The belief that sin is real, leads to all kinds of behavior modifications. If sin is real, i.e. certain activities or behaviors are "actually sinful", this will force you to have to avoid certain things, not do certain things, be instantly sinful if you did certain thing sin the past etc.

You will start to prepare yourself in behavioral ways for "the lord" and you will sacrifice. You will see certain behaviors are "good" and other behaviors are "bad". Sins apparently won't apply to ALL of the things in the world, only special select things. The special good things will be "spiritualized".

If sin is real, then all of the world is sinful. But this seems to escape people. Reason being that they believe the world is real, so they can't have the whole world being sinful, they instead section part of it off as sinful and call the other part "good".

They then strive to become "more good" by getting rid of, denying, literally avoiding, condemning, and judging the things which are considered sins. There will even be a list of what is a sin and what is not a sin. There may even be alleged commandments given by God which tell you what you can and cannot do.

You then will try to make yourself as good as possible, which emphasizes the persona, which, btw, reinforces the shadow, which produces evil. Oops!

This polarizing idea of sinfulness has produced so much LEVEL CONFUSION it's crazy.

If you believe in sin AT ALL, i.e. sin is real, and you can really sin, and that if you really sin God will not love you, you're going to be in for a shock. IF sin were real, it WOULD mean God could not love you because the real sin would prove WHY. So then you will avoid doing real sins to try to avoid having God not love you.

Well, here's the news. God permanently loves you and cannot find you sinful or guilty for any reason whatsoever.

So what does that say about sin?

SIN IS NOT REAL.

There are no sins. There is no real sin. The world is not real. Anything you seem to do in the world is not real. None of it is really happening because the world is entirely an illusion. And therefore, YOU CANNOT BE SINFUL.

God is already completely loving you 100% right now, with absolutely no unforgiveness, absolutely no judgement or condemnation. The concept of judgement and condemnation (to hell) by God is purely based on the idea that sin is real.

The idea of sin being real is a form of crowd control invented by the ego and expressed through religious dogma.

God isn't waiting for you to stop sinning in order for you to be forgiven. God already finds you worthy, innocent, holy, lovable.

The thing that God is actually waiting for you to get done with, is for you to STOP BELIEVING THAT ILLUSIONS ARE REAL.

Stop believing that the illusion of sin is real! That's what God wants. And as soon as you drop the belief in "real sin", innocence MUST follow. THAT is why and how you are innocent.

"What if you looked within and saw there is no sin?" - ACIM

There is a subtle form of ego projection which may go unnoticed.

Sometimes other people are arguing or upset. It may not necessarily have anything to do with you and you might not be actively a part of the argument.

But the ego in you can start to experience a kind of "delight" that others are suffering or in conflict. It's almost like saying, I don't even need to project sin to make others guilty because they're doing a great job of being guilty on their own.

The ego then kind of sits back in glee, in a kind of sick way, excited that someone else is receiving the punishment.

I've seen this rise up in myself on occasion when other people are having arguments in front of me. The ego becomes a kind of spectator, feeding off the situation by "enjoying" the conflict.

The ego is sadistic, and false beliefs always lean toward welcoming suffering. The ego loves to suffer, to be both victim and victimizer. So when both external parties are victimizing and being victims of each other, the ego is having a field day.

I have to watch this in myself and notice it. When I notice it, it seems to collapse and disappear immediately if I recognize that this is me being ego. Just because I don't seem to be involved doesn't mean my ego stays quiet. It gets involved passively.

This is also the source of people gossiping about each other or backstabbing or creating drama indirectly about the behaviors of others. Using them as virtual scapegoats. Taking advantage of the opportunity to be "right" about others being "wrong" because of how other people dug their own grave.

When Jesus speaks of 'sickness' in ACIM, he doesn't just refer to what we think of as sickness.

You see, to Him, sickness occurs because of some very very fundamental things happening. e.g. "seeking outside yourself" produces sickness". e.g. "confusing the levels" (of consciousness) produces sickness. e.g. believing that causes are outside of you or that the body has its own will, produces sickness.

So really, when there is ANY seeking outside yourself, ANY reversal of cause and effect, ANY level confusion whatsoever, whatever results from that is given the label "sickness".

