLD.

Saving the world does not so much mean that you save it FROM some attacker, but rather, that you save it from itself, because it is an ILLUSION. The ultimate healing of all the world will be the restoration of "immortal bodies" temporarily, the total undoing of all sickness across the entire planet, the recognition of the real world by the entire sonship, and then the complete DISAPPEARANCE of the universe, revealing that ONLY HEAVEN IS REAL.

Miracles are the MEANS of the atonement - how YOU get there, but because they are expressions from a higher level of love, you will also BECOME PART OF THE ATONEMENT by continuing to express love even as you are about to accept the atonement, still in a body, walking the earth. You become part of the atonement by becoming part of LOVE, part of God's Will, and DOING WHAT GOD WANTS YOU TO DO, which is to extend love and healing to everyone who needs it!

This is why you will join the "great crusade" and be part of the plan of atonement long-term, because it is YOUR NATURAL FUNCTION when you have received healing and naturally desire to alleviate the suffering of others. You will not have any willingness to support or keep sickness in yourself OR in others. You will be miraculous ALL THE TIME, EVERY DAY. Being miraculous is a PERMANENT QUALITY of the Son of God and all of God's creations. Being constantly miraculous in this world is NORMAL. Being un-miraculous is ABNORMAL. You will also have no desire to "opt out" of this crusade. Jesus needs active miracle workers to bring about the resurrection!

Miracles raise everyone towards God's eternal life. We are to use them WHILE it seems there is a "need". But miracles really acknowledge that "there is nothing to heal" just as forgiveness recognizes "there is nothing to forgive" and God's power recognizes "there is nothing to have power over". So long as illusions persist however, miracles HEAL the illusion, forgiveness UNDOES the ego, and God's power DEMONSTRATES what is true.

Miracles mean life. Resurrection of "what is dead" and brought back to life is the goal of the atonement. Miracles lead to revelation and atonement as the ultimate healing. We are in a state of semi-death right now, in this dream world, separate from God. We NEED miracles. The whole world NEEDS miracles from God. This world NEEDS LOVE.

And love will restore life, to turn the world into a SYMBOL of life, and then the symbol will give way to REAL LIFE. The lower level will disappear (since it was never real) and all that will be LEFT will be the higher level of God/heaven/truth. This is a course in CAUSE, not effect, a cause in how to express the miracle of love from that higher level, not to suffer as a victim of fake effects of death in an ego illusion!

Then we will simply extend God's love forever, which has been happening all along, continuing the miracle of eternal life.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR of awakening."

Fear is not "just fear". It's not just "an emotion". It's not just "one thing". It's not just "a reaction". Everything that fear appears to be, it is that, and it is not that. There is much more happening that isn't obvious.

Fear is the opposite of love. Death is the opposite of life and life is love. Fear and death are therefore the same state - the end result of the ego's thought system of sin.

Fear is self deception. Let's look at how the ego thought system deceives us.

God establishes what is ACTUALLY true. This truth is reality. It is eternal life, love, happiness, safety, peace. This truth is always true. Nothing can change it.

Ego means nothing more than truth reversal. It's an attempt to oppose the truth through denial. Ego can't change what is true. But, in ego you can DENY it or "pretend" that it's not true.

To deny what's true, you believe it is false. God's truth, or the truth about you, becomes false to you. Simultaneously, things which are false and unreal start to SEEM true and real. You start believing UNTRUE things about yourself.

Jesus describes the end result of this process (the ego thought system) as "total confusion". It's a state where everything true has been confused with or mistaken for, everything false. And everything false has been confused with or mistaken for, what's true.

You could not be more confused than to have no idea what is ACTUALLY true or actually real. It's a state of not recognizing anything for what it is. A total loss of perspective. It is insanity. Fear and death are insane. Fear is paralysis, or the stopping of life, which is death.

When your mind is confused, it's because you believe something is true which isn't REALLY true. Something seems real that is not real. Something seems to be happening that isn't really happening. You think it is, but it's not. In this state, you are simply very MISTAKEN. And in denial. And unwilling to accept that a totally opposite truth is the real truth.

What is false? Death, sickness, suffering, unhappiness, fear, guilt, sin, attack, murder, threat and danger, darkness, insanity, delusion, disassociation, not knowing who you are, unreality, non-existence, etc. All of this is false because it is OPPOSITE to what is actually true - God's truth. None of it is real and none of it exists.

What is true? Eternal life, happiness, freedom, fearlessness, freedom from sin and guilt, immortality, being incapable of sickness or death, nothing to be afraid of, no threat or danger, total safety, peace of mind, invulnerability etc.

When you CONFUSE these two, and put belief into the false stuff, you "make it real". You try to invest it with reality and truth.

"Whatever you BELIEVE IN becomes REAL to you."

To do that you have to deny what's really true. This denial is a block to awareness. It makes you UNAWARE of the real truth or the big picture. It disassociates you from what you are believing in the big picture, and the consequences of that belief.

