Let's say you're in a regular situation, maybe you're around someone you know. And there's something this person is doing that you 'describe' or 'label' as something. You think you're just making a basic observation, like it's obvious.
So maybe you 'see' that the person has a sickness, or they're angry, or scared, or whatever. So to you, you think you're just observing this like..... my friend Jane seems to be sick right now.
In this situation, I bet you believe that you're not actually 'doing' anything to Jane right? And you believe that you're just seeing her neutrally, right? And that there is not really anything to forgive here, because Jane really is sick, right?
Well... even in what seems like an 'ordinary' everyday perception of a 'normal' condition that someone is experiencing, there is unforgiveness. But you may not realize this especially because, IF you are seeing this and believing it's real or true, you have forgotten to forgive, and have lost sight of the REAL person - therefore yourself.
When this happens for me, I at first feel as though this isn't really 'my' problem. It's not 'me' that's got the issue. Whatever the other person is experiencing, it seems to be 'theirs' and is 'actually happening'. And here I am, in my ego, believing that I can perceive this so-called 'reality' without actually contributing to it at all, like I'm a completely neutral party. But this is of course the ego's deception.
The ego is not capable of seeing neutrally. "I have no neutral thoughts". "My meaningless (skewed) thoughts are showing me a meaningless world." etc. The ego believes it can do something to others and NOT be in any way associated with the outcome or the consequences. It thinks something can apply to someone else that does not apply to yourself. It thinks it can observe neutrally someone else in pain or any other suffering, and not suffer, and be having nothing to do with its presence.
But the ego is always actively involved. It's always attacking with attack thoughts and distorted perceptions. It's always judging. It's always projecting something onto someone.
So even though the situation seems to have no issues in it that have anything to do with 'me', separate me, is that really true? If we are all one and all laws apply equally to all people, then if the other person is seemingly in pain - or at least, if my perception has 'stopped' at "sight of form" or has made it real or believes it's true or agrees with it at all, then my ego IS active in this situation and IS using it. Instead of healing my brother, I must be condemning him or her by not overlooking 'their issue'. So what I'm seeing in them, or what they seem to be experiencing, SOMEHOW, it is MY issue.
What I did in a situation like this recently, even though it didn't SEEM like "I" had anything to forgive, as though there wasn't anything 'wrong' with me, but the other person was upset or sick, and I was accepting that they were actually sick, was to step back and do a forgiveness.
The basic fact of a need to forgive is that I'm seeing something that I think is separate from me (in another person, its their problem or fault, their sickness, etc), DISASSOCIATED from it.
Another basic fact of a need to forgive is that I see something in someone else that I don't believe is in me. That HAS to mean, that what I see in them IS my own stuff that I've projected onto them. Even if the other person seems to be the one with the sickness or the anger or whatever issue, I have to realize - it's really MY issue. If I am perceiving that anything applies to anyone that doesn't apply to myself, that we are not one or equal in every way, I have waking up to do.
Even if that sounds ridiculous. And it does sound ridiculous. To the ego it is ridiculous to suggest that something 'clearly' nothing to do with me, is actually somehow something about or in me that I need to forgive. You could boil it down to, ... if I'm seeing it, it's me. If I am seeing Christ, I am being Christ. If I am not seeing Christ, I am not being Christ. Right? Even if it seems like someone else's problem, if I see it and think it's really there, *I* (the One Son of God/Christ) have a problem.
So I did a forgiveness. I took back ownership of the sickness or anger that I saw in the other person, as though it were my own. I took back the guilt I thought the person had for believing they were sick. I took back ownership of the fear and anger. I even claimed it to be 'mine'. I took all of these labels, judgements, perceptions, impressions, evaluations, analyses, etc off of the person, to where I could moreso see THEY are innocent. THEY don't have any of these issues really. THEY are none of this. This whole 'perception' of them even having an issue, is MY error. Sounds ridiculous. Sounds like taking the world on your shoulders. Sounds like some kind of martyrdom. Sounds like taking possession of 'other people's problems' and making them your own on purpose. But is it REALLY not your problem?