Sickness includes all physical sicknesses, diseases and death. But it also includes all mental illness, all fear, all upset emotions, all projections, all false beliefs, or mistaken sense of identity, all unawareness or unconsciousness, all behaviors inspired by the separate ego mind, etc... absolutely every activity or attitude of the separated self is sickness. Even the existence of the body itself is fundamentally a form of sickness, because the ego made it to enforce separation. Believing that you are not one with other people is sickness. Any form of separation is sickness.

So when Jesus refers to sickness in ACIM, he's referring to AAAAAAALLL of the forms and facets of 'a sick mind' in all the ways it manifests or distorts on every level in every way. Similarly, all of this entire motherload of 'states of being' that are not pure and holy, are sickness. And sickness also = fear, because "healing is essentially the release from fear". So sickness and fear are the same thing, and all distortions in the mind, and all ego in any way shape or form is sickness.

So when Jesus says you can perform miracles to 'heal the sick and raise the dead', he also really does mean the correction or undoing of the entire ego thought system, the entire ego 'world' of manifested interferences and distortions and unholiness.

Here's something that may be very difficult to own up to. If you are upset by anything in the world, it is because you have attacked the world. And usually when you are upset, it is because you perceive someone else did the attacking. And then you recoil and despise the attack, and it affects you, and you become upset. And this all covers up the fact that you are attacking. Sin seems outside of you, not in your mind.

You see, you cannot see attack unless you attack. If someone seems to murder someone in front of your face, most people would be horrified. But that's the ego being horrified, about what the ego has done. The reaction has to be fake, because if you knew the truth you'd know nothing has really happened, would laugh at it, and raise the dead. Nothing real can be threatened. There is no death. You're just seeing a dream.

What's very hard to confess to or even be aware of, is that the only reason you are upset by a murder is because there is part of your mind that believes in murder, and is murderous. It reminds you of that, and triggers that in you. You are horrified by your OWN belief about YOURSELF. It reflects what you think is going to happen to you, and what you are doing to yourself. Otherwise you would dismiss it in an instant.

You might say, well, I'm a really loving person and I absolutely would never want to hurt anyone. I advocate for love and can only love. BUT, when someone gets murdered in front of my face, I may freak out. Why? How is that possible? It's only possible because I make it real, I believe it's true, and I value it. I see what I value, and value what I believe in. So I believe in the murder, and its horrors just reflect what I believe I deserve, because of my belief in sin being real, which I am perceiving outside of me.

There HAS TO BE something in my mind that is made of sin, in order for me to react to the "sinful behavior" of others. Otherwise I would be absolutely unmoved by this illusion. So on the one hand I'm claiming to be love/loving, but these events prove my love is conditional, and that means I MUST be in denial. Invulnerability is a characteristic of innocence and holiness, not reacting with ego emotional trauma. A peace that passes all understanding. The immovable rock of sanity.

So we have to be really, REALLY honest with ourselves. Are we REALLY loving, if we are so easily shaken by sin? Are we really awake, if we are still affected by the world we see? Something is incomplete if there is even a slight trace of upset. If we have any reaction other than love, we are in the ego. To the Holy Spirit, all things call for love, not fear.

Yet sometimes we split the world into two things. There are perceived behaviors which are "okay and loving" and other behaviors "which are evil". This is the result of a split mind looking at the world. And when the loving things happen we think, ok, that's love, I'm doing that, so I'm loving. Then when the unholy things happen we think, that's NOT love. But instead of recognizing it as a meaningless illusion we recoil in horror and pass blame and point a finger and make the person wrong. Because we're not really whole in our love. It's not unconditional.

If I derive my sense of happiness from what happens "to me" or what happens "in the world", then I am easily robbed of happiness when anything goes wrong. And there are plenty of things that will go wrong. Invulnerability and love can only come about by becoming CAUSE, not effect. By recognizing that you are NOT at the effect of the world, in ANY of its forms, any events, or when anything happens. If I want to be actively loving in this world, it can't be that I ditch love at a moment's notice when something alarming seems to occur. That's special love, and too much fear. Fear does not enter where it is not welcome, and fear is its denial.