That means you are CAUSING things (making them through belief), which are producing EFFECTS, but you are no longer aware that you are causing them, so they seem to be caused by something other than yourself. Who wouldn't be frightened of an "alien will" (a will outside of your awareness of what your own will is willing) that seems to do things "against your will"?

It's the mere fact that you are unaware of what you are choosing, wanting, supporting, believing in, that results in "stuff happening" that you didn't SEEM to will. And this stuff is then experienced as being unfairly treated. Especially given that everything that happens in ego is a form of suffering. And who wants to suffer? No-one sane.

So then, naturally, you perceive that you are suffering not because you chose to, but because someone or something else separate from you caused it. You really caused it, but you don't see that, so you HAVE to pin it on some other cause, automatically, to try to make sense of where it came from. This is the root of all projection.

The simple notion that there is "another cause" besides yourself, is the root of all fear. Because if something can CAUSE YOU other than God, can change you, affect you, or hurt you, without you being able to prevent it, that is grounds for terror. The mere perception of "a separate thing" that seems cut off from your oneness is grounds for fear.

As you move further into the ego darkness, increasing fear, consciously you start to experience what SEEMS to be a greater unwillingness to want or 'own' what is happening. You want to get away from the danger, away from the source of threat.

Because in denial you believe/perceive more and more than it's got nothing to do with your own choice. That you are having absolutely no part to play in making things happen, did not choose them, do not want them, did not cause them, and don't even HAVE a choice. And death is an attempt not to choose at all.

The more this increases, the more you go into denial, the less aware you are that you're choosing to believe death is salvation. Here, false = true and true = false. If both the true and the false are false, and the true and the true are true, there is a total blurring of distinction and no difference between them, resulting in total confusion.

The threat of death seems to be on the increase, your conscious horror at this increase makes you squirm like you don't want it and try to avoid it, but unconsciously you are choosing it.

For example, if you believe in cancer, at all, you will become afraid. Believing it exists whatsoever, that it has power, that it causes death, that it even exists at all, places your mind into denial. Because in God's truth, cancer does not exist. Cancer is false, untrue, unreal, non-existent, powerless, causeless, nothing. Cancer is totally an illusion that has no effect on the Son of God.

But if you've moved into "I believe cancer exists", you MUST now be in denial. That means you believe in cancer, but you are not aware that you believe in it. What's left of your conscious awareness is now limited only to the scope of what you are AWARE of. You are not aware of your belief, BUT, your belief is moving you TOWARDS cancer. Because whatever you BELIEVE EXISTS, you WANT MORE OF.

Whatever you believe in, you try to invest it with reality. You try to MAKE it be true. You give it a sense of truth, power over you, an alien will, causality, strength, threat. The more you believe in it the bigger of an 'enemy' you make it, and the more your perception warps to make it seem large and looming and able to affect you.

So there's your mind believing "cancer is a very real danger", which puts you into denial of the truth, which makes you unaware you believe in a dangerous threat, which makes you confused about what is true and false, which makes you think cancer is real and true and your salvation, which makes you want it, which CAUSES IT.

So now there is an increase in your 'environment' of the presence of this illusion of danger, and your conscious awareness is becoming afraid because strange disconnected threats are looming on the horizon, and you are not aware of how they got there. It seems like they're happening "on their own", separate from your mind. And because they seem separate, you perceive that you have no control over them. This perceived lack of "ability to influence it" produces fear.

This is the general state most of us find ourselves in - seeming to have no power or control over anything external, anything that seems separate, or anything in the world. As if the world is causal, decides your fate, and you just have to suffer, or run away in fear. As if it has its own will, separate from yours, that you can do nothing about, making its ultimate attack unavoidable.

Whatever you believe in, you make it real. Whatever you believe in, you give truth to. Whatever you believe in, you value. Whatever you believe in, you want to see. Whatever you believe in, you will perceive. Whatever you believe in, you make happen. Whatever you believe, you'll defend with your life, because you associate LIFE with "whats true".

It is not possible for example to believe "cancer exists", while also claiming to believe you are not threatened by it. I do not have it but I am scared of the idea, purely based on beliefs in its existence. You cannot believe in a causal power outside you without feeling threatened. You are not immune to it just because "it doesn't seem to be happening to me". You will fear it even if it's not seeming to happen. And the unconscious masses have done a lot to amplify its "reality".

The only way to not have fear of cancer therefore is to not believe in cancer. AT ALL. ie, cancer does not exist, cancer has no power over me, cancer does not cause death, cancer isn't affecting me, cancer has not done anything to me, cancer cannot do anything to me, I do not believe in cancer, cancer does not exist, there is no cancer, cancer is a lie, cancer isn't real, cancer is an illusion I made up, cancer has no mind of its own, cancer does not exist at all, there is no cancer, cancer is nothing, cancer is not making me afraid, I have power over cancer. etc

That's what you have to believe in order to be free from it. And being free from the BELIEF in it DOES make you INVULNERABLE. That's what you have to believe in order to not put yourself into the state where you'll be afraid of it. And that's what you have to believe in order to not CHOOSE IT. Because if you "believe it exists but I don't believe I have it", you are trying to have it.