I took it back. Then I went to Holy Spirit with it. I unconditionally surrendered the need to be right or wrong about any of these issues. I surrendered unconditionally any desire to decide FOR MYSELF whether any of these things were true or not. Thus I opened up to accepting whatever Holy Spirit would decide. I asked for His decision, and he reported instantly that NO, I am not guilty of any of these things, none of them are true.
Then, instantly, there began a healing process within me, Holy Spirit came in, body parts vibrated, 'energy' whirled around, things shook, and several seconds later all of the sensation or experience of those 'things' was gone.
Now, what was the result of this?
Next day, around this person, *I* was noticeably much happier, clearer, much less engaged with taking their situation seriously, much more detached, lighter, smilier, stronger. I accessed a 'light' and a sense of security and certainty that I did not know was available. I also believe that by my being in a higher state of awareness, this 'helped' the other person in some way. Not saying it was a miracle as such, or that it had observable effects, but for sure *I* was transformed.
How would I have been transformed if this wasn't all about me to begin with, or issues within me that needed healing? How would I have experienced greater light if I hadn't had any need to forgive? Even though it didn't seem like the issue outside of me had anything to do with me, *I* was the one perceiving it, *I* was the one believing it. *I* needed healing.
You can't believe that other people are guilty or bad or wrong or sinful without believing that it applies to you somehow.
You can't be someone who is separate from the effects of your own attack.
You can't judge someone, believing that your judgement of them is not a judgement of yourself.
To believe that someone else is very wrong and this does not include you, is insanity.
Try hating someone while at the same time experiencing full and complete love for yourself. Try it. You will fail.
Try being outraged and angry at someone while fully experiencing the joy and peace of your true self. Impossible.
Try blaming someone for being wrong or guilty or sinful or a criminal and simultaneously experience a sense of serenity and happiness and love within yourself. You will not be able to.
The fact is, your attack on them attacks YOU. You cannot believe in sin without being sinful. You cannot believe in guilt without being guilty. You cannot believe in fear without being afraid. You cannot believe in punishment without being punished. And you cannot believe in death without being dead.
To deny this is insane. What applies to you applies everywhere. It is the ego which claims something can apply to you which doesn't apply to someone else, or vice versa. You can't have two sets of rules that come into effect whenever it pleases you or makes you out to be better off. That's dishonest to say the least.
Believing is receiving.
Believe in God, you will receive eternal life.
Believe in ego, you will receive suffering and death.
You receive because you believe in it. You believe it is your truth. Your reality. And what you deserve. You receive it because you make it happen.
When you believe in God, you join with God's will and create with Him and thus receive what you create.
When you believe in ego, you join with the ego's will and create with it and thus receive what you create.
Whatever you are receiving, it reflects what you are believing in.
You can't have a belief which is disconnected from what you receive, and you can't be in a state where you believe one thing and receive something else.
If you want to receive a miracle, you need to receive God, by believing that His truth is your truth.
If you want the results of the miracle but you don't want the alignment with God that's required to receive it, to choose it, you won't receive it. That's how sickness and suffering remain.
You get to choose what to believe in.
Whatever you believe in, that is what you believe you deserve or are worthy of experiencing.
If you believe you sinned, you will believe you deserve an experience of guilt.
If you believe you're guilty, you will believe you deserve an experience of fear.
If you believe you're afraid, you will believe you deserve an experience of punishment.
If you believe you are being punished, you will believe you deserve an experience of death.
What are you worthy of? To become worthy of love, you must recognize that none of these accusations are true. You don't deserve any of them.
You did not sin, are not guilty, need not be afraid, there is no punishment coming, and you don't deserve to die.
Because separation didn't happen. So you're innocent.
If you have not really sinned, you automatically have no reason to try to get rid of the responsibility for having sinned.
If you believe you HAVE really sinned, and believe in your own sinfulness, you will try to escape the EFFECTS of sin. Sin causes guilt, fear, punishment and death. It is condemning. That's a pretty big reason to want to escape those effects!
