First of all, let's touch on what the "authority problem" is. You as a Child of God, were authored by God. God caused you. His authority, or His power to Author you, designed you to be the way God wanted you to be.

You are the result of His Will, your nature is as He chooses, everything you have is inherited from Him, you only have what He has given you, you are only capable of what He created you to be capable of, your identity was given to you by sharing His with you, and you cannot change anything about yourself.

In fact, you are an extension of God Himself, you "host" God within yourself. It's not just that God is sitting there in a chair and then created you sitting in another chair some distance away. He extended out from Himself and put Himself into you, as you.

"I, who am host to God, AM worthy of Him. He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling- place in me created it as He would have it be."

"When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, He ESTABLISHED you as host to Him forever. He has NOT left you, and YOU have not left HIM."

You host Him, which is what your "inner altar" is. So you are not only a self, you are a self that also contains all of God. You are joined to God within you. You overlap with Him. You are a part of God which is also host to the whole of God. His own being is embedded into what you are. It's like, His light is shining in your heart. He is radiating through you. He is so intimately close with you that He is inside of you, and together you co-create as one.

In the separation idea, you questioned authority. Which means you questioned who was the Author of you. You questioned God. You protested against being Authored by God, and became unhappy with the fact that you were ONLY as God created you. You wanted to be not only the author of yourself, you wanted to be the author of God also, the definer of reality, and the chooser of what is true.

You wanted to become something other than you are. You wanted to change your idea of what God is. You wanted God to stop Authoring you, so that you could "be God", ie so that you could take Authority away from Him, and have this authority for yourself. Even to the extent that you wanted to have authority OVER His Authority, which is the idea of sin - the ability to affect, change, and cause God.

In concert with Him, you shared His Authority. His Power, His Authority, is in you. And it operates through you. But you wanted to be able to exercise a power that did not come from Him. You wanted a power of your own, or to regard yourself as authoritative without His Authority being the source of it.

"The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has an "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself"

In fact you wanted God not to be your Father, to not be the source of you, and to not be the Author of your identity, inheritance, or nature. And by denying that God was the Author of you, you denied that you had been Fathered (created) by Him. This was necessary in order to reject or oppose His Authority.

But by doing so, you made yourself fatherless, like an orphan. And so instead of being the Self that God created, you become "anonymous", attempting not to share His identity, rejecting your inheritance, and claiming to have not been Authored at all. This was an attempt to separate cause and effect, Father and Son, and to block awareness of your identity.

"and men preferred to remain anonymous when they chose to separate themselves FROM their Author. The word "authority" has been one of their most fearful symbols ever since."

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all. "

Now that an individual has developed an artificial "problem with Authority", they move into the ego thought system. Here they believe God is not their Father, who and what they are is not defined by God, they do not want to be defined by God, they are the author of themselves, and they even proceed to invent a new Father to explain their own origins.

"being uncertain of their true Authorship, men believe that their creation was anonymous. This has left them in a position where it SOUNDS meaningful to consider the possibility that they must have created themselves."

"Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of God (including himself) has arisen, and is tolerated. ... Fourth, that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him."

"The "attack on God" made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression."

"he would not accept the fact that, although he was a creator, he had been created."

While rejecting God's Authorship of you places you into turmoil, accepting it restores you to peace. God HAS established the only facts of your existence, the only truth that is true of you, and is the sole source of your nature. You cannot change this fact because it is absolute. It is impossible to alter God's will, but you can deny it. You can reject the fact that "you inherit God", but this just makes you unaware of your inheritance, which God saves for you.

"Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS. The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship."

"He has thrown away the reason for his own peace, and sees himself only in pieces. This strange perception IS an authority problem."

The question then is how to return to an acceptance of what your true Authorship is, how do you return to being a host to God, how do you become aware of your inheritance, and how do you resume your real function in heaven. Obviously this will involve the undoing or ceasing-to-do of the various ways that you play God, the attempt to author/define yourself, and the unwillingness to accept your function as extender of God's being.

It entails acknowledging that whatever you are, you are what God says you are. And you need to become okay with that. It needs to become acceptable to you, even welcomed, that you are ONLY as God created you. That ONLY the truth is true of you, and nothing else is true.

It means you have to recognize that the way Creation is set up, you ARE an effect of God, He DOES define you, you CANNOT define what you are AT ALL, and you have no desire to do so. Accepting Atonement simply means accepting the truth is true, accepting your position in the machinery of heaven.

You were created to create with God. You were created to HOST God. God is in you, at your sacred inner altar. You and God are one, and everywhere you go He is in you. You do everything together. And you are still as He created you. Nothing has changed, you have not changed His Will or His Mind, and you Will only to Will like Him, in accord with His Will.

"Instead of "seek you first the Kingdom of Heaven" say "Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven," and you have said "I know what I am, and I will to accept my own inheritance.""

This means putting aside your need to be the gatekeeper or decider of what is real or true. It means making room for God to operate THROUGH you. It means accepting that you have nothing of your own, and everything you DO have, which is everything, is OF or FROM God. Even AS God.

"Recognizing that all Power is of God is to gain all Power."

"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."

It means giving up trying to do everything alone, or by yourself, or dependent on your own strength, which is at best highly lacking. You HAVE nothing that God has not given. Not even strength, ability, will, power, mind, or anything. You are in a symbiotic relationship with God. You cannot live without Him.

"Symbiosis is misunderstood by the mentally ill, who use it that way. But I also told you that you must recognize your total dependence on God, a statement which you did not like. ... God and the Souls He created ARE symbiotically related. They are COMPLETELY dependent on each other. The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not. God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly. He gave them His peace so they would not be shaken, and would be unable to be deceived."

You and God function like a Team. It's kind of like He is the hardware, His mind and power is His software, He creates you as a new piece of Hardware, and downloads His software into you. Without Him you have nothing. With Him you have everything, but you only have what He has given, and what you create together.

So it's really a matter of humbleness and honesty and a willingness to make room for you to host God again. You have to receive Him. You have to allow Spirit to guide you again. You have to plug your mind back into your Soul. You have to become an instrument through which healing can occur. And you have to be willing to let your mind be loving so that it can not interfere with the automatic extension and expression of love, which is miraculous.

In your purified state, you resume the proper function as the Light of the world, because HIS Light is in you and extends through you. You resume your place as powerful miracle worker, because HIS power operates through you. You act as a relay station for His miraculous love.

"The miracle extends WITHOUT your help, but you ARE needed that it can BEGIN. ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED."

Your proper function is to express God and Christ. To be in such a state of cooperation and alignment and agreement that their functioning empowers your functioning. You thus become a miracle worker, able to give what you are receiving, to others. This is simply because having been Authored by God, He has given YOU the ability to Author, and thus you become able to create and to work miracles. To extend and express what is in you, which is God Himself.

The final acceptance of being host to God, and thus that God operates through you to others, is what establishes you as an UNLIMITED miracle worker, and is the acceptance of the atonement. It requires you acknowledge God is your True Father, the ONLY cause of what you are, that you are not caused BY anything else, and therefore resume your place as a Son of God, co-creator of miracles and life.

"Souls were given their own true authorship"

When you act as/with Christ, operate through the Holy Spirit, and activate the Power of God, there is nothing your holiness cannot do.

"24. A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. EXPLANATION: You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

"A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. " simply reflects on this arrangement of beings. You host God, God is in you, God is the source of miracles, Holy Spirit is the mechanism, it extends THROUGH you, TO ALL OUR BROTHERS, or perhaps to an individual brother. You operate as a "physician of the lord" to go out and profess Christ, healing the sick and raising the dead as a miracle worker. This is atonement - being part of the great crusade to give to those what they seem to lack.

"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment.

Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

The authority problem is an issue of authorship, power, and causality. ie, who is the author? Who caused? Who has the power to do so? Why has the authority to decide what the truth is?

God is the primary authority who has the power and is the cause of His creations. When he creates his children in Heaven he uses his authority to do so. But he also extends His authority to them, giving them their own true authority, which means they too now have the authority and power to create - to author. It is because souls have authority that they are co-creators with God. Every Son of God has authority and power because God is in them.

"Souls were given their own true authorship"

The problem came in the separation idea, where souls attempted to be the author of God. Simultaneously they attempted to deny that God is the author of them. And therefore that the author of themselves is anonymous or unknown.

This then opened up the possibility for souls to believe that they could invent their own definition of God, their own definition of truth, their own definition of who or what authored them. And so they themselves were now attempting to be the one to define their own selves, as though they had authored themselves and could determine what they are. Or to put it another way, they wanted to be God and to change, cause, or alter God, which is the idea of sin.

"You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

By denying the author of you (God), you invented an author of yourself, by yourself, and thus found yourself in a kind of split minded state of being under the power of a made-up false God, while also attempting to BE a false God. This all hinges on the belief that you can author God, can cause God, can change reality, and therefore have power over Him. It's an attempt to establish what the truth is, to decide what it is and to use this power to redefine or deny God's truth.

"First, the assumption is implicit that what God has Created can be changed by the mind of Man.

Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect (or wanting) is intruded.

Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of God (including himself) has arisen, and is tolerated.

Fourth, that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him."

You then form this ego viewpoint that you are God, you have power over God, you are the author of yourself, you don't need God, you don't derive from God, you are not like God (or yourself), and you can "make up" or invent whatever you think you want to be. This also then positions you as believing you are an authority, for whom there is no higher authority. Which means you are now unwilling to accept or share God's truth, mind, or will, and have "gone rogue".

By trying to be an authority over God, who is the authority over you, you enter into level confusion. You who are an effect of God, authored by God, deny this inheritance and claim to be able to cause/author God. You are now like a resistant child who doesn't want to cooperate and is digging in its heels with a superiority/inferiority complex.

This level confusion forms the root basis for the entire ego thought system, which is entirely level confused, is infused with the authority problem throughout, and leads to the making of a world in which you play God. "The world was made as a place where God could enter not", SO THAT you could be God without God in this world and try prove your authority does not come from Him.

As "children without a father" (the separation between Father and Son, Cause and Effect), we now act as if we're God in this world, a gatekeeper, a definer of truth, he through whom all things must be approved and agreed if they are to be "authorized." We attempt to define our own self, to establish our own truth, to invent worlds, to make-believe stuff into reality.

We're then busy not listening to God, not receiving, denying inheritance, rejecting guidance, wanting to be right, and are so in denial that we have trouble being willing to accept correction.

You can see this in anyone who is doing A Course in Miracles, and indeed everyone else. The attempt to be God. Nothing is authorized or approved unless it is cleared by us. Nothing is allowed to be agreed to as "the truth" unless we say so. We have to be the one to figure everything out on our own. We are unwilling to be mistaken because our reliance on our own self and abilities is too high. We depend on our belief that we are so accomplished and important and authoritative that anything challenging our self-defined truth is rejected.

This also leads to a kind of maniacal, tyrannical, domineering, resistant, stubborn, power-hungry, competitive, war-mongering, intimidating nature. These are all forms of artificial authority. They are all based on the belief in a lack of authority and insecurity. They all require a lot of reinforcement, and in the worst examples produce a desire to literally force others to comply with one's wishes. You can see this in leaders of some countries for example, in murderers, and in those who project and scapegoat and blame.

As far as A Course in Miracles is concerned, we come to it with an authority problem. We come to the truth with this egotism of self-centered "I must control", "I am right", "it's not true unless I say it is" kind of approach. And this also means initially that we will attempt to change the course to make it match what we want the truth to be.

We think we have more authority than someone who has accepted that God is their author, such as Jesus, and who has authored the Course from his position of true authority. This doesn't mean that Jesus has authority OVER us. He is an equal. He temporarily is like an older brother due to his acceptance OF authority and the reclaiming of his TRUE authority and power. But this does not mean he aims to force or dominate.

God similarly is not forceful ("God does not coerce" "even God would not go against your will"), and His authority isn't a domineering tyrannical rulership of forced control, but the ego cannot help but fear this authority. It reads into it its own authority problem and sees it as a threat, or as an attempt to have power over you. There will then ensue a power struggle for dominance, for who is right, between you and what the truth says is true.

This usually leads to a tremendous amount of attempts to redefine the meaning of the truth. New ideas which seem to threaten one's God complex will be frowned upon or treated suspiciously. We will try to change the truth and the course to fit whatever we believe is true already. We might though gradually become willing to surrender and let go of this need to have authority over true authority.

What we find in the Course is an expression from a Master who has authority and knows the truth. Ego doesn't like this. It wants to be the gatekeeper through which all things must be approved otherwise they are considered false. We have to become willing to surrender this position and becoming open to receiving a truth which may contradict our beliefs. And that means a willingness to be mistaken, not just about what we've concluded but even that we are in a position TO define what God's truth is.

Basically we're being exposed to God's truth and authorship, while believing we are the truth and authorship of ourselves. Believing we don't need God or his stupid truth. So there's going to be a tug of war on our part. There's going to be resistance. But ultimately we need to shift from trying to be the one who defines the truth, to being one who accepts HIS truth.

To do this is an act of surrender, and the development of trust. A willingness to be mistaken. An openness to BE taught. To be a student. To learn of Him. To ALLOW His truth to become the authority. To align with God's will. To surrender the ego and let go of being right. It means regarding the Course's truth as FIXED TRUTH, meaning that YOU are the one who needs to adjust to correlate to it, rather than IT being the one to change. It means TRUSTING Jesus's words. If HE says something is true, YOU need to accept it, even if that means letting go of beliefs which say the opposite. Without this trust there is no willingness to allow Jesus to be your teacher, or to accept the truth of God.

This is where you become humble. This is where you surrender the fight. This is where you are willing to let God tell you of Himself. This is where you learn to receive love. This is where you let go of controlling yourself, your life, and others. It's where you become willing to do God's will. To set aside your attempts to oppose His guidance. To hand over authority to your soul, receiving its truth from God. Where you plug your mind back into spirit and acknowledge that God is your father again. That you have no other God's. That you are open to receive your inheritance and recognize yourself as God created you.

It entails allowing God to be the one who has defined who and what you are. To recognize you cannot and have no changed yourself. That you have never sinned because you did not cause God and have no desire to do so. To realize you must still be as God defines you to be. AND this does not mean, as it does to the ego, that you have to merely begrudgingly cooperate "against your will". We have to unlearn the belief that God is trying to force us, require us, or manipulate us. We have to learn he does not have an ulterior motive or that he's trying to dominate.

We can only come to God through our own free will. It entails a willingness to accept God's truth is the only truth. That it offers you an extraordinary inheritance, freedom, power and joy. That doing God's will will make you happy. That forgiveness offers everything you want. And this all requires you to trust God and surrender your self-authoring control issues. If you suspect God of trying to force you to do something you don't want, it's because you are forcing yourself and others against their free will. We have to re-learn that God can be trusted, and that He still loves us.

Upon relinquishing false authority, or rather, an attempt to have authority without or against God, as a rebellious nature which seems to throw yourself into hell, we can resume our TRUE authority as co-creators, with the power TO create, to ADD TO the Kingdom, and to Create WITH God USING His power which He has shared with us in our own creation. We now happily and willingly resume the extension of God's spirit to increase our joy and to fulfill our function. God knows what's best for us.

A willingness to accept God's authority of us doesn't necessarily mean having to accept that you are under coercion. "God does not coerce." God has granted you free will and co-creatorship. He wants to create WITH you. Through you.

It also doesn't mean you have no power or no authority. The Sons of God have authority over all illusions. They also have authorship, shared with each other and with God, of their creations, to and through whom they extend their authority from God. God is not trying to take your power away. He's trying to give it back to you. It's just that He wants your power to the be the power HE gave you. He wants your truth to be the truth HE established in you, which is true of you. He wants you to let go of the truths you invented and to allow His truth to be your truth. In this way, you reclaim your inheritance of truth from Him.

This means that as you become more truthful, opening up to receive truth FROM Him, you put aside your OWN opinion. You let go of the truths you invented to replace his. You become a messenger of His truth, an extender and sharer. You now become authoritative in His truth, able to express it, but this truth didn't come from you. It is not OF you.

This means that while you are being authoritative, you also recognize that the truth you express is not "your own". We are not accustomed to the idea that someone's statements of truth are not necessarily THEIRS alone. That what they are saying has been inherited FROM another source, and is not their own opinion. We have to separate out the truth we share, from the messenger.

Just because you communicate this truth to others doesn't mean it is your OPINION. Having authority does not mean you are trying to be right, if it is based on truth inherited from God. When you have transitioned from being an inventor of truth, to being a relay or medium through which trust extends, you become a PART OF the Kingdom, a representative of God's authority, a way for His truth to transfer and extend to others. You have the truth, but you did not create the truth. The power of your word has the power of God in it, but you did not give it this power. As a representative of God, your truth also is His.

The light in you is what God put there. He shared His will with you in your Creation. He gave you his power. He put authority into you. He created you with His truth. And he etablished your permanence by knowing you forever. Everything you really are has been defined by Him, sustained by Him, and kept safe by Him.

You are worthy because He says you are. You are permanently at peace because He says you are. You are free to love and create because He says you are. What you are you cannot define. All you can do is accept and rejoice that He created you good and you are perfect and happy in the function He gave you. And by simply being true to yourself and natural in your expression, you are a perfect child of God, created to create the perfect.

Accepting your function is accepting God's authority. Having authorship by God does not make you a slave. You are an author, and you do have creations. But these creations were not created WITHOUT Him, or using anything not OF Him. Of yourself you are nothing, because you are not of yourself. You are not from yourself. But you DO have power, shared with Him, because He put it there. You are the medium through which this power can extend, per your free will. And when you will in accord with God's will, the power of God moves through you, with you.

"The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you."

"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. The image you made of yourself has none. The Holy Spirit knows the truth about you. The image you made does not. Yet, despite its obvious and complete ignorance, this image assumes it knows all things because you have given that belief to it. Such is your teaching, and the teaching of the world that was made to uphold it."

"I am forever an effect of God."

"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world." "Do His works."

"I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your minds of what is already in them. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true forever."

"For no one can forget what God Himself placedin his memory. You can DENY it, but you cannot LOSE it."

"The communication link which God Himself placed within you, joining your minds with His, CANNOT be broken."

"His is the ONLY Fatherhood, and it is yours only because HE has given it to you."

"Thus the Son gives fatherhood to his Creator, and RECEIVES the gift that he has given Him."

All credit goes to God for what you are and what is in you. Without Him you are nothing. All credit goes to God AND to you and your brothers for what you express TOGETHER in co-creatorship and joint power.

Without an acknowledgement of God's power, you have none. By acknowledging it, it becomes yours. And so long as you remain plugged into His power supply, the Power of God is in you and is yours to extend with Him. Through His power, you work miracles. The power, peace, joy and love of God is your natural inheritance, and yours to pass on to the children of your will.

"The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship. All fear comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship."

The "authority problem" is where, in heaven, you who are an effect of God and a co-cause of creation, attempt to turn around and CAUSE GOD, while also DENYING YOU ARE HIS EFFECT. You deny his fatherhood and causation of you, you reject everything he has therefore GIVEN you, and therefore ORPHAN yourself - "separate yourself off" from sharing everything with him, collapsing your oneness and trying to "go it alone."

You then proceed to try to AUTHOR YOURSELF, which leads to you trying to reinvent yourself and make a self (ego), while simultaneously believing you have not BEEN authored, and this begins the fear that you DO NOT EXIST - which is the basis of all fear.

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

All fear is the fear of not existing - the fear of death - which is the same thing as the belief that you have not been created - that you have no source, and are therefore fundamentally UN-CAUSED, and not a co-cause, and so must be purely an effect/victim that is ceasing to exist.

AS you begin to open up to hand back to God HIS FUNCTION, in which you acknowledge that you share everything with him, what you have is what he has GIVEN you, you have nothing OTHER than what he has given you, he is your cause and creator and father, and you RECEIVE what he has given you by reclaiming your shared inheritance, you are once again acknowledging that God is the AUTHOR of you, and therefore the AUTHORITY in terms of causal power that has CREATED you. You as a creation are SECOND to him - his son, not his father.

Essentially this is a movement toward giving the role of God back to God, reinstating God as your creator, recognizing that you have BEEN created, allowing yourself to receive everything from God again, and to therefore recognize that you ARE LOVED, you are BEING given, and therefore your existence is being CAUSED BY something other than yourself. Which means that you do not establish or maintain or put in place the continuation of your existence - which you tried to do driven by the fear of death, but instead that God is the one who is causing you to exist FOREVER, and THEREFORE, you absolutely exist and will always exist. Which IS THE END OF FEAR - the reclamation of your GOD SUSTAINED immortality.

"The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has a "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself"

"The authority problem remains the ONLY source of perceived conflict, because the ego was MADE out of the wish of God's Son to father HIM."

"The authority problem IS "the root of all evil."

"We spoke before of the authority problem as involving the concept of USURPING His power. The ego believes that this is what YOU did, because it believes it IS you. It follows, then, that if you identify WITH the ego, you MUST perceive yourself as guilty."

In ACIM we're told we have an authority problem. If you read ACIM it speaks about us having an issue with "who authored who".

We're told that God is the author of us, because he is our creator and cause. We're told we are forever an effect of God. This means God is the author of us and he has authority over us. And because he IS AN AUTHOR (creator), we HAVE BEEN authored (created).

"I, who am host to God, AM worthy of Him. He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling- place in me created it ***as He would have it be***."

"When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, ***He ESTABLISHED you*** as host to Him forever. He has NOT left you, and YOU have not left HIM."

This means that in terms of heaven's reality, we are really SECONDARY creations, and thus co-creators. We did not come first. We did not create ourselves. We did not have any say in who or what we are. It is entirely up to God to create and sustain us. You have a REAL PARENT!

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind."

You are not the primary creator. You are not "God" in this sense. You are A CREATION of God, and a co-creator with him. You have a father, therefore. You are a CHILD of God. This puts you in a position of being second-in-command, not commander-in-chief. You are his "number two".

In the separation, we as second-generation creations, rebelled against our creator. We rebelled against the idea of having been created by God. We wanted to believe we could overpower God and be his equal, to rebel against him, to overthrow his kingdom, and to have authority at least as equal to if not greater than his. We wanted to be the CAUSE OF HIM, and not his effect, thus separating cause from effect (father from son) and inventing the idea of sinning against God.

This meant throwing his authorship out the window and believing that he was NOT the author of you. This meant that you believed you were the author of yourself, in a position to define and create and redefine yourself according to your wishes. And it was this wishful thinking which made the ego, a SECOND SELF designed to deny you are a SON of God and to portray yourself as ruler of a world where God doesn't exist - as though you had destroyed him and his son through death.

"The world was made as an attack on God" ... "A place where God could enter not."

"The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has an "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself."

This led to the curious belief that you actually are convinced that God is not your father, that you are not a child of God, and that you have therefore not really been created at all.

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

"being uncertain of their true Authorship, men believe that their creation was anonymous. This has left them in a position where it SOUNDS meaningful to consider the possibility that they must have created themselves."

You then replaced God with a false God - a God of judgement and vengeance. An ego God and a God of sickness. A god unlike God. A god of suffering and evil.

"The "attack on God" made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression."

So now we have a problem with God's authority. We think we are orphans (separated fatherless selves). Our egos do not want God to have authority over us. We don't want to be second-in-command. Wd don't want to admit that we ARE A SELF that is SECONDARY to God, he having created something other than himself, and that therefore we are NOT HIS EQUAL.

"This is because God and man are NOT equal."

"If you created GOD and He created you, the KINGDOM could not increase through its OWN creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would NOT be co-creators WITH God. As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations."

"God's accomplishments are NOT yours. But yours are LIKE His. HE created the Sonship, and YOU increase it. You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

We need to kind of bow-down and accept that God is greater than us. That we do exist as "lesser beings" in a sense. We are his effects. We are his creations, his children. There is something above and beyond us which is bigger than us, of which we should have awe. This requires HUMILITY to accept that your REAL SELF is NOT GOD in this regard, and thus heaven contains you AND God.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

"But it WAS emphasized that awe IS a proper reaction of the Soul in the presence of its Creator."

"You who are in the image of the Father need bow only to HIM, before whom I kneel with you."

We don't want to admit to having been created "against our will." We don't like the idea that God was the only one who could decide what we are. We want to redefine ourselves and imagine that we're something we're not. And we reject God's will as if it means we're going to be forced to do something we don't want to do.

In order to undo the authority problem, it does in fact entail having to accept that God is your creator. God has to be seen as the source of you, the cause of you, the creator of you, and the reason WHY you are the way that you are in reality. If you are to be "still as God created you", then you have to accept that you are immortal BECAUSE OF him. You are his son, not his equal!

God maintains you in his mind forever and gives you eternal life. He shares his innocence and his power with you. He handed down everything he had to you in your creation, and you therefore share everything with him. But to get over your power-trip you will have to acknowledge that you COME FROM GOD. That you did not create yourself, and have no say in what you are.

This is where acceptance of atonement comes in, because now we're talking about your willingness to put aside all attempts to define yourself, to decide what is true of you, or making it your business to be the one who says what is real. This requires a surrendering of ego and a surrendering of the position of "I want to be first" and "I want to rule God" and "I will do everything without God" and "I want it thus."

To accept atonement and thus undo the problem with authority, you have to be willing to acknowledge that God has authority above you. He has the authority to create and cause you. Everything you are and everything you have not only comes from him but is chosen BY him. You have to accept that you have no say in your nature, what you can and cannot do, who you are, or what you are. You have to be willing to simply accept what you have been GIVEN with gratitude.

That means an end to inventing artificial identities, an end to identifying with bodies, an end to believing stuff about yourself that is out of line with God's will, an end to trying to portray yourself as mortal, and an end to acting like you're not Christ.

This isn't about you just being true to yourself or knowing yourself, it's also about you acknowledging that everything you are and have COMES FROM GOD, and therefore he is your creator and father and you acknowledge him as having power over you. Not a power that coerces or manipulates or dictates, but nevertheless you have NOTHING other than what HE decides you have. And you have to be okay with that.

Thankfully God has given everything good, and everything worth having, and everything meaningful. He has given you his own power and strength, his own light and love, and his own happiness and joy. He has given you the ability to create life and also in this world to heal and resurrect. And he ultimately is all that you want and what you want to be like.

You are literally the will of God. God has willed what you are. You therefore are what he wills. And you are thus an extension of his will. Your free will therefore wills like his and wills for the same things that he wills, ie the creation and sharing of eternal life. To align your will with God's is to accept your place in heaven, orient yourself to filling the shoes he made for you, and lining up with the "way of living" that he designed for you in perfection.

God has GIVEN you what you are, where you live, what is true, what is real, and how you can function. He has defined you, decided for you, created you, chosen you, wanted you, and maintains you forever. You are what you are BECAUSE OF him which is why your soul is grateful to him eternally. You have to RECEIVE him to host him. And you have to acknowledge that you have a REAL PARENT, which means you have to get over all your authority issues and be willing to BE A CHILD.

Then, by acknowledging that God is your father, and you are his holy child, you are now in a position to recognize that you are also a co-creator WITH him, and that he creates through you. By your extension you now create your own children and are father to them, just as God is father to you. And thus accepting HIS fatherhood you accept YOUR fatherhood and become reacquainted with your own children in heaven.

"A son of a father must have a son."

"As miracles in this world join you to your brothers, so do your creations establish your fatherhood in Heaven."

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

"So would I look on everyone today. My brothers are Your Sons. Your Fatherhood created them, and gave them all to me as part of You and my own Self as well. Today I honor You through them, and thus I hope this day to recognize my Self."

"Without your Father you will not know your fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation."

If judgement and forgiveness are opposites ("he who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive"), then judgement is the condition of being unforgiving.

Being unforgiving really means that you are looking at the appearance of illusions and are believing what you see. This means that we don't recognize that we're being faced with an illusion, and instead think that it is somehow the truth. We've fallen for the trickery, for how it 'appears', but are not overlooking appearances to see the truth.

This is the same thing as not seeing Christ in others, because you can only see Christ in others when you are overlooking the illusion. i.e. you have to see past appearances, and that means also seeing past the body, seeing past how things seem, and being very clear about the fact that people are actually Christ.

If they are Christ, they are immortal, powerful, have freedom of choice, cannot be victims, and cannot die. They are also the ones dreaming their dream. If we lose sight of that we fall for the illusion they're creating and take it to be real. Doing so is 'judgement'. We are 'judging' what we see, evaluating it, engaging with it, instead of overlooking it.

It doesn't just mean we are judging harshly, labelling people, pointing out flaws or condemning. Even if we believe for a moment that someone dying of cancer is 'real' and that the person isn't choosing it, that is judgement.