Whatever you believe in, you are CHOOSING. If you don't want to choose something, you must NOT believe in it. You can't believe in something and then claim that it does not apply to you. You can't believe in something and then claim to be free of it. Believe it, and you give it power over you instantly and are moving towards manifesting/materializing it into your experience. And fear and suffering then become the consequence of that.

The secret of salvation states that you are doing everything to yourself. That means, in your confusion about what is true and false, you keep choosing things which are FALSE, by believing they are TRUE. By mistake. Because you are mistaken about what is true. You keep choosing things which are unreal, by believing they are real. And that means you literally WANT TO SUFFER.

By believing in illusions or false things, things opposite God's reality, you are electing to make those things part of your reality. So that you can have a false experience of them. Beliefs are attempts to CHANGE WHAT IS TRUE into what you want to be true. But belief can also be used to line up with what is ACTUALLY true, so that you believe the Atonement truth, which sets you free.

In fear, which includes unawareness, you are consciously kicking and screaming to get away from what seems to be coming to you "on its own". Unconsciously, ie behind denial, you are actually MAKING IT COME TO YOU by believing in it. And that literally translates to, you are doing it to yourself. Or the adage, "what you fear comes to you" or "what you fear increases". This is literally true.

Jesus says "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

This also means there are NO CAUSES OF SUFFERING BEYOND YOUR OWN CHOOSING.

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

And that then means, if you were to actually sort out what is REALLY TRUE, from what you THINK is true, ie that you WANT GOD, and learn to recognize the ACTUAL truth again, you would also simultaneously recognize that false things ARE false. You would recognize that cancer is an illusion that does not exist. You would recognize that there IS NO THREAT. Because then you have stopped threatening yourself.

All fear comes from self-threat. A sense of danger that results from YOU believing that you are under attack. Which is an attack on yourself. "My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

For example, if you believe you sinned, and choose not to forgive yourself, you'll believe you are guilty. But this isn't merely a belief in guilt. It's a belief that you ARE guilty and an acceptance that your guilt is TRUE. If guilt is true, you will WILLINGLY ACCEPT that you DO deserve punishment, because it it SUPPORTED by what you believe is true. You will not object to it. So instead, you will WELCOME suffering. But even more-so, MAKE SURE IT HAPPENS.

This now means you YOURSELF believe that you logically deserve to suffer. And this means you now ACCEPT that you MUST suffer. Which means you believe you should suffer. Which means you now have it in for yourself.

It means you are now seeking to attack yourself in order to punish yourself, because it is justified, and this is SELF THREAT. It is suicidal. And that is going to terrify you more than any external projection of "who is causing fear" or "how its going to happen".

Guilt leads to fear. Guilt leads to more self attack. Your SELF attack is what frightens you. YOU are the cause of your fear.

So then when you are in fear, you are trying to hurt yourself. You are scaring yourself. You might project it onto all kinds of external stuff but it's self attack. Ever notice that when you are afraid you start finding all kinds of EXTERNAL things or "causes" to pin the fear on? Many things around you start to become threatening? That's projection. Your perception is warping. It's the same as accusing your brother of your own sins. You accuse your brother of your own self attack and reasons to fear.

So fear is really a state where you are CHOOSING TO SUFFER, where you are wanting what you are threatened by, are trying to make it happen, to undermine your immortality. BUT you are disowning it so much that it SEEMS like you have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

You are in denial that the thing you thought was going to help you is actually hurting you. You are in denial that your savior is your attacker. You are in denial that what you WANT is actually working against you. You are in denial that your defense against truth is causing you to be MORE sick. And you are under the impression that death is going to save you from God's wrath.

Your internal conscious messaging might be "I hope that doesn't happen, it's scaring me". But your ACTUAL activity is "I hope that happens, I want that to happen, I believe in it, it's going to save me." Your mind holds visions of threats and dangers in front of its perception to attack itself.

This is why fear is such a slippery thing. It's so deceptive, back to front, inside out and upside down. It SEEMS like the TOTAL OPPOSITE of what it is. The experience of it seems like you totally don't want it, but this COVERS OVER the fact you are WANTING exactly what you are frightened by. If you are scared, YOU scared yourself.

You have to own up to this, look deeply at it and realize what you actually are doing, rather than what seems to be happening on the surface. All victimy persons, everyone who is afraid, all who are terrified, ACTUALLY are choosing and wanting everything that they are afraid of. AND they are the one DOING THE ATTACK. This is why victims are victimizers and victimizers are victims.

Fear is choosing with the ego, siding with deception.