You will then find yourself PRETENDING that part of you is not yourself - that it is someone else. And then you will displace all of your SELF BLAME onto that part, disassociate your identity from it, and pretend that it belongs to a separate self.
You will attack this "not me" part of yourself and put all of your self condemnation onto it, accusing it and finding it sinful, berating it and hating it, like it's some kind of culprit, when in fact it's actually a part of yourself. This is self abuse. It's your "innocent persona" attacking and CREATING your "guilty shadow".
You will then overlay this hallucinated "other not self" on top of people, and believe that they are the ones who are guilty. You will think that your perception of this IN them, justifies you being angry AT them, and that therefore you SHOULD blame them for what you believe they are doing to YOU. Projection of your split mind onto others completes your ESCAPE PLAN.
But you are doing this all to yourself. And you're ONLY doing this because you believe you are really sinful. And because of that belief, you THINK that you can DENY that YOU YOURSELF believe in your own sinfulness, by hiding from it using denial, and then pretending that someone ELSE is the sinner.
It is simply clear that, if you did not believe that you are really sinful, yourself, you would have no NEED for denial, no NEED for a scapegoat, no NEED for disassociation, no NEED for projection onto "not me" (others), and you would not NEED to find other people guilty of YOUR OWN SINS. You would also not need to create persona at war with a shadow, and all that would remain is your REAL Self.
As Jesus teaches, "you but accuse your brother of your own sins." This is LITERALLY TRUE. You ONLY accuse your brother of your own belief that YOU are sinful. Your attempt to find someone else guilty is your secret belief that YOU are guilty. Your attempt to see someone as sinful is YOUR OWN BELIEF in YOUR OWN SINFULNESS, that you're trying to disown.
It is your OWN belief in your own sinfulness that you are trying to escape from. You want someone to take the blame for what YOU believe YOU really did! And that's the only reason why you are doing the denial/projectin/blame game at all. You have a vested interest in finding someone to take the blame FOR you, so that you can convince yourself you don't really hate yourself, even though deep down you STILL DO.
The answer to undoing this is obvious and simple.
1. ADMIT THAT *YOU* BELIEVE *YOU* ARE REALLY SINFUL
2. STOP BELIEVING THAT YOU ARE REALLY SINFUL AT ALL.
Where will be the need for denial, or a split mind, or a projection, or a persona being at war with a shadow, or scapegoating onto someone else then? You'll have absolutely no need to do so. And that also means, you will no longer have a DESIRE or a NEED to find other people sinful... you will not WANT to find them sinful, because doing so really means you are finding YOURSELF SINFUL! You cannot escape the effects of what you believe about yourself.
If you are not really sinful, because you did not REALLY sin, because sin is not REALITY, because nothing REALLY happened, then you MUST still be innocent. And only when you can accept that this is TRUE about you will you stop ATTACKING YOURSELF with the condemnation that you are a sinner. It is you doing this to yourself. It is your self attack, masquerading as an attack on others.
Nobody has ever attacked you, and you have never really attacked anyone else. You're incapable. You're just in a war with your OWN SELF, attempting to take sides WITHIN your own mind, attacking YOU, because YOU believe that you really sinned. And if you no longer are choosing to see YOURSELF as sinful, in all honesty, you will stop trying to see OTHERS as sinful and will stop splitting of fa part of your mind to house all of your self attack. Thus you will find others WORTHY OF YOUR LOVE, and you will be justified in loving them.
Real sin is the belief that separation REALLY happened, producing real consequences. If sin is not real, separation cannot have REALLY happened and you're still WITH God and exactly AS God created you. Innocent, holy, permanently forgiven, and completely WORTHY OF LOVE.
Once you are worthy of love, you are NOT worthy of sin or attack, and you will not feel that attack is JUSTIFIED, and you will STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF.
You are worthy of the love of God, and always will be. Once you stop WANTING to attack yourself through a belief in real sin, you will AUTOMATICALLY stop judging others and will desire to love them.
If you know what the secret to the magic trick is, you know that there is not really any magic happening. But if something is hidden, if there is information missing, it becomes possible to enter into an alternative state of awareness - a state of deception and misperception.