And so it's possible to have special love for the world, which means that you value bodies and the planet and want to keep it and want to have "loving behavior" and so on, but without overlooking these illusions and without being consistent. Some actions are then considered acceptable, others are considered evil and are despised. That is not love. That's judgementalism. That's fake spirituality. That's the ego trying to spiritualize an illusion and make it real. It takes many forms, sometimes things such as "not eating meat", or "hating murderers", or trying to focus solely on "the positive", or wearing "spiritual clothes".

That is denial. It is the two-facedness of the ego. The ego is especially good at taking sides and making out that one "way" is right and one way is wrong. Still continuing to be affected by the world is a certain sign of unforgiveness. Forgiveness overlooks the world which is why it causes you not to take anything seriously in it, recognizing it is not real. This can be difficult to learn because many things in the world SEEM evil or unloving. But you can't have a life where you are "loving sometimes" and call it loving. You have to learn to realize that the unloving, hateful, vengeful things are NOT THAT, and see through them to the truth.

This is a course in Cause, not effect. The world is not a cause. Believing it causes anything produces effects in you and makes you sick. To suffer with upset or horror when bad things happen is sickness. To blame the bad things for causing it is sickness. To not realize what you did to yourself to make yourself experience upset, is sickness. A Course in Miracles isn't about putting on a nice facade of persona all the time and "looking loving", and then taking off the love and going into fear or judgement when the situation changes.

Beware of illusions of love. Real, genuine, deep love is unconditional in its application, sees ALL things in this world as unreal, recognizing NOTHING can change what it is, and has NO effects from worldly events. To love is not to take sides or to judge or to hate sinners. To love is to recognize the Christ in each is the only truth and all the rest is bullshit. "For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew YOU were dreaming."

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

If there is a pain in my hand, and if I believe there is a pain in my hand, I will begin to experience reactions about the pain.

This is simply because I see there being some kind of causality coming from the pain. I think it has a power over me. I see it as happening to me. I seem to be experiencing it as though it has happened without me asking for it. And so it seems unfair, malicious, unwanted, unwelcome, as though these sentiments are somehow justified expressions of me being holier or more innocent than this.

And if this pain in the hand continues or increases, then I will likely increase in my perception of victim hood, and simply by the reversal of cause and effect, seeing cause as outside of myself, I am actively creating responsive conditions inside of myself which show up as reactions, having threatened my own self with my own mistaken perception of this pain.

I myself am creating my own reactions, including fear which begins to mount in response, as though the pain is causing me to be afraid - what does it mean, what is it leading to, why is it happening, but simply also the sheer apparent fact (albeit unreal) that it is even happening at all, is enough to provide an upset.

"I am upset because I see something that is not there." - ACIM

And so as my fearful reaction increases, so too does my conviction that this is a more serious problem than before, that it calls for magical curative measures which will attack it and manipulate it and try to make it go away. And the more strongly I feel passionate about the need to be rid of it, the more I will actually add empowerment to it, seeing it as being so strong and mighty as to deserve serious counter-measures.

These perceptions of the need for a counter measure, a retaliation, a reaction of any justified kind, a fear, or any sense of taking this seriously or treating it as real, simply shows the extent of my mistakedness and the fact that what I am ACTUALLY doing is CREATING THIS. I create it with my fear of it, I create it with my rejection of it, I create it with my desire to be rid of it, and I create it with my attempt to fix it.

And the more real of a problem it seems to become, the more certain I will be that I really need to get something done about this because it's very very serious indeed. And yet in perceiving it, describing it, envisioning it, interacting with it and making it be serious as such - believing in its appearance - I am merely choosing to manifest it, to give energy to it, to feed it.

The reason that we do this is because when we are using the mind incorrectly and are entering into illusions, false perceptions and errors, we start to experience the opposite of what we attempt to achieve. We think that we do not want pain in the hand, but this means that we will put it there. We think the pain in the hand should not be happening, and such intensify its happening. We think that it is making us very afraid, and as such we literally are causing it to become more monstrous.

We do not realize that as soon as we have stepped away from real truth and have entered into mistaken truth, we've lost our mind and our way, have become deceived, and are now operating our mental powers 'inversed' or back to front.