In fear you secretly choose to suffer, by choosing something that does bring suffering (ie to God it is FALSE), but which you BELIEVE brings salvation. And this stems entirely from being CONFUSED about what is really true and what is false.

All the attributes of God's truth need to be given back to God. You need to re-associate aspects of truth with God's truth. God's truth is where the safety is. God's truth is where salvation is. God's truth is what will ACTUALLY help and heal you and give you life. God's truth is what will protect you from harm. God's truth will give you immortality. And by choosing it, you will GET what you EXPECT to get, rather than the total opposite.

Learning to RECOGNIZE that is the entire process of working on your spiritual awakening. The "sorting out" of true vs REALLY true. What do you REALLY WANT to believe in. What are you believing that isn't REALLY true. How might you be very mistaken in your conviction that death is real? How might you be mistaken in believing that cancer even exists? How might you be confused about whether you can even be affected by anything, given you are immortal?

Gradually you will side with the ACTUAL truth rather than siding with what you BELIEVED was true. And that's a really good thing. Because now your expectation is that the truth will help you and make things better for you, and it ACTUALLY DOES. And then you will develop TRUST in it. You can't trust the ego. It is all lies and deception. One thing pretending to be something else. It is two-faced because it contradicts the real truth.

Only the truth is true. Only the false is false. Only eternal life is real. Death is an impossible illusion and does not exist. In God's love there is NOTHING to be afraid of. "Nothing unreal exists." Nothing false is true. And recognizing that will bring you peace and freedom from suffering forever.

It's really impossible to separate from God, given that God is everywhere and there is nowhere else to go. But the ego mind believes that the impossible is possible. It thinks it can actually succeed in being separate and can have an existence somewhere that God doesn't exist. To be separate from God, if it were possible, would have to mean you exist somewhere that God is absent, and that is why following the separation, God seemed to no longer be present.

But this is all really an illusion, being impossible in truth, and only by some illusory interpretation of what is happening could you believe that you have actually succeeded in achieving this separation. It's as if you found some kind of loophole or exception or special interpretation which allowed the impossible to become possible. There must be an illusion that God does not exist, otherwise you couldn't possibly believe that separation is possible, it would make no sense, and you would not believe it. Only by hiding or denying the truth does an illusion seem to make sense to you.

This mentality carries on through all stages of separation from sin to guilt to fear to death. At every step, we actually believe that if we buy into the ego's illusion, we're actually becoming capable of succeeding at doing something impossible. We then believe that doing it actually "works", that we're actually getting away with it. And because in this illusion there doesn't seem to be any reason why you can't do this, it seems justified and as though you have the freedom to do it. Nothing therefore seems to be stopping you from getting away with murder - the murder of God and His Holy Son.

It's not that you're an inherently evil person. You don't automatically see things in a twisted way. You're not fundamentally broken. You actually keep with you at all times an attempt to maintain some semblance of truth. You also always retain an attempt to make sense out of what you are experiencing, using some kind of logic or reasoning to explain it, to come to conclusions based on it, and to then act on those conclusions. Decisions are actions based on all previous conclusions.

You're actually just in the business of trying to make sense of your experience of reality (or unreality), and base your conclusions on all of the information that you are aware of. You look around you at everything you can see, and you look within at everything you aware of taking place within yourself, and you look at other people, and often it seems to just make sense that they must be the cause of your upset. You do not see what the real cause is because you do not see fully, or the whole of what is happening, but you believe you do.

At all times you believe that whatever is within the scope of your awareness is all that exists, is all that is true, and is all that is happening. This is true whether you are fully with God or whether you are hiding in a dark corner in an unconscious state. The extent of your awareness determines what you can SEE, and therefore the scope of your idea of "wholeness". You believe, even if you are not whole and are in denial of a great many facts, that you are a whole person, with a whole perception, seeing the whole situation clearly.

Given that you believe this is true, and you do not suspect there is anything hidden from you, you then attempt to make sense from the evidence. You look at it and examine it and judge it and then conclude certain things based on that. The trouble is, you're not really in a state of wholeness or full awareness, and there are many important facts and pieces of truth which are hidden from your awareness.

Whatever the scope of your awareness is, you'll also find that this correlates to your sense of identity. You will ALWAYS be believing that you are a whole self, regardless of how limited you are. However, when you become more conscious, to be aware of parts of you that you were blind to before, you become aware that you are more than you thought you were.

Your awareness uncovers not only the truth that love is present, but it also uncovers the rest of your hidden identity. And if you are unaware, you do not fully or clearly perceive who you really are, and so do not see all of your motivations or beliefs, or the full extent of your will, or the full extent of what you might be doing in the situation.

If you are having any kind of experience of unhappiness, unlove, unforgiveness, fear or guilt, punishment or suffering or upset, it is guaranteed that you must be in some kind of state that isn't really whole. Love and forgiveness and happiness come from true wholeness, so if this is absent, then immediately it means that you have some blocks to your awareness which are preventing you from being aware of those conditions. And yet you will believe that you are whole, in your partiality, and that there is nothing more to see.