In that state, where you don't know that information is missing, or that something is hidden, you believe that you're seeing the whole truth. You therefore make sense of it, and it seems to be what it is, based on its appearance. You think you're seeing the truth because you think you are seeing fully.
But if you are not seeing the whole of the information, and some information is hidden, you aren't seeing the real truth. So when you then believe that you are, you're inside a hallucination.
In other words, you're seeing meaning where there is none, you're convinced you're awake but you're not, you're certain you are making complete sane sense out of what's happening but you're mistaken, and you don't even realize that you're nuts.
This state of insanity is automatically a state of imagining truth where there is none - a hallucination of the truth, which is a state of believing the truth is something it is not.
Puzzles are another good example. When you first encounter a new puzzle, you do not see the answer. It seems obscure, hidden. At first you are confused, and you don't understand it, and it makes no sense, and you can't "see" how it is possible. And yet it seems to be possible that the unsolved state of the puzzle is truth, because you see no way to solve it or see additional truth beyond that. But over time, as you question your perception, you gradually might realize that by undoing your own assumptions and reversing your own conclusions, i.e. collapsing the hallucination, the answer suddenly becomes obvious.
Once you have solved the puzzle, it's because you've seen some information, really a state of greater awareness, which has burst the illusion and suddenly you are seeing outside of it. You are no longer fooled, you've found the answer, it seems clear as day and now you kick yourself for the apparent stupidity of having not seen it earlier. In other words, you realize you were mistaken the whole time and its pretty embarrassing.
Bringing this around to A Course in Miracles, it is the same with the "illusion" that this world is a reality. There is an illusion here, in front of your face, which if you were able to see ALL of it clearly, you'd see past the hallucinations and the misinterpretations and the misunderstandings, and suddenly realize, in a state of greater awareness, that what you THOUGHT was true before, was actually false. And you'll understand why. Because now you have revealed some kind of awareness of information that was hidden before, and this information is vital to being able to see the illusion correctly. Ie to overlook the deception, to overlook the delusion and insanity, which was telling you that all kinds of other stuff was true.
So right now, unless you're in full awareness, you're still inside what seems to be a puzzle. And because there's some stuff you are blocking from awareness, there's some information you are not privy to. And because of that limitation, and because you don't even know that the extra information exists yet, you believe that you're seeing the entire truth as it appears to you. That's in spite of the fact that you're only seeing part of a scene, are coming to false conclusions, are seeing "truths" which actually aren't quite true, and are therefore having hallucinations about the meaning of what you see.
You see a dark shadow behind a door, and because you lack information - awareness of "God facts" - in your belief that you are seeing correctly you believe that "its true" that there is a scary monster behind the door. However, if you turn on the light, which reveals to your awareness extra information, now it becomes obvious it was just clothing, and you once again kick yourself for falling for the silly belief that there was a real monster there. But before that, you really believed there was a real monster, and you were therefore frightened. Frightened by an hallucination - a false belief about the truth.
When there is enough awareness of "what is here", of what this illusion IS, its structure and purpose and functioning, and the ways that it deceives, it is no longer possible to believe the magic trick. You've seen through and past all of the mistaken perceptions which you thought were showing you reality.
All of the horrifying mis-truths that you believed in, such as that sin and death were real, are revealed to be completely false. All of the reasons you ever had to be afraid, suddenly have no foundation whatsoever because the truth emerges and shows you that the things you thought were frightening were not TRUE, they were delusions and hallucinated meanings, and thankfully there is a larger explanation for them. When you don't understand what is happening or why its happening, it will scare you, because the illusory truth it presents makes it seem real. When a correct explanation is given, you're like, oh... okay then. Then you drop the false belief, with relief that you no longer have a valid reason to be afraid.
So a blockage placed on awareness leads you to believing that the meaning of reality is obscured, the truth no longer quite makes sense but still seems true, you see things IN and ON TOP OF the illusion that are not even really there (thereby hallucinating), and the sense that you make of it is actually a deception. When the blockage to awareness is lifted, you can no longer be deceived. It's like hearing the punchline to the joke, and never again can you hear the joke and have quite as much of a laugh because you know the answer. Knowing the real answer, the real truth, is revealed by awareness.