The ego is an entire thought system based on this back-to-front inversion of truth, and when we are in this mind, we quite literally ask for what we do not want, attract what we are trying to get away from, try to fix what is not even a problem, and generally compound the very issues that we suffer from, not realizing all along that we are inadvertently causing ourselves to prolong the suffering, simply because we're applying ourselves through an inverting filter, a reality flip, which gives us back the exact opposite of what we think we are asking for. And this is simply because once in the ego perception, we are in opposition to the real truth, and therefore are bringing about opposite effects.

Indeed the incorrect form of forgiveness correlates to the ego activities and behaviors of believing that you are sincerely attempting to rid the world of that which is wrong with it, by taking a purer or more innocent standpoint, all the while actually reinforcing, manifesting, increasing and generally adding to the conditions of sinfulness. Such forgiveness then becomes an attack rather than a correction of error, a judgement instead of a miracle.

True forgiveness therefore must entail the cessation of all of the above egoic behaviors, reactions, self-caused chaos, and general inversion of truth and opposition to it. All of these symptoms are expressing merely because you are using the mind backwards, expressing opposition and resistance instead of unity, order and health.

True forgiveness entails the complete UN-doing of all of these egoic thought patterns, attitudes that reinforce the reality of the monster, reactions to it founded in fear which really are created by your own self as part of your psychological reversal and belief in threat, and the cessation of "making real" this problem. To lend reality to it, to believe in it, dwell upon it, give it credit, think of it seriously, forget to laugh at it, mistake it for real danger (which does not exist), and to generally actually side with it while claiming and portraying yourself as doing the exact opposite, is simply to keep the problem and make it worse.

We need to learn to forget this world. As Jesus says, forget this world and come with wholly empty hands unto your God. To forget is to literally pay no further attention, knowing that the thing was unreal, and requires no upkeep to defend against it.

We need to learn to stop learning the wrong things. We keep teaching ourselves with the ego, we keep learning that sickness is real, that sin is irreversible, and that death is inevitable. This must all be corrected and undone and vanquished from the mind, replaced with the Holy Light of the Truth, which comes to set you free.

The truth does set you free, literally, actually, and in reality. Because the Truth is God and only Love is Real.

Those who are sane do not attack, are not sick, cannot hurt or be hurt, are immortal and invulnerable, recognize their oneness with others, have no interest in murder, cannot suffer or be unhappy, can only will with God, and can only heal. Nothing harmful or hurtful can come from a person in their right mind.

When a person is rooted in pure unconditional love, they can do nothing but love. All behaviors are coming from love. All thoughts and attitudes are loving. The right mind is healing, healthy, happy and whole. Sane people are innocent. Sane people are compassionate. Sane people cannot attack.

What this tells you is that 99.99% of the people in the world are not sane. They are not in their right mind. They are also not fully conscious. Anyone who is not in their right mind must have blocks to awareness, must be in denial, must be to some degree unwilling to do God's will, must be sick, and must be to some degree unhappy.

Anyone not in their right mind must have positioned themselves as a victim and a victimizer. The denial/blocks in their mind is preventing them from seeing their invulnerability and their innocence, causes them to be split-minded or in two minds, have a divided will which is acting against itself, and now sees themselves as under attack.

This produces state of non-awareness or unconsciousness. The amount of conscious awareness that remains, which pretends to be a full, complete conscious awareness, is still not fully conscious. Entire portions of the mind have become inaccessible to awareness. Entire portions of a person's identity are hidden from view.

The person thinks they wake up in the morning but they merely pass from sleep to slightly less sleep. The blocks in the mind block sanity. And those who are "sleep walking" in the world are typically not awake. They will tend to hurt and be hurt. They will tend to attack and project. They will tend to sin and feel guilty. They will tend to be afraid and suffer and be sick. And they will tend to be murderous.

What we can see then is that anyone not in their right mind has placed themselves into a state of at least partial unawareness, are attacking themselves unconsciously, do not see what they are doing to themselves and so seek to explain it with causes outside of them, and are in a state of attempted murder. What is not love is murder, and those not in their right mind are not wholly loving.

But someone who is not wholly loving, is not sane. They are insane. They are un-conscious. They are confused. They do not have the awareness that's needed to show them what the obvious truth is. They are out of touch with who they are. They can't tell the difference between what is real and what is not real. They don't know what they are doing. They are acting insanely and are in a state of being mistaken.