So what is a failure to forgive? How does judgement justify that failure? What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is a state of mind in which you are so forgiving that you see only innocence, truth, Christ, and do not for a second fall for any illusions. You know the truth, you know who is behind all this, and you can no longer believe the trickery - appearances.

When you fail to do that, you are attempting to explain to yourself why you stopped being forgiving. So you have to point out that it was 'because of' things that you are not responsible for. It was because of other people. I mean look at them?! And so we become tangled in appearances, forgetting to overlook appearances, because we are trying to make out that we were right to not forgive, and that the person actually 'is' or 'deserves' what you're seeing in them.

What we need to realize is that this entire world is an illusion, which means, someone somewhere is deliberately creating something for the sole purpose of pretending to be something else, for portraying that author as 'not the author', to try to convince him/herself that it's actually true, and to make-believe that this story is really occurring. It's nothing more than like when a child plays make-believe and pretends that stuff is happening.

This story is what is being shown to us all around us all the time, including our body. And it's our challenge to see through the make-believe, not take it seriously, know that it is not true or real, and be aware of who it is that is making all this seem to happen. It's only because we do not recognize the author of it (and therefore do not recognize ourselves) that we think it is real. And not recognizing Christ as Christ (as the dreamer of all this) means to fail to overlook the illusion and instead fall for it, which means we are judging it to be the truth - that it is truly awful, truly deadly, truly upsetting.

It's not true. The dream is just a dream. We need to wake up to realize who is dreaming all this.

Your body is just a piece of software running in the God Computer.

The brain is a central processing unity (CPU) and is one of many processors in the body. Or you could think of it as a sub-set of the software which performs a particular task.

The brain and all other processors do not do anything other than execute commands. The brain does not create commands.

The body executes all commands exactly and correctly. It does not invent commands itself, has no will of its own, and does not think.

The mind is not a by-product of the brain. That would be as though to say that the CPU of the body computer comes up with it own software programs, or that the software has the power to change itself.

The software programs MUST come from outside of the computer itself., from an actual source of WILL, capable of writing programs in the first place. And that intelligence must be able to function WITHOUT a body and without a brain!

That intelligence must be able to think without needing a body in order to think. It must be creative.

That mind, that intelligence, must also have designed the body computer itself, the CPU (brain) and all other parts. It must have devised all of the software that operates it.

Therefore the body computer is INSIDE of the mind, just as the programs which run on a computer come from OUTSIDE of the computer, created by an operator who tells the computer what to do.

Just because software runs inside the computer does not mean the computer is the source of the software. Similarly just because it SEEMS as though the mind operates inside the body, that the mind is created by the body.

The mind - the programmer - WROTE the body software, WROTE the brain, and WROTE all of the programs which the body/brain executes.

This is why looking for mind or thought within the brain, as though the brain is a "cause", or that the brain has a "will", or that the body has a "mind of its own", is completely a mistake.

The body does not have a mind of its own. It is just a functional machine, a device. YOU as mind put instructions into the device to tell it what to do. And it does that, and only that, exactly and correctly.

No matter what you tell the body computer to do, it will do it. If you tell it to depict health, it will. If you tell it to depict sickness and death, it will. It always produces a correct result because it does not pick and choose what instructions to follow.

YOU are therefore in COMMAND of the body, the world, and all illusions. YOU are the one who is writing the scripts (programs). YOU are the author.

Except that, it goes even further than this. God is really the only author of reality and truth. He is the only author of bug-free programs. He is the only one who can create the perfect program (Christ) which can in turn extend God's design to produce further perfect programs (Christ's creations).

But when you tried to become a SEPARATE PROGRAMMER, you tried to override God's program, shut it out, and replace it with a program of your own. Thus your ego wants to be fully in charge of the dream, to have power of it, and to even perform miracles, PROVIDED it gets to stay separate from God.

Fortunately miracles require sharing with God, so the ego will never be able to access God's power. Therefor the ego will never be able to rewrite the true program of Christ, and will never be able to actually corrupt anything.

Just as all bugs and errors and viruses and rogue programs are WIPED UNCONDITIONALLY from memory when you reboot your computer, when you awaken to enlightenment, God will REBOOT YOU, and after the reboot, all that will be left is the perfect program of Christ. A totally new, fresh system, untainted and undefiled. And you will express love and love will be your only output.

"Yet in this learning is salvation born. And what you are will TELL you of Itself."

"I am come to tell you that the choice of which is true is not yours."

I consider myself fairly devoted to ACIM. My attitude about is that it contains an expression of Truth, and that Jesus knows what the truth is. I have respect for his Authority and for the Word of God which comes through. I want to learn. I want to be receptive. I want the course to tell me what the truth is and guide me toward an ACCEPTANCE of it.

This means that I have to learn to trust, to allow God’s truth to be true, and to define what is true and what is not. Being in ego is entirely a game of playing God, trying to be the one who decides everything, not listening, not accepting a truth which has already been established. Ego is all about dreaming of a different truth, a different reality. It wants to be the author of itself. To undo God’s handiwork.

When we read the course and the course says something, which is almost certainly literal in almost every case, if we do not like what it is saying, we will go into denial. If we have other beliefs that we think are true, which we cherish and want to keep, and are unwilling to let go of, we will defend them against what the course says. Even if the course is explicit, we will instantly react with "that’s not true" or "I don’t believe that". Or we’ll make up some excuse why the course "doesn’t mean that" and why other interpretations are possible.

The course is really straightforward, clear, literal and intense. That is why the ego hates it. It wants to change it, deny it, distort it, mangle its meaning, give it its own definitions, change words, adjust its theology, and even use it to keep its pre-existing beliefs about everything AND strengthen them. It’s perfectly capable of reframing everything the course says to make it fit into a view of reality that a person already came with. To even reinforce that view more deeply.

There are some people doing ACIM who are totally deluded about what it is saying because they have so much denial and unwillingness to let go of what they believe. They are not ready for the fullness of the truth yet. And this course is not for everyone.

We have to be willing to put aside our egoic denial. We can’t be continually questioning everything Jesus says. When he says something, it is true. Otherwise we are claiming he is a liar, and that we know better. That is arrogant. And it is dishonest. It indicates we are not willing to surrender our ego position and are not willing to ACCEPT anything that we’re being told. If we do not believe what Jesus is telling us, it means our beliefs are WRONG, not his. He is the sane one. We have to be more willing to learn a NEW truth.

Are we willing to trust that, and thus question every belief we hold dear, if needed? If it does not correlate to what Jesus says, it has to go. If it does not line up with God’s truth, it has to be false. If it is out of accord with God’s will, we must become willing to surrender it and get ourselves in line. The truth will tell us of itself what it is. We must simply be willing to accept, receive it, and listen to it. To allow God to be God. This is the only way you can accept the atonement. Accepting the truth is the opposite of trying to change it or author it. God is the author, not you.

It’s not your function to create yourself, reinvent yourself, define yourself, establish what is real, establish what is true, create laws, or to act against God’s will. When you do any of this you are in the ego. The truth, reality, can ONLY be accepted. You have to accept the truth God has created, off the shelf, as is, without you messing with it. Without you wanting it to be different. Without you not liking it or rejecting it, or trying to adjust it to be the way you want it. God’s choice FOR you has to be good enough. It has to be wholly welcomed with free will.

"I choose to let him by allowing Him to choose for God for me".

Look at all the ways in that sentence that Jesus is taking the responsibility of defining truth AWAY from you.

"I choose to LET HIM" (I choose whatever HE chooses FOR me)

"by ALLOWING Him to choose" (He decides what is the truth I will accept and take as my own)

"choose for God FOR me" (He chooses the truth about me, on behalf of God, and does so so that I can ACCEPT and

ALLOW whatever He chooses to be true of me, TRUSTING Him over my own ego ideas)

This is what your inheritance is about. You must INHERIT from God. You must receive what He has given you, how he has established you, what you ARE, by His will. You CANNOT change the truth, and trying to do so is insane. You cannot change what you ARE in reality. Atonement is the acceptance that you HAVE NOT done so, while sin is the rejection of this fact and nothing more than denial. Be glad you are ONLY the perfection God created and be open to receive your inheritance at last. What you stand to gain is yourself.

"I am forever an effect of God"

"I am still as God created me"

"The soul is the idea of self fullness"

"Nothing real can be threatened"

"You are immortal and you cannot die."

If a child were playing make-believe and pretending that things were happening, would you believe it? If you knew better, if you knew that the toy car is just a toy, not a real car, but the child was whizzing it around making car sounds and saying "beep beep", would you believe there really was a car there?

Of course not. And the reason is, you know without any doubt, and have a clear awareness, that the toy is just a toy, not a car, that it isn't a "real car", and that the child is just pretending. You know that the car is only moving because the child is moving it. You know that the car is only making "beep beep" sounds because the child is making those sounds appear. So you see everything, you are aware of the whole scene, and so you smile and laugh at the gentle play that the child is performing, knowing it is completely unreal.

The thing is, in this big physical world, we do not realize that everything in it is also a toy. It is a toy that is being played with by the Son of God. And the Son of God is having a great old time making things move around, making sound effects, pretending that He is a multitude of difference characters. He is really versatile and clever. He even pretends to be multiple characters at once, and they even interact with each other and seem to do things to each other. And from the point of view within that pretence it sort of seems like certain characters seem to not know that this is all just a big made up fairytale that the Child of God is playing out. And even that not knowing is part of the play!

And the other thing is, the Son of God is so powerfully creative and expressive, and so intelligent, and so sophisticated at weaving pretend illusions to make things seem like they're really happening. He animates snowflakes falling from the sky. He causes trees to seem to grow. He makes the birds flap their wings. And he creates war. And he creates death and suffering too. Yes the Son of God made death (and can abolish it).

But even as He is make-believing these things, from His vantage point He knows that none of these are real. He is just playing, just pretending. He's having fun and laughing to Himself about how He is playing 'within' His own being, dreaming up fantasies and pretending to make them real. He even is capable of pitting one of His many personalities against another. And He is even capable of manifesting sickness and death, as though these are really happening, and yet all a long He is absolutely unaffected by these and they do not change Him at all. How could they when He is immortal? How could they when He, like the child playing with toys, knows all along that He is just making this all up?

The Son of God knows He cannot die. He knows he is immortal. He knows there cannot be a separation from God. He knows there is nowhere to go where God is not. He knows sin is not possible or real. He knows He is forever innocent. He knows all is forgiven because there is nothing to forgive, because nothing has REALLY happened. And so He is just playing with this 'tiny mad idea' of 'what if separation is possible'. It's just a toy. It's a mind toy. And nothing has really gone wrong. And even as he dreams about this extreme separation from God, and even as it seems to be a horrible nightmare, even the horrible nightmare He is making up on purpose, willingly, wanting it to happen, as part of His great pantomime that He is orchestrating every part of from a higher perspective. And it seems like 'we' are here on the receiving end of this 'chid' playing with illusions, making our lives hell, but 'we are Him and we chose this too. See how creative and imaginative we are, to invent a life of hell on purpose just to see what it's like?

If a child were playing and acting and pretending that they are some character, and if the child is at war with some other child, in this character, and this other child's character comes along with his mighty sword and attacks the child and the child pretend to fall down dead, do you believe it? Of course you don't. You know they are pretending. You know the child is not really dying. And you know this because you know who the child really is. You know their true identity. You see their real self. And so for you, you see their illusions from the outside, and recognize that they are not real or true, and not for a second would you take them seriously or think they are actually doing anything to the child.

But what SEEMS to be happening to 'us', as little Earth people in little bodies, is that us, as characters in Christ's dream, seem to be acting a role in which we seem unaware of who the dreamer even is. It seems like the Son of God has, somehow, even though this is IMPOSSIBLE, has somehow forgotten that He is just pretending, and has lost sight of His true identity, and has become unaware that everything that moves in this fantasy world is because He chooses to make it move. This absolutely cannot be true, but it can SEEM very much the case, and we SEEM to be finding ourselves in this situation, this role, where it SEEMS like we 'really' have gone and fricking done it this time.. where we've *actually* separated from God, where we're *actually* not the Son of God anymore, and where the stuff that seems to be happening really seems like we're not choosing it whatsoever.

This is the extreme prowess of the Son of God, that He is actually capable of making it seem, to Himself, that He is not even Himself anymore, that He doesn't even recognize that He is making up His own pretend dream, and that He is not the author of any of it. He is actually capable of creating WITHIN Himself, what appears to be the almost complete negation of Himself, to the point where He seems to 'die', even though some part of Him must still be existing in order to project this fantasy of 'death', and so He is not all the way dead and still continues to pretend. And even as He seems to experience what it is like to be an actor who has forgotten He is an actor, EVEN NOW He is still Himself and, very very subtly, STILL has not really lost touch with reality, or with the fact that He is STILL the author of this entire dream, even a dream of death. He is STILL the Son of God and He is STILL the one who is choosing and dreaming all this. The subtlety with which He has pretended to not be Himself is so extremely subtle that it is very easily overlooked and unrecognized.

So then the Son of God (you) then seem to even die. And you seem to experience this extreme state of stuff happening that you do not choose or want, like you have absolutely no power to choose otherwise or to stop death. And then it happens, and this SEEMS to prove that you are not the author of this dream. You have given an absolutely tremendous PERFORMANCE, you have totally fooled everyone even yourself (it seems, but not totally), that you have actually died. Once again, if there were an audience who knew better, they would erupt with rapturous applause at just how prolifically brilliant your performance of 'dying' was, and you would then stand up in costume yet identified now as an actor, at the end of the play, and take a bow.

Becoming aware of how this make-believe fantasy world has been turned into something that SEEMS like it is REAL, is the simple act of "waking up" from the dream. It's not that we're not the dreamer, it just that we're pretending not to be the dreamer, and doing a very good job of it. We cannot disconnect ourselves from God. And here's the good news.

Everything that we thought was really happening in this world, all the bad things, all the terrible things, the wars and tragedies, the sickness and death, all of it... every single horror, the absolutely hilarious news is... that all of this IS, absolutely, JUST a pretend play that the Child of God is pretending to enact, as part of an innocent play with toys, and the Child of God - which is who you really are - IS absolutely unharmed, undisturbed, untangled, undead, in your divine comedy of play and pretend. All of what you thought has gone wrong, is not really true. All of the things you thought could attack you, were coming from yourself. All of the things that upset you, you deliberately chose to be upset by. All of the things you thought were capable of keeping you from God, they never were - you just kept pretending they could.

And so ultimately, the gentle happy good news is, when you can come to realize it and see it, that everything is absolutely alright. Everyone is okay. Nobody has been hurt. The Son of God has not been defiled. There has been no real upset. Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists. All of the elaborate pantomime of 'planet earth' is a hoax. All of the stories that have been told about who did what to whom, it was all part of childs-play. All of the supposed tragedies, terrors, horrors, disasters and upsets, were all being deliberately chosen and performed by a full cast of Sons of God. And we're all completely safe in Heaven with God right now in total joy and bliss and happiness, laughing our heads off at how much fun it was to invent such a wacky world of wonders.

If we can just realize this and just tap into this truth, that nothing has really gone wrong and that we're just fooled by the illusion of appearances and by our own role play and acting, we would stand up and laugh and feel so completely free. And we'd be free of the terror of fear, the ugly weight of guilt, and any belief at all that everything has truly gone wrong. We'd be free from the constant anxiety that we've gone off the rails, that life is unfair, that we're in danger, that there are threads and things that upset us, thats there is reason to be unhappy, that we're justified in being unhappy, and we'd be free from our own faked dying forever. The end of fear, the end of suffering, the end of death.

This is all just a SHOW! It's not a real world. It's not a real history. These bodies are not real people. There is nothing real happening here. The kids are just playing in the sandbox. It's make-believe. Don't buy into it or think it's real, remember they're the innocent Children of God to whom nothing can happen. And they're just having fun.

Only love is real.

"Some of them are shared illusions, and others are part of your personal hell."

It's a very common belief that there is only one dreamer of the dream of separation. This is not true.

Nor is it true that "the one son" dreamed the dream. Only individual portions of the sonship chose freely to entertain the idea of separation, not all of them. And some angels also bought into it and others did not.

The dream has MANY AUTHORS. This is possible because we OVERLAP, because we share minds. So there can seem to be one dreamer or it can seem in an awakened experience that you are responsible for "all of the dream", but *ALSO* others are responsible for all of the dream as well! You overlap, you share, you collaborate, you join wills and join forces and this world was made by MANY MINDS.

The misunderstanding of this, due to poor reasoning, has led to many people to be CONFUSED and to adopt beliefs about what ACIM is teaching that are mistaken.

For example, people say "other people are me" or "we're all one person" and therefore, this leads to conclusions like... I am responsible for what other people are doing. Or, I must be responsible for making someone sick. Or, if I change my mind about the dream, it will automatically somehow magically "heal" everyone and all of the sicknesses will magically disappear and I'll be looking at a world where everyone is healthy and happy. NOOOO. That does not happen.

You waking up as "author" of this dream only means that you are a CO-AUTHOR, and you've waked up from the PART you played in its making. This is why Jesus was able to wake up FIRST without others waking up, and it's also why you must accept atonement for YOURSELF. Many individuals have to accept the atonement, otherwise if "one" of them accepted it, it would literally be instantly accepted for all, and we wouldn't be sitting here 2000 years after Jesus atoned still deciding whether or not to wake up.

This has led to some quite distorted conclusions about what needs to happen to your perception in order to produce a forgiven world or a happy dream or a world without sickness or bodies. It makes people OVERLY responsible for the choices of other FREE WILLED INDIVIDUALS. This is actually a fault, because YOU are supposed to be claiming and taking full responsibility for what YOU are choosing or doing to yourself, and you can't DO that if you're telling yourself that you are responsible for the other PARTS and CAUSES that are in the world. If you tell yourself, you're responsible for someone else's choice to die, because it's so-called "your dream", then you're going to be in for a surprise.

This has also led people to conclude that when Jesus was performing miracles, he somehow "did not see" bodies or was not able to discern "sickness" at all, and they've justified and rationalized and explained this away as some strange twist of perception, that he could not SEE what was "wrong" with them and could not tell that they needed help. This is CLEARLY not in accord with what ACTUALLY happens in experience, and even people who have had awakenings through ACIM have said that they still can SEE. Perception merely becomes MORE ACCURATE, it doesn't make you BLIND to what OTHER PEOPLE ARE CHOOSING.

Miracles would not be able to supply a lack to those who temporarily have less from those who temporarily have more, if we did not have free will. There could be no teachers or students or people meeting to learn lessons. There HAS to be a provision for individual choice, in terms of what YOU are responsible for and what OTHERS are responsible for.

This is why Jesus says that when you accept the atonement for YOURSELF, you become part of the atonement and then must go help OTHERS. Many people now believe that when you accept atonement you are accepting it as "the one son" and therefore it ENDS the whole process, the dream disappears and "your dream" exists no more, therefore you're done with your task. This is NOT what happens. You become part of the atonement PLAN, and you must then go HELP OTHERS, help those who HAVE NOT YET ACCEPTED IT. This is only possible because everyone has free will and because we are CO-CREATORS of this dream.

You can wake up from YOUR dreaming or your BELIEF IN the dream being real, but that doesn't mean other people have woken up, it does not force them to wake up, nor does it mean the dream is over. The only reason people have come to believe that there is ONE DREAMER or ONE SON is because of FALSE TEACHINGS that have been perpetuated about the course, from even the most famous of teachers. It makes sense to the ego, but the ego is insane, so it is nonsense. It also is based on denial of souls and individual free will, which is the underlying foundation for WHY what other people choose is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

The simple change that must occur in order to wake up to reality, is a change in premise. If the premise is that this world (earth etc) is real, then everything that happens in the world is real, and is God's will. Because God is the author of reality.

So now everything you see in the world is real and cannot be undone, and cannot be forgiven, and sin is real and death is real and there is no escape from hell. Or more to the point, murder is no longer a sin but is God's blessing.

But if the premise changes from "this world is real" to "this world is a dream", ie is not real, then this changes the entire perspective on the world and what seems to happen in it. EVERYTHING in the world now must take on a new meaning in light of this information, because if the world is NOT real, it changes your ENTIRE relationship to it.

All events ultimately are therefore nowhere, the changes wrought are substanceless, nothing is really causing anything, there is no meaning in the world of itself, it is all just a dream, the whole planet is an illusion, nothing is really being hurt or attacked, all sickness is a lie, death is impossible, and there isn't even really a world here.

That is the simple change in vantage point which ACIM and any spiritual path entails. Ultimately it leads to the simple recognition that only God's reality is real, and this world is NOT God's reality. This world is a dream in which imaginary figures seem to come and go and try to destroy each other. Where lovely illusions come to soften the blow of death, and where everything turns into something it is not.

Either the world is real, or it isn't. If it is real, it cannot be changed or undone, or forgiven or overlooked. You are then required to love death and murder, to look on war as justified and attack as healing. All of hell seems to be heaven to you, as you use it to avoid God and to hide from sanity. If the world is real, God himself ordains its every property, all happenings are his doing, and there is nowhere else to go.

But fortunately the world is not God's doing, nor does it represent him, nor is it anything like him. Fortunately when your mind fully reframes the world as "this is just a dream", it changes the ENTIRE context of the WHOLE universe in which you think you live.

If it is just a dream, nothing here really matters, nothing is really any more difficult or easy than anything else, nothing really means anything more or less than anything else, all senses of separation and difference are illusions, the very form of objects is a fantasy disguise pretending that it is not the same as something else, and everything your body sees is not really there.

It ultimately and simply leads to the fact that there is no world. A world which is just a dream isn't really a world. It's an illusion of a world, held in a mind that is seeming to be asleep a while. When that mind awakens, it does not awaken to the world it was already dreaming of, it stops dreaming it entirely and awakens to God's reality of heaven.

There is really no world here because the world is not real. Anything you take seriously in the world is deception. Any time you buy into it you are falling for temptation. Any time you think someone is a body and refer to their body as their self, you do not see them. Bodies are illusions of life which are not even really alive, or really anything. Everything in a dream world is literally NOTHING pretending to be something.

All things in this world are impossible. It was made to be impossible. There is no permanent solution to anything. There is no escape from problems. There is an endless barrage of attack and strife. Death is waiting inevitably for every single thing that thinks it lives. And everything in the entire cosmos eventually destroys itself. There is no salvation here, no freedom, no real safety, and nothing to gain. It is a tired old world that was ready to rot as soon as you dreamed of living like a mortal.

In truth you are an immortal being in heaven who is simply asleep at the wheel, dreaming of being not mortal. Of being not yourself, being opposite to your God-given nature, pretending to be things you are not, believing false truths, and trying to GIVE reality to a world that isn't real. To a premise that isn't real. A premise that God is dead and you can make of yourself what you will. None of that is possible or true beacuse God means permanence.

There is no world, there is no sickness, there is no suffering, there is no pain, there is no death, there is no cancer, there is no heart disease, there is no war, there is no torture, there is no abuse, there is no attack, there is no sin, there is no guilt, there is no fear, there is no difference, there are no races, there is no earth, there is no solar system, there are no galaxies, there is no sun, there is nothing here whatsoever.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his OWN attack, but sees it at another's hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but NOT their cause. He authored NOT his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused."

The body is a symbol. Being a symbol, it represents something. It represents something beyond itself. That means it does not have its own inherent meaning. It is really nothing. A canvas on which you paint a picture of resurrection or death.

Because it is a symbol, it represents and reflects something which lies beyond itself. It is not an end unto itself. It is not a sign or a thing or a standalone entity. It is the outward projection from an inner condition. It does not author its own identity. It does not decide what it will be or what it will look like. It does not determine its behaviors. You USE IT. You project it. It is SYMBOLIC of the content of your mind.

This is why when the mind is healed the SYMBOL MUST CHANGE. The body CANNOT RESIST changing. When the mind decides to be well and whole, the body must reflect that. When the mind decides to be separate and afraid, the body must reflect that. It is a picture of the mind's condition. It is not a thing in its own right.

Because it is a symbol, when the body is sick, the body ITSELF is not sick. IT does not have its own separate sickness. It is SYMBOLIZING a problem in the mind. This is why when the body is broken or sick, it PROVES the mind cannot be healed, because it is IMPOSSIBLE for the body to make up its own state. It is a reflection of the mind. It has no will. No continuity of its own. Its being projected. So if the body is showing up as broken, the body has nothing really wrong with it, the MIND DOES.

This is why if there is sickness or death happening to the body, the MIND IS DESTROYING ITSELF. And this is proof. No-one dies without their own consent. Healthy mind, healthy body. Sick mind, sick body. There are no exceptions.

"Remember, then, that neither sign nor symbol should be CONFUSED with source, for they must STAND FOR something OTHER than themselves. Their meaning CANNOT lie in them, but must be sought in what they REPRESENT. And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the truth or falsity of the IDEA which they reflect."

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of the separation."

"The body is the idea (in the mind) of sin, made flesh, and PROJECTED (by the mind) outward.

The more that you take responsibility for what you are experiencing, and the more you see that your whole experience is not caused by anyone or anything other than yourself, the more you will see this in others as well.

I was at the grocery store and saw this man walking with a cane and an obvious limp from some recent injury. But what struck me was how this 'looked' to me. Instead of the usual ego perception of ... oh, something must've happened to him, he's obviously been unfairly treated, he didn't choose this and he is powerless.... I saw instead, here is someone who has chosen to give themselves this temporary disability, who has done it to themselves, albeit perhaps unconsciously, and this hasn't happened to them against their will. I see the man acting as if he didn't choose this, acting as if he didn't want this, but still somehow it registered with me that he was not a victim and that this 'accident' had come from him. There are no accidents.

As Jesus says, nothing happens to us without our consent, including death. We get everything we ask for. We do not get anything we don't ask for. I don't know what had changed in my mind or how, but somehow my mind was seeing/perceiving differently and the 'meaning' of what I was seeing struck me differently. This man is responsible for what he is experiencing, he's not a victim, and nothing has happened against his will, meaning he has the POWER to recover.

If I see myself as a victim, by not taking responsibility for what I believe and feel, and if I don't recognize that what I feel is NOT caused by anything outside of me, then I also will see other people as victims. I'll have 'sympathy' for other people's unfair treatment, and enter into 'false empathy'. I also won't believe that other people chose what's happening, or that they have the power to heal. Instead I'll see them as condemned and stuck and powerless, because that's how I see myself.

But when I claim who I am and what I am experiencing, with me as its author, I will also see other people as being empowered and capable and free.

It's interesting how perception can change, how the mind can change, and how it can make the world appear different to you. I'm not talking about having certain thoughts, just the immediate way the world 'looks' to you, how it registers, what it means, what is clear and obvious and what you see in it. This somehow gets transformed when we heal and forgive, as if there are hidden changes to a hidden projector in our mind that produces a different experience, without really knowing how that change occurs. Holy Spirit of course knows how healing is accomplished.

Separation seems to have disconnected our mind from Spirit. Jesus describes the separation process thus:

"7 First, the assumption is implicit that what God created can be changed by the mind of man.

8 Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect or wanting is accepted.

9 Third, the belief that man can distort the creations of God, including himself, is accepted.

10 Fourth, the idea that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him is implied.

11 These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the separation. None of this existed before, nor does it actually exist now."

When this was occuring, basically we created a fictional lack in the mind, and then proceeded to fill it with our own separate voice.

Or in other words, began to express the idea that we created ourselves, that we author reality and truth, and we decide everything, that we can usurp God’s will, etc.

So then our mind has kind of gone rogue, it’s unplugged itself from God and is now making up realities (fantasies) left and right. It isn’t operating in service to Spirit so it generates its own content, the likes of which is UNLIKE God intended.

Rather than receiving all of its input, direction, and usefulness from a Spiritual source (soul), it instead runs amock inventing stuff on its own. It invents an artificial second identity, a world, bodies, events, fictional problems, you name it.

This all happens because it is unplugged from Spirit. It isn’t getting the proper input anymore so it just starts hallucinating. Outputting stuff it ITSELF thinks the input should be. It thinks it is the creator of itself.

What this means is that we have become unwilling to RECEIVE, and all that we want to do is CAUSE without accepting the effects of Spirit. We are basically trying to convert ourselves, from being an EFFECT of God/Spirit, to being the CAUSE of God and not at his effect.

When God created our soul, He shared His creative ability with us and gave us free will to enjoy creating in His/our perfection. This means we were able to RECEIVE FROM GOD, and EXTEND GOD, creating onward. So we were receiving and giving simultaneously. "Giving and receiving are one".

After separation, we stopped doing the RECEIVING part, and just kept on with the "creating part" which now became "mis-creating".