Whatever is outside of your awareness you will believe does not exist at all, and you might not even suspect that there IS anything else. Whatever is unconscious to you is outside of your conscious awareness, as though it is nowhere, and so you do not see it. Any evidence it might provide you will dismiss. That is, unless you are willing to look deeper for the truth.

If you are upset or unhappy, and given that happiness is wholeness, you cannot truly be whole. There must be something blocked or something you are unaware of. But you will believe you are aware of everything. You don't see what you're choosing or why you're choosing it. You don't see what you're doing to yourself. You don't see who is truly responsible for what you are experiencing. You don't see how you might be using your reactions or behaviors for a secret motive. And you don't remember having asked for suffering.

Along comes what appears to be a situation which seems to attack you, and you look inside the confines of your awareness to examine all the possible causes or influences or reasons why it is happening. You use your ego mind's logic to try to come to some kind of understanding, to try to make sense of what you are experiencing. This is quite natural and everyone does this at all levels of awareness. Whatever you are aware of and are experiencing is the truth to you - reality, and its truth equates with 'sense' or with rationality or sanity, and so you attempt to make sense out of your limited viewpoint.

So you're now experiencing attack and you look around, you do not see that you are involved, you do not see that you're choosing it, you do not see that you're using the other person as an opportunity to get rid of a hidden sin, and you don't realize what you're doing to yourself. You see this other person is present and when they showed up the attack seemed to start and you started to suffer, and not seeing your involvement it seems to "make sense" that they are the cause of it. You seemed innocent, being unaware of any guilt or causality on your part, so it MUST be their fault.

It simply makes sense to you, based on your limited evidence which you think is the whole evidence, that they are the culprit and so you are now justified in being angry. You didn't seem to ask for this, it was unwanted and uncalled for, and it seems real. Given this fundamental basis for your deciding what the truth of the matter is, it seems only logical, sensible, understandable and rational, to be upset about what this other person apparently is doing to you against your will.

Anger becomes justified and so does a counter-attack, which is an attempt to defend yourself. You believe you are acting in self-defense, given that you did not seem to be the one to start all this. You see yourself as upholding your innocence, as having been needlessly and unfairly treated, at which you are outraged. You do not in any way see that your anger has another motive, or that it is self destructive, or that it does not work to alleviate your suffering. Instead, your unawareness of some key facts has led you to be MISTAKEN, so now you actually believe that your angry retaliation can succeed in achieving the impossible, once again.

If you could retaliate against the attack and prove them wrong, it would seem to prove you right, and thereby uphold your obvious innocence and keep you justified in maintaining your sense of identity and wholeness. Your enemy came to attack your truth and you must defend it. The trouble is, the goal being the defense of yourself and the maintaining of your truth, all of that is thrown into jeopardy as soon as you justify your anger.

Your belief in attack attacks yourself and undermines your innocence. Your counter attack therefore renders you guilty, which destroys your innocence and shakes the foundation of your truth. What you thought would "work", does not work. And yet in unconsciousness you may not even realize it is not working, and will just carry on with this device believing that it is helping your situation.

Only with a lack of information and a lack of truth could you continue using a device which is broken, does not work, isn't bringing about the peace you lost, and is working against your own goal. Yet you won't stop using it while you continue to fail to correctly recognize the faults in your system, the lack of truth in your reasoning, and the mistakes that you are making. You don't see them AS mistakes because you believe you're totally logically, naturally, and inherently justified.

This is how we continue to use the ego in the same way we did at the separation from God, all the way through our progress towards death, believing that whatever we are doing with the ego makes sense, is understandable, is justified, it works, it can succeed, and that if you will just do more of it you will reach your goal. It is extraordinary, however, that given how obviously the ego's promises are lies, and how they constantly fail to deliver, and how they always make your situation worse while pretending they will help, that we can so easily "overlook" the truth and believe that we're getting away with the impossible.

We'll keep using the ego this way, keep falling for its traps, keep reacting with anger and justification, and keep remaining in denial, simply because it all seems to make sense and seems rational given what we're aware of. So long as we are keeping our illusions and keeping the truth out of awareness, we're really just doing our best to respond to situations in a way that makes sense to us.

We're simply very mistaken and are making "errors" in perception and judgement, without realizing it. It's not as though we are fully aware of the whole entire truth and are then making a deliberate decision to defy it and ignore it and act in insane ways. We do not SEE them as insane. We've blocked out so much truth that we simply are not aware of the ways that our beliefs and perceptions are mistaken.

If we had all the evidence of what's really going on, and were aware of it, it would once again make sense. We'd evaluate it and look at all of the pieces and see how they fit together. Without any denial, it would be obvious and clear exactly who caused what to happen, why it happened, and what the effects were. There would be no confusion within that context. Everything would be completely clear and obvious and easy to accept.