If we frame everything that insane people do as being a state of "not knowing what they do", that they are acting this way as a result of mental illness, not being in their right mind, and we can remember that the person is simply not aware of what they are really doing, we can enter into a state of greater compassion.

It's a state of recognition of what the truth is, in which we understand every person is innocent and holy and divine and invulnerable, and so if the person is acting foolishly or murderously they must be in need. They must be lacking love in some way and are calling out for love. They must need help. Something has gone wrong with them and even they are not in a position of awareness to know how to resolve it.

We really need to recognize that most of the people in this world are not sane. Just about everyone has mental illness. And that includes all the people who seem to be conscious, successful, holding down a job, raising a family, displaying confidence, seeming to be fairly happy and sociable, or what you'd consider an "average person". If they were truly fully sane they probably would not be in a body.

If we then recognize that anyone "not being as God created them" is not in their right mind, we can say that they aren't acting the way they are "on purpose". While it's true that on a higher level they ARE choosing everything they are doing, they are not aware of this in their present state of consciousness. They have denied themselves the love that would heal them and so do not want it. And the result of love's absence is insane behavior.

If we can see that everyone is supposed to be being completely happy, joyful, alert, healthy, holy, harmless and peaceful, then if they're not, we know something has gone wrong in their mind. And that means they are calling out for love. They may at the same time not want that love, because their denial of love is what put them into this state to begin with. But they do NEED love because love is all that's absent in their mind. They need the love they have blocked.

It's like, people have tried to unhook themselves from the life support machine of God. They've pulled out the wires and don't want the help. But they NEED the help because of what they've done to themselves and the state they've put themselves in. So now they are calling out for help in the form of not wanting help, which if taken at first appearance seems to be an attack on God and on you. But it is merely an absence of love, just as light would dispel the illusion of darkness.

"It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is impossible. But you must remember that when you put yourselves in an impossible situation, you believed that the impossible WAS possible."

If you can remember people are mostly insane and not in their right mind and not acting "on purpose" and not really wanting what they are doing, it becomes easier to not be deceived by the illusions they present. There is something deeper going on beyond the surface, beyond behaviors and beyond attacks. Healing is needed, called for, and the only appropriate right-minded response.

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.

If a person - ie a body - does something wrong, and you focus on their body and what it did, you are being unforgiving. It isn't possible to keep focusing on the body and forgive the person. You can't be psychologically aiming your focus at the person's body while exclaiming that you forgive them. To focus on their body IS to imprison them AND accuse them AND not forgive them.

What is required then is to completely disregard ANYTHING that the body person seems to have done, on the basis that they are NOT that body self. That body self - the combination of the body and the ego - is NOT their soul. It is not who or what they really are. This means basically dismissing anything anyone physical ever seems to do, with a thought that completely ignores anything involving the body, recognizing NONE of its behaviors are real.

This of course takes an initial willingness to approach the idea that a person IS NOT their body. This can be very difficult and threatening at first, especially with strong special-relating tied up in it, valuing the body, associating a sense of identity of the person WITH their body, and constantly referring to their body-self whenever thinking of "them". We have to become open to the idea or the possibility that the person's identity or self IS NOT their body, or their ego. And everything the ego-body does is not real or relevant.

That means challenging your own belief and conviction that people are fundamentally bodies. This is a HUGE change. That when you look and your physical eyes see a body, you think "that's a person", and you give it a name such as Michael or Jane or whatever, referring to IT as if its the person. We do this all the time. If you watch and notice whether or not your references to a person are including the body, you'll probably find that ALL of them are. You barely can even think of anyone without your mind bringing up pictures of their body in your mind.

"For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize."

We essentially have to deprogram ourselves away from regarding the ego-body-self as the truth about the person, or that it even IS the person at all. We have to be open to the idea that their ego-body-self IS NOT who or what they are. It is entirely unreal and fictional and NOT part of their self. That's completely bizarre to contemplate and rather threatening when you are very much bound to living in a world of bodies, as a body. The bottom line is, ALL relationships with bodies are special relationships.