"All of his miscreations can literally disappear in "the twinkling of an eye" because they are merely visual misperceptions."

Since we stop receiving God’s will, God’s truth, God’s reality, God’s divine order and sanity, we go off making-up a bunch of shit out of nothing, for no good reason, with no solid foundation. We don’t get it from God. We dream, because instead of extending God’s truth, we just output with no correct input.

Being in ego then is a state of causing but not receiving. OR in other words, giving without receiving, which is SACRIFICE. This is also the same thing as "what is not love is murder" or "getting away with murder", in which the mind is trying to cause effects in others, without receiving the effects in itself. It is trying to express self, without receiving from God. It is trying to have an identity that has not been GIVEN BY God. It is trying to live without Him.

The key feature then of our awakening process, our endeavors to become closer to God again, entails OPENING UP TO RECEIVE again. Being WILLING to let INPUT come into you, to inform you and flow through you again, from A TRUE SOURCE or signal. To LISTEN to the Voice of God, instead of listening to our own voice. To EXPRESS God’s Will and miracles instead of our own magical bullshit.

This means putting your mind back in service to Spirit, becoming willing again to express God’s will instead of making up a will, being guided, directed, healed and empowered by God. And also it means being willing to ACCEPT, ALLOW, and RECEIVE God’s truth - in the atonement.

The ego’s game is all about trying to define a substitute self, in a substitute world, making stuff up all over the place without God. It wants to be the author of itself and make-up its own output. It think’s it’s prety special and important and capable, as if it does not need God’s input. It is like a screaching speaker system, broadcasting its own sounds instead of playing what the musical SOURCE is telling it to play.

Undoing the ego means surrendering this tyranny, this self-rule, this mode of functioning, this "thinking with the ego", where we "make" without God and don’t allow ourselves to RECEIVE INPUT.

We need to learn again to let God do for us everything we have been trying to do without Him. To let Spirit use our mind. To allow Spirit to work through us to extend miracles. To let God be the one to decide what the truth is. To accept His Will instead of inventing our own wishful thinking. To "channel" God again instead of making up our own signal.

It is all in the receiving. You cannot receive UNLESS YOU SURRENDER EGO CONTROL. Being in control of what your mind makes, in opposition to how Spirit wants it to be in ITS service, is a protest against God’s will and an attempt to steal the mind from God. It is supposed to be used for creating and extending love, not for making up your own fantasies.

God has provided the content. HE is downloading it to you. You simply need to be WILLING to receive it. We are not accustomed to receiving, as ego-oriented folk. It’s not what the ego wants to do. Billions of facebook accounts attest to the ego’s desire to broadcast ITSELF and not God. Mind is required to let there be help or input, or truth, that it has no ability or desire to define or interfere with.

Accepting the atonement is an act of TOTAL SURRENDER, giving back the mind to spirit, handing over decision making to spirit, dropping all fights against God’s will, admitting that God is the ONE SOURCE, ALLOWING GOD TO BE THE ONE WHO IS RIGHT, and letting Him do TO YOU and THROUGH YOU whatever he wants, happily, and gratefully, because he ONLY wants to love you. Which, fortunately, is absolutely in our best interests and can only bring us joy, not some kind of prison sentence.

God is waiting patiently for us to LET GO AND LET HIM. He wants to heal through us. He wants to love through us. We simply need to become willing to surrender our ego’s authority problem and LET HIM. To plug our mind back into HIS BROADCAST, His radio station, and to radiate it outward WITH Him.

Holy Spirit WILL UNDO ALL the consequences of your wrong decisions, IF YOU WILL LET HIM. You let Him by surrendering your ego and being open to TRUSTING Him and ALLOWING HIM to move IN YOU and through you. He can heal your sickness, your body, your mind, your life, your problems, IF YOU WILL LET HIM. He wants to help you and to heal you FOR YOU.

Holy Spirit is active. He is capable and willing to do anything FOR YOU. We are not supposed to be doing this course all on our own. We are not responsible for doing all of the healing or for fixing all of ourselves. We show willingness, by surrendering unwillingness, and then LET HIM DO IT FOR US.

"He asks but little. 8 It is He Who adds the greatness and the might. 9 He joins with you to make the holy instant far greater than you can understand. 10 It is your realization that you need do so little that enables Him to give so much."

He very actively WILL COME INTO YOU and will perform supernatural healing on you, and on others through you, without you lifting a finger, IF YOU WILL LET HIM. If you thought you had to do this whole entire course on your own and that the only advances would come from your own efforts, you are mistaken.

The Holy Spirit will start to operate FOR you and THROUGH YOU (speak through you, heal through you, direct you specifically, etc) as you start to surrender enough that you LET HIM, that you MAKE ROOM FOR GOD in your life.

As you start to RECEIVE AGAIN, being willing to accept atonement again, being willing to accept your innocence again, GOD WILL MOVE and will start to do stuff FOR YOU. It’s pretty awesome, when you let go of the reigns and take a leap of trust in Him. To let someone else "do stuff to you" for your benefit DOES require trust, which you CAN develop. Once you trust Holy Spirit to heal you FOR you, incredible things start to happen.

Invite Him in. Let Him work in you. RECEEIEEEEEEIIVE His Help. He wants to help you. You don’t have to do this all on your own.

There is one reference to "vertical perception" in ACIM, as part of miracle principle 41. Jesus says:

"41. The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. The sudden shifts from horizontal to vertical perception which the miracle entails introduces an interval from which the doer and the receiver both emerge much farther along in time than they would otherwise have been."

So he introduces this idea that there is a horizontally oriented way of perceiving, and a vertical way. The horizontal way is what you don't want, and the vertical way is what you should be trying to shift towards. But what are these two ways of perceiving?

Let's start by saying the world doesn't exist yet. You are designing a new world inside a computer. You're using some 3D software to model forms and objects and are placing them in a scene. Your intention is to create a 3D holographic movie of various CGI scenes, in which anything goes.

As far as you are concerned, as the director and editor, it's a level playing field. There are no inherent rules or laws as to what is possible or what can happen. There are no laws of physics set up. There are no limitations. Your imagination can run wild.

So you start designing this environment, composed of what seem to be models of objects - cars, buildings, bodies etc. But simply by putting them in the scene, nothing happens. They just sit there. Nothing causes anything. There are no consequences. There are no laws. There are no forces of repulsion or gravity or collisions between things. Objects can exist in the same space overlapping even. There are no chemical reactions. No biological processes.

From this perspective, which we'll call "vertical" or "above the battlefield", you are in a position of vertical causality. The level you are on is ABOVE the level of the world you're making below. Whatever you decide, happens. So if you decide to move one of the models of a car, the car moves. It can't move on its own. But moving it doesn't do anything. There are no effects or limits. You can even move one car to overlap another car, without anything happening. But let's say you want to make it SEEM as if there is a car crash. What do you do?

Well, you're first going to have to CAUSE there to be a scene with two cars in it. You're going to have to cause the two cars to SEEM to move. They will not be moving as a result of having an engine, that's just a pretend engine "for show". Your mind is going to determine where the cars are. You can even pick up the cars and plonk them down somewhere else, or make them float in the air, with no regard for any laws of physics. So you deliberately move both cars in what appears to be a direction towards each other, on a fake road, pretending they are "driving" and making "broom boom" sounds like children at play.

When the cars approach and seem like they should "crash", nothing's going to happen. They'll pass through each other. So you have make up some fictional "laws of physics". You make up some rules which suggest, when this car touches the other car, it will SEEM as if they push into each other, "causing" a crash. One car might be thought of as SEEMING to "cause the crash". But this is entirely illusory. It's on purpose. The car does nothing. The mind that causes EVERYTHING about the car, causes what seems to be the crash.

The director - the true causer - is deciding that car A will crash into car B. And the director also has to deliberately model the way car B will deform to make it LOOK AS IF car A's impact caused bodily damage. So when you now "play the scene", it's going to SEEM as if it's an animation in which the two cars move towards each other on a road - under their seeming own power - not seeing the hidden hand of the director - and collide. Car B seems to become damaged, and it looks like car A was the cause. But it's just an illusion. Everything that happens is orchestrated from above. Did you fall for it?

You know better. You know that NEITHER of the cars has any causal power. You know from this vertical position, looking down on the whole scene from above, as the director, who can pull all the strings and change anything at will, even changing or breaking the laws of physics, that it's NOT TRUE OR REAL that car A crashes into car B. But based on appearances, viewed through a camera (the body's eyes), it SEEMS as if car A causes damage to car B. The camera frames the scene just right to make it seem believable.

This is because when you look at the scene through the camera, which ONLY looks at the **end result** of the director's work, the body's eyes do NOT see that the entire scene is fabricated, they do NOT see that if the director so chooses the car will not be damaged, they do NOT see that there are strings being pulled to create the ILLUSION of laws of physics, and they do NOT see that the movement of both cars is being orchestrated by the ACTUAL CAUSE, the mind. All the laws of physics are EFFECTS, not causes.

Even the damage to car B cannot occur without the higher level mind causing it. It is NOT caused by car A. The illusion that car A has causal power is AN ILLUSION! It's "causality" is ONCE REMOVED from what the REAL cause is. And taken at face value, the body is "blinded by perception of form" and appearances, not looking past them and not seeing the trickery and lies that are producing this illusion. And so it is tempted and deceived by what it sees.

So at the level of the world, which is the scene containing the objects, viewed through the body as the camera, looking at the props and taking them to be not only real but the FIRST ORIGIN OF CAUSALITY, your body assumes there is no other cause that CAME BEFORE, no prior or higher cause, no bigger picture, no author, no orchestration of the world, no secret agenda, no plot to deceive, and just takes it at face value. It thinks then that the car ITSELF had causal power. And now there's reason to blame the car for "causing it".

Seeing the scene this way, is what we call FALSE PERCEPTION. The entire physical world IS FALSE. All the objects are false. ALL the laws of physics are false. ALL of it is a lie. It's a movie set. Every apparent "horizontal causality", where it seems something on this level in the world CAUSES something, or is the true origin or chooser of something, creates the illusion that the world has real consequences, causal power, makes things happen on its own, and isn't being run by a deeper, hidden author.

The DREAMER - the director of all things that happen - goes unnoticed and hidden behind the scenes. He is the cause of the "causes" in the world. He is the one deciding that all objects move. He is the one making up the laws. HE is the one deciding what SEEMS to affect what. HE makes both the causes and the effects that we see as being on the same level. He orchestrates all events and has power OVER everything.

He can also BREAK all the laws and consistencies and illusions of the world through his seemingly "miraculous" freedom and transcending of all illusions. He can rewrite the world. He can make mountains move in an instant. He can reverse death. He can make a pretend body seem to walk on pretend water, as if gravity were total nonsense. He MADE UP gravity, and is not bound by it. He MADE what we call sickness and death, and can ABOLISH both. He is the director. He has the power to dominate all things in the world. There is NOTHING his holiness cannot do. His mind has the power to make WORLDS appear!

To those on the horizontally perceiving level, who are living within the context of ASSUMING the world is real and causal, when the awakened dreamer - a miracle worker - decides to CHANGE the dream in a way that BREAKS the normal order and laws, having shifted into vertical perception, and EXPRESSING a vertical causality, SEEMS to be doing things which are "impossible".

He seems to be breaking the laws of physics. He's walking on water, he's multiplying objects, he's cancelling death, he's curing all sickness, he's moving mountains with his mind, and seems completely unlimited by anything in the world. To those asleep, he appears miraculous. Yet he is just being natural. He is in touch with the power to cause and choose, under NO LAWS but God's. Those fixated on the body's world see him as OUTSIDE what's possible. He breaks their reality. And they do not understand how he can do this.

When you are believing everything the body sees, which is an illusion, the illusory world of form, you are having "horizontal perception". It's the same thing as false perception. And everything in the world, all objects, all laws, are what you see when you are only looking through the camera which was designed on purpose to NOT SEE the secret behind-the-scenes activities. The body fixates only on the story, the appearance, and the illusion. The end result or effect. The dream. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

To horizontal perception, ie false perception, everything in the world seems to be lined up side by side. Like in a crowd of people. All horizontally spaced out. And so if one of the bodies is sick, and dies, the appearance is that not only is the sickness and death "reality", there is also a strong BELIEF IN (being deceived by) these appearances. The divisions between things make the body's appearances seem very tangible and pronounced. Differences are emphasized, so as to blind you to the deeper truth.

Someone operating on the level of false perception believes that sickness is real, death really happens, the world is dangerous, people sin in bodies, stuff is attackable, there are causes to be afraid of, we are victimized by the world, and are at the effect of the world. To them, the FORM of differences are very strongly deceptive, bodies all seem different, problems seem different, and the world is highly fragmented. What the body sees is believed. And then all kinds of coping strategies arise from that perception of horrors.

To move into "vertical perception" ie true perception, you're not merely going upwards above the battlefield and still perceiving in a horozontal way, you're moving OUTSIDE of horizontal causality and seeing from an entirely different perspective. Outside of the laws of space and time and physics. You're lifting up out of the illusory world, the story, the fictional movie. You're taking your perception OUT of the role of "character in a dream", and becoming aware that YOU ARE THE DREAMER. You are that one who MADE the world, made the bodies, made the planets, and invented all the laws. And you recognize you have been "doing it to yourself" - which is the secret of salvation.

You made up bodies, made up a world, made up laws, made up scenarios, forgot who you were, believed YOUR MOVIE was orchestrating YOUR life, that your scene had causal power over you, that you were now a character IN the movie, a body - the hero of the dream, and thought the dream was happening to "you". You lost touch with your vertical causality, the fact you are directing the whole thing from above, and that you are under NO LAWS BUT GOD's!

Your "miraculous" freedom FROM all causality and laws on the horizontal level, allows you to perform "miracles" - or rather, expressions of vertical causality, which BREAK AND DEFY these "second hand" "once removed" causes. Illusions of causes and illusions of laws are nothing to a miracle worker, who recognizes there is no order of difficulty because ALL of the lower orders are at YOUR effect, including what seem to be causes. You are free from all limitations. The hierarchy of illusion is FLAT to you. ALL illusions are the same. Raising the dead is no harder than healing a headache.

From the higher vantage point of vertical perception, looking down on the WHOLE scene from above, the distracting ILLUSION of appearances is SEEN THROUGH. The spiritual eye, Christ vision, looks PAST the movie set. It sees all the props and cameramen and sound crew. It reads between the lines. It sees the glue holding the scene together. It sees the light of the room in which the movie is being edited.

It does not BELIEVE FOR A MOMENT anything that the appearance of the movie would say is true. It doesn't even buy that physical objects are even really there. It pays no attention to appearances of form, shapes, colors, sizes, distances, weights, laws, or supposed differences of any kind. It has the VISION to SEE the WHOLE scene, including all hidden parts and mechanisms and trickery. It recognizes it is all an illusion. It is not DECEIVED by anything at the level of the world. Vertical perception is inclusive, horizontal perception is exclusive.

Mind is cause. World is effect/dream. Mind being causal is vertically positioned above the world. Everything below, in the world, is an illusion of horizontal causality. Nothing about the world is TRUE. Believing it is false perception. When you are in true perception you do not REGISTER the illusions of differences between things. Bodies are not separate. Objects are not real. There is a subtle connectedness that you didn't see before. A light which sparkles between things. A glue which you become aware of. A sparkling unity and sameness that seems to be behind everything.

A vertically perceived world is a forgiven world. Being aware of ALL the information about the scene is awareness of the real world. You cease to project sin and guilt and fear and death onto the scene. These arise only from false perceptions. You don't see it from a horizontal vantage point. You ignore the eyes of the body. You know that nothing in the world is real, so nothing is sick, and nothing is dying, and everything is one thing.

You see death as not an end, at the end of a horizontal linear sequence, but as a dipping DOWN from a higher level to a lower level perception. As an immersion into falseness. And from above, you know death is TOTAL FICTION. Just some arrangement of fake particles that you DECIDED you would call death. Which can easily be rearranged and reanimated if you so choose. It's totally fake. Actors in a movie do not die when their character dies.

Here, above the battlefield, you know you cannot die. You are the author of the world. You are not a body. You are not the story. You make the rules. You can break them. And nothing in the world has any bearing on anything real. Death is now vertically no longer seen as an interruption, but as merely another form of objects on par with all others. Just an effect you have power over. You can choose not to make it happen.

Dead bodies, living bodies, they are all illusions. They have NO inherent meaning. The world has no inherent meaning. You give it all the meaning it has when you design it, projecting made-up stories onto it. The world is nothing but fiction. You are not bound or limited by any of it. You are free. The director of a movie is not bound by ANYTHING that seems to happen. And edits can be made at any time. You have power over the world, because you are its cause.

"W-pI.190.5. It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. 2 Nothing external to your mind (horizontal) can hurt or injure you in anyway. 3 There is no cause (at the horizontal level) beyond yourself (who are above it) that can reach down and bring oppression. 4 No one but yourself affects you. (from above) 5 There is nothing in the world (below) that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. 6 But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see (as director, author, dreamer, law-maker) by merely recognizing what you are (from a position vertically aligned above the world)."

Forgiveness is nothing more than seeing correctly.

It means recognizing that illusions ARE illusions, and not falling for them.

It means overlooking illusions and seeing past them, rather that taking them at their appearance and thinking they are real.

This extends all the way to the illusion of death, which is where the Son of God in all HIs divine freedom and power creates the ILLUSION that He has absolutely no freedom or choice left, or that things can happen to Him against His will.

This is of course impossible, so it is an illusion, bit it APPEARS on the surface to be an unwanted death, happening to someone who didn't seem to ask for it. But the Son of God is faking it.

If and when you can recognize and see that this is in fact an illusion of death, not a real death, then you are now over-looking and not falling for the trick. Believing it's real is a complete mistake.

You will only believe illusions are real when you forget to forgive, which puts you into so-called "judgement", which is really to do with attacking appearances and making them out to be the truth.

Illusions are not the truth. Death is not truth. But as soon as you are convinced that it's real you've become blinded, you've been tempted and you've succumbed to the deception. You didn't notice that it was the Son of God, infinite and immoral, who was pretending He can die.

And so because you didn't look past the ILLUSION of death, to see its Author, which would reveal to you plain as day - this is absolutely pretend - so you enter into the illusion yourself and go unconscious.

All you need realize then is that all you need to do to 'wake up' is to see correctly, ie have your perception corrected, so that you are not falling into the lie, are not believing the trap, and didn't go along with the story. It means fixing your vision on the truth, on what is really going on here, not buying into any form of victimhood or suffering or accidental events, and staying very certain that the immortal Son of God cannot be harmed. Death cannot be real. And nothing is really happening.

To overcome an illusion, ie "forgive", you must learn to see past the deception that you've fallen for, remember the truth, and stop taking it seriously. It's like some old trick that someone keeps playing on you and finally you figure out that someone is behind it and it's not just some random bizarre thing going on, his cover is blown and the illusion is broken, and now you can no longer fall for it. That's all it is, just learning to recognize and see the truth and stop being deceived by appearances.

All false appearances are your interpretation of the 'illusion of separation' as though it is not an illusion. Behind this misinterpretation there is still an illusion being created by the Son of God, but it has no power to convince you it's real unless you choose to play along with it. Then it's just something you can't believe anymore and you know is false. As such you escape death, because death is just part of believing that illusions are the truth.

"Salvation requires the acceptance of but one thought, you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself."

I'm seeing this is the vital key to salvation. To be saved you merely need to accept that you are in whatever condition God created you to be, you are only that, and you're not anything else.

It's like accepting an "off the shelf" solution. Letting God be the one who is the author of you, is the undoing of the authority problem. It is the acknowledgement that God is your creator and source, and that you have inherited from God. That you are only what he wants you to be.

It's a willingness to stop trying to define yourself, invent yourself, change yourself, establish yourself, or be the one who in any way has any say in who and what you are. It's a willingness to just accept a self, an identity, a nature and a condition, that someone other than you has given.

What you are was GIVEN to you, not made by you. Someone other than you, God, decided what you would be. He is the one who has the privilege of deciding what is true of you. Only he can create you. Only he can cause you. Only he has the authority to cause you to be what you are.

So this means you have to give up ALL efforts in trying to define what is true of you. WHO YOU ARE IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. Who you are is God's business. All you have to do is be willing to just be what you were appointed to be, what you were created to be. To be okay with trusting that God has done a great job of creating you to be perfect and that you're totally happy with that.

This is acceptance of atonement. Simply accepting the self God GAVE you to be. Being of God. Being only what he wants. Being fully wanted by him, and being willing to let yourself be wanted by him. Recognizing that you have never really had any say in who and what you are at all. You've only been denying who and what you are and pretending you can define yourself. Who and what you are has nothing to do with you.

Surrender your drive to keep redefining yourself, trying to convince yourself that you're something you're not. Resign as your own teacher, in this regard. Stop trying to teach yourself what you are and just accept that you are what God created. That you are as he created you to be still, and you have not changed since he created you. You're still the raw original fresh new self that God wills. You ARE THE WILL OF GOD.

All you have to do is find out who you really are, who you were created to be, what your given true nature is like, and simply "know thyself" as God intended. Just be you. Be the divine beautiful soul that God created you to be forever. And drop all efforts to be something else - a body, a separated ego self, a special self, a deprived self, a guilty self, a fearful self, all these other fake identities that you make up. Just be christ. Be what God wants you to be.

The truth is that this world is merely an EFFECT, coming from the mind, and mind is the only cause.

Since the world is only an effect, we are deluded when we believe that it has some kind of causal power. We look at the things that seem to happen and we say, this caused that, and that caused this, but this is not true. Effects are not really causing anything.

To recognize the world is nothing but an EFFECT, is to recognize that its seeming ability to cause things is only an illusion. You as the dreamer of the dream are NOT being caused by the dream. You are cause, the dream is the effect.

This means if the world can't cause anything, it has no power, it can't create, it can't change what you are, it can't act against your will, it can't do anything to you, it can't hurt you, it can't make you sick or suffering or dead.

Effectively, the world IS NOT CAUSING YOU AT ALL. It is literally not doing anything whatsoever.

You are only ever caused by God - forever an effect of God. Gladly what God chooses that you be, is good, and gives you eternal life and happiness. You are caused by God, you are not caused by the world. The world is doing nothing to you at all.

"The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect it cannot make effects."

"There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically."

"It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did."

"You may cause a dream, but never will you give it real EFFECTS. For that would change its CAUSE, and it is this you CANNOT do."

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream."

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

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which sets him off from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more valuable, and therefore true. And each establishes this for himself, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values. This is justified because the values differ, and those who hold them seem to be unlike, and therefore enemies."

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The truth is not something that we make up, decide upon, invent, have to "believe in", or have as a kind of personal preference. The truth does not come in a billion forms. There is only one truth, and that truth is set in stone forever by God. God is the creator of actual reality and no-one else. Not even His creations, his souls/sons, have the ability to change reality or to define what the truth is.

This means that when we are in the business of accepting the truth, we must also be in the business of putting aside personal opinion, a desire for a special or different or exclusive viewpoint, and in fact even the ownership of "this is my view". Beliefs only take you so far and are too personalized.

In this ego world, we are very accustomed to everyone seeming to have their own opinion. This is because everyone with an ego stands like a gatekeeper in between the truth, acting like a filter or go-between or authority, with a need to "approve" of anything being claimed. This is because the false ego authority wants to constantly define the truth, invent it, change it, decide what it is, author it, distort it and basically make-believe whatever it wants to.

As we move towards atonement, what HAS to happen is the relinquishment of this egocentric ownership of opinion making. The truth is true all by itself. We cannot define it, our only options are to either a) accept it or b) deny it. When we deny it we attempt to invent the truth ourselves, to reinforce it through beliefs, and to play at being God. This is egotism. But as we SURRENDER the ego, we are also becoming willing to give up on being the AUTHOR of the truth.

What this then leads to is that you become wiling to "take on" the "off the shelf" truth that God has established, to accept it, to allow it, to align with it, and to integrate it as "your own". Without changing it, we give up trying to fight with reality and instead settle in to accepting it. The reality as God has defined it, that is - the nature of the Kingdom.

This absolutely means that as we become more attuned with the real truth, the entire idea of "having an opinion" is being dissolved. Personalized, "everyone has their own truth" bullshit is dissolved. We become representatives of a truth that we did not invent. We become spokespersons for a truth that isn't an "interpretation". We allow the one truth to function through us and to organize our mind.

That means that over time, as we continue to awaken, the things that we express, the words we use, the statements we make, the documents we write, the various expressions that we perform, cannot be logically attributed to ourselves. When we express something we can no longer say that this is our own opinion. The truth, God's truth, is ONE truth, and it is FACTUAL REALITY. It cannot be argued with, it cannot be changed. As this truth becomes our truth, we stop being the "sole owner" of truth, of a personal opinion, and we instead become a reflection of God's truth.

So we then start to express things which are factually true, which are not an opinion, and which others can also either accept or deny. In many cases people will mistake your expressions for you having an opinion, it being just your beliefs, just your interpretations. They will argue that you are trying to be ego or right just because you have a sense of certainty. But the fact is that when you get with the facts, which HAS to be possible, and you are in accord with God's truth, you ARE CORRECT. Because you have accepted correction.

Some people will not like this especially when they have an ego and especially when they do not understand how any kind of truth could be "impersonal". The truth is something to be shared and joined with, not something to possess and control. As representatives of God, teachers of God act almost in the same way as the Holy Spirit who is the Voice for God. He speaks FOR God because He is "the same" as God and has no "different" opinion of His own. We listen to Him because we trust that the truth for Him matches God's truth. As a corrected individual, we too become voices for God, correctly representative of what is true.

It's important to then realize that because we are surrendering artificial truths, interpretations, opinions, beliefs, playing God, authority problems, false exclusive ownership etc, being spiritual does not remain a "personal" exercise. Moreso it means that you are becoming a salesperson for God, peddling His wares, sharing His contributions, relaying His messages, being His eyes and ears. You take on the eyes of Christ and cease to have "your own" separate viewpoint.

So when we are evaluating whether someone is just having a belief, or whether to listen to them, or whether it's all just opinion, or whether everyone's truth is different, we should remember also that those who DO have alignment with ACTUAL TRUTH, will appear to the ego to be egos claiming total righteousness, when in fact all they are doing is being a medium through which a truth BEYOND themselves is being expressed.

In the factual truth there ARE no opinions. There is no wiggle room. There are no exceptions. There are no loopholes. There is no uncertainty. There is nowhere that some kind of "maybe" comes into it. There's no room for interpretation or opinion. The truth is either true or it's not.

The entire realm of having opinions is founded on the idea that something is open ended and doesn't make sense and is not factual. Which leaves everything open to interpretation. And where there is interpretation, there is hallucination and insanity and a complete breakdown of any kind of factual consistency.

There is no room for having a different viewpoint in God's Kingdom. We are to accept the truth that God has GIVEN and to make it our own, and to then express that same truth without distortion. This erases the ego and leaves no doors through which it can mangle and distort and personalize the facts. In God's logical system of thought there is no error and everyone is in perfect agreement. There is one truth, and we are to accept the Holy Spirit's message, in accord with it, without question.

It is obvious that in this world there is very little agreement. Everyone sees to still have an ego and an opinion. We can barely agree to what the course says and means. Each person has their own interpretation and viewpoint. There is a tremendous amount of mistakenness. Yet Jesus states that teachers of God truly should all share ONE truth and agree on EVERYTHING. There should be a single reflection coming through all such persons which is the same in all of them, not thousands of different versions. One truth, one voice.

"God's teachers appear to be many, for that is what is the world's need.Yet being joined in one purpose, and one they share with God, how could they be separate from each other? "

"As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages that are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source."

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself. There was no time when all that It created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that It created suffers any pain. Forever and forever are God's Thoughts exactly as They were and as They are, unchanged through time and after time is done." W320W111 urtext.

Many people have an idea in their head, before they even come to ACIM, that reality must be some kind of "oneness". It's based on their idea of God as "one great big giant thing". But A Course in Miracles has a very different definition of God and reality, so this idea of oneness has to be thrown in the trash if you want to do ACIM.

ACIM's model is that God is a creator. God is a cause. God creates many things. God has children. God has created an entire sonship comprising many sons. God's children are also creators who cause the creation of living beings. And God has also created a permanent Holy Spirit, and angels.

Without the idea of God as a creator of many things, there is no notion of God having ANY sons. There is no way to explain the authority problem or its undoing. God is now the one who separates and has to atone. There is no way for mind to be in the service of spirit. There is no way for you to be as God created you. There is no way for you to have permanent brothers to share with so that you're not alone forever. And without God as cause, you cannot have an inheritance.