And you would accept it, because you will always be accepting of whatever you have ALLOWED into your awareness. Whatever is inside your awareness and not outside of it, you have accepted into your mind, and it therefore becomes part of you and is your truth. You can only accept what you believe is true, and anything you believe is not true or of which you are not aware, you will see as false and dismiss it as false evidence.

If you had the whole truth, you'd see the part that you play in all of your experiences. You'd see exactly who it is that is doing things to you - it's yourself. And you'd see the entire chain of cause and effect stemming from your own initial decision to separate from God and all the way through to all of the forms of suffering you are experiencing. You would not be ABLE to deny that it is all coming from you. It would be so obvious. The only sensible conclusion you would be able to draw from it is that you did all of this to yourself and no-one else was ever to blame.

The trouble is, key evidence and key truth has been blocked from your awareness. You do not know what you do not know. And even in a state of profound denial and unconsciousness, whatever little amount of awareness you have left seems to you to be "all" that there is. And whatever you see, from that perspective, seems to show you a reflection outside of you which you also believe is "all there is". And since that is truth to you, that presents to you a world which seems hostile, unfair, confusing, dramatic, upsetting and unsafe.

These are conclusions which you must come to, albeit mistaken. You can't conclude anything else because you have no other evidence to the contrary. All of these beliefs and perceptions about how the world is against you, life is unfair, people are victimizing you, you are alone and afraid, you're suffering against your will, you're constantly in conflict with other people, etc... it all comes solely from a lack of awareness and a lack of truth. It all seems to make sense to you and you believe in it, even if it is very upsetting.

People believe in the inevitability and un-avoidability of death, simply because of a lack of truth and a block to awareness, which seems to show them that they have no say in the matter and no power to choose otherwise. Such power is unconscious, such ability to decide is unconscious, and such truth that shows them that they cannot die because they are really immortal is also unconscious.

Without those key facts, death seems like something that happens to you against your will and it just "makes sense" to you that you must die. You see no other way out of the dark maze of hell and will therefore ACCEPT it and allow it, even if you seem not to want to.

This is also why when things happen to you seemingly against your will, you experience them as upsetting and unwanted. And yet, simultaneously, you experience them. You can't seem to make them go away, because you don't see that you are choosing them. You'll be very upset or afraid or suffering and experience it as though you really, really do not want this and are not in any way choosing it. And death is the ultimate expression of this - the idea that you are not choosing what you experience whatsoever, and therefore have become a passive victim of fate.

You'll experience these upsetting situations as being so against your will that you resist them and hate them and wish they would stop. You'll kick and scream all the way to the grave as though someone else is deciding for you what will happen to you. You seem not to want to be a victim, that you don't want to be afraid, you don't want to be sick, you don't to suffer and die. But it seems to be happening. And given you are unaware of the secret fact that you can CHOOSE for or against all of this, you don't believe you have any power to stop it. And that is terrifying and very upsetting.

You'll then set about trying to change others, trying to stop events, trying to resist life, trying to prevent bad stuff from happening, and trying to defend yourself from all the ways that some "other will" - an unexplained influence - seems to be deciding when you are or are not happy. You want all those bad influences to just go away so that you can carry on being innocent and harmless, to enjoy your "life", but bad stuff keeps cropping up. You don't see what you are doing to yourself so it seems entirely unwelcome and you just wish it would stop. Why is life so unfair? Why can't they just leave you alone and let you live in (an illusion of) peace?

These dramas and stories of suffering and unfairness will continue until you become willing to look at how you might be mistaken. It takes for you to become a little bit open minded about the possibility of something which seems very unlikely. If you are experiencing that you are a whole person, that you are fully aware of everything that's happening, and that you know everything there is to know about what is causing what, then you may not be willing to entertain this idea. But the idea is, that you MIGHT NOT BE WHOLE, and you MIGHT NOT BE FULLY AWARE, and there MIGHT BE MORE TRUTH than you are currently aware of.

Sometimes this is expressed in the form of "there must be a better way". This can be a natural reaction to the experiences of unfairness and strife and misery which all SEEM to happen for no good reason, which perhaps after a while don't seem to make sense, which perhaps seem so unbearable and stupid that it surely can't be the truth. When life becomes too painful and unmanageable, there can be a stirring of awareness or a desire for peace of some kind that prompts you to start to question whether what's happening - your experience of it - is really the truth, or whether there must be some kind of "deeper" truth or meaning that you just aren't seeing.

This requires a willingness, however small, to consider that you MIGHT be mistaken about what you're experiencing, or about the conclusions you keep coming to based on the evidence you have. It means literally a willingness to question your SELF, your own righteousness and your own sense of knowing everything. It even means questioning the truth of your identity - who you are - and what is the basis for yourself. To the ego this seems like self-attack, but in truth it is a willingness to dismantle your false self to reveal the "True You".