But we need to find a way to not hold anyone's ego-body stuff against them. If their ego-body stuff is real or happening or associated with them, it DOES ACCUSE THEM OF SIN. Just even merely looking upon it accuses them of sin, if we're identifying them with their body and its actions. To NOT accuse them of sin, to be forgiving, to overlook, actually REQUIRES that we look beyond the body. It's can't be that the person IS a body if we are to forgive them. The forgiveness has to include the recognition that people ARE NOT BODIES AT ALL.

So anything the "person's" ego body does, any actions you see with your physical eyes, any mistakes they make, anything that comes out of "their" mouth, any behaviors, any attacks "they" seem to make, any way at all that their body is regarded as "the person", HAS to be undone. We have to learn that this world is not populated directly by souls or real identities, it is populated by FAKE IMAGES of FAKE BODIES doing fake things. And if ANY thing that any such body-self does is held against anyone, you are accusing them of sin.

That effectively means that we have to be willing to let go of a person's body-self, stop referring to them as their body self, stop binding them to their body whenever we think of them, and realize the quite shocking revelation that you've been in a relationship with AN UNREAL BODY SELF all this time, which has had nothing to do with their real self.

You'll also find that you will be afraid of admitting that their body is not really the person, because this implies that the very people (bodies) that you love the most don't exist as those bodies. They are beyond them. And your ego may interpret that as a loss, or a threat to your relationship, or an attempt to kill off the people you value.

You can more or less disregard all bodies, and basically ignore what any body does, on the basis that it is nothing. It is basically part of a dream. "The body is a dream." The body is not real and it is not the person. Anything you've seen them do or heard them say basically HAS NOT HAPPENED. It has no real consequence and means nothing whatsoever. Your challenge is to basically not hold ANYTHING IN THE WORLD against anyone!

So you might as well just brush off absolutely everything you ever see "any-body" seeming to do, simply on the basis that it is NOT THEM. And thus not hold their own body against them, nor the ego behaviors that seem to emit from it. If you try this you will find that you move into a much more forgiving space and are much happier, because now you're actually BEING forgiving by recognizing that bodies are not real, sins are not happening, no-one is doing anything, and nothing REAL has been threatened.

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end have NOT been brought in line. "

"This is no gift your brother's BODY offers you. The veil that hides the gift hides him as well. He IS the gift, and yet he knows it not. No more do you."

"Your brother's BODY shows not Christ to you. He IS set forth within his holiness."

"You who believe it easier to see your brother's body than his holiness, be sure you understand what made this judgment. Here is the voice of specialness heard clearly, judging AGAINST the Christ, and setting forth, for YOU, the purpose that you CAN attain, and what you can NOT do."

"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE. He can but be IMAGINED in the darkness, and it is here that the illusions you hold about him are NOT held up to his reality. Here are illusions and reality kept SEPARATED. Here are illusions NEVER brought to truth, and ALWAYS hidden from it. And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality IMAGINED as a body, in unholy relationships with other bodies, serving the cause of sin an instant, before he dies."

"Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision, and give you joy. And place NO value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is. It is HIS desire to see his sinlessness, as it is YOURS. And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you have MADE of him. "

"Let your awareness of your brother NOT be blocked by your perception of his sins, and of his body. What is there in him that you would attack, EXCEPT what you associate with his body, which YOU believe can sin? BEYOND his errors is his holiness, and YOUR salvation."

"When you call upon a brother, it is to his body that you make appeal. His true identity is hidden from you by what you believe he really is. His body makes response to what you call him, for his mind consents to take the name you give him as his own. And thus his unity is twice denied, for you perceive him separate from you, and he accepts this separate name as his."

"He is not brother made by what he DREAMS, nor is his body, "hero" of the dream, your brother. It is his REALITY that is your brother, as is yours to him. Your mind and his ARE joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but SEEM to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. And yet, between your MINDS there IS no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him NOT, because his dreams would SEPARATE from you."

"And as you see him shining in the space of light where God abides within the darkness, you will see that God Himself is where his body is. Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows MUST give way to light."

"Choose, then, his body OR his holiness as what you WANT to see, and which you choose is yours to look upon."

"The Christ in you beholds his holiness. Your specialness looks on his body, and beholds him not."

"Limit your vision of a brother to his body, which you WILL do, as long as you would not release him FROM it, and you have denied HIS gift to YOU. HIS BODY CANNOT GIVE IT. And seek it not through YOURS."