ACIM's model is very very fundamental on this. God HAS to be thought of as your creator, the source, out of whom not only you but also others are created. God has to be acknowledged as your father otherwise you cannot share his power or give his gifts. God has to be seen as the cause of you and of everyone else, otherwise you are at the effect of your brothers. God has to be fundamentally acknowledged as having created A FAMILY.

This flies in the face of the idea that reality is just one thing, or its one giant expanse of energy, or there is only God being alone, or God doesn't cause anything, or that there is a kind of oneness that is all just a great big "one" without anything in it or any parts or anything to share with.

If you like, A Course in Miracles is a kind of "creationist" teaching, not that God created the Earth and bodies but God IS a creator of something. And that makes it impossible that reality just be one big blob or some void or some kind of giant emptiness or expanse of singularity. This fundamental idea of reality being "a oneness with nothing in it" IS NOT what ACIM teaches.

If someone wants a path that teaches that God is just sitting there on his own and that you are him in his entirety, then you really are barking up the wrong tree by taking this course. ACIM is not for you if you want to believe that God has no family. Or that YOU in turn are not a co-creator with your own creations. Your mind HAS TO EXTEND in order to live and to be healthy, just as God's does, which automatically implies that creation is the only true nature of anything real. Without it God is dead.

ACIM is a teaching on cause and effect, with God as cause of his effects, who inherit everything from him, and in turn become causes with effects. Reality has to be accepted as a very large "place" within which God hosts a great many things he has created. And which is forever increasing. An entire Kingdom of souls and beings and life. A Kingdom of unlimited thoughts and power and creation.

If that's not what you "like" or you think reality is not like that, then you probably should chose a different path which frames God as an inert blob. Trying to force ACIM to BE that path is just mangling its teaching, creating denial in your mind, splitting you away from the truth and producing a fairytale about not existing with no brothers to relate to. It's a shame that some people consistently assert that they have no self and there is no one else. If that were true, God has no creative power whatsoever.

God has a mind. God has awareness. God has many thoughts. God has creations. God has a Kingdom. God has power. God has a will. God has love. God feels. God knows. God be's. Gid us an author. God causes. God shares himself. God communicates. God has relationships. God is far more than just some expanse of existence.

Given everything is driven by free-willed cause and effect, nothing is accidental. There are no mistakes. There is nothing happening randomly or by chance. Nothing happens at all without someone choosing it and willing it. There must be a CAUSE, before there is ANY effect.

You might think this is not true based on what appears to be a world or 'nature' that seems to do random stuff and is hard to explain as being anything but chaotic. But the fact is that nothing happens without some kind of "cause" making it happen. Whatever the cause may be. Without a cause there is no effect, so whenever something is 'happening', something caused it.

You then also get the idea that even if you cause something, it seems to have a cascade of completely "unintentional" consequences or side effects. There's seemingly knock-on effects or a whole chain of seemingly chaotic aftershocks. Yet are these things truly random? Are they not simply cause producing effects, which act as causes producing effects, and so on, in a chain of causality?

As the Course says, those who are to meet will meet. So for example, people meet because they choose to do so.

If you also look at My Self is Ruler of the Universe, it explicitly states that nothing happens without your say-so, and anything you choose happens, and nothing else.

The course also describes how teachers of God make all decisions fully consciously, with total awareness of the consequences, meaning, they know exactly what effects they are causing, and cause only those effects, on purpose, deliberately. And it is by choosing only loving choices that they guarantee their safety.

So this world, while it may SEEM like it's a total mess of random chaos and accidents and things happening against your will and victims and mistakes and all these illusions of uncertainty, in actual fact absolutely nothing is happening without a cause. It is all chosen. All deliberate. All instigated by a mind, somewhere.

Nothing moves or animates without mind making it move. Nothing appears or disappears without mind's say-so. Even the laws of nature are being "run" by a mind, somewhere, deliberately choosing what will and will not occur. The entire world would not even show up if it were not for a decision made somewhere.

And just because we think okay, we "set it in motion" and now the chips will fall where they may and a completely automatic random chaos follows, that's simply not true. Causality ensures that the consequences were set up in the causing, not as a result of the effects. Effects do not choose. Effects are not the source of decision. Even if there seems to be an entire cascade of consequences, one thing leading to another, is that not also completely specifically deliberately set in motion by a mind making a choice?

The truth about this world and enviornment then is that nothing happens without your consent, everything that happens is chosen, the world doesn't even spin unless someone spins it, and it is literally impossible for anything to happen if you do not choose it to. You are the author and dreamer.

You are the causer, chooser, instigator, of everything. You are never at the effect of some 'other chooser' choosing against your will, or things happening 'on their own' or as a result of some process or sequence of events that seem totally unrelated. There is no 'un-asked-for' anything. Remember that this entire world didn't even exist until someone explicitly put every piece of it in place, through choice and belief.

So there are no accidents, of any kind, ever. There is no victimhood. There is no mistake or something un-asked for. BUT, it DOES remain possible to make a POOR decision. It's possible to make a wrong decision or a decision for something that brings suffering. It's possible to evaluate situations and set in motion things which later turn out to be harmful. And it's possible to be very deluded as to what you have chosen or why.

The law always holds. Your free will is never violated by anything. If you would simply choose to wake up, you would. "Heaven is a choice I must make". Nothing can keep you imprisoned in hell against your will, other than YOUR choosing. You CAN make a poor choice, producing explicitly selected consequences or conditions, but you cannot make NO choice, and whatever you DO choose WILL happen. No exceptions.

The task then simply becomes one of, making a better choice. "I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace - I made the decision myself but I want to choose otherwise - I want to choose otherwise because I want to be at peace". Choose again, the course says. You are free to choose, but not free from the consequences of choosing. And all consequences are chosen. This is how you create your own hell. And it is how you find salvation.

If you start with "I'm defective, I need to improve", you will end up with an ego.

If you start with "I'm perfect, I need not change", you will end up with a perfect self.

Most of us start with the approach that we're defective, full of guilt, unhappy, broken, lost, etc.... and then we start seeking on the basis of this premise.

But when you do that, there is huge risk of not questioning the premise itself, which is false. The premise says "there's something wrong with me, I need to improve myself." That's NOT true. But if you believe it, you'll start the "seek and do not find" spiritual journey.

Then you'll be trying to make yourself better, be more loving, have more wakefulness, gain more growth etc. The trouble is, this will cause you to AVOID the real problem. The real problem is your belief that you are defective in the first place.

If you start with "I'm not defective, I only need to accept I am already perfect", then you're starting out on the right foot. And it results in you questioning any belief that says otherwise, without you going off on a tangent based on a false premise.

So it's another sort of paradoxical thing. You have to start out as you mean to finish. You have to start as though you're already at the end, and sort of work backwards to accepting a pre-existing God-created condition of perfection.

If you do it the other way around, starting with lack and guilt and not good enough and all that, thinking this is true, and reacting to it, and feeling compelled to do something based on it, you'll be led astray by the ego. And then you'll become a spiritualised ego.

We've all fallen for this trap. Believing we even NEED to seek for a perfection, or to make it happen, or to construct a better self, when in fact God has already done the hard work.

If we adopt the ego's view that we need to perfect ourselves, then we avoid looking at the fact that we are IN DENIAL. We have DENIED that we are perfect, and this denial is the problem. We have DENIED happiness and peace and love, and the removal of the denial is necessary in order to become AWARE OF it again.

If we are in the business of trying to focus on the positives and the being more loving and more kindness and all these sort of non-denial happy-go-lucky perspectives, then we may inadvertently NOT LOOK at the DENIAL that we have. We may not look at the actual problem - the block to awareness - the barriers that we have built against a PRE-EXISTING perfection.

So in general we have it all backwards. We are looking for something in the wrong place and in the wrong way. The spiritual path is actually back to front. We need to be melting within, going within, finding the truth that God has already put there, finding the solution God has already established, accepting, recognizing, rather than going out of our minds trying to make it, build it, change it, author it, transform into it.

If you can't look at and question the ASSUMPTION of the belief "I'm not perfect", "there's something wrong with me", then you're not really making any headway. The trick is not to answer the question of what you have done wrong, it's to question WHETHER OR NOT you have done anything wrong.

There is nothing wrong with you. You're just pretending, and you don't really need fixing. But your belief that you need fixing needs fixing.

"We will but be making perfect TO you, what is ALREADY perfect IN you."

"To repeat an earlier statement, and also to extend it somewhat, the Soul is already perfect, and therefore does not require correction."

"Whatever is true and real is eternal, and CANNOT change or be changed. The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters."

If sickness is real, and given that God is the author of Reality, it would have to mean that God created the sickness. And since God is Reality, this would mean that God Himself IS the sickness.

The belief that sickness is real, is therefore actually a belief that God is sick and that God wants you to be sick. If the sickness is truth, ie reality, then God cannot be a loving God.

Love would not create sickness. Love would not want someone to be dead. To suggest that sickness is real, is to suggest it was created by Love, and that Love wants you to die. This is utterly ridiculous!

Sickness therefore CANNOT be reality. It simply cannot be real at all. It MUST be an illusion of sickness. ALL sickness must be an illusion. It may look like sickness, behave like sickness, be caused by things like sickness is, etc, but IT IS NOT REAL SICKNESS.

There cannot be real sickness. If reality is associated with sickness in any way, God would have to be sick.

The belief that sickness is real is the belief that an ILLUSION is actually real. It is the belief that illusions are real that IS sickness. Sickness is the belief that Reality is not reality, and therefore that illusions have taken the place of reality. It is the belief that God is not healthy, and therefore it is true and real that God must be dying or dead.

Sickness is therefore an attempt to kill God and His creation, to destroy His son, and to render God nothing. Anyone believing in sickness as something real, something serious, something to be afraid of, or something to struggle with, is believing that sickness is not an illusion, that God is dead, that sickness is the truth, and that it is God's will that you die. Again, UTTERLY RIDICULOUS!

So, let's all learn this and learn it well. Every single person or establishment or governing body or hospital or clinic or doctor or researcher or scientist or anyone in the public or anyone struggling in their home with sickness etc, ANYONE that claims that sickness is REALITY, they MUST be out of their mind! They are not sane and they are not telling the truth. This MUST be a false belief.

God cannot and does not create suffering. God is LOVING. And God is REALITY, and therefore only love is real. And since love would not create suffering in any way - love only creates love and health - ANY and EVERY form of sickness, suffering, lack, death, loss, pain and misery must be a complete illusion. It is NOT REALITY.

We need to wake up to this. We need to become clear about this and recognize this. And we need to stop accepting and listening to everyone who says that sickness and suffering are real. It is a lie. Even told by those who are sick or those who are jist onlookers. People who look at the sick and think others are sick but they themselves are not sick, ARE sick, because sickness is real to them.

People are doing the best they can to try to deal with the sickness, rarely finding a cure. There is a better way. Miracles are everyone's right!

Not believing in sickness means not believing that an illusion is real, which means being SANE. And sanity is the solution to all sickness, because all sickness is mental illness.

Who and what you are in REALITY cannot be sick. You are fucking immortal! You cannot be sick, you cannot die, you cannot change, you cannot be unwell or tired or lacking or depressed. You cannot be dead. You cannot be dying. And you cannot be suffering in any way. Anything that looks like it is contrary to that it MUST be an illusion. And if you believe it is not an illusion but a reality, then you are mistaken and you need correction by the Holy Spirit.

If your brother is the cause of you, you are perceiving him as though he is your creator ie your father.

If your brother is your creator, you are his child.

In terms of causality, being a father means being cause.

In terms of causality, being a child means being effect.

You are not supposed to be the child of your brother. Nor is your brother supposed to be your parent.

Believing that your brother has the power to cause you is an attempt to claim that your brother is your father and you are his child. This is in denial of the fact that God is the father of both of you are you are both his equal children.

In truth, everyone is equal. There IS NO CAUSALITY BETWEEN BROTHERS.

Therefore in earthly relationships where you think that a parent is supposed to have power over a child, or a child is always going to be the inferior child of the parent, that is working against God’s will.

Children on earth therefore are supposed to become equal with their parents and the entire parent-child relationship is supposed to dissolve and be replaced with a relationship purely based on equality and brotherhood.

When children remain children and continue to be under the power of the parent, or the parent can’t stop seeing the child as a child rather than an equal, the relationship has not reached maturity. Nor has it reached holiness.

When you believe that your brother - in whatever form or role they take - has some kind of power to cause you, author you, create you, make you exist, define what you are, or otherwise affect you, you are making yourself into a victim, are making them into a victimizer, and there is an inequality in the relationship.

God did not create your brother to cause you. Your brother is not the creator of you. Therefore they are not responsible for what you are or what you experience. Nor are you responsible for what they are or what they experience.

If you have guilt about your children or about your parents, or are under their thumb, or trying to control them, or cannot accept them, or keep seeking acceptance by them, or want their approval, or keep trying to make them proud, you are giving them authority over you. It’s the same thing as claiming they are the cause of you, which makes you a victim at the effect of them. You do not need any of this and it must be healed.

In the ego’s world, it has set up relationships and families and procreation so that what should be a pair of equal brothers end up being dominant, controlling, owning, reprimanding, having authority over, and generally being inequal with the children. The children are kept as inferior and not on an equal footing, in order to maintain the illusion of special relationship. To maintain having power over them, or being powerless to do anything to become their equal. This is dysfunctional.

The setting up of brothers as a hierarchical family of parents and children, is an illusory false arrangement that leads to all kinds of dysfunctions and inappropriateness, SO THAT if you can learn to overcome all of those dysfunctions AND transcend the family structure, you will become mature and free. In other words, until all members participating learn that they are 100% equal brothers first, all baggage is removed, all power struggles are resolved, and the family is essentially "flattened" in its equality, the lesson has not been learned and the relationships have not matured.

There is tremendous resistance to this from both directions. Parents believe their children are their property and must behave according to their wishes. Children believe their parents have control and power over them and they must obey and worship them. Parents posess responsibility for the children and thus take away the child’s self-responsibility. And then the children displace and project responsibility for their existence onto the parent, and get all banged out of shape when the parent isn’t being parental enough.

These are all signs of immature family dynamics. Until the children and parents have become equals in every way, the relationship is not holy, it is special. When children cannot get out from under the parental thumb, they have not become adults. When you cannot stop trying to please your parents you have not learned that you do not need their approval because you are under no laws but God’s. God is the only true cause or parent. Even your earthly parents are children of God. Even your spouse is an equal child of God.

The only true healthy family structure is the one ESTABLISHED BY GOD! And that is where God is the only parent, all children of God are perfectly equal, no child causes any other brother, and every child is fully responsible and empowered to own the fullness of the unlimited power that God gave to them. In God’s kingdom the only beings that are your children are NOT your brothers, but are your *creations* which are part of your self. None of those creations are in the dream world and they are waiting for you in heaven.

Only through equality with ALL PEOPLE can you enter into holy relationship within the Sonship of God. And God’s sonship is His divine family, in which all sons are loved equally and no-one is more special or deserving than anyone else.

God loves us all equally and that is how we are to love and relate to each other.

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."

While ACIM, as a book, is a collection fo words, these words are twice removed from reality. They are symbols of symbols.

Jesus, who wrote the material, was not operating on a level of symbols upon symbols, or even a level of symbols. He is operating from a level of total awareness and experience of truth. He is in heaven, and wrote the course material from that perspective.

What you have to realize then is that the words in the book are just expressions from a higher state. They are a sort of translation. So if there is some kind of truth or principle and it's talked about in the book, it may be presented in several different ways, using various words. Because the words aren't the starting point of the truth.

For example Jesus touches on the topic of forgiveness hundreds of times, and many of those statements say practically the same thing. There are even some sentences which are worded almost identically. Yet they appear different in form just because they use different words.

It's important to realize that the words in the book are NOT the highest level of truth, or the origin of that truth. They are expressions OF truth, turned into symbolic form.

For example if Jesus is expert on the topic of forgiveness, he could write literally 1 million books solely on that topic, all using a plethora of words and coming at the same teaching from a variety of angles.

Although he might choose certain words to try to represent the subject matter, that doesn't mean the words chosen are doctrine or some kind of perfect representation. Because you have to remember that they are not only removed from reality, they are part of a strange ego-generated language and is trying to work within their confines so that the people who speak that language will be able to get some measure of coherent meaning from it.

Many of us begin learning the course from the bottom up, starting in the darkness and trying to find our way to the light. We have some pieces of the puzzle but not all, and based on various clues and consistencies we gradually piece together a clearer picture of what it's saying or means. And that can take a long time to sort out what it means without any contradictions or confusion.

Just because the course says something in one passage that doesn't mean that's the whole truth either. Because Jesus may say something in another passage which either clarifies it or seems to contradict it. This is because each set of words are jut one form or expression, and each expression may have nuances or implications or suggestions of meaning which, if taken too out of context or in isolation, may lead to false conclusions.

You can try to think that the words are the meaning, but this isn't always true, and quite often you'll see people quoting isolated passages as if they are the whole story. Since Jesus is coming from a singular whole truth, the course should be considered a kind of holographic projection of that, and that means there is fragmentation and differences and in some cases there may appear to be things which don't seem to add up.

Jesus has gone to great lengths to try to ensure that the course words are as unambiguous and consistent as possible, but the nature of the beast is that words are limiting and sometimes this adds some confusion.

It's important to gradually realize that beyond the words, and prior to the words, there is a state of truth and an entire logical system of metaphysics. For example the idea that the world was made as an opposite to reality. That's a simple metaphysical concept and you could put that into a million words to express it.

As you "see through" the words, read between the lines, and look to the deeper meaning, you're gradually going to find yourself moving beyond the words of the course entirely. Once you SEE the underlying metaphysical basis for what he's saying and why he's saying it, and therefore what his statement MUST mean regardless of their words, then you are really starting to see the "course beyond the course". The higher form of it.

In a way, this means that you have to "forgive the course", you have to overlook its forms and not be deceived by the appearance of its words. Just as much as anything else. It's easy to get hung up on trying to preserve the perfect words or read the earliest edition or whatever but that's all surface fluff. The real meaning behind it is way deeper than any of the words and any of the editions.

This is also why it's important to foster a personal relationship with Jesus and Holy Spirit and to get truth from the horse's mouth rather than getting lost in the book. Logically it makes more sense to speak to the author who is an expert, than to get lot in confusion based solely on some words on a page.

Once you grasp the logical concepts, they transcend the words. And then you can look at the words and you can see where Jesus is expressing FROM and what he's getting at and therefore, logically, what the words must mean. And this can be quite eye opening because then you'll start to compare and contrast the clearly logical meaning of the metaphysics against the English-languge expression or discussion "about" that metaphysics. And this begins to highlight the ways that they can at time be a little different in form. But the higher metaphysics is more accurate than the language-form of it.

One of the problems people have with the course is the sheer mass of words, the holographic scattering of subject matter, the seeming visiting and revisiting of topics, and the difficulty getting through the density of all that language to try to really get a clear view of what's behind it all. And what's behind it is actually very simple and organized and clean. What began as seemingly a huge collection of cryptic statements, few of which were believed or made sense, you end up with a massively stripped down and very simple foundation.

It takes a lot of sifting through the sheer weight of the course material to come to realize just how simple and logical the underlying metaphysics is. It's kind of like a sculpture where you have to continually chisel away at the rough details and the seeming differences until gradually a clear picture forms. And what them emerges is simple and beautiful and clear and well formed.

This is why it's important to learn not to get too hung up on what is written in the book. The form of the words can become a distraction away from the meaning. Some people get really hung up on what it says, taking words and phrases in isolation and thinking that they represent the whole meaning. This is because the ego believes that form IS meaning. The form of the course is not its meaning, however. Its meaning comes from where it CAME FROM, and the form it took in it expression is just a symbolic version of that.

There is a truth beyond words. There are structures and relationships between things that underly their English-language expressions. There is a metaphysics deeper than any page of the text. And as you move closer toward the deeper meaning you also more closer toward experiencing it. This is all part of the purification process. All part of undoing the seemingly elaborate complexities of the ego and replacing them with the sheer simplicity of God's truth.

"Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly." UrW132L4

It cannot be that the physical world was merely 'made' ahead of time, and that we then entered into it as passive spectators. This would have to mean that everything about it was set up beforehand, meaning the entire thing is destined and has a fixed outcome. It would be then impossible to change it because it would be proverbially "set in stone".

The fact that it's been proven many times over that mind can influence the body, that psychokinesis exists, that the mind can change physical matter, that mind can produce and heal sickness etc, clearly shows that this so-called "world" is in an elastic state of flux and redefinement. That we are in effect projecting it NOW, that mind can influence it at any time, and that its state and conditions are not fixed.

It may be true that mind originally did dream of this universe in general and set things in motion, but the fact still remains that the same mind which dreamed it to begin with is continuing to operate in and upon it. Meaning that mind can still alter its dream, even if it's an ancient dream.

In a sense this indicates that the two opposing views - that we just perceive an existing world in different ways, or that we're literally making the world right now, are actually both true. The same mind that made bodies, is continuing to make bodies, and to alter them. The mind that made the sun and the stars is continuing to influence them. And that same mind can end the world in the blink of an eye.

Since we are the dreamer of the dream, even if we established an initial dream, we are still dreaming it, and thus changing it. As Jesus says in the course, in seemingly contradictory terms, you should change your mind ABOUT the world because your perception OF it can vary, BUT at the same time, by doing so, the whole world must change. Because the world is an effect of the mind.

Long story short, we made the world, seemingly in an ancient past, but we're still working on making it and re-making it. We can change how we perceive it, as though it is objective, but it is also still subjective, and mind can still change it.

You could say that the idea of the world being fixed and predestined arises from a sleeping mind that is seeming to dream of arriving in a pre-existing world, which it is at the effect of. You could also say that a more awakened mind comes to the awareness that it is presently dreaming it, can more lucidly change its dream, and can wake up from sleep entirely.

Thus the idea that our job is only to re-perceive an objective world is a closed-minded false-perception based view in which we see ourselves as victims and not causal. And in this view it seems (unforgivingly) that the world is "already there" and the best we can do is change what we "make of" it.

But as we awaken to the power of God in us, we also re-access the original ability which, temporarily unconsciously, was projecting the world to begin with, and then was can master that power and modify the projection, literally changing the world of matter. This then isn't merely a case of changing what we make of it, but of what we make it literally be.

A deeply sleeping mind believes the world is real and objective and that its only salvation is to change its interpretation of the world. Which leads to keeping the world and regarding it as God's creation. In this view we are merely passive powerless observers who have no influence on anything, living out a mindless "script" and having no freedom of thought or effect to change anything.

But a more awakened mind recognises the world is a dream, not God's handiwork, and instead becomes masterful over the dreaming process, to dream in ways the less awakened would consider "miraculous." Gaining access to the mind's ability to orchestrate the dream, to modify bodies, to move mountains, and to radically break with all the laws of physics and limitation. Demonstrating that "mind over matter" is the fundamental fact of what puts the world there to begin with.

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father. But He would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it." UrT11D10

"You WILL believe that you are helpless prey to forces far beyond your own control, and far more powerful than you. And you WILL think the world you made directs your destiny." UrT21F3

"For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what IT wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source." UrT21D11

"For time YOU made, and time you CAN command. You are no more a slave to time than to the world you made." UrT22C8

"This single lesson does it try to teach again, and still again, and yet once more; - that it is CAUSE and NOT effect. And YOU are ITS effect, and CANNOT be its cause. Thus are you NOT the dreamer, but the DREAM. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that IT contrives." UrT27I3

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother." UrT28C7

There are two distinct aspects to creation. One is God's own Self which is complete, the other is God's creation or the exending/projecting outward of God. This extension is referred to as Christ or the Sonship or Kingdom.

Now, we're told that it is the Son who is dreaming, not God. We're also told that God does not believe in or acknowledge the dream, otherwise God would have become insane and there'd be no God to go back to. How is this possible?

Technically speaking, if everything is one and there is only God, then God is responsible for the dreaming of the cocacola delivery truck which just drove past my window. And he is responsible for babies seeming to die. And he's responsible for war. Can God conceive of war, even in a dream?

There's a bit of a problem there, because the course says "never was love in the world", ie, God did not "enter into" the dream. Jesus is also quite clear that while the dream never truly happened in terms of reality, the IDEA of it happening did happen. Can God have an idea of being separate? Is he even capable of that? What would happen if he were capable of that? Who is going to get God OUT of the dreaming state and wake Him up, if God Himself is asleep?

This is why God created the Holy Spirit to "do his dirty work" so to speak. To awaken His son from sleep, cooperatively.

What this all boils down to is this. If God is not part of the dream or dreaming, there ABSOLUTELY MUST be some kind of "distinction" or "separation" between what is God and what is the Son. The Son's mistaken use of will does not affect the father. The son can't cause the father. So that means the Son effectively has free will. COMPLETELY FREE will. It means if the Son chooses to try to will against God, although it in truth impossible, He can still imagine it happening, without God's "approval" so to speak.

Jesus describes mind (of souls) as having two potential functions. One is creation - which uses mind as a medium to Create along the same lines as God, AND He uses the term "co-create" several times. The other is the POTENTIAL of mind to PROJECT, which means it actually has the freedom to ELECT whether or not it will will with God or not. He even says that the fallen angels are "free to establish their kingdom wherever they choose". ie God isn't going to force them to comply with His will anytime soon.

This is ALSO why, the curriculum is mandatory and REQUIRED, BUT... you can elect WHEN to take it. You can postpone it, ignore it, choose away from it, and decide not to learn it right now. How is that possible, if God's will is somehow forcing you to act a certain way or make certain choices? And how is it possible that "love does not enter where it is not welcome", meaning that if YOU elect to do so, you are able to make love not welcome?

Basically, long story short, God does not WILL that there be death, God does not will suffering, God does not will war or conflict, God does not even will any kind of dream. In fact God wills that you WAKE UP from dreaming, and that's why He created the Holy Spirit to facilitate that. And this is why you also have to give your WILLINGNESS - your little willingness - in order to CO-OPERATE with God's Will for you.

There absolutely definitely IS a distinction between the freedom of God's will, and the freedom of your own will. Will does not coerce or force you. While you are an effect of God, you are not his slave. You are not created to "have to" do anything you do not choose to do.

The ONLY WAY that God cannot be the one who dreams, is by having given you ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY FREE WILL. As in... practically the same thing as saying you are SEPARATE. Absolute complete freedom. If you did not have absolute total autonomous freedom to decide for yourself, dreaming would be impossible and if dreaming were happening God would die.

This is why A Course in Miracles is not well represented by thinking of it as a teaching of conceptual "oneness" ie singularity, or as a teaching of "non-duality". Non-duality completely ignores the FREEDOM with which God creates, and the total freedom He GIVES to his creations. As the course says itself

"How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom’s name. Unless you do your will, you are not free. And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never lose your will, when He gave you His perfect Answer."

"The mind can be right or wrong, depending on the voice to which it listens. "

"Souls were given their own true authorship, and men preferred to remain anonymous when they chose to separate themselves FROM their Author."

"Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS."

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

"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. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others."

The world cannot make you peaceful. The world cannot take your peace away. If you have peace, it is INNER peace. Inner peace means the peace is inside of you regardless of what's outside.

Peace is an attribute of WHAT YOU ARE. It isn't something you have to add-on or feel as an emotion or attain. You have peace in you because God put it there. The peace in you IS HIS. It is a meeting place in you in where you are calmly quiet in the presence of God. It's inherent to your being.

Peace, as part of your being, cannot be given to you by the world, because the world is not the author of you, cause of you, creator of you, or your father. You are not a product or side-effect of the world. The world can't make you be at peace. It doesn't matter how many devices or toys or special relationships or events or special practices or whatever you do, the peace you're trying to find is a part of you, not something someone can give to you.

Peace can be uncovered, or tuned into, but that means tuning into your real self. It means joining with God. Accepting God's GIFT of peace which was infused into you in your creation. To be at peace you merely need to be yourself. The world didn't put it there, nor can it change it. Only you can decide whether to acknowledge your inner peace or deny it, which means you want to cover it up and pretend it's not there.

Your inner peace can't therefore be taken away, upset, disturbed, shocked, changed, or made to stop, by anything that happens in life. The only reason you "lose your peace", or rather lose touch with it, is because you cover it up by going off on tangents of ego. You choose not to be yourself, and that means you deny your natural peace. Only you can hide your peace, and not even you can destroy it because God himself is holding it in place.

You can be in your peace no matter where you are, no matter what you do, who you see, what happens or doesn't happen. You can be in your peace in spite of the world. You can be in your peace in all situations. You can be in peace permanently. What is the world going to do then, when you choose to stay in your peace and it can do nothing to stop you? When, by choosing your peace, the world has no say in whether you are peaceful or not?