It's the beginning of humility, it's the beginning of honesty, and it's the beginning of opening up to a possible truth that exists in 'addition' to your current idea of Self. In other words, you are beginning to make ROOM for the truth in your life, creating a space where a larger truth can dwell where you are not filling that space with all of your own egoic conclusions and interpretations. It means you are making room for God, stepping aside a little bit from your ego mind and becoming willing to LOOK AT the situation from a slightly different perspective. And that means, you are starting to ALLOW a bigger truth to enter your awareness - therefore you are starting to wake up.

Illusions will be kept so long as they make sense to you, so long as you do not see their real purpose, and so long as they seem to work. Or at least, even if they don't work, you keep them because you believe they CAN work, if you will just use them hard enough. You think for example that in your justified anger, your anger will somehow bring about happiness.

If you can be angry enough at someone else for what they did, and thus prove that you are right and justified, then there will be some kind of acceptance by the other person, a backing down of their attack on your truth, and you will get the respect and recognition that you believe your truth deserves.

In their acceptance and admittance of how they were wrong and you were right, you'll feel vindicated and satisfied having "proven" that your truth is true. It's as though you need others to admit to YOUR truth and accept it and humble themselves, in order for YOU to believe your own truth more - that you've given them the power to accept your truth for you, which is what you want because it's part of your disowning of responsibility for you own decision-making.

You think then that you'll find peace and satisfaction from this. But does anger ever produce peace and happiness? No. It does not really work. Getting someone else to admit to your truth for you will not cause you to be happy indirectly, but you think it will. And most likely their ego will not be humble enough to accept your truth on your behalf, meaning you cannot gain the happiness that lies in their hands. To admit to that fact is to admit to the truth, which means you are allowing a greater truth to shine its light on this response and to show that it is false.

Everything that you do in the ego thought system has a justification, a purpose, a reason behind it, a motive, a secret plan and an attempted goal that it would achieve. Just as in the truth everything you do is deliberate and intentional, producing exactly the results you ask for every time, this still holds true in your use of the ego. Every decision you make to believe in the ego's interpretation and follow its advice, is based in a deliberate, intentional decision to do so. You have a purpose and a use for every ego device you use.

Generally speaking the overall purpose of the entire ego thought system is to get rid of yourself by becoming an artificial self that doesn't exist. To replace yourself with non-existence. To replace God with death. And because your attempt to do this is based in your belief in SIN, the attempt to get rid of your sin is just another part of your attempt to get rid of yourself. Every step of the way, in every ego device that you use whether it be denial or projection or anger or reactions or suppression of guilt or punishment or death, all of these "tools" have a purpose for you, in furthering your attempt to get rid of sin and to get rid of yourself.

So when you are angry with someone, even though you are angry because it seems completely justified and sensible, given the (lack of) facts, this anger is actually also serving this goal. It is an attempt to get rid of sin by finding someone else guilty. Behind this anger, in greater truth, you actually are the one who believes YOU sinned, you have accused yourself of a horrible crime, and subsequently felt extremely guilty. You are trying to cover that up and get rid of it, because you believe deep down that YOU are the one who "did it".

When someone comes along and SEEMS to be the one who must have done something to you, instead of seeing that you believe that YOU are the sinful one, you take the opportunity quickly, based on the lack of awareness and the presence of denial, to scapegoat the person and put all your sense of guilt onto them. You might seem as though you are projecting onto them because "clearly" they did something to you against your will, and it therefore seems justified, but the rest of the evidence shows that you actually are USING that person to get rid of your sin and ultimately yourself.

In light of that additional information, it would also show you that your attempt to use them to get rid of sin is actually an attack on YOUR part, towards someone who is NOT the cause of your sin, and they in fact are the one who is innocent. So now you have committed a further crime, for which you will feel guilty. Even if you think your anger is justified, you will not be able to explain why you feel remorse and guilt and "bad" about having done so.

The truth would also reveal that you in fact WANTED that person to "seem" to attack you, because you wanted to have an opportunity to get rid of your sin. Even if it seems to you as though you did not want it, did not choose it or ask for it, and that it was completely uncalled for, you in fact DID call for it, ask for it, and were given what you asked for. You hired the person to play the role of attacker so that you could use them. Even if you suffered, even if you didn't SEEM to want it in your semi-conscious state, you really DID want it. You wanted to be hurt so that you could make out that you are not the one who is guilty.

Without this key information, without the awareness of what you are doing to yourself, without realizing and recognizing how you are using these ego devices for an ego purpose, and how everything is a deliberate part of your plan to get rid of yourself, it is easy to see how and why you would conclude what you do. It also then becomes easy to see why you are MISTAKEN, and are making an error, and why you therefore need CORRECTION. You need the truth in order to see what is REALLY happening here, and to have any hope of being set free.