"Framed in his body you will see YOUR sinfulness, wherein YOU stand condemned. Set in his holiness, the Christ in him proclaims HIMSELF as you."

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT. And you will see SAFETY IN GUILT, and DANGER IN COMMUNICATION."

"Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION. THIS VISION is invisible to the physical eye. The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation."

Since all things physical are rooted in separation, it is impossible to do ANYTHING in this world without it being in some way connected to being separate.

Eating, breathing, talking, touching, fighting, whatever, everything physical is not God’s nature.

We tend to section off certain physical things as somehow “meaning” that they are good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse, more or less spiritual. But physicality can’t really be said to be selective in terms of what it represents.

A war, a butterfly flapping, people hitting each other, baking a cake, painting a picture, on the physical level it’s all still forms in a dream, images made of ideas of separateness and conflict. But somehow arbitrarily we’ve assigned all kinds of hierarchies and categories to physical things to say that some are better than others.

Given that you can’t DO anything in the world without it being rooted in separation, it then comes down to PURPOSE. And by purpose we have to mean that how it is being USED or toward what ultimate goal. The use of it isn’t inherent to the thing itself, because purpose is about mind and the meaning the mind gives to things.

It is mind that judges murder as bad, or as worse than kissing. It is mind that decides that a dead broken body is more evil or proof of sin that a healthy athlete running a race. It is mind that decides to say that people shooting others with guns is bad while hugging is good.

Ultimately the strange truth is that all things physical cannot be used to determine “what it means”, or whether it is a good thing or not. Our categorizations of stuff comes from judgements, and most of those judgments are rooted in ego. It is technically the ego that says that physical war is ”an ego thing.” Which is kind of a confusion of two levels - mental and physical.

Let’s remember the world is a dream. And the dream is made of symbols. And the symbols can sometimes look what we have decided is nice and other times not nice. Even the death of the body has been artificially endowed with negative meanings, while the non-dead bodies have been endowed with positive meanings. Yet:

“The body cannot be meaningfully invested with attributes of Christ OR the ego.” Because the body is actually “nothing.”

So if we stop completely trying to evaluate whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, spiritual or not, based on its FORM … we might be better off. This means all illusions are equal and there is no hierarchy. Just because something looks like “a big disaster” doesn’t mean it IS actually in truth “worse than” a seemingly small problem. These are DECEPTIONS based on being blinded by perception of form.

A headache or cancer are technically both equally unreal and untrue, and one is NOT technically worse than the other. One is not more serious than the other either. Both are supposed to be regarded as equally meaningless and their forms are meant to be regarded as illusions of deception. We are not supposed to buy into how stuff looks on the physical level, as though differences mean something.

This is a bit radical because it means putting physical war and murder alongside kisses and hugs as equals. And not just categorizing the arbitrarily as opposites. It means that terrorism and abuse are “just another form” of the same illusion as someone throwing a birthday party and giving gifts. Because the FORM something takes is not its real meaning.

As the course teaches, when we look to the form tell us “what it means”, and USE and depend on the form to “describe” its meaning, we are deceived by illusions. A healthy body is not better or worse than a sick body in this sense. But the world is very accustomed to evaluating rightness or goodness based on what form something takes. Technically a nuclear bomb is no more ‘evil’ than a feather falling to the ground lightly.

“Let me not use this as a sign of sin and death, or as an obstacle to peace, but help me to use it to facilitate its coming.” This applies to all the seemingly physical FORMS of “bad things” in this world as much as anything - you should be able to find a way to laugh at it and see it as affirming a mental purpose of peace.

In terms of judgement, meaning, purpose, evaluations of whether its good or bad, judging whether it is spiritual or not, an ego thing or not, more or less ego based, etc…. that’s all mental stuff happening on a separate level from the physical. We have to give stuff all the meaning it has because it has none of its own. It’s a meaningless world. It has many different forms and we seem to prefer some over others, but truly we are not supposed to. The form illusions takes is not supposed to sway us whatsoever.