You have to learn to separate your peace from the world. To stop believing that certain things in the world could give you peace or make your life more peaceful. And similarly, stop believing that things in the world have POWER to take your peace away. If you feel that something is going to happen that is taking your peace away, you are GIVING it power over you, and pretending that it is causing your peace to go away. But it's you doing this to yourself.

What if you were to go through the exact same events, seeing the same people, doing the same tasks, encountering the same seeming problems, but stayed in the state of experience that YOU want to be in? What if you could maintain peace all the way through it, and not HAVE to suffer or be stressed out or annoyed or angered? What if you can just be "passer by", not ALLOWING others to seem to take power from you or dictate your INNER state?

This is part of what "I need do nothing" is about. That you will remain calm and happy and in touch with the LOVE AND PEACE THAT YOU ARE, regardless of the BUSY things that you are doing in the world. "It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him."

"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. Today's idea places you in charge of the universe, where you belong because of who you are."

"But there will always be this place of rest, to which you can return. And you will be more aware of the quiet center of the storm, than all its raging activity. This quiet center, IN WHICH YOU DO NOTHING, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent."

"You have given your peace to the gods you made, but they are not there to take it FROM you, and you are NOT able to give it TO them. You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it."

"There is a light which this world cannot give. Yet YOU can give it, as it was given YOU."

"I could see peace in this situation instead of what I now see in it."

"Love's arms are open to receive you, and give you peace forever."

"Miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."

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

"The world is but an effect and not a cause at all."

"The mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

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

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

----- There are two levels -----

1. Higher mind, which is causal and causes everything. It causes the EFFECT of a lower level 3D world, which is entirely governed by what this mind decides to make happen. This is the level of "the dreamer."

2. The world, a 3D projected image which is entirely an EFFECT of the higher level. This level has NO causality and cannot make anything happen on its own. No part of it causes any other part of it to do anything. This is the level of "the dream."

The higher level CAUSES the lower level effects. That means causality is "vertical". It proceeds from above to below.

The lower level of the world itself, has NO CAUSALITY in it. It is 100% pure effect. It is not alive, it has no will, it has no mind, there are no forces or powers, no reactions, no chain of events, nothing. It's like a movie that's been projected onto a screen. The movie cannot DO anything outside of the content that the PROJECTOR has put onto the screen.

However, the higher level mind is capable of creating ILLUSIONS of lower-level causality. For example, it can place an apple in the world, next to an orange. It can then make the orange move (which cannot move by itself). The orange can move towards the apple. However, there are NO lower-level laws that DO anything, not even laws of physics. So the orange moves THROUGH the apple, having no effect on it. It's like it's not even there. It's just an IMAGE. Two images overlapping.

In order to make the orange "collide with" the apple, the higher level mind of causality has to make the apple move, at just the right moment as the orange SEEMS to touch it, so that there is an ILLUSION of a reaction, which makes it look AS IF the orange collided with the apple. There were NO laws on the level of the world causing this reaction. It's entirely fictional, decided upon by the higher level mind.

To an observer who has "bought into the illusion", it SEEMS as if there is some kind of "law" on the lower level, governing what will happen when the orange hits the apple. And the these are described as laws of physics. These laws are based on the idea that stuff on the lower level is capable of CAUSING EFFECTS on the SAME lower level. This is the idea of "horizontal causality". ACIM refers to the illusion of this as "horizontal perception."

The illusion is so convincing that it seems there is a "law" in effect, some kind of universal rule, that ensures the apple and the orange will act AS IF they are colliding. These are then thought to be natural laws or laws of nature. THEY ARE NOT. THEY DO NOT EXIST! The orange NEVER causes anything to happen. The apple NEVER is affected by the orange. BOTH OF THEM are being simultaneously moved and animated BY the higher level mind.

So in the world, it SEEMS as though there are laws of physics which govern how everything interacts, but it's 100% once removed from what ACTUALLY causes everything to occur. The world ITSELF is once removed from reality/causality, which is why it is an EFFECT or illusion and DOES NOT EXIST!

The things in the world that you THINK are "causes" or "causing something", are NOT THE CAUSE. Cause is always in the mind! They are ILLUSIONS of causes, pretending to be causes. Both causes AND effects on the level of the world are BOTH EFFECTS. This is why Jesus says "the world you see DOES NOTHING. It has no effects at all" (it has no causal power at all).

So while there is this horizontal illusion of cause and effect, which is of the ego, since these so-called "laws" are actually fictional and not the REAL cause, when the mind decides to make a change in what it PROJECTS, it is capable of BREAKING THE LAWS. If the mind decides suddenly, that the apple and the orange will combine together to produce a banana, THEN SO BE IT.

Vertical mind will CAUSE a banana to be projected INTO the world as a banana showing up. This will VIOLATE every conceivable "horizontal law" that you can imagine. And THIS IS MIRACULOUS! "Miracles violate every law of reality as the world judges it." The mind has simply decided to CHANGE ITS DREAM, and this breaks all of the FICTIONAL horizontal laws that APPEAR to explain why things are the way they are, or what limits they are restricted by. Mind OVERRIDES the law!

Miracles are also demonstrations. And miracles are also teaching devices. When the higher mind expresses its power OVER the lower level, and shows that it is the AUTHOR of the "fake laws" by breaking those laws, it demonstrates that those laws ARE ILLUSIONS. "Appearances can be changed." And by changing those appearances, it is PROVEN that those appearances MUST have been illusions. This is educational.

Additionally, the "nature" or "natural law" of the horizontal level, which is fake, is BELOW the TRUE NATURE of the higher level mind that causes it all. That means that which CAUSES the lower level effects is ABOVE the NATURE of the lower level. Another word for that is SUPER (above) NATURAL. Supernatural. Miracles are supernatural! They transcend the "nature" of the "ego", which is the illusion that horizontal causality is real. Also the idea that horizontal causality is real, is really the ego idea that there is no God! That there is no HIGHER CAUSE.

This is why it was possible for Jesus to do things like walking on water to defy gravity, multiplying food to defy ideas of limited materials, changing a tree branch into a snake and back again, raising a body from seeming death, etc.

These are all POSSIBLE because the mind that MAKES all this worldly content show up has POWER OVER IT from a higher level. When a person's mind has become VERTICALLY ORIENTED, which relates to "miracles entail a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception", the mind aligned with CAUSALITY can make ANY changes you can possibly conceive of, OUTSIDE of the illusion of "laws that can't be broken." And this is what MIRACLE WORKERS demonstrate. The idea of irreversibility is SIN. Miracles prove sin is not real by CHANGING what the world says cannot be changed.

The distinction between what is CAUSE, and what is its EFFECT, perfectly explains the structure of cause and effect and WHY supernatural miracles are possible and HOW they operate. They are acts of MIND and WILL firmly rooted in causal power, simply electing to produce a different EFFECT. Since "the world is but an effect and not a cause at all", there is nothing in the world or OF the world that cannot be changed, healed, undone, reversed or manipulated by the power of the Mind. This includes bodily sickness and death. "The mind (cause) must be stronger than the body (effect), every miracle demonstrates this!"

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

This morning Jesus told me to "listen". So I just lay there and focused on listening. My thoughts stopped. It was at times difficult to maintain extreme focus on listening intently, particularly without anything to listen "to". My mind kept getting lost agains in ego dreams and thinking. Then I'd come back to it.

Listening very intently stops all thoughts. It also makes you more present.

Then something else happened. Holy Spirit said, "receive". So while maintaining this listening state, I allowed myself to receive. This means, receiving without necessarily 'giving' anything. Allowing God to come to me. I immediately felt Holy Spirit's presence in my body which then proceeded to shake and stuff as Holy Spirit healed me. Each time I allowed myself to stop, listen, and receive, another wave came.

Here's why listening and receiving seem so alien to the ego, and why it stops ego thoughts.

Your mind in its natural state is supposed to receive everything from God. It is a receptive device. It's willingness to listen to everything God is sharing and to be open to it keeps it plugged into love. It is supposed to receive a constant broadcast of love, all the way into the deepest depths of the soul.

This is simple cause and effect. God is cause, God creates and sustains you forever, you are the effect of God and so it is completely natural for your soul to simply receive whatever God is creating you to be.

This openness to receive God, to allow God, puts the mind into its natural state of extension, where it receives input from God and then broadcasts it, like a repeater. It allows God to flow through it and express love outward, increasing the love and joy.

But in the separation idea, something happened.

Another way to think of separation is that we tried to unplug ourselves from God's input, to stop listening to His Voice, to stop receiving His love, and to run off with our hands over our ears trying not to acknowledge, allow or be open to receiving the truth. It was an attempt to shut out the 'cause' of ourselves and to pretend that we ourselves are our own cause.

This does something unnatural to the mind.

Without input coming from God, the mind starts 'inventing' inputs. It starts to dream. It makes stuff up. And since what it is making up is not love, all of this dreaming produces ego thoughts and forms. "All thoughts produce form at some level." So now instead of simply radiating silence, or peace, or love or joy, the mind starts making "noise". This noise takes the form of ego thinking.

So ego thinking then is, in every case, an attempt to run away from God, to not listen to God, to not RECEIVE, and to instead try to give without receiving. This is because in the separation, ego separated giving from receiving. It actually is trying to give give give all the time (because it is sacrificial), but without receiving, because it wants deprivation and lack.

So the ego-driven mind is very good at making noise, broadcasting, giving without receiving, creating lack, inventing thoughts and dreams, and making illusions. It is all symptomatic of being unplugged from God and not receiving God as input.

So what happens is, if you focus on listening, ALL of your ego thoughts will go silent. Very automatically. You don't need to thought-watch or try to transcend them or stop them or whatever. They are only happening because the mind is not listening to God. So as you put all your focus on God, all your problems are solved and the mind automatically stops inventing stuff.

All of the ego's thoughts are mind wandering. And mind wandering means, allowing mind to take you away from yourself and away from God. This means going into ego thinking, making illusions, believing separation, and stopping receiving. If you did not "wander away" from yourself, ie yourself in God, you would not have any ego thoughts - OR any ego at all.

Essentially this is the ONLY meditation that works, because there is only one problem - separation from God, and only one solution, rejoining your mind with God and putting your mind back in service to spirit. ie being willing to receive God's will and extend it, rather than willing against it.

It is very easy and simple and very powerful. Just put all your attention on listening. Listening means you are shutting up and stopping making noise and being quiet and allowing something else to have it's say. It means you are willing to stop being the author of illusions, and to receive reality - what it wants to tell you it is rather than your ideas about it.

Whether you listen to sounds or not does not matter. But even if there are sounds and if you put all your focus on listening to them, that is helpful too. Not much different to transcendental meditation where you focus on one thing. But you don't even need something to focus on.

You are basically focusing on God. On allowing God to express to you, whereby you listen to that expression and thus receive it. Listening and receiving are the same thing. This is also how you get in touch with spiritual guidance.

"If you do not hear the voice for God it is because you do not choose to listen."

When you surrender and listen, and become open to receive, it can seem as if you are being selfish by ONLY receiving. But try it. Allow God to come to YOU, rather than you doing all the "seeking". "Be still, and know that I am God." Just allow yourself to receive God's love, let Him love you, let the love come to you, and simply absorb it. Without needing to express anything, nor even trying to extend it.

We have become SO used to not receiving that we think we're supposed to do something in order to earn or be entitled to something. You don't. God would love you regardless of whether you do anything. Just be still and listen and let yourself receive from God.

I think I posted about this a while ago and called it "God bathing"... like sunbathing, you just soak up God and receive the warmth. Like recharging a battery before use. It feels great to let yourself receive love. Especially to allow yourself to be loved without you having to do anything, recognizing you are worthy of that. It actually makes you feel VULNERABLE. Exposed to God. Allowing God into your innermost private areas. Soak up the love. It will heal you.

And, if you are willing, to receive God's love, you might also invite Holy Spirit to enter you at that time, and He really can go to town healing you. There are major miracles of healing waiting for you to receive if you will just surrender and be willing to let it come to you. This is also the key to abundance.

The world can't really be held responsible for its nature. It was given its nature by those who made it. It was made for a purpose to serve them. And it functions exactly as they wanted it to.

Its makers wanted the world to be a place opposite to heaven in every possible way. Whatever was true of heaven, the world we made had to be unlike it in the most extreme ways possible.

Whereas heaven was light and strong and eternal and perfect, the world we made HAD to be dark and weak and temporary and imperfect. There was no real choice in this. Certainly the world itself had no choice in this, because it didn't make itself.

We wanted an opposite to God, an opposite to heaven, an opposite to eternal life. So we made an unreal dream of death and unhappiness. A dream of mortality and impermanence in which all things are infiltrated by death and destruction. A world opposite to creation where creation is impossible.

"Creation is impossible in this world."

The world cannot help this. It was made to be like this. Its nature is the only nature that is even possible as an opposite to heaven. It HAD to be this way in order to be different to the Kingdom.

It's not like the world can actually choose to be heaven, or have a nature that is exactly the same as heaven. Nor is it possible that the world is actually electing which nature to have. It cannot make this choice. It is something we made, and isn't the creator of itself.

This is also why the ego - something else we made, is forgivable. It is just as forgivable as the world because it did not make itself. It has the nature it has simply because it could have no other nature. A device spawned from an idea of separateness COULD ONLY lead a state of selfishness and isolation, exclusion and limitation.

The ego itself had no say in this. In fact it has no say in its own nature. In this sense it too is not responsible for being the way that it is. It was forced to be this way by its makers. And now it is true to its nature and follows the laws assigned to it.

The ego cannot really be accused of therefore doing bad things on purpose as though it could actually ever choose not to. It isn't a device for truth and salvation, nor is it a mind that can make a decision. It certainly isn't its own author, even though it has invented a story about a false God that it thinks made it.

The ego HAD to be the way it is because this is the natural outcome of an idea of separateness. Separateness never looks any other way or functions any other way. The world and the ego and the body simply CANNOT function any other way. They were given a function when they were made and they cannot deviate from it. The reason being that this function derives from a premise which has never been altered.

So in a sense we can't really hold the deeds of the ego, or of bodies, or people, or the world, against them. They are being faithful to their nature. They are just ticking over like a machine which was designed to function a certain way. They cannot do anything about it.

"The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real."

The world cannot suddenly decide to be nice to you. The ego cannot suddenly tell you what the truth is. The body cannot suddenly be immortal. Objects cannot suddenly transcend spacetime. They are all locked into a system. It's a system-wide state of laws and rules by which they were made, they always abide, and they can never escape.

They cannot escape themselves, nor can they offer salvation from themselves. They are not going to change their minds. They are not going to take on a different nature. They are always going to keep running and operating on the same dysfunctional basis because that's the nature that was given to them, and they know nothing else. Nor are they capable of anything else, just as a tool or device can only do what it was designed to do.

So while the world and the ego and bodies attack and murder and destroy, in a sense they cannot help it. It's what they do. It's all that they do. They don't know how to do anything else, nor can they be taught to. Nor can they be kept while they are transformed into something better. They can only ever keep on being the way they were always going to be from the start.

Because they do not know what they do, they are forgivable. Because they did not create themselves, they are forgivable. Because they can only function in fault and failure because they were supposed to, they are forgivable. Because they can't help but break and disrupt and distort and skew and deceive and destroy, they must be forgivable. They aren't doing it "on purpose" out of optional spite, nor are they doing it on a basis of being free to do anything else.

The world can only destroy, and it can only deny, and it can only lose, and it can only fail. That is its nature. It can only disappoint and it can only fall short and it can only hurt. That is its nature. It can only be at war, it can only decay, and it can only die. That is its nature. It was born to die, and never to live except for death.

We cannot hold its nature against itself when it doesn't even have the slightest say in its nature or behavior. We cannot redeem the ego. We cannot redeem the world. The world cannot be saved in this sense because it cannot stop functioning the way it does even if "it wanted to". It is helpless. It is powerless. It has no causal choice. It can make no decisions. It is weak and vulnerable and fearful and nothing. So it can't really do anything of its own volition.

The world and the ego are nothing but puppets on a string being dangled by sons of God playing with sharp-edged toys. The world and the ego won't stop trying to kill you off either. Nor will they suddenly turn perfect or operate with holiness and happiness. The world is a pointless depressing hopeless place because all its roads lead to death. It doesn't know how to live, it only knows how to die. You can have pity for it in that sense. You can even have compassion for it.

"Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys? How soon will you be ready to come home?"

The world will never be other than what it has to be in order to fulfill the function of separation. And the ego will never have a loving truthful nature. They are lost because they are loss. They are faulty because they were not made with love. They are broken because they were not given immortality. And they can only but disappear.

I forgive the world for being true to its maker. I forgive it for being incapable of real change. I forgive it for not knowing how to function better. I forgive it for being only capable of disappointment. I forgive it for attacking and destroying mindlessly and without consideration. I forgive its determined mercilessness, driven solely by its inherent function and its blindness to anything else. I forgive its evil which does not know what it does. And I forgive it for ever seeming to be needed, for a purpose of attack, from which it cannot deviate.

There is no spiritual ego. There is no sacred planet. They don't exist and never will. How can you hold a dream against ITSELF when YOU are the one who dreamed it into existence? It is what you want it to be, and it does what you wanted it to do. And until you stop dreaming it will continue to be a dream of death.

"It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life."

"Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real."

"The world goes AGAINST your nature, because it is out of accord with God's laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable."

"The ego cannot make this choice because of the nature of its origin."

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

"You see the world which you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image-maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause."

"The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever BE unbelievable."

"the world will never give a gift that is not made of fear"

"Everything the world can offer promises some joy that it will never give." "Your ego and your Soul will never be co-creators" "the body may become his chosen home, but it will never be his home in truth."

"The body's eyes will never see except through differences."

"These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see."

"The body's serial adventures, from the time of birth to dying is the theme of every dream the world has ever had. The "hero" of this dream will never change, nor will its purpose."

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place?"

"For the ILLUSION of love will NEVER satisfy you. But its REALITY, which awaits you on the other side, WILL give you everything." "It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind."

"There IS no meaning in the form, AND THERE WILL NEVER BE."

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

Let's just be clear about something here. God creates or extends reality. Everything real is within God's being. Everything real comes from His Will. Ok. The entire "realm" of God is within Himself, and all of it is real and deliberately created BY HIM.

SO.....

If we claim, God created planet Earth, God created bodies, THEN... we have to also say this:

Earth, bodies, dog shit, death, war, terror, sickness, suffering, starvation, explosions, supernova, ice ages, being eaten alive, piles of puke and diarrhea, cannibalism, murder, destruction, rape and incest, etc... ALL OF IT.... MUST, be part of God, per God's will. If it is God's CREATION, there is no loopholes, no exceptions, no OTHER makers of this stuff. It is all God's. And it's all real. And you cannot escape any of it.

If whatever God creates is within HIS OWN BEING, and is part of HIS OWN SELF, per HIS OWN WILL, then absolutely EVERYTHING within his being must be in accord with His Will, CREATED BY HIM, without exception. And therefore everything "created" MUST reflect God's nature, intention, attitude.

This should be pretty obvious. The ENTIRE CONTENT of whatever "world" He creates must be 100% HIS DOING and entirely WHAT HE WANTED.

So this now means, every single thing in this world, good or bad, right or wrong, happy or sad, is HIS DOING. And this leaves NO ROOM for other wills to have other doings. There are no other causes. This makes God the AUTHOR of all hatred, pain, torture and decay. All suffering is HIS FAULT. HIS WILL.

God causes floods. God causes famines. God causes stars to explode destroying solar systems. God causes black holes to suck up galaxies and civilizations. God causes murder and attack and death. ALL OF IT MUST be part of God's mind and will, IF GOD CREATED THIS WORLD.

And if you can understand why this is entirely correct, you should also realize that if God WERE to do this, to have DONE this, God WOULD BE EXTREMELY CRUEL.

As the opening statement says, if God created BODIES, which includes all forms of bodies not just human, including planetary bodies, IF GOD created them, DEATH IS REAL. Because these bodies DO DIE. Flowers die. People die. Planets die. Galaxies die. IF God created these things, DEATH IS REALITY. And if death is reality, then you CANNOT UNDO IT, you cannot overcome it, you are guaranteed to die forever. And that means there is NO SUCH THING as eternal life. So you better be counting the days until your "inevitable death."

The idea that God made the world is the idea that GOD IS THE EGO!!!!

And that means, quite simply.... GOD WANTS YOU DEAD. That it is GOD'S WILL THAT YOU DIE.

So now, we're in a bit of a predicament, because unless you want this to be TRUE of God, you CANNOT be claiming that God made the world. It literally CANNOT BE POSSIBLE that God had ANYTHING to do with the making of any of this shit, if God is to be loving. It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest, God WANTED there to be suffering, sickness and death.

Now, some people, who are insane and in denial, and cannot accept this fact, try to find another way to look at this situation, so that they can do two things: 1) KEEP the world and keep believing God created it, 2) Explain it in such a way that it is NOT terrible, bad, ugly and murderous. And so what do they do?

They come up with this bullshit idea that if you will simply change your mind ABOUT it, you'll suddenly realize that MURDER AND DEATH are totally LOVELY. That it is NATURAL for animals to eat each other alive. That there is SUPPOSED to be seasons in which things are born, suffer, and die. That if we will just skew our perception enough, supposedly "truly", then we'll see it as GOD INTENDED, as though to say, the things which SEEM like death and cruelty, ARE NOT ACTUALLY that.

And so what does that mean? It means God is totally nuts. Because now God does CRUEL THINGS, on purpose, under the BELIEF that THEY ARE NOT. It makes God out to be an absolute idiot. It justifies murder. It justifies death. It tries to adjust to the world to MAKE IT OK. It sees true perception as a device for changing the MEANING of a meaningless world, to GIVE it meaning, so that it seems meaningful. It's an attempt to find a way to look at this world such that EVEN THE HELL of it SEEMS LOVELY AND ACCEPTABLE.

That, is totally nuts. But that is what some people are doing with ACIM.

This world cannot be God's will. God HAS TO BE CRUEL to produce ANY of this, regardless of how you perceive it, regardless of how you think it was conceived, regardless of how you think God views it. God could not construct EVEN THE POSSIBILITY for suffering. God could not come up with even a scenario where you MIGHT even die. Yet alone to accuse God of MAKING DEATH. And to then try to explain it away by saying it''s not death, really, it's actually totally natural part of life. BULL SHIT.

I want you to consider this deeply. Think about it. God HAS to be TOTALLY FUCKING CRUEL in order to make a world like this. Which,may I remind you...

"Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"

"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. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

And therefore, Because God IS NOT CRUEL AT ALL, He CANNOT have made it.

Nor does it STOP BEING cruel just because you try to LOVE IT. Just because you forgive it, look past it, or truly perceive it, this does not change what it is. A true perception of a world of death doesn't turn it into a world of life. Who can look on death and believe IT IS NOT THAT? No amount of forgiveness has ever stopped animals from eating each other alive, babies from dying at birth, planets colliding, or black holes swallowing whole entire civilizations.

THIS WORLD, is NOT God's creation.

THIS WORLD, is the world WE made when we were delusional and trying to DENY God's world. This is written all over the course. A delusional system of those driven made by guilt. A place where God could enter not. An attack on God. A picture of the crucifixion fo God's son. Make no mistake it is NOTHING LIKE God's creation, and crediting it to him is a MASSIVE disservice. God in his perfection could not come up with the shite that happens in this world. And all of the shit that happens would HAVE TO BE BECAUSE OF HIM if he created it.

God does not create hell, suffering, death, decay, destruction, sickness, meaninglessness, suicide, insanity or hatred. Look around you. This is not reality.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world.God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself."

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

If you want to SEE REALITY, you have to DENY THIS WORLD. There are two worlds. One you made, one God created. In God's world there are no bodies, no day and night, no stores, no stupid stuff you don't need, no sickness, no death, no muder or attack, no suffering, no time, no loss, no dog shit, and especially no bad weather that kills people. If you want to SEE IT, to see the world GOD ACTUALLY created, you have to STOP LOOKING AT THIS PLANET. Sight of it is COSTING YOU the ability to SEE CHRIST where HE IS, in God's Kingdom, BEYOND THIS WORLD.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it.

This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world (heaven) HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT (heaven). And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made (earth), and do not want. The only effort you need make, ***to give this world away in glad exchange*** for what you did NOT make, is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

Heaven is not like this, folks. God can do a lot better.

Heaven is possible. Earth is impossible. This is a simple enough fact. But maybe you don't realize just to what extent the things of Earth are impossible. For it is here in "this world" that things which CANNOT OCCUR in heaven, seem to occur constantly. Things which cannot be true, appear to be always true. Events which cannot occur, seem to occur. Impossible consequences seem easy to cause.

For example, nothing real can be threatened or die. In this world, however, it is easy to threaten anything and destroy it. This is in fact technically impossible. Nothing in heaven can die because it has immortality. So what is this seeming appearance that something can be easily attacked and destroyed? It's can't BE HAPPENING. Everything about it must be a lie. Right down to the very atoms that are forming the murder weapon, and the subatomic forces that are allowing the body to be damaged. IT CAN'T BE!

When you really look at it, it is shocking. Everything that SEEMS POSSIBLE in this world IS IMPOSSIBLE in reality. Destruction of any kind of not possible. Sin is not possible. Death is not possible. Attack is not possible. Sickness is not possible. Damage is not possible. Fear and guilt are not possible. Murder is not possible. Space and time are not possible. The laws of physics are not possible. Consumption and decay are not possible. Change is not possible. Just look around you, all the things which seem COMMON and ever-present and constantly proving their possibility here, CANNOT BE. This world can't be here.

If a body is attacked, and it lays on the ground in a pool of blood, with flesh wounds and damage, this is impossible. This is what we call the "proof of sin". So long as it is there AT ALL, in this form, it is testifying that SIN IS REAL. That attack DID happen with real consequences. And its evidence is easy for anyone to look upon, and not deny. For if the body is damaged and dying on the ground, something IMPOSSIBLE is happening.

Do you realize the extent of this? It means that this whole world and all its workings and EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS, all events, all causes and effects, all states of matter, all forms of growth and decay, everything in this universe, IS A LIE. It CANNOT happen in reality.

" 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 substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

Two planets colliding and blowing each other up, utterly impossible. Bodies consuming each other, utterly impossible. Sickness and suffering and pain, COMPLETELY impossible. All that is required here is to be aware of God's truth. Look at what is true in God and his reality. And then COMPARE it to this world. And recognize they are NOT the same. In fact Earth opposes heaven completely and totally. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way."

Then you have to ask yourself, how can it be POSSIBLE, that this world is in ANY WAY like God or God's creation, given that it demonstrates things that are NOT POSSIBLE in God or to or for God? EITHER heaven's reality is true, OR this world is true. Either the Kingdom is real, or Earth is real. They CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE. Either death can happen, or it cannot. And death is RAMPANT on this planet, so can this planet be true? Not it cannot.

"Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world. "

When you understand what heaven is like, it becomes starkly obvious that this world comprises the EXACT OPPOSITE, and is constantly trying to demonstrate that what CANNOT HAPPEN is happening. That there is real pain and suffering and destruction. These things cannot even exist. If you are seeing them, you MUST be hallucinating a fantasy world. And no amount of forgiveness or changed perception will alter the fact that while bodies CAN still change and suffer and die, UNREALITY is there. Because the world you made is false.

"The ego may ask, "How did the impossible occur?", "To what did the impossible happen?", and may ask in many forms."

"Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

"Pain is impossible. There is no grief with any cause at all and suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream."

"grief and pain must be impossible"

"That is why attack WITHIN the Kingdom is impossible."

"You are in an impossible situation only because you thought it was possible to be in one."

"because the ego wishes for the impossible"

"In illusions the impossible is easily accomplished, but only at the cost of making illusions true."

"For it is here the split with God occurs. A split that is impossible. A split that cannot happen. Yet a split in which you surely will believe, because you have set up a situation that is impossible. And in this situation the impossible can seem to happen."

"Sin is impossible, and on this fact forgiveness rests upon a certain base more solid than the shadow world we see."

"Harm is impossible for God's teachers."

"Gentleness means that fear is now impossible"

"Fear is deception. It attests that you have seen yourself as you could never be, and therefore look upon a world which is impossible."

"It IS impossible to see your brother sinless, and yet to look upon him as a body."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible."

"HE TEACHES THAT THE PAST DOES NOT EXIST, a fact which belongs to the sphere of knowledge, and which therefore NO-ONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS. It would indeed be impossible to BE in the world with this knowledge. For the mind that knows this unequivocally, knows also that it dwells in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all."