If it is true that you did not ask for suffering, then you are stuck. Suffering is going to happen against your will and you will not be able to stop it. If it is true that you did not ask for death, then death will happen against your will and you will have no power over it. But if it is true that you made sickness and death and suffering, and have chosen them, and are using them for a special purpose (to get rid of yourself), and you want them, and you yourself are using them against yourself, then at least now there is potential for you to CHOOSE AGAIN and to decide to stop doing this to yourself.

It also means realizing that because you are doing this all to yourself - this is the truth which you have been keeping hidden from yourself - there is a possibility now for SALVATION. If you are doing it to yourself, you can change your mind. You can stop your self attack. You can forgive yourself. Your mistakes can be undone and corrected by your willingness to become more aware of the whole truth, and you can be free of all suffering and death. It also means you will realize that no-one else ever attacks you, there is no other will acting against you, and therefore you are perfectly safe forever.

The secret to salvation is that you are doing this all to yourself. But until you can become aware of and admit to this truth, allowing this truth into your awareness, you will not be aware of it and will not be able to use it to make sense out of what you are experiencing. If it also remains in the realm of intellectual concepts, you will not be able to experience it and know it and feel it and trust it.

You have to actually be willing to shift your experience by expanding your awareness, becoming more conscious of what was unconscious, admitting to or owning up to what you have been doing yourself, and bringing your unconscious mind back into your conscious awareness. That is only going to be possible if you are willing to question or doubt your current experience, reconsider whether what you think is true is really true, undermine your own beliefs which hold the truth prisoner or judge it wrongly as "false", and be willing to be corrected in your mistakes.

Essentially this means you need to be willing to surrender and let go of your ego's illusions, its holding onto false truths, its blame and denial, and its various ways of convincing you that you can actually get away with or succeed at using its tools to produce a desirable outcome. It is only because you do not see what the ego's outcomes are (always worse, leading to death), that you think they must work. And even if they don't work you'll still keep using them, insisting that they MUST work because they seem to make sense to you. You won't question what makes sense to you because you trust it as the basis for your whole reality.

But what makes sense in a limited ego consciousness makes no sense in a greater expanded awareness. And even if you believe that you know all there is to know or are aware of all there is to be aware of, both within you and without you, you need to be willing to question that. There IS stuff outside of your conscious awareness, stuff you have denied, stuff you have forgotten, stuff you have deliberately avoided wanting to admit to or allow into awareness.

Even if you see yourself as whole, complete, innocent, truthful, loving and caring, or seeing completely clearly, be assured that if there is something in your unconscious mind - if you have an unconscious mind - your facade of innocence and perfection WILL NOT hold up to the truth. And it will not be capable of stopping bad stuff from happening to you. Being ultra perfect and ultra pure is not going to stop your unconscious separate will from attacking you, and it's not going to keep you safe, and it's not going to prevent you from attacking yourself indirectly.

So if you think you are perfect and your life is still filled with suffering of any kind, you must KNOW that this means you have something outside of your conscious awareness, some way that you are attacking yourself and therefore you need to become willing to question whether your idea of perfection is really sound. There must be some way that you are in denial and there must be some truth you do not want to admit to. There must be some false belief you have which you think is true but which is not. And your sense of identity - of who you even ARE - must be not quite whole or complete or as true as you thought.

It can be difficult to look more deeply for a greater truth, and it can seem at first to be pointless given how much you are convinced you are all of yourself. But you have attempted to get rid of yourself, in a big way. You are Christ, maker of this universe, pretending to be a little suffering self in a body that dies.

There is much more to who you are than you are AWARE of, and that means that there is more to BE aware of than you are aware of right now. And that means it is highly likely you are going to be mistaken and come to false conclusions about what things mean and what sense it makes. It means you will act and respond to "reality" based in false perceptions and will make errors, and these will seem to hurt you against your will. But there is a way out.

The Holy Spirit, maintainer of truth in your mind, protector of your connection to Truth as God, is always with you and is the very truth in which you are recognized as being set free. Even your sin isn't real. Even your self attack isn't happening. And even your real identity has not been lost or changed or damaged. There is much truth that awaits you in which you literally will be set free from all suffering forever. There is no real death. There is no real sin. The Son of God is free.

A little willingness is all it takes to invite the truth into you - to invite Holy Spirit into you. A little willingness to put aside your ego identity and make room for the truth. A little willingness to open up to receiving a truth from beyond your little ego self, which also means receiving love. A little willingness to let go of what you thought was real, what you valued and what you thought was important, based only on false conclusions you came to just because you didn't have all the information.

There is more to your identity and more to your sense of self than you may be currently aware. Even if you think you are the whole of you, there is more to you than this. You are bigger and more magnificent than you realize. And you are far more free from suffering and death than you realize as well. There is no cause for fear because sin is impossible and separation is impossible. There is only cause for gratitude to God, that because of what God is, you can never be anything other than how He Created you.

You are innocent and holy, forgiven because you have done nothing wrong, are immortal and invulnerable, and permanently reside in Heaven as One with your Creator. And all is well.