So then it comes down to the mind’s USE of the form, the PURPOSE it gives it from a higher level. What is it for. What meaning do we give TO it. What goal will we use it to serve? Who are we looking at it with - ego or holy spirit? You could say that a physical war could be used by the holy spirit’s vantage point to welcome laughter and happiness, just as much as you could say that a happy dance with hugs and kisses could be used by the ego as a sign of treachery and betrayal and conflict.

We’re not supposed to be dividing up the world based on what FORM things take, whatever category we put those forms into, or what meanings we give to those categories. Otherwise we start to try to “spiritualize form”, by saying that certain behaviors, acts, physical movements, styles, wardrobe choices, words, whatever, are somehow “more spiritual”. And before long we’re creating an illusion of being “physically spiritual.”

Of course a mind at peace, coming from Holy Spirit, may well tend to be guided to act in a certain way, to avoid certain things, or to do other things. But the things that are done are done for a higher purpose. And the form that these things appear to take may be misunderstood as “not looking spiritual.” There could be a higher purpose at work even if on the surface something does not “look spiritual.” Who are we to judge anything?

Can physical forms of separation and attack be AVOIDED in this world? Probably not. No matter what you eat, no matter how you move, what you do, it’s all still technically unreality and an attack on truth. Forms of sin and weird strange behaviors. You can’t avoid it. The whole system is one of death. But you can change how you look at it, what meaning you give to it, and what you make of it. And that’s all you can do with it. See it differently.

The key to seeing it differently is detaching from HOW IT LOOKS, disregarding the form, not trying to make the form take on a certain shape in order to be more spiritual, and not feeling guilty about what form it does take. Even going to the toilet is technically an act of war on the physical level. Nature’s nature is to devour. Everything you eat requires something else to starve. There is no escape from problems in this world. But you can change your mind about it and how you use it.

A good question to ask is, it is any of my god-dam business?

In various ACIM groups, a majority of statements made are attempts to evaluate what someone else is doing and to judge whether or not they are supposed to be doing it.

It's kind of like the behavior police, making it one's own business to require that other people be a certain way in order to be acceptable.

What I think it really stems from is this issue of irresponsibility for our own choices. Or rather, trying to make someone else responsible for your happiness, and thereby being justified in anger at them when they're not being the way we need them to be, in order to choose what we want on our behalf.

There is this "forgiveness to destroy" all over these groups.

If I am responsible for my own choice and what I experience and I am not responsible for anyone else's mistaken decisions, then what anyone else is or is not doing should really be of no concern to me.

If I can access anything I need and any experience I desire through responsibility for my own choice, then I should have no need for anyone else to be a certain way, say certain things, have certain behaviors, or comply to some kind of guilt-laden course ideal. If I'm finger-pointing as to how others are falling short, it must prove that I am falling short and I'm the one who needs to own it.

What I came away with from spending time in the groups is, getting back to this self-study practice, for myself. No-one else can choose the atonement for me, or deny it for me. It's not anyone else's choice to make on my behalf. So I ask myself now whether there is really any significant merit in participating in these "discussion groups" where 90% of what's written is about the ways that other people are wrong.

Why are so many people talking about the way that OTHER people are doing the course and judging them for it?

I don't think we're supposed to be even getting into other people's business. Like, if someone is doing the course a certain way for them, that's their choice. It may not be the way I do it or what I believe the course says. But as soon as my ego starts to compare and judge the person now I'm getting involved in their business, interfering with their choices, trying to control them, and then rejecting them when they fail to comply.

We need to mind of own fucking business a bit more. Or as Jesus puts it more eloquently.... be passer by. Observe.

Forgiveness looks and is still and quiet and judges not. Where is the entanglement of opinions and getting into whether other people are right or wrong, in that?

All the debate and trying to coerce others to be like oneself, is an indirect ego attempt to avoid making one's own choice for atonement. It's a failure to forgive, actually, resulting in justified judgement. "He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive." We aren't going to get to heaven by having someone else choose to go there for us.

So what does it matter what anyone else is doing? What does it matter whether other people are getting it or not? What does it matter who said what to whom and who was an asshole and who is passive aggressive and who is spewing lies about the truth 24/7?

I'm just thinking... I need to do the course myself, for me, and let go of trying to change other people when they're not ready or willing. Those who are to meet will meet. When students are ready, teachers appear. There are no accidents in salvation. God has a plan.