"It is impossible to conceive of light and darkness, or, everything and nothing, as joint possibilities."

"UNCONSCIOUSNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE."

"Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

"Attack is neither safe nor dangerous. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE."

"which makes ALL fear impossible"

"Loss of ANY kind is impossible."

"Being faced with an impossible learning situation, REGARDLESS of why it is impossible, is the most depressing thing in the world."

"What is more difficult to grasp is the lack of order of magnitude, which stamps the miracle as something that MUST come from elsewhere, NOT from here. From the world's viewpoint, this is quite impossible."

"For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying LACK of content, makes a cohesive system impossible."

"terror is impossible"

"If the body could be sick Atonement would be impossible."

"But if destruction ITSELF is impossible, then ANYTHING that is destructible cannot be real."

"Actually, a meaningless world is impossible."

"Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion."

"Hear not its madness, and believe not the impossible is true. Forget not that the ego has DEDICATED the body to the goal of sin, and places in it ALL its faith that this can be accomplished."

"To God, unknowing is impossible. It is therefore not a point of view at all, but merely a belief in something that does not exist."

"Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven."

"Without illusions conflict is impossible."

"The idea for today is, of course, the reason why a meaningless world is impossible. What God did not create does not exist."

"It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and keep the illusions."

"The sight of innocence makes punishment impossible, and justice sure."

"The impossible can happen ONLY in fantasy."

"War is impossible unless belief in VICTORY is cherished."

"Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack always BREAKS communication, and therefore makes communion impossible."

"If you wish to be the author of reality, which is totally impossible anyway, then you will insist on holding on to judgment.

"rejection is impossible."

"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. " "He offered us all a final demonstration that it is impossible to kill God's Son; nor can his life in any way be changed by sin and evil, malice, fear or death."

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. "the special love relationship would thus ACCOMPLISH THE IMPOSSIBLE." "It IS the belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore means that you have accepted the IMpossible as true."

"It is impossible that one can gain because another loses."

"Perception is impossible WITHOUT a belief in "more" and "less."

"Partial KNOWLEDGE is impossible."

"Where there is death is peace impossible."

"The world MUST despise and reject me, because the world IS the belief that love is impossible."

"Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened."

"The learning situation in which you place yourself IS impossible, and IN this situation, you clearly require a special teacher, and a special curriculum."

"For if the dream were real, escape would be impossible, and there would be no hope except illusions."

"Impossible indeed; but every mind which looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone. But never in One God."

"How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has NOT occurred, and CAN have no effects. "

"And sin MUST be impossible"

"In this world, it is impossible to create."

One of the worst and most generalizing interpretations of ACIM's teaching, is that "there is no separation". This has framed any kind of separateness as wrong. It has associated all separation with duality, and has stripped oneness of any possibility of being many things.

So now we have in our minds this idea that oneness must be the total absence of separation. This even seems to make logical sense. But it's not the truth. How do we even know that reality has to be oneness? Where did we learn that crap? We've also taken it further to mean that, separation equates with duality, and a lack of separation equates with oneness. As if, there literally is "only one thing", a count of one, as reality. And obviously that must be God, so there is only God. God being alone all by himself. But that's not the truth etiher.

For a start, just as a cursory glance, ACIM has all kinds of material talking about God having a son. A what now? How can God have a son if there is no separation? If you are being strict about this it's impossible for God to have a son at all. Surely that implies there are separations in reality? Surely it's not true that reality has separate parts to it? Surely it has to be all one thing?

Who came up with this notion that reality HAS TO be all one thing with no parts? That is a gross preconception. So many of us keep projecting this idea onto what the course is saying, insisting that reality HAS to be one thing. It HAS to be oneness. We all want that lovely shiny oneness, and it absolutely cannot have any separations in it, because separation is ego, right? Well no.

How about, it would be okay for there to be a kind of separation, where even though there is a separation, it isn't a complete severance? How about if a single environment can contain two things, which are indeed two fully distinctly and wholly created things, but those two things ALSO are unified and share everything with each other? Is it still separation or ego if they are completely open to sharing everything without any selfishness?

The kind of separation that exists in reality is not the same kind of separation that exists in the ego world. The thing that you really need to get your head around is this. One thing can also be many things while still being one thing. Does that sound too radical or difficult to understand? Is such a thing impossible, and why does it have to be "not the truth"?

Wouldn't such a scenario where something is one thing, but is also two things, and the two things are still two things, but are also one thing, be somewhat transcendental? It would have to warp and transcend every notion we have about how everything is supposed to be in a nice tidy box of its own, wouldn't it. It would be some kind of weird thing where something can be one thing and two things at the same time. It might even have to be described as miraculous.

If God cannot create, God cannot live. If God cannot share, God cannot give. If God is devoid of any kind of separation, God can never create a son. Not even one. Not a single son of God can exist in God if God is this very vague idea of "oneness". Some people seem to not be comfortable with the idea of God having TWO sons, but they seem to be okay with him having ONE son, even though that's still a logical contradiction. Why is ONE SEPARATION okay?

Just on the general jist of it, ACIM is saying a whole lot of stuff about God having a son. Now, I don't know about you but if it were to be meaning that he DOES NOT have any sons AT ALL, then I would say Jesus is a terribly misleading author. Just on the basis of how often and how much "the son of God" is referenced, either Jesus is full of shit, or Jesus is deceptive, or the ENTIRE course is metaphorical.

Now, sometimes people actually do opt to believe that the whole thing is metaphorical, because that seems to put a nice bandaid on it and COVER UP the truth. It sort of ties up some loose ends. Those nasty little loose ends that keep saying God has a son. It would be great to just say, well it's all a metaphor, there isn't really a son of God, and to then go onto say that Jesus is just placating your little pretend ego self because it can't handle the truth. Where have you heard that before?

It would be quite convenient IF Jesus actually were only talking in riddles, and the entire course was a lie, and the whole thing was just playing to your ego's need for specialness, and if only "the special advanced students" will get and accept the fact that there really is NO SON AT ALL.

This is the kind of of mad thinking that some people have adopted to try to justify and explain away the very intensely radical truths in the course, to make themselves feel better and to try to understand what the heck it's saying. But it's simply wrong.

God absolutely does have a son. You're going to have to deal with that. If you think he does not have a son, then there is only God. What are the implications of this idea? If there is only God, then you are God entirely, God is dreaming of exile from God, God is insane and believes in death, God has special relationships, God creates poop, and God kills people. Hmm... Is that going to jive with your spiritual goals? It doesn't exactly sound very loving, but it is perfectly logical.

For God NOT to have participated in this madness of a hellhole we're in, he MUST be distinct from you in SOME way. There has to be some kind of freedom that you have "from him" that allows YOUR insanity to not affect him. Otherwise any madness you go into would instantly infect him, and then we'd all be lost forever. God did NOT enter "the separation", did not buy into the mad idea, and did not dream of hell. So who did? And the obvious answer is of course that you - as the Son of God - or at least ONE OF the sons of God did.

The kind of warped bandaids that a person has to come up with to try to mangle the course's meaning to make certain untruths "fit" is quite incredible. We've got people saying that God has no son at all, people saying that one separation is acceptable but not two, and we've got people saying that God can't have many sons because that mean separation. It doesn't, but that's what they think.

And mainly it's because people just cannot seem to conceive of something that TRANSCENDS "either this or that". They just can't seem to envision what a reality is like where one thing is also two things, or even many things, while still being one thing. There is NO parallel to that in the physical world. There are NO examples in your environment that you've ever encountered where one thing is also two things, or two things are one thing, or two things entirely overlap and share the same space. It seems impossible. But THIS world is impossible, so don't you think that means "one as two" is entirely possible?

What some people then don't like is the seeming SIMILARITY between this idea of God being "one and many", and their idea of duality. Oooh... it's a little bit too much like duality isn't it, that must be an ego thing, that must be a bad thing, let's get rid of it. But duality is NOT the same thing as the transcendental multiplicities of reality.

Duality really means, things are separate, AND they do not share anything. The lack of sharing is a vital part of it. It's not just that there's a separation, it's that the two things are kept apart and do not join or connect. So then you might ask what is the opposite of that? Is it oneness? NOT NECESSARILY. How about the opposite of duality, is a reality in which there are STILL many things, BUT at the same time, they SHARE EVERYTHING? What would that be like? Because that's what reality IS like.

That's exactly what Jesus describes over and over again in ACIM. A reality in which there are many parts, and where each part is the whole, and each part shares everything with all the other parts, yet is STILL a part. You being one with God, while STILL being yourself. You having your own soul, while ALSO sharing the soul of others. You being christ, while OTHERS are also christ. You having many brothers, yet each brother BEING the other brothers. That's all over the course in hundreds of ways and that's what you have to come to realize about reality.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

Reality IS NOT ONENESS. It is not the kind of "opposite of separation" that you think it is. It IS oneness, but it's not ONLY that. It is a oneness which has expressed infinite power to CREATE additional ones. It is a wholeness which has FULLY created additional WHOLE beings. It's an entire constellation of creations, where each INDIVIDUAL creation is also so joined to the others that they are ALSO one. Oh my God, did he just say that we have an INDIVIDUAL SELF IN REALITY? How can that be?!!!

"We share our life because we have one Source, a Source from Which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

Now I can hear the thoughts in your mind trying to whirl around to visualize this. And you're probably thinking well, how do these many separate things be joined, to the extent that they are one, without DISAPPEARING? Because in spacetime we only have analogies where, as two things become one thing, the separation vanishes and you can't tell them apart any more. But that's NOT the case in reality. The two things are FULLY two things, AND fully one thing, at the same time. That's what you have to come to accept. The dynamics of heaven's reality is NOT the same as the laws of physics.

God is one, and has many children, who are one, who have many creations of their own, which are one. And every one creates with every other one. And the whole sonship, which is a collection of ones, creates as one, to create many additional ones, with God, who is one with them all. Oneness extends itself, to produce more onenesses, which are each oneness, and each gives oneness, creating more onenesses, which are in turn still the same oneness. One thing, creating separate things, which are one thing still.

This cannot be understood by separating things into separate boxes. It cannot be understood by insisting that reality be a count of one. It cannot be understand by projecting ego ideas of the "lack of separations" onto it. It cannot be understood by trying to get rid of all the sons of God and all your brothers and turning the world into a solo-gameshow of you vs yourself. There ARE other people here, there are other dreamers here, there are other free willed beings here, and you DO have relationships.

The course has been smushed, crushed, distorted, twisted, mangled, bent, upheaved and shattered, by well-meaning but mistaken individuals who THINK they know that heaven has to be a singularity of God. ACIM if you read it carefully does not support this idea. Even when it says "God is". Even when it says "God has but one son". Even then it STILL ALSO SAYS that God has many sons and a family and even grandchildren. Your creations are his grandchildren. That's all in A Course in Miracles, whether a person likes it or not, or whether it makes sense or not.

Can we just let the course be what it is and say what it does and try to FIND A WAY TO ACCEPT IT, instead of keep trying to CONVERT IT INTO the models and concepts and theories and theologies that WE think it has to be? Because it is not like them. ACIM is not non-duality, it is not adviata vedanta, it is not about oneness in the traditional sense, and it doesn't teach that there is only God.

Let it be itself and let it tell you what the whole truth is. Take ALL of what Jesus says and recognize that he does NOT contradict himself, and if he says two things which SOUND contradictory, it does not mean they are. What it means is YOUR THOUGHT SYSTEM contradicts itself when it is exposed to a truth that trancends it. It isn't the course that's confused, it's you. Jesus knows what he's talking about. "We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone."

"Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself."

"God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you" "God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him."

"It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it YOURS. Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."

God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it.

"The Holy Spirit is the IDEA of healing. Being thought, the idea GAINS AS IT IS SHARED."

As we allow ourselves to be healed, we become healed, and in turn become healers. We are able to give the miracles we have received, and we can give healing to others.

"I will be healed as I let him teach me to heal."

"No one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession."

"Those who are healed become instruments of healing." (note that an instrument is used by something HIGHER than the instrument - in this case the Holy Spirit).

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another."

We're asked in ACIM to perform healing WITH the Holy Spirit. That means he is included in the healing process, and is actually the way by which the healing occurs. This is because HE is the only healer and therapist. Only HE understands miracles. He is the answer to the separation and KNOWS HOW to heal everything. You DO NOT know how to heal!

"the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him"

"The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION."

"help is His function"

"its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function."

"he (you) LETS HEALING BE"

"the nature of miracles you do not understand" "Nor do you DO them."

"HE (you) can point to darkness, but he (you) CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF"

"What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world"

"what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them"

In effect, we act like a kind of portal or window THROUGH which the Holy Spirit's radiance of healing power extends. The light of God comes from God through him, through us, to others. We are not able to GENERATE this light ourselves.

We of ourselves really have NO power at all. But when we OPEN ourselves to him, and allow him to work WITH AND THROUGH us, we GAIN the power of God. And this power works ON ITS OWN, because love automatically extends and shines.

It's kind of like, the radiant shining light of God, which has healing power in it, shines from God THROUGH you, to others. Which is why "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me (Jesus, as an example of a brother), to my all brothers". The light of God is God's light, which shines through you, and extends to others, healing them.

"The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles" or the way by which this miraculous power is bridged to you from God, so that it can be GIVEN TO OTHERS through you.

This is because in your creation, you are given the gift of giving, which means that God gives himself to create you, and creates you to BE a giver, so that HE can be given THROUGH you along WITH you, to co-create. He has given you something which you are meant to GIVE to others, to share with them, in order to have it.

"You CAN LEARN to bless, and CANNOT give WHAT YOU HAVE NOT. If, then, you OFFER blessing, it MUST have come FIRST TO YOURSELF. And you must also have ACCEPTED IT AS YOURS, for how else could you GIVE IT AWAY? This is WHY your miracles offer YOU the testimony that YOU are blessed."

"Your hands will heal, and give the gifts that you accept of me."

Healing miracles are a mirror of this creative dynamic, on Earth, whereby you give what you receive. And WHAT you receive (God's blessing/miracle) has within it the power to heal others, WITHOUT you having to know how it does it.

It's kind of like you are passing along or allowing to extend THROUGH you a power which you did not generate on your own, you did not author, but which you allow to TRANSFER as a form of communication. God shines through you, FOR you, and therefore FOR your "patient".

"The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark."

Your function is, in effect, to participate in the Holy Spirits's healing work, by sharing his function, allowing HIM to PASS ON his healing (of you) through you to others. In this, you don't really get to claim any credit for being a healer, or special, or the source of the healing.

HE heals YOU, FOR you. And you in turn allow him to heal others, FOR you, FOR them. Because he is the help that God has appointed and given. He is supposed to be the one who DOES the miracles.

"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and the healing that is of HIM ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary."

"And that is why the Holy Spirit IS the only therapist."

"The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let to banish the idea of darkness."

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

"The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made."

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

This means that in truth the Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist, because ONLY he knows everything to be able to be certain how to heal everything. He is the GUARANTEE that the separation WILL be undone, because he has the power TO undo it entirely, given him by God. The Holy Spirit DOES NOT FAIL, and when He heals, IT ALWAYS WORKS. Your role then is really to LET HIM DO THE HEALING.

"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. ***The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this.*** He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."

"We once said that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the answer to EVERYTHING, because He knows what the answer to everything IS."

When I heal with the Holy Spirit, I am not really doing anything. I am specifically instructed what to do, to fulfill my part of the function I am sharing with him. I may be told to place my hand on a specific part of the body. I may be told when the healing is done. I may be asked to move to a different position.

But more often I will be asked to "rest" or "relax". In effect I am really being told to just take a chill pill and sit on the sidelines while I let HIM USE ME and work through me. He works through my body and through my hands. The more that I don't try to do anything at all, the less obstructing I am. I pretty much just relax and rest and just let him get on with it.

I have NO CLUE how he does what he does. I do not know what he is doing, only that he is doing it. My body shakes and my hands tremble and there is an intensity and various back-and-forth motions and so on. But these happen on their own, caused BY him, or as side effects of what HE is doing.

This means that I have to be willing to trust and to sort of "get out of the way", and to "not interfere". And you can be sure that at times my ego does try to BECOME the healer. The ego in me starts trying to say things to make healing happen, which really has little to no effect anyway. Or I start thinking that I need to force or push, or to hold my hand differently, or to think forgiveness thoughts, or to start doing affirmations, or say lofty things, and none of this is necessary. I am told to relax or even to stop.

In particular Jesus instructs me by saying "let me". Which I've come now to learn to mean, allow him to use the Holy Spirit through me to perform a healing on a person FOR me and FOR them, without me doing anything other than being used as a kind of vessel. It may still entail me "laying on hands" and spending some time involved in the process, but my participation is minimal.

It does take the willingness to allow something OTHER than yourself to DO stuff through you and through your body. This may be unsettling at first, learning to trust to allow some unseen force to make stuff happen IN your body and THROUGH it. To see that, even if you are standing there doing nothing of your own volition, your body is moving, even BEING moved by some unseen power.

Trusting that it WILL move on its own, without your intention to move it. And then seeing it consistently do so, without interference or motivation or control on your part. I am now at a point where I can let the Holy Spirit literally move my body parts ON HIS OWN. He can actually make my arms and hands move around with no motor intentions of my own.

"For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth."

"The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

"Concern yourselves not with the EXTENSION of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do NOT understand. Nor do you DO them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did NOT do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship, when you do not understand the miracle itself?"

So here Jesus is clear, you don't even really DO miracles yourself. That is to say, you do not originate or source the power or the light that produces healing. You do not "use your own power". You are not the "battery" that charges someone. Instead, the Holy Spirit temporarily USES your system to infuse your battery with HIS power so that it extends beyond yourself to someone else. HE brings the power from God, and you allow it to extend.

This is also reflected here, where Jesus tells us that the miracle extends through you WITHOUT your help, because it's really something that's being given BY GOD. "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life." "Miracles are a universal blessing from God." Their RADIANCE or GIVING to another is essentially AUTOMATIC, because you give it freely through sharing and letting it go. Ie not inhibiting it or stopping it from FLOWING THROUGH you.

"The ONLY way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends WITHOUT your help. But you ARE needed that it can BEGIN. ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth, because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED. No-one can ask ANOTHER to be healed. But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not HAVE? And who can SHARE what he denies HIMSELF? The Holy Spirit speaks to YOU. He does not speak to someone ELSE. Yet BY your listening, His Voice extends, BECAUSE you have accepted what He says."

Essentially then you are to receive help and healing from the Holy Spirit to get your own mind into a state where it is more trusting of HIS help. Where you are willing to RECEIVE miracles for yourself, which you are willing to SHARE with others. You become infused with healing and love and power. And HIS light now shines out from you ON ITS OWN. This light "performs" the healing in another. The light comes from God and you just allow it to pass through you. You become a kind of CHANNEL or MEDIUM THROUGH which love, light, life, healing etc is communicated to your brother.

"We have said that the Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for miracles. This is because He ALWAYS tells you that ONLY the mind is real, because only the mind CAN BE SHARED."

"You CANNOT choose to escape His care, because that is not His will. But you CAN choose to accept His care, and use the infinite power OF His care for all those He created BY it."

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."

What I have learned now is to let Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit perform the healing. As in "You will see healing through your hands through me." This means acknowledging that the healing power or force or love which CAUSES the healing, the remedy, is something given by God and passes TO me and THROUGH me. I can let it pass through me when I have been willing to receive it for myself, because that means I am unblocking myself and getting MY blocks out of HIS way, so that HE can shine THROUGH me.

This means also recognizing I am NOT SPECIAL as "a healer". I have NO CLUE how to heal anyone to be honest. I don't know how bodies work, what makes emotions work, or the intricacies of the actual mind or how to make it sane. I cannot claim selfish credit for the healing that takes place, beacuse I am not the one doing it. Yes i am involved, yes I am facilitating, yes I am using my hands, yes I am maintaing a relaxed and non-interfering state of mind, but I am not the CAUSE of the healing. All "glory" for that goes to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

At least, for now anyway. We are told that eventually we will become far more directly in-touch with all power in heaven and earth, that "I am not afraid but all powerful", and that by acknowledging that "all power is of God is to gain all power." But right now my experience is that I a pretty much powerless to do anything OF MYSELF, I don't HAVE any special powers, and I don't know HOW to heal. But I do know how to trust the Holy Spirit and Jesus to do healing through me.

"A better and FAR more helpful way to think of miracles is this: You do NOT understand them, either in part OR whole. Yet you have DONE them. Therefore, YOUR understanding CANNOT be necessary. Yet it is still impossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so there must be Something IN you that DOES understand."

"As God communicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the Holy Spirit TRANSLATE His communications THROUGH you, so YOU can understand them."

"The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him."

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

"You understand that you are healed when you give healing. You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive. You recognize your brother as yourself, and thus do you perceive that you are whole. There is no miracle you cannot give, for all are given you. Receive them now by opening the storehouse of your mind where they are laid, and giving them away."

"But YOU must see the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have done them unto YOU. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do THROUGH YOU, or you will not accept what I can do FOR you. For it is done ALREADY, and unless you give ALL that you have received, you will not know that your Redeemer liveth and that YOU have awakened WITH Him. Redemption is recognized ONLY by sharing it."

In A Course in Miracles, the truth is completely consistent. It represents a thought system of Oneness, in which everything correlates perfectly. There is no contradiction in Oneness or in the Truth.

Everything about the thought system of the Holy Spirit, of God, is completely LOGICALLY consistent. It is also true, that the thought system of the ego is completely logically consistent. The only difference is that the ego’s system is based on a fallacy, a premise which is not true - the idea that separation is real and possible with real effects.

Because the truth is 100% consistent, it is not necessary to guess, wonder, be confused, misunderstand, interpret, warp, figure out, avoid, speculate, or otherwise be less than certain about what the Course is teaching. This means the Course CAN be learned and understood with 100% consistency, 0% guesswork, and 100% certainty.

The Course itself is written in very exacting LOGICAL terms. Jesus contrasts what is true, versus what is false. This is very deliberate. Our main problem is we have CONFUSED what is true and what is false. We’ve mixed them up and switched them around. In our confusion, we NEED clarification as to what is actually true, and what is actually false. This is achieved by contrasting, in very black and white, clear, irrefutably LOGICAL terms, the difference between them.

e.g. "This is only this, and this is not that, therefore that is not this." This is logic.

e.g. "This is all that exists. That is the opposite of this. That does not exist." This is logic.

e.g. "Only heaven exists. Earth is opposite to heaven in every way. Therefore, Earth does not exist." (There is no world). This is logic.

e.g. "The opposite to love is fear. Yet love has no opposite. Therefore fear must produce a state which DOES NOT EXIST". This is logic.

Logical FACTS cannot be denied. They must be accepted if you want the truth, even if it means letting go of stuff you long held to be true, given that it is NOT consistent.

Jesus very specifically, and intentionally, uses extremely intensely black and white language where it is appropriate. He does not blur boundaries. He does not umm and ahh about what things mean. He is very intense in His absoluteness, certainty, clarity and consistency.

He very deliberately uses language which intensely draws lines between what is true, and what is false, so that we are left with as little confusion as possible. This *contrast* clarifies the DIFFERENCE between what is true and what is false in no uncertain terms. Jesus is deliberately extreme. This lends the Course much of its black and white, all or nothing, life or death "intensity". I have a hunch this is why many people experience *overwhelm* when reading the course, because it stretches the mind to extremes so much, and seems very "intense" because of the extreme contrast.

This is what we NEED, because our only perceptual problem is that we do not RECOGNIZE what is true, versus what is false. We do not recognize God (truth), because we think that when we see an illusion (lies) they are in fact true. This is because we’ve attempted to turn God into an illusion. We then believe illusions are God (ie real). This LACK of discernment between what is actually true and false, is the sole basis for our confusion and unconsciousness.

Just by the mere act of even exposing yourself to the "book" itself, reading its extremely LOGICAL words, its black and white CLARITY, you will experience CORRECTION. Simply from reading it, even if you don’t "get it" or do anything else with it. Simply reading for example something absolute like "there is no sin", is capable of inducing RELIEF. It is healing.

I can’t begin to tell you the number of times just merely reading phrases like this has melted me. The very FORM of the language itself is designed TO HEAL, by bringing CLARITY to what is true, and what is false, which corrects our false perception, undoes our confusion, and alleviates fear.

The very SPECIFIC, deliberate, intentional LOGICALITY of the Course is very important. Not only is it healing due to its ability to bring clarity, it also means that if you understand the logic *correctly*, it is completely CONSISTENT throughout the truth. Everything Jesus says about truth MUST be consistent with everything else He says. IT MUST.

If something does not seem to fit or correlate, it’s because there is some LACK OF AWARENESS of the LOGIC that is being expressed. This often is due to level confusion and false conclusions.

To put it simply, the Course contains a metaphysics which is a system of TOTALLY LOGICAL thinking, which transcends all words, and which is a "structure" so completely logical that IF you grasp even part of it correctly, you can RELY ON the part you learned and form ADDITIONAL CONCLUSIONS based on it, which are absolutely consistent with what Jesus is teaching. This, however, ONLY works IF you are perfectly grasping the LOGIC, otherwise you will make errors, which will produce FALSE conclusions and confusion.

This means, if you learn the METAPHYSICS, the "core" structure of reality and the ego, everything will "fit together" and be consistent. It will also build upon itself as you gain more clarity. You will be able to REFER TO that which you already learned which is 100% true, using it as a REFERENCE, to compare and contrast..... is this new information *perfectly consistent* with what you already know to be perfect truth, or not? In black and white terms, if it IS, it is true. If it is NOT, it is not true.

A grasp of the metaphysical LOGIC provides you with a tremendously powerful tool, because you can build upon what you already know is 100% true. This makes your grasp of truth STRONGER with every step. And this in turn makes the truth CLEARER. One seed of perfect clarity is all you need to be able to DEDUCE whether everything else is *completely consistent*, logically, or not.

This is your automatic barometer or "bullshit meter", for determining whether what people or the Course say is true or false. This means you do not need to "figure out" what is true. You ONLY need to come to CLARITY enough to see and understand LOGIC, so that you can let the truth itself tell you whether something is consistent with it or not.

Without something to refer to which is 100% absolutely true, we do not have anything TRUE to compare things to. There is no context or perspective into which to put things. That puts us in the dark. We will then be UNCERTAIN, lost, confused, unsure what the truth is or is not, and will then enter into tremendous debates trying to figure it out. And most of that time will be spent in either speculation, or make-believe, or wishful thinking, or ego-based conclusions, which are NOT CONSISTENT.

This is because WE are trying to author the truth, instead of ALLOWING the truth’s OWN built-in consistency inform us as to whether something is true, or something is false.

Since the full picture of "every topic ever talked about" is quite large and complex, it can take some time to logically compare and contrast what the course is saying in terms of its WORDS, versus making sure that the MEANING is completely CONSISTENT without contradiction when we keep everything ELSE the course says in mind.

We should realize that the whole truth is in every part of the course, but in FORM, often it SEEMS like taking one part of the course in isolation "means" something which it CANNOT MEAN, IF what the truth says elsewhere is true. If there is not a logical consistency, and if anything does not FIT PERFECTLY into the overall picture, into the thought system, SOMETHING IS IN ERROR.

What we need to learn about the Course, is that the metaphysics are ONCE removed from the truth. The words in the course are TWICE removed. Transcending the words is the only way to learn what IT MEANS. Or in other words, the logical FACTS of the Holy Spirit’s thought system have absolutely no wiggle room for interpretation or denial. Only the truth is true.

It is our job only to DISCERN CORRECTLY what is true, and what is false. This can ONLY be accomplished by a full appreciation of the METAPHYSICS, not the words. The words should only be there to reveal pieces of the truth and to point to aspects of the LOGICAL CONSISTENCY. If what we are reading is confusing or does not 100% comply with the rest of the truth, we are in error.

One of the biggest struggles with learning the Course’s metaphysical foundation, is when we THINK that our grasp of the Course’s statements IS logically consistent. If we are actually 100% onto the truth, which is possible, then good for us. If we are "off", but believe we are "on", THIS ITSELF is due to a CONFUSION about what is true, and what is false.

Anyone with an ego WILL BELIEVE that they already know what is TRUE. This is of course a trap. The ego is no different to God this way, in that both stand by whatever is true. The only difference is the ego believes something is true which actually is FALSE. It will defend it just as vehemently as God would, believing that to do so is to protect "self" and continue logical consistency. The problem is since the ego is blind to truth, and therefore limited and incapable of seeing the WHOLE truth, it comes to false conclusions based on its LIMITED awareness of information.

When the ego is believing it knows what is true in the course, defending it "to death", its blindness MUST make it mistaken. It will believe it knows or gets the course. But the ONLY way to grasp what the Course REALLY MEANS, is to have a PERFECT GRASP of the LOGICAL CONSISTENCY of the METAPHYSICS. Otherwise if you have DIFFICULTY with PERFECT LOGIC, you will come to false conclusions. Everything else is storytelling, fiction, interpretation, ego opinion and guesswork. And a whole lot of confusion.

The question then is, whethere YOU are truly being LOGICALLY CONSISTENT in every way possible on every Course topic. If there are "holes" in the logic alone, this is the only criteria for being in error. Not because of someone’s experience or authority or way of writing or years spent doing the course or how many workbook lessons or how proficient with miracles or how old you are or how publicly recognized.

The ONLY barometer for whether you are grasping the Course CORRECTLY, is that you can SEE a highly UNIFIED picture, in which all pieces fit perfectly, with NO CONTRADICTIONS, and an ability to DISCERN even the subtlest of nuances. Fortunately, the metaphysics TELLS YOU what somethig MUST MEAN, based on what is LOGICAL. You can rely on it, depend on it, and refer to it.

And you are supposed to. THE TRUTH IS YOUR GUIDING LIGHT. IT tells YOU what is true. The metaphysical logic TELLS YOU whether a given course quote means one thing or another. Not the ego’s ability to figure it out. Not a person’s prowess or personality. Only the truth is true.

There IS only one true metaphysics. There IS only one truth. Jesus HAS given a PERFECTLY LOGICALLY CONSISTENT COURSE. If we do not SEE the logical consistency, it’s because of our ego. Use that as a MIRROR therefore to show you where you MUST be in denial, with a willingness to be MISTAKEN, so that if the Course says something is TRUE, and it is consistent, you must ACCEPT IT. That means dropping your ego’s personal opinion.

We do not get to decide what the truth is. God established the truth. The metaphysics of the course reflects the truth. The WORDS of the Course are BASED ON the metaphysics. Grasp the metaphysics and none of the words will confuse you!

For example.

Fear is the opposite of love. Yet love has no opposite. An opposite to love must produce a state which does not exist.

This is LOGICAL. Similarly, Heaven has no opposite, "earth is opposite to heaven in every way", therefore IT IS PERFECT LOGIC to say that "earth does not exist." The logic itself tells you this must be true.

For example.

What is not love is murder. Anything which is not 100% perfect love, is murder. Even slight disagreements or even "agreeing to disagree", which is an illusion of peace, IS MURDER. You can deduce WHY this makes sense, if you look at the logic, and why this is *black and white*.

In the thought system of Oneness, what applies to you applies equally to everyone. There is nothing true about you which is not true about everyone. Everyone shares the truth (God). In truth, logically, you cannot attack your brother WITHOUT directly attacking yourself. DIRECTLY. Because what is true of them, INSTANTLY and ALWAYS is true of you. If they are hurt, you MUST be hurt. If you "cause" them to change, YOU must experience the effects.

...WHICH MEANS LOGICALLY.... if there is a thought system in which something applies to an other which does NOT apply to you, a separation has been introduced. This separation MUST logically come between you and your brother. It then means, what applies to you, SEEMS not to apply to them. SO.... if you were to attack your brother, it would SEEM, you can "cause them" to experience effects, which YOU do not experience! This is 100% logical.

This therefore means, in the ego thought system, you can seem to attack/cause your brother and ESCAPE ALL CONSEQUENCES (effects). This LITERALLY MEANS, logically, you can "get away with attacking", ie, escape the attack, ie you can attack without being affected. With no repercussions. This is PRECICELY the meaning of "getting away with murder."

And this is why, if there is any SHRED of belief that what appleis to someone else does not apply to you, because you are not ONE, that you are not perfectly equal in every way, you ARE being MURDEROUS! Hence, logically, what is "not love", MUST be murder, even if it seems to be a tiny degree of difference. Every argument on this forum is murderous!

Every difference of opinion is murderous! People being in separate bodies is murderous! This also means, the logical truth of the Course REDEFINES the meaning of "murder", by clearly demonstrating FOR US what murder MUST BE. Murder is not ONLY one person stabbing another to death. It is ALL degrees of attack.

It is also easy to logically conclude, that even though in a thought system of "cause being separate from its effect" (Father separate from Son), even if it SEEMS like you can get away with murder, YOU DO NOT. Because it is TRUE, that the thought system of Oneness ALWAYS APPLIES. Oneness has no oppposite, so its thought system has no true opposite. Which means, logically, even if you think you CAN get away with being murderous, YOU DO NOT escape the effects of what you cause! Therefore, you ARE attacking yourself when you attack your brother, and your body WILL suffer and be sick if you use it to attack others. Not my opinion. Perfect metaphysical logic.

All of this is LOGICALLY DEDUCED. It is a perfectly logically consistent conclusion. THIS MUST BE what the course says is true. This is METAPHYSICS. There is NO opinion here. This is not my personal viewpoint. If you see ANY logical fallacy, by all means let us know so that we can find a TRUER and MORE CONSISTENT truth.

It is possible to use simple logic to understand EVERYTHING that Jesus is telling us in the Course, in terms of what the Course MEANS. This DOES include the correct recognition of what ANY kind of terms mean, including often hotly contested CONCEPTS such as "worlds" or whether God could have created the Earth or what the Earth even IS. It SHOULD tell is EXACTLY whether there can be multiple sons and what perception IS. LOGIC can even tell you what death must be, and explain WHY the separation‘s "end result" was the manifestation of FORM as a "physical universe" with illusory planets and bodies. This is concludeable by LOGIC ALONE with zero opinion. The ONLY correct meaning of what these things really are, MUST BE LOGICALLY CONSITENT. Otherwise it is conjecture, aka ego bullshit.

The same is true for all Course theology, all creation stories, determining whether there are multiple sons or God, how the entire ego thought system functions, what is heaven, what is not, and everything in between. The only question is, WHAT IS LOGICALLY TRUE AND CONSISTENT?! The Course’s TRUTH is absolutely 100% consistent.

If we are not seeing HOW it is consistent and something seems not to fit, it comes down to our ego - our own ability or lack of to LOGICALLY RECOGNIZE what is true, vs what is false. If we have difficulty with logic, or dealing with black and white statements, we WILL have difficulty understanding the course, and MUST come to false conclusions. That too is part of the logic.

It is also true, that the Course CAN be learned, the Truth is NOT obscure, the Truth is NOT mysterious, it IS possible to understand what Jesus means on ALL topics, and there should be NO confusion or disagreement about what Jesus is teaching. The only conflict comes from different ego’s attempting to have their truth be the one truth. Only the truth is true. We can ONLY ACCEPT IT, together, in agreement. We cannot MAKE IT.

Learn the metaphysics, and you will see what the Course is really saying, meaning, intending, and what is TRUE. This will transcend ALL words, all people’s opinions, even your own. If all you want is to let the truth TELL YOU what is true, you will learn the Course. To learn it REQUIRES that you put aside all of your own ego, otherwise you will misunderstand it.

"The Course" is not in the book. It exists as metaphysical states of mind whose relationships and interconnections are 100% logically defined. Everything about the ego can be described with perfect logic. Even creation is logical. Jesus is nothing if not EXTREMELY LOGICAL, because only that kind fo black and white clarity will show you what is TRUE, and what is FALSE.

IF we were to only ever talk of *metaphysics*, there would be no ROOM for opinion and no room for the ego. Then there will be peace.

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and its content is not true."

First let's be clear that all true properties belong to God. God's reality entails what is real, permanent, certain, true, exists, is happening, is powerful, has will, causes, with real effects (creation), is eternal and immortal.

The separation from God was an attempt to conceive of an opposite to God's reality. It ultimately produced what appears to be an entire world. In light of the fact that God's reality is real, this second world we made as its OPPOSITE is unreal. It inherently has the properties of the opposite of God's properties.

The world we made is unreal, temporary, uncertain, false, it doesn't exist, nothing in it really happens, it is powerless, has no will of its own, causes nothing, has no real effect, is not eternal, and everything in it is mortal. It is an illusion of a world because it is not a reality of a world.

"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 substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

"The world you see does not exist BECAUSE the place where you perceive it is not real."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what he creates must be eternal as himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever."

So now we have these two seeming worlds. One is completely real, one is completely unreal. One holds all the truth, one is utterly false. One is permanent and powerful, the other is temporary and powerless.

The unreal world, which is the world of bodies, is a mistake. It presents ideas that are not possible. It is not possible for example for anything real to die or be threatened, but in the unreal world it seems things can die and be threatened. In reality everything is immortal, yet in the unreal world everything has mortality. In reality everything is unlimited, and in unreality everything is limited.

The unreal world is actually an idea of what is not possible, founded on a "mad idea". God's reality holds all possibility. The opposite of possibility is impossibility. The unreal world seems to show things happening which are not possible in God. In God nothing can die, so leaves falling from trees and flowers dying and bodies dying is not really possible.

The unreal world presents pictures of impossibilities all the time. Everything in it is impossible because the world itself is the idea of impossibility. The world "is not" - which is why ultimately "there is no world."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

Now. In ADDITION to the reality of God, and the unreal world, there is also a matter of BELIEF, resulting in an act of projection UPON these worlds. There is something that happens in the mind in terms of belief. Mind can choose to be fully aware and accepting of the sane fact that ONLY God's truth is true - that only heaven's reality is real. OR, it can go into a state of denial.

When the mind is in denial, it flips everything around. It takes ALL the properties of God's reality, and assigns it to the unreal world. It then takes all the properties of the unreal world and assigns is to God's reality. This produces total confusion and insanity. It is insane because you've lost track of what is really real and what isn't, and can no longer distinguish between them, making you lost and confused - ie mistaken.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

In a state where the attributes of God are assigned to its opposite, you are confused and insane. This puts you into what we call "false perception". In false perception, everything about God is assigned to the unreal world, and vice versa. The ramification of that, is that a simple MISTAKEN world, an IMPOSSIBLE world, begins to take on properties of actual reality. This interprets mistakes as SIN, because sin mean "a real error that can't be undone because it's real."

So now, the unreal world is considered to be real, have permanent qualities, to be eternal, to depict the truth, to house all possibilities, to have a will of its own, to be meaningful, to be heaven, to be life, to be really existing and really happening. In this mode, you have "made illusions real", ie have "made the world real", because you have GIVEN it reality. You are assigned reality's properties to it. You BELIEVE it's real.

There is also a flipside to this. All the properties of UNreality are now assigned to God's reality. God is now considered to be false, non-existence, lacking will power, not happening, being totally unreal, having no life, being mortal and dead, being impossible, being insane, and making no sense. God is considered to be nothing, is rejected as untrue, and relegated to oblivion.

When mind is in this state, this is where the world is experienced like a nightmare. Given that an unreal world is very UNNATURAL and disturbing, if it is REAL then you'll experience it as a horror show. This is what is happening when you see problems arise and you feel like you cannot do anything to change them. The reason they seem unchangeable, is because you've assigned properties of permanence, existence, happening and reality to them. This in a sense "locks them in". ONLY illusions can be forgiven or undone or changed, and not whatever is regarded as real.

If it is true that this world is REAL, then everything in it is permanent, fixed, unchangeable, irreversible, absolute, total, certain, and eternal. Because these were all attributes of God's reality before the confusion. Given that you believe this about the world, you CANNOT bring yourself to conceive of how you can possibly do anything about anything. Everything will seem like some horrible fate, some pointless hopeless disaster, some kind of cruel unchangeable unhealable trauma, that just happens by its own will leaving you a helpless victim.

In this state of false perception you will also completely forget about God's reality. It will seem like it does not exist. Mind will shut down. Any sense of being above the battlefield, stepping back, detaching, being able to wield supernatural miracles, anything to do with healing or correcting problems genuinely will go out the window. Your mind will fixate on THIS world, the unreal world, as if it is THE ONLY REALITY, and all that exists is happening before your body's eyes. Everything it sees is now real to you and you are powerless over it. If an unnatural, "evil", impossible world of conflict and disaster is REAL, you MUST suffer without escape, and death is now the wages of sin. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

This is the state that produces all despair and suffering, all sense of the "irreversibility of sin", all notions that what happens cannot be undone, that sickness is progressive, that death is inevitable, that your fate is set in stone and you have absolutely no say in what happens. This is the state of being a victim, with the world doing everything in its power to simply be horrifying and traumatic, throwing up unsolvable problems all over the place every single day.

So the world in the state of false perception is a COMBINATION of .... 1) an unreal world of mistakes and impossibilities, and 2) the properties of reality being confused with and assigned to it. You MAKE the world seem real by GIVING it properties of reality, and this converts all illusions of sin into what seems like REAL sin.

Once illusory events, which really cannot be happening, are UNITED or "made one with" properties of reality, everything that happens will appears to be a sin. The whole hierarchy of illusions will demand specific responses, reactions and effects. You'll feel compelled to just go along for the ride and have every single reaction that the world says you should be having. And anything anyone does that appears in any way wrong will be regarded as a REAL SIN. An unforgiveable act, and you will NOT be able to forgive it because you believe it is REAL, and therefore permanent.

"The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, NOT to establish them as real, and THEN forgive them."

"Good cannot BE returned for evil, for forgiveness does not first ESTABLISH sin, and THEN forgive it"

What the world IS, in terms of it being an UNREAL world, an ILLUSION of a world in which nothing is true, is distinct from your interpretation of that world - ie what it means to you. If you GIVE the world reality, then you BIND reality WITH illusions and the result is a nightmare of inescapable sin and irreversible suffering. If the world is REAL, nothing in it can be undone, because reality is permanent and can never end.

But your way out of this hell of suffering is simply then to change your mind. This is NOTHING more than a change in the PREMISE of the world. It's a shift from "the world is real" to "the world is not real." Every single attribute of reality and God that you have mistakenly given to the world, you have to TAKE BACK from it.

You have to dis-identify everything God created from the world, and RE-IDENTIFY it with spirit. This is the same as shifting from body-identification to spirit-identification. What is TRUE AND REAL about you has to be re-identified with what God created, requiring your IDENTITY to transition from a limited body to an unlimited soul.

"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 REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP."

You have ASSIGNED power to the unreal world. That's why it seems to have power over you. You can and must TAKE BACK that power, and assign it back to God/spirit/soul where it belongs. This is the only real change of mind. It's a change of belief. It's a restoration of your acceptance of, and recognition of, WHAT REALLY IS TRUE. Or of what really is REAL.

"This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. BUT DO YOU BELIEVE IT?"

"Only the truth is true, and nothing else is true."

Our task in "applying forgiveness" then is nothing more or less than properly assigning the properties of reality to GOD's reality, and the properties of unreality to the unreal world. To undo the confusion between the two. To become very clear only God's stuff is real, and all the illusory stuff is not. That only God's world is TRUE, and the world you made out of illusions IS FALSE.

"The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

The unreality of this world has to be recognized. This is what "true perception" means. It is accurate perception, or the ability to recognize accurately WITHOUT confusion, what the world "actually is". Or in a sense, to see "the truth of" or "the reality of" this world. When you see the reality of an UNREAL world, ie the truth that IT IS unreal, you are seeing it for what it "actually is". Yet an unreal world isn't "actually" anything, because IT IS unreal. Recognizing this recognizes IT IS NOTHING AT ALL.

To then transition from being heavily absorbed, confused, lost, and threatened by, a mistakenly mis-assigned property ... where you've given the world or something in it - some body or event or thing - properties of God, you need to go through some kind of purification or process to revert your mind back to the truth. To return to sanity. We call this sort of "applying the principle of forgiveness", or trying to "atone".

"To atone is to undo." What we are undoing is our CONFUSION about what the world is and is not, and what God is and is not. BOTH the truth AND what is false have to be fully and clearly distinguished and recognized, and NOT confused with each other.

"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM." By correctly identifying all properties of God WITH God, and taking them AWAY from the world - or undoing their mis-association with the world, your mind returns to sanity.

"Sin is insanity", meaning that when you combine the insanity of confusion about what is real, WITH an unreal world, you turn a mistaken world into a sinful world. You make sin seem real when you are insane, but when you return to sanity sin converts back to a mistake - or what Jesus calls an error. The world is simply an error, not a truth.

To forgive then, we simply need to undo, reverse, cancel out, heal, purify, and correct, the mistaken beliefs that we have about what the world's nature is. We need to remind ourselves, maybe we need to talk ourselves into it, maybe we need help and healing from the Holy Spirit or Jesus, maybe we need affirmations or reminders or cue cards or whatever it is. We need to LIFT AWAY from the world all the properties of reality which we gave away TO it, and give them back to God. The ACIM workbook is designed to facilitate this correction, e.g.:

"God did not create that war, and so it is not real."

"God did not create that airplane crash, and so it is not real."

"God did not create that disaster (specify) so it is not real."

"God did not create that illness (specify with name of person) and so it is not real."

This could simply be in the form of you telling yourself, "this world is not real, it is just a dream." "This is an illusion of a world, not a reality." "Nothing is really happening here." "No-one has sinned because it did not take place in reality." "Nothing is held against anyone because it's a dream and is not true." "People are not really bodies." "My identity is not a body." "The world is urneal." "Only God is real." "Only heaven's reality is my reality." etc. Whatever form it takes.

All that needs to happen is the proper re-categorization of everything in the world. To put the world itself into the "unreal, non-existing, not-happening, not permanent, entirely undoable and nothing" bucket. And at the same time, putting heaven back into the "really does exist and has reality and is the only reality" bucket.

"There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

To forgive then is simply to RECOGNIZE what is true and what isn't. To get the mind back into a state where it has been deprogrammed of the LIES that appears as real sins. Nothing in the world is real. Nothing in the world is causing anything. Nothing in the world is happening. Nothing in the world is permanent. Nothing in the world is changeless. Nothing in the world is true. "Nothing the world believes is true."

"There is no sin" because "real sin" requires the combination of an unreal illusion, incorrectly mixed with "a sense of reality." When you withdraw the sense of "it is real" from the "sinful act", it is no longer a REAL sin. It is only a mistake, an error, a forgiveable nothingness which hasn't even really occurred.

"Forgiveness recognizes what what you think your brother did has not OCCURRED."

This LITERALLY means that anything you think ever happened in this world, HAS NOT OCCURRED. It has not occurred FOR REAL, because it is taking place in an UNREALITY, in a dream, which is NOT real, and nothing real happens in a dream. Dreams by definition are fantasies and hallucinations. Everything in them is false. No events in the history of planet Earth have ever occurred. Accepting this is to accept atonement, in which only the truth of God is true, and the world is false.

"When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear, and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream."

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his OWN attack, but sees it at another's hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but NOT their cause. He authored NOT his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused."

This is a central ACIM teaching, that death is not "normal" or "natural", but rather a choice, and that if you do not make the choice, death does not happen. It literally speaks to the real possibility of immortality, and the impossibility of death.

Think about this. Death cannot happen without you in some way being victimized. Something has to "happen to you". And that means, you are at the effect of the world in some way. That there is some kind of cause outside of you which somehow seemed to have power over you, which overpowered you, and did something against your will.

The only way that this kind of scenario can occur, is if there is something seriously mistaken about your mind. Your mind has to be seeing itself as a victim. It has to be believing it is affected by an illusion. It has to be playing the part of victim and of being attacked. It also has to be using the world, or people in the world, as scapegoats. Without the ability to accuse the world of causing the death against your will, the death cannot happen.

A key part of this is that even when it appears that death is happening against your will, even if you do choose it and play along with the victim role and being affected by something external, even then you are still giving full consent. You are still involved. Your mind is actually participating in laying down life and becoming un-willing to live. This is not passive.

The mind cannot ever be passive. The mind is always active and creating. If the mind chooses to have a sickness, the mind is still choosing the sickness and the mind is still putting the sickness there. The sickness isn't just happening on its own. And when the mind chooses not to put the sickness there the sickness disappears.

Even if it may *appear* at the time as though the sickness is happening outside the scope of your choice, or beyond what you can control, or that you were not even the one who chose it, the truth is that you did choose it, you put it in place yourself, it is you who are maintaining it, and it cannot even continue showing up without your consent.

So you have to realize what death is. Death is only "possible" as a state where our mind has something seriously fucked up about how it is seeing itself. It can only come about by the mind deciding to pretend that it is being seriously affected. Jesus describes it as a vain attempt to make no choice at all - really the disownership of choice or the attempt to be completely irresponsible for your existence.

In the activity or implementation of dying and death, the mind is actively choosing to pretend that it has nothing to do with living, nothing to do with what happens, and nothing to do with the circumstances that are arising. It is faking it. It is going under-cover, putting on a tremendous performance as if everyone and everything else is causal other than itself, and that it is purely an effect.

So what death really is, is an attempt to NOT be causal at all, to have no power, to appear to be making no choice, and to paint this picture of stuff happening seemingly against your will. But it's such an extraordinary lie, such a cover-up, that everyone seems to believe it. All the fingers will point in the direction of "cause of death" or "why they died" to explain how this death came about. But this will only explain the manner in which the death seemed to "happen", it will not in any way implicate the person as having been the author of these events, or of being the one who made it happen to themselves.

Death is a state of extreme lying. It is the most dishonest condition possible. It is a state of not only denying God, denying the unchangeable fact of eternal life, and denying that nothing can happen to you against your will (because that is God's Will and God has given you a will which cannot be affected).

If life seems to be degrading, and diminishing, and slipping away, and the external world seems to be mounting a successful attack, and the body seems to have a mind of its own, and circumstances appear to be transpiring against the person, and it starts to look AS IF it is unfair and unchosen and the person is not doing ANYTHING to contribute to this condition, that's because the illusion is INCREASING and the person is moving further away from truth.

Death is a complete reversal of sanity, a total reversal of the proper functioning of the mind, and a complete reversal of cause and effect. It places all power and will and choice and causality as outside of oneself, making oneself entirely an "effect" of something separate from oneself.

Death actually is an attempt to claim that God is external, that God is separate, that God has a will which opposes your own, that God is to blame for destroying you, that you have no power to stop Him, and that this is all happening to you entirely against your will. In other words, it is an attempt to claim that God is the cause of all death, and not the cause of life.

It then will appear that anyone who dies does not want to die. It will appear as if the person had no say in the matter, as if life just threw them a shit sandwich. It will seem as if they are being dragged kicking and screaming against their will into the firey pits of hell as if having absolutely no power to do anything about it. This is the most grandiose, lying, fabricated, fictional, deceptive, denying, dishonest, irresponsible and bullshit state of being possible. It's an attempt to accuse the entire world of destroying oneself.

Another way to put it is that we are inside this dream which WE are dreaming, and then we turn around and attempt to claim that this dream - which is coming from us - suddenly has the ability to cause us, to decide for us what we are, to make us what we are, that we are born from it and according to its nature, that we inherit from it, that is has power over us, that it decides if we live (are born) or if and when we die, and now we are a completely powerless victim of it. That's the entire illusion of death. The suggestion that a dream that WE MADE UP, is willing against us and has taken over possession of the very mind that dreamed it in the first place.

Another word for this also is "level confusion". Every single aspect of the ego thought system is level confusion. It means that cause and effect have been reversed and what was just an effect seems to be causal and what was always causal is seen to be at its effect. This means that the lower level - the effect - now seems to turn around and inflict a deadly blow against the higher level that made it in the first place, thus reversing the levels and creating an 'upward' direction of causality.

This is actually nothing more than the attempt to say "I cause God". It is the authority problem. Death is the result of the authority problem. It's an attempt to say, I have a will which is stronger than God's and I am successfully willing that God be dead, or that God is at the effect of me, or I can change God, and God is my victim. This is the idea of sin made real, that we can "actually" sin against God and cause Him harm. When we attempt to do this, instead of God dying, WE DIE. Instead of God receiving the effects, WE receive them. And so death in form is actually an expression of the attempt to kill God, and to kill His Son.

And Jesus goes into this in the Course quite a bit. The body is used as a kind of "anchor" to associate the Son of God with a form which can APPEAR to die or go through suffering, so that we can play out a fictional sadistic story of being successful at torturing and killing God's Son. When our sense of identity as God's Son is associated or identified with the body, or bound to the body, this makes us cling to the body and then we appear to become vulnerable. Eventually the body suffers and becomes weak, because we are using it for attacking ourselves, and then the body dies. And what does our ego think is happening when the body dies? It thinks that we are *succeeding* in destroying the Son of God!. Symbolically anyway. So all death is a SACRIFICE of God's Son.

This is also why this universe that we dreamed up, is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's Son". It's an attempt to implement death, to associate God's son with the form of a body or bodies, and to then destroy those forms in order to act out this idea that God and His Son have been murdered. This is of course utter bullshit and a total lie, because God and His Son are IMMORTAL, and cannot be changed or destroyed or harmed in any way.

God has granted ETERNAL LIFE to all souls He Created and it is absolutely impossible for any soul to truly die or suffer or be sick or upset or unhappy in any way. At the core of your being you know that you are already as God created you, you have not changed since God created you, and you cannot change what God created. At the core of your being you have no authority problem and you know that death is absolutely impossible for you. And yet here we are, pretending to be bodies, stuck in an illusion, bad stuff seeming to happen from our unconscious mind making it seem like we didn't ask for it, yet we are doing it ALL to ourselves.

The secret to salvation is that you are but doing ALL of this to yourself. All of the suffering, all the sickness and disease, all the upsets and unhappiness, all the tragic sudden car accident and airplane crashes and food poisoning and wars and all the rest of it. It's all a massive fictional illusion to make it seem like you are not doing it to yourself - that you are not trying to sacrifice yourself or crucify yourself. But you ARE. It's YOU that is doing it. It is YOU that is giving your consent. It not only that, not just that you are saying to someone hey, I give you consent to come along and kill me so that it seems I didn't do it myself, it's that you actually DO IT YOURSELF.

ALL death is suicide. All of it. Every single person buried in the ground was a suicide. Even the people who "died of old age" committed suicide. All of the people who suffered from terminal illnesses committed suicide. Every single still birth, every tragedy of war crimes, every murder, every unexpected accident, absolutely all of it is CHOSEN. And not one single person had anything happen to them which they did not choose and did not participate in causing to happen.

This is the truth of the Course. This is what Jesus is teaching us, to be responsible for the POWER that we have to make anything happen, and to stop denying it and stop pretending to be victims. We are NOT at the effect of the world we see, the world is nothing but an effect. It has no power to make you ill or weak or afraid or upset in any way! You are invulnerable. You are immortal spirit!

So fundamentally, death is IMPOSSIBLE because you are immortal. Period. You cannot die. But you can pretend to die, or as the course says, you can try to associate your identity with things that appear to die. Such as the body, which is an illusion, and a wonderful way to make it appear that you are not choosing.

It is utterly impossible, in all cases, for someone to move towards death, without their mind having made the decision to use death to try to sacrifice themselves. In every single case, if sickness is showing up, if suffering is happening, if there is punishment occurring, if there is unfair victimhood, or you seem unfairly treated, or something is happening that *seems* you have no power over, it is because you have GIVEN it power over you and you have given AWAY your power TO it, to make IT have the power to seem to choose FOR you that you will suffer and die, so that you can keep your power a secret even unto yourself, and pretend that this is all happening against your will.

Death cannot even begin to happen without your participation. It cannot even begin to happen without your consent. It cannot even begin to happen without your mind doing something wrong and unnatural. Death is NOT natural. It is completely unnatural. Anything that dies is filled with lies. Death is not an exit from the dream either. It is a guarantee of reincarnation. It doesn't matter how much of a famous guru you are. If you still go through death, you are still denying God, are still at the effect of the world, are still putting in place a state of victimhood, are still rallying things against you, and are still believing that God's Son can be killed.

So do not think that death is some kind of option or some kind of thing which is acceptable or peaceful or loving or kind or a sign of success or a way out of dreaming or inevitable or something which just happens against your will. IT DOES NOT. It cannot happen AT ALL unless you are making significant mistakes and are trying to bring about a will against your own will, meaning your will is divided against itself, meaning you still have a split mind. The symptoms of all sickness and death cannot show up AT ALL unless there is something going wrong with your mind.

"A broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." This is absolutely 100% literal. If there is some kind of sign of damage or breakage or sickness in the body, it is because the mind is attempting to attack ITSELF. What you use the body for it will become to you - use it for attack and it will become weak and sick and die. Use it to bring the word of God (immortality) to those who have it not and it becomes holy and being holy it CANNOT be sick, NOR CAN IT DIE. This is pure ACIM teaching.

Death is failure. Death is denial. Death is a lie. Death is a mistake. Death is victimhood. Death is self hatred. Death is sacrifice. Death is illusion. Death is suffering. Death is reluctance to accept the truth. Death is a defense against the truth. Death is sickness. Death is level confusion. Death is a reversal of cause and effect. Death is the authority problem. Death is a belief in the justified consequences of real sin. Death is absolutely the OPPOSITE of everything the course is teaching, everything true about God and His creation, and is a total reversal of sanity. Do not see it as normal or natural or an graceful exit.

Jesus is teaching us to stop killing ourselves. To accept immortality. To demonstrate immortality. To show the world that death is impossible. Jesus was crucified (by his own will) and came back and manifested another body to demonstrate that the MIND makes the body and can make another, to prove that the mind is completely NOT at the effect of the body or the world, and therefore has escaped death entirely. It is proof of immortality. Jesus overcame death. He wants us to overcome death, not give in to it. Not anticipate it or fear it or give it power or expect it or make it into a religion or worship it or put it on a pedestal like some kind of salvation.

Only the creations of light are real. Nothing real can be threatened. What is real is immortal. Spirit is is a state of grace forever. Heaven and earth are total opposites. Heaven is a state of eternal life. There is no death in God's Son.

There is no death! The Son of God is free! The Son of God can only be free if it is completely experientially true that nothing can happen against His will. And it IS true. There is no will but God's. Eternal life is GUARANTEED.

This is a central ACIM teaching, that death is not "normal" or "natural", but rather a choice, and that if you do not make the choice, death does not happen. It literally speaks to the real possibility of immortality, and the impossibility of death.

Think about this. Death cannot happen without you in some way being victimized. Something has to "happen to you". And that means, you are at the effect of the world in some way. That there is some kind of cause outside of you which somehow seemed to have power over you, which overpowered you, and did something against your will.

The only way that this kind of scenario can occur, is if there is something seriously mistaken about your mind. Your mind has to be seeing itself as a victim. It has to be believing it is affected by an illusion. It has to be playing the part of victim and of being attacked. It also has to be using the world, or people in the world, as scapegoats. Without the ability to accuse the world of causing the death against your will, the death cannot happen.

A key part of this is that even when it appears that death is happening against your will, even if you do choose it and play along with the victim role and being affected by something external, even then you are still giving full consent. You are still involved. Your mind is actually participating in laying down life and becoming un-willing to live. This is not passive.

The mind cannot ever be passive. The mind is always active and creating. If the mind chooses to have a sickness, the mind is still choosing the sickness and the mind is still putting the sickness there. The sickness isn't just happening on its own. And when the mind chooses not to put the sickness there the sickness disappears.

Even if it may *appear* at the time as though the sickness is happening outside the scope of your choice, or beyond what you can control, or that you were not even the one who chose it, the truth is that you did choose it, you put it in place yourself, it is you who are maintaining it, and it cannot even continue showing up without your consent.

So you have to realize what death is. Death is only "possible" as a state where our mind has something seriously fucked up about how it is seeing itself. It can only come about by the mind deciding to pretend that it is being seriously affected. Jesus describes it as a vain attempt to make no choice at all - really the disownership of choice or the attempt to be completely irresponsible for your existence.

In the activity or implementation of dying and death, the mind is actively choosing to pretend that it has nothing to do with living, nothing to do with what happens, and nothing to do with the circumstances that are arising. It is faking it. It is going under-cover, putting on a tremendous performance as if everyone and everything else is causal other than itself, and that it is purely an effect.

So what death really is, is an attempt to NOT be causal at all, to have no power, to appear to be making no choice, and to paint this picture of stuff happening seemingly against your will. But it's such an extraordinary lie, such a cover-up, that everyone seems to believe it. All the fingers will point in the direction of "cause of death" or "why they died" to explain how this death came about. But this will only explain the manner in which the death seemed to "happen", it will not in any way implicate the person as having been the author of these events, or of being the one who made it happen to themselves.

Death is a state of extreme lying. It is the most dishonest condition possible. It is a state of not only denying God, denying the unchangeable fact of eternal life, and denying that nothing can happen to you against your will (because that is God's Will and God has given you a will which cannot be affected).

If life seems to be degrading, and diminishing, and slipping away, and the external world seems to be mounting a successful attack, and the body seems to have a mind of its own, and circumstances appear to be transpiring against the person, and it starts to look AS IF it is unfair and unchosen and the person is not doing ANYTHING to contribute to this condition, that's because the illusion is INCREASING and the person is moving further away from truth.

Death is a complete reversal of sanity, a total reversal of the proper functioning of the mind, and a complete reversal of cause and effect. It places all power and will and choice and causality as outside of oneself, making oneself entirely an "effect" of something separate from oneself.

Death actually is an attempt to claim that God is external, that God is separate, that God has a will which opposes your own, that God is to blame for destroying you, that you have no power to stop Him, and that this is all happening to you entirely against your will. In other words, it is an attempt to claim that God is the cause of all death, and not the cause of life.

It then will appear that anyone who dies does not want to die. It will appear as if the person had no say in the matter, as if life just threw them a shit sandwich. It will seem as if they are being dragged kicking and screaming against their will into the firey pits of hell as if having absolutely no power to do anything about it. This is the most grandiose, lying, fabricated, fictional, deceptive, denying, dishonest, irresponsible and bullshit state of being possible. It's an attempt to accuse the entire world of destroying oneself.

Another way to put it is that we are inside this dream which WE are dreaming, and then we turn around and attempt to claim that this dream - which is coming from us - suddenly has the ability to cause us, to decide for us what we are, to make us what we are, that we are born from it and according to its nature, that we inherit from it, that is has power over us, that it decides if we live (are born) or if and when we die, and now we are a completely powerless victim of it. That's the entire illusion of death. The suggestion that a dream that WE MADE UP, is willing against us and has taken over possession of the very mind that dreamed it in the first place.

Another word for this also is "level confusion". Every single aspect of the ego thought system is level confusion. It means that cause and effect have been reversed and what was just an effect seems to be causal and what was always causal is seen to be at its effect. This means that the lower level - the effect - now seems to turn around and inflict a deadly blow against the higher level that made it in the first place, thus reversing the levels and creating an 'upward' direction of causality.

This is actually nothing more than the attempt to say "I cause God". It is the authority problem. Death is the result of the authority problem. It's an attempt to say, I have a will which is stronger than God's and I am successfully willing that God be dead, or that God is at the effect of me, or I can change God, and God is my victim. This is the idea of sin made real, that we can "actually" sin against God and cause Him harm. When we attempt to do this, instead of God dying, WE DIE. Instead of God receiving the effects, WE receive them. And so death in form is actually an expression of the attempt to kill God, and to kill His Son.

And Jesus goes into this in the Course quite a bit. The body is used as a kind of "anchor" to associate the Son of God with a form which can APPEAR to die or go through suffering, so that we can play out a fictional sadistic story of being successful at torturing and killing God's Son. When our sense of identity as God's Son is associated or identified with the body, or bound to the body, this makes us cling to the body and then we appear to become vulnerable. Eventually the body suffers and becomes weak, because we are using it for attacking ourselves, and then the body dies. And what does our ego think is happening when the body dies? It thinks that we are *succeeding* in destroying the Son of God!. Symbolically anyway. So all death is a SACRIFICE of God's Son.

This is also why this universe that we dreamed up, is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's Son". It's an attempt to implement death, to associate God's son with the form of a body or bodies, and to then destroy those forms in order to act out this idea that God and His Son have been murdered. This is of course utter bullshit and a total lie, because God and His Son are IMMORTAL, and cannot be changed or destroyed or harmed in any way.

God has granted ETERNAL LIFE to all souls He Created and it is absolutely impossible for any soul to truly die or suffer or be sick or upset or unhappy in any way. At the core of your being you know that you are already as God created you, you have not changed since God created you, and you cannot change what God created. At the core of your being you have no authority problem and you know that death is absolutely impossible for you. And yet here we are, pretending to be bodies, stuck in an illusion, bad stuff seeming to happen from our unconscious mind making it seem like we didn't ask for it, yet we are doing it ALL to ourselves.

The secret to salvation is that you are but doing ALL of this to yourself. All of the suffering, all the sickness and disease, all the upsets and unhappiness, all the tragic sudden car accident and airplane crashes and food poisoning and wars and all the rest of it. It's all a massive fictional illusion to make it seem like you are not doing it to yourself - that you are not trying to sacrifice yourself or crucify yourself. But you ARE. It's YOU that is doing it. It is YOU that is giving your consent. It not only that, not just that you are saying to someone hey, I give you consent to come along and kill me so that it seems I didn't do it myself, it's that you actually DO IT YOURSELF.

ALL death is suicide. All of it. Every single person buried in the ground was a suicide. Even the people who "died of old age" committed suicide. All of the people who suffered from terminal illnesses committed suicide. Every single still birth, every tragedy of war crimes, every murder, every unexpected accident, absolutely all of it is CHOSEN. And not one single person had anything happen to them which they did not choose and did not participate in causing to happen.

This is the truth of the Course. This is what Jesus is teaching us, to be responsible for the POWER that we have to make anything happen, and to stop denying it and stop pretending to be victims. We are NOT at the effect of the world we see, the world is nothing but an effect. It has no power to make you ill or weak or afraid or upset in any way! You are invulnerable. You are immortal spirit!

So fundamentally, death is IMPOSSIBLE because you are immortal. Period. You cannot die. But you can pretend to die, or as the course says, you can try to associate your identity with things that appear to die. Such as the body, which is an illusion, and a wonderful way to make it appear that you are not choosing.

It is utterly impossible, in all cases, for someone to move towards death, without their mind having made the decision to use death to try to sacrifice themselves. In every single case, if sickness is showing up, if suffering is happening, if there is punishment occurring, if there is unfair victimhood, or you seem unfairly treated, or something is happening that *seems* you have no power over, it is because you have GIVEN it power over you and you have given AWAY your power TO it, to make IT have the power to seem to choose FOR you that you will suffer and die, so that you can keep your power a secret even unto yourself, and pretend that this is all happening against your will.

Death cannot even begin to happen without your participation. It cannot even begin to happen without your consent. It cannot even begin to happen without your mind doing something wrong and unnatural. Death is NOT natural. It is completely unnatural. Anything that dies is filled with lies. Death is not an exit from the dream either. It is a guarantee of reincarnation. It doesn't matter how much of a famous guru you are. If you still go through death, you are still denying God, are still at the effect of the world, are still putting in place a state of victimhood, are still rallying things against you, and are still believing that God's Son can be killed.

So do not think that death is some kind of option or some kind of thing which is acceptable or peaceful or loving or kind or a sign of success or a way out of dreaming or inevitable or something which just happens against your will. IT DOES NOT. It cannot happen AT ALL unless you are making significant mistakes and are trying to bring about a will against your own will, meaning your will is divided against itself, meaning you still have a split mind. The symptoms of all sickness and death cannot show up AT ALL unless there is something going wrong with your mind.

"A broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." This is absolutely 100% literal. If there is some kind of sign of damage or breakage or sickness in the body, it is because the mind is attempting to attack ITSELF. What you use the body for it will become to you - use it for attack and it will become weak and sick and die. Use it to bring the word of God (immortality) to those who have it not and it becomes holy and being holy it CANNOT be sick, NOR CAN IT DIE. This is pure ACIM teaching.

Death is failure. Death is denial. Death is a lie. Death is a mistake. Death is victimhood. Death is self hatred. Death is sacrifice. Death is illusion. Death is suffering. Death is reluctance to accept the truth. Death is a defense against the truth. Death is sickness. Death is level confusion. Death is a reversal of cause and effect. Death is the authority problem. Death is a belief in the justified consequences of real sin. Death is absolutely the OPPOSITE of everything the course is teaching, everything true about God and His creation, and is a total reversal of sanity. Do not see it as normal or natural or an graceful exit.

Jesus is teaching us to stop killing ourselves. To accept immortality. To demonstrate immortality. To show the world that death is impossible. Jesus was crucified (by his own will) and came back and manifested another body to demonstrate that the MIND makes the body and can make another, to prove that the mind is completely NOT at the effect of the body or the world, and therefore has escaped death entirely. It is proof of immortality. Jesus overcame death. He wants us to overcome death, not give in to it. Not anticipate it or fear it or give it power or expect it or make it into a religion or worship it or put it on a pedestal like some kind of salvation.

Only the creations of light are real. Nothing real can be threatened. What is real is immortal. Spirit is is a state of grace forever. Heaven and earth are total opposites. Heaven is a state of eternal life. There is no death in God's Son.

There is no death! The Son of God is free! The Son of God can only be free if it is completely experientially true that nothing can happen against His will. And it IS true. There is no will but God's. Eternal life is GUARANTEED.

Let's have a closer look at what the course says about the world and whether it is God's creation. This is going to be a long post so bear with me or pick and choose which quotes you want to look at. I put a comment after each one.

To me, the way that all of these statements sound paints a clear picture that the "physical world" i.e. the physical universe - planet Earth, is NOT God's creation whatsoever in any way shape or form.

It also says to me and that every time Jesus refers to the world as something we do not want, he is not referring to some "misperception of it" that we don't want - some imagined version of the world, which he talks about in other passages - but rather, literally "the world" - planet Earth. It is an illusion not created by God, and it does not exist, and it is not our home.

Confusion comes in because at times, Jesus IS speaking about our false perceptions and the need for the correction of perception. But at other times, he is speaking at a higher "level" either at the level of someone with true perception, or even higher at a level of the One Son of God who made this universe. Not having a clear distinguish about WHICH level he is talking at in any given quote leads many people to a lot of confusing and false conclusions. Let's take a look at some quotes....

"You do not want the world." (who would want a world God didn't create?)

"The world provides no safety." (because it is an attack on God)

"This world was over long ago." (because it never happened)

"Nothing the world believes is true." (because the world itself is fundamentally a lie)

"Love was never in the world of dreams." (because God cannot be in the world or of the world nor can He create the world. The world of dreams is not your dreamy interpretation of planet Earth, it IS planet Earth, a dream which you are inside of right now, sleeping - look around you! "Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all." - tells us that when we wake up in the morning to eat breakfast, WE ARE INSIDE A DREAM, not a world that God created.)

"There are no satisfactions in the world." (because the world was made by us as a substitute for God's universe)

"It is the world you see that is impossible." (because the world we see - literally planet earth, not your interpretation of planet earth - is impossible. It cannot exist because God did not create it.)

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world." (because this world is entirely an EFFECT and it has no power to do anything)

"The world is not left by death but by truth." (because the world ITSELF is death, and truth is its undoing)

"Without the idea of death there is no world." (see .. the world is MADE OF DEATH and it will not ever be made of Life or given life or resurrected or turned into something living or God-created).

"All the "pleasures" of the world are nothing." (because they are illusions, and substitutes for God's love. This means the world can NEVER be a satisfying replacement for God's Creation).

"Perception selects, and makes the world you see." (Many many people think this means, that you have misperception OF the world, peeking out from a separate body, looking incorrectly at planet earth which somehow objectively came to exist "on its own" or created by God. What this really means is, YOUR perception, as the One Son of God, MADE THE ENTIRE WORLD, and the world *itself* IS a state of mind containing images. Trees, houses, people, it's all part of perception. Not perception OF trees and houses and people, but literally the things themselves. Those objects, your body, planet earth, are misperceptions.)

"The world you see is but a judgment on yourself." (because you are the One Son of God and the ENTIRE WORLD is a judgement against you. It's an attempt to deny who you are, to turn you into a form which dies, to picture what it would be like to be dead, and to completely obscure the light of Christ. The world itself IS judgement. Judgements OF or ABOUT the world are an entirely additional LAYER of bullshit that you added as a separate human, and is a SECOND LAYER of sleeping you added on top of dreaming the world.)

"The world you see has nothing to do with reality." (Again, this is one which many people think means, the world your little separate body-located self sees... thus your private perception. No. It's the world your eyes see. You see trees. You can call the trees good trees or bad trees, hated trees or loved trees, you still see trees. The trees you SEE - trees AT ALL - are nothing to do with reality. God did not create trees.)

"If this were the real world, God would be cruel." (This SHOULD be an obvious one. Given all the suffering and terror and death in the world, which is inherent to the world's nature, should NOT be possible if God created it. And claiming that it's really love or life if viewed correctly, is a complete distortion, again based in one person's body-identified personal opinion about the world. God does not create worlds where there are forms or bodies or things which die, NOR does he create worlds where even if those things are all part of one lovely "whole", they are possible either. God only creates HEAVEN, which is formless and has absolutely nothing to do with planet Earth in any way.)

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness." (Yes, planet Earth, is a bleak little world, and it will vanish into nothingness, because God did not create it. This does not mean your personal misperception of the world will vanish (though it will also) - the world ITSELF will vanish, because it is a lie).

"The world was made that problems could not be escaped." (the purpose for this self-made world was to create problems that are inescapable, such as sickness and death. These problems however have no power over miracles which can undo them all BECAUSE God did not create a world of problems.)

"This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." (I like this one because it says it like it is. The entire world, the entire physical universe, is a "picture" in the MIND of the Son of God, who is absolutely vast and unlimited, who is dreaming this ENTIRE physical universe and everything in it, and it was designed by him as the crucifixion of himself. Its depiction of things which have beginnings and ends, stars which are born and die, flowers which wilt, people who die of disease, planets that die, etc... is a picture of CRUCIFIXION not a picture of "God is very loving." While you can come to perceive it in a more forgiving way, that does not make or prove it is God's creation either, because if you recognize it for the illusion/lie it is, it MUST disappear.)

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all." (This is because the world is an effect of dreaming. What appears in it as "causes" are illusions of causes put in place by the dreamer. The world has no consequences. Anything God creates MUST have the power to CAUSE, and since the world cannot cause anything, it cannot be a creation of God.)

"The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never be." (There can only be joy and love and peace in what CAN be, i.e. God's creation, heaven, the kingdom, but outside of that there is no life and nothing can be joyful or loving or peaceful. The world is inherently a depiction of what peace is NOT like. Separation in all its forms is played out here, and every single particle of matter is at war with all the rest.)

"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home." (This world is not your home... literally, planet Earth is not your home. This entire physical universe is not your home. But some people interpret this to mean, well, this imaginary interpretation of the world is not my home - the world I'm putting on top of the world is not my home. Bullshit. "The world" is simply planet earth. Planet earth is not your home. Surely you FEEL this? Surely you recognize that you feel like an alien here, and that the more you wake up the more you recognize that you do not belong in this illusory place? I know I do.)

"There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten."(Thank God, because this world is not something God would ever create. God is suddenly the author of duality and sickness and death? God sees sickness and death as lovely and precious? I think not.).

"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state." (Planet Earth has never existed at all. This is hard to accept I know. There is no world. This is the one core teaching in ACIM which many people refuse to entertain. This is because we believe the world is REAL and cannot conceive of how it would not be. Especially if you come to the course with a background in beliefs which say God made the world in some way, that's hard to put down. This isn't referring to a privately perceived interpretation of the world. Again, it's just simply... this world, planet earth, has never existed. We can deny and fight this all we want.)

"In the world of scarcity, love has no meaning and peace is impossible." (Would you say planet earth is a world of scarcity? I sure would. That's not a judgement or an inability to see its pure loveliness. Yes there's a forgiven world, which is the recognition that this world is an illusion and is nothing, but I think most would agree this is a world of lack and rarity. Just look at how empty outer space is and how distant civilizations or inhabitable planets are. Extreme scarcity.)

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt." (So here again you could say, well, this means my perception is nuts and I'm not seeing the world correctly. Ok. That's one LAYER of the problem. Once you undo that false perception you're going to find out, that the world is STILL a delusional system. Inherently, the mountains, trees, planets, forests, oceans, it's all a state of DELUSION, and that's not going to change when you get over your personal misinterpretations of it. See, the problem is, we think that when we overcome "my" personal misperceptions, that's going to be the end of the story. It's not. You have to not only get over your personal interpretations (which is ONE level of awakening), AND then go beyond the definition of "my self" to incorporate ALL SELVES into one single Son of God - as Christ. And in that view, there is an entirely second level of awakening which leads to God, and the acceptance that the One Son of God MADE this world out of insanity and guilt. Guilt, denied, became unconscious, and projected out as the physical universe, in which we are now hiding from it by pretending to be innocent. Hmmm)

"The Holy Spirit sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home." (because the world ITSELF is not your home. It's just a way Holy Spirit can USE it to help you to ESCAPE from it through truth - because it doesn't exist)

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." (Plain and simple. Normal language. The world you see, with your eyes, regardless of your mental interpretations or labelling or judgements, is an illusion of a world. God did NOT create it. Many people want this mean, my personal interpretation of the world is not the world God created, and once I am free of my personal interpretation, God is going to reveal that this world - planet Earth - is his lovely creation. Good luck with that. Planet Earth does not exist. It is an illusion. The course even tells us the "real world" is an illusion and will disappear.)

"There is no world! This is the central thought the Course attempts to teach." (AHA!.. .. If you can GET this one and accept it, you've made a huge leap away from the ILLUSION that this world dis real, or that God could have created it whatsoever, to the awareness that this world can NEVER be real because to believe that requires a belief in sin and death. There is no world. Yes, planet Earth. There is no planet earth, neither as a separate planet nor as part of some seamless "soup" of God-stuff. Pretty threatening to the ego which is why it fights it tooth and nail.)

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone." (Miracles can UNDO the world itself, and everything the world says cannot be undone (itself), BECAUSE the world CAN be undone, proving that it is NOT REAL. What is real cannot be undone. If miracles can undo the world, they can bring about RESURRECTION - the undoing of death in ALL its forms, including physical and mental death. Eventually the entire physical universes is going to be UNDONE, because it does not exist. Only God's kingdom will remain.)

"This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity." (Obviously, but this actually does not just mean that the people in the world are nuts (and most are, me included), it means the world ITSELF, the very fabric of spacetime, is insanity. It is impossible to be separate from God and this universe attempts to prove otherwise.)

"On confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon." (here, we're told the world RESTS UPON confusion. The world itself. Now, if this means your perception, sure, that'd seem to make sense. You can be confused, and become unconfused. Sure, makes sense. But this statement isn't speaking about you or your personal world. In fact, most of the course is not speaking to or about anyone's EGO SELF, and yet 90%+ of ACIM students THINK that the Course is talking about THEIR PERSONAL EGO, which leads to a ton of confusion. The world ITSELF is based on confusion because it's an expression of a belief that separation from God is possible, which is a confused state of mind.)

"It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for this world." (And this never changes. The world is BASED ON death, made of death, and is ALWAYS DEAD. There is no life here. There is no life outside of heaven. All forms of "life" in the world, all bodies, animals, plants etc, the sun and stars, it is all part of a DREAM OF DEATH, and not one part of it has eternal life. Death was the motivation that MADE THIS WORLD. This world was MADE BY A DEATH WISH, not by God. That's quite extremely opposite to the folk who believe God created this world somehow).

"The world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself." (When this says "yourself" note that it does not just mean "you in a body and not other people." Most people take it that way because they have an ego. Statements about you making the world or the world being in your mind, is not about it being in your SEPARATE MIND. It's about it being in THE ONE MIND of the son of God. The ONE son of God is the maker of this entire world. It is not outside of THAT SELF. You are busy focusing on how to get your LITTLE SELF to a state of awakening of maximal naturalness, but there is more beyond that - realizing that you are the entire sonship and more. You are Christ, not just one Son.)

"What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" (Who wants the crappy world anyway? It's full of shit.)

"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up." (You can believe you are victimized when you believe the world itself is a CAUSE and you are its EFFECT. But when this is reversed (this is a course in cause not effect), YOU become the cause and the world is recognized as an EFFECT. It has no power over you because it is an EFFECT of YOUR dreaming it (as the One Son). This is how you are not a victim of it. Otherwise, the world can still kill you against your will. No-one dies without their own consent.)

"Holy are you, eternal, free and whole, at peace forever in the Heart of God. Where is the world, and where is sorrow now?" (Apparently Jesus is clear that the world is not a place of peace or freedom or holiness. So God cannot have created it.)

"What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up. The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth." (Yes dreams seem very real. What if i told you right now that you are actually INSIDE A HUGE DREAM? Right now... this room you are in or whatever, the people you are near, it's part of a DREAM. This is not what God created because it is a DREAM, not a reality. God does not dream or make worlds of dreams, or dreams of death. God did not create a dream world. You're dreaming, and you need to wake up FROM this dream, not TO it.)

"Forgive the world, and you will understand that every thing that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real." (Objects in this world have ends and beginnings. Every particle begins and ends. Every flower is sown and grows and blooms and dies. Beginnings and endings. It's not just a matter of not seeing them correctly or not realizing that "God is making them grow" or some BS, it's simply that, ALL FORMS ARE FORMS OF DEATH, and they all end, and that is why they are NOT eternal, and God did not create them.

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach in all its forms wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty and bound by what it orders him to feel." (Exactly, and elsewhere Jesus tells us that love (God) did not make the body. God does not create forms, or planets, or a physical universe).

"The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal, passed away in Heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come. What disappeared too quickly to affect the simple knowledge of the Son of God can hardly still be there, for you to choose to be your teacher." (The entire world and all things in it were MADE by us to be NOT ETERNAL, which is WHY it passed away, because it could not last. Nothing God creates can die or end or transform or change, no matter what words you use to try to make out that it wouldn't be seen "as change" when you're awake.)

"Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness." (I like this quote also because it locks in the form of the world as being evidence of a mistake. Everything in the world, bodies, objects, even the planet, are "little". All little particles and atoms. All little tiny little creatures walking around thinking they are big. Go up in an airplane and you'll see how little it all is. Every FORM in this world is little, as an idea of not being unlimited or infinite, because it's an idea of contraction AWAY from God. This is not God's creation or God's will, and God would not maintain this for an instant.)

"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see and all the world must change accordingly. (mind over matter)" (Again this is another one which people can and do use to try to prove that references to the world are all about "your personal misperception", and that you need to fix how you see in order to see it properly, and that afterwards, you'll keep the world and stay in it because it's real. No. Your WISHES have MADE A PLANET. The wishes of the one son of God, has made an entire physical universe. These are wishes to die. Wishes to be crucified. Wishes to sin. Wishes against God's will. God did not make this. What you want to see, changes, IN FORM, as mind-over-matter, because your mind is THAT POWERFUL. It doesn't just mean you change your perception OF stuff, when your perception properly changes, the world ITSELF must change form, and so must the body.)

"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you. The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition." (You put it there (forms, bodies, trees, buildings) because you WANT TO. Do you think you don't have that much power? The mind is very powerful. The world must match the outward picture of the inward condition of the mind of the ONE SON. The One Son is attempting to destroy himself BY fragmenting himself into many many individuals and forms scattered across many worlds. What shows up as objects and bodies is what the Son of God wants to see there. It IS his perception. The course says literally "the world IS PERCEPTION", which does not mean that your little human "perception" contains the illusory world, it means the ENTIRE WORLD OF EARTH is inside the perception of a vast mind - it is that mind's IMAGINATION. Meaning, physical objects, are actually a part of SEEING, the mechanism of trying to VISUALIZE STUFF, which brings it into appearance as fake images i.e. objects and forms and bodies. When the mind is free of all this, the physical world - yes - planet earth in all its ways - MUST DISSAPPEAR.)

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true." (I would rather have what the Kingdom of God offers than what this world offers. This world is not my home. It does not contain the truth. It is not real. And God did not create it. It HAS blinded the sons to the father, which was its purpose. You cannot behold (see in any way) the world (physical planet earth) and behold the kingdom. Only one of them is true and real. Planet earth does not exist, was not created by god, is an illusion, and if you're still SEEING IT in any way, with any mind whatsoever, you are not in the Kingdom. To suggest you can BE in God, in his kingdom, while the world continues to appear or move or change or have form, you are in denial.)

"O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is. Hallowed your Name and His, for they are joined here in this holy place. Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love." (Looking forward to this! Finally a relief from this world of nightmares and death and suffering. THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD BEYOND THIS which God did create - his kingdom, heaven, filled with joy and life and peace and celebration. It is HOME. It is where you really want to be. Do not let the world, planet earth, bodies, objects, forms, people, places, idols, or anything else, KEEP YOU FROM going there and accepting it as your true home where your true nature is free at last. The world offers nothing in comparison. Pleasure is not love. Specialness is not love. Forms are not love. Sunsets and kittens are not love. "Never was love in the world."

There is no world. The people who do not believe this will continue to not believe this, and will object to this post and everything it says. They are free to do so, but they are not free of the confusion that is going to accompany those beliefs, or the fear that will be induced upon being confronted with this truth. I would hope people will change their mind and see what the course is really telling us. Then we have real hope.