So here's a question. If there is a grand illusion of a physical universe, a world, and a body, and if the only reason that you believe you're even seeing them is because you are lacking awareness, then doesn't it suggest that if you had enough awareness, you might suddenly see past that illusion and realize the world does not even really exist? It was just a kind of twisting of consciousness, a distortion, which you could only experience while insane and hallucinating? Maybe the world you thought existed was your misinterpretation of reality, and only existed as a hallucination based on a lack of awareness. Maybe there is no world.
Jesus said in relation to seeing through illusions, "What is understood as nothing must disappear."
and
"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. "!!
It's not just that there really is an illusion. It's only even an illusion because you believe there is one. Really, you are just misperceiving reality. That misperception shows you an illusion that there is a world. Once the puzzle is seen through and the truth is revealed, you will no longer be able to perceive that there really is a world. You will not believe it. You will recognize it was just an illusion, and nothing about it was ever really true. Like a dream. Not a real dream, but a dream-dream.
Form, matter, bodies, the universe, events, people, places, sins, guilts, death, sickness, it's all an illusion, a deception that APPEARS TO MAKE SENSE or appears to be real and true, ONLY because we lack awareness, and ONLY be cause there is some hidden information. When all is revealed, all of these illusions must disappear into the perfect omnipresent light of God, in which they DO NOT EXIST.
In reality, the world does not exist. We're dreaming it, hallucinating it, imagining it, reading into it, and are TRYING to make it a reality. It's just what you get when you haven't solved the puzzle yet, because the truth is obscured. When the truth is revealed, it will be obvious that there isn't really a world there. It was part of the puzzle while you fell for it. And now that the light has come, it is gone.
Lesson 75, "The light has come":
"The light has come. You are healed and you can heal. The light has come. You are saved and you can save. You are at peace, and you bring peace with you wherever you go. Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared. The light has come. Today we celebrate the happy ending to your long dream of disaster. There are no dark dreams now. The light has come. Today the time of light begins for you and everyone. " - ACIM
For miracles of healing to function, there must be firm belief that healing will occur.
God's will is permanent healing, and miracles extend this, coming from love. So if there is any way that you believe healing will not happen, that means you don't believe God's will, so are actively working against it.
God has certainty and a complete knowing that healing has already occurred. We need to share in this.
This is why when you go to perform a miracle, you also need to believe in what God believes. You need to have this certainty that healing will and has happened. And what that translates to, is that you need to EXPECT MIRACLES TO HAPPEN.
Expectation comes when your belief is so refined and certain, that you are convinced and sure that it will happen. This puts you into a state of expecting, which in a way is a form of demanding/commanding. It is a refusal to accept any other outcome. Complete certainty.
Expectation is a very firm way of not only believing but of actively EXTENDING the certainty of God that "healing is truth". It's like, "of course it will heal!", or even better, "it MUST heal". No doubt. This is where you are extending God's authority over illusions.
Once all doubt and fear are gone, which is a requirement of miracle-mindedness, expectation results as a perception of certainty. It's not a request, it's an enforcement of God's will.
When there is no doubt left that healing must occur, in which you are merely enforcing God's will kind of like a law-enforcement officer, you KNOW the law and you KNOW what God wants and you KNOW that this is not negotiable. As such, what is left but to completely expect, reliability, certainty, trust... that "it is so". Illusions must bend to this because they have no authority over God.
Expect miracles to happen, believe it totally, pray with God and receive.
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.
I think a lot of people have a belief that they are 'supposed' to suffer.
When an opportunity for healing is presented, unconditionally, with no strings attached, we actually recoil a bit in suspicion that we're not 'supposed' to be free of the suffering.
We believe the sickness is honorable, truthful, justified and deserved, and we defend it, and would even feel guilty for throwing all that away in favor of instant healing. How dare you heal someone when they're in the middle of good bit of suffering?! They were really getting into it ;-)
It seems 'too easy' that God would just come along and take away any degree of sickness instantly, as if, that's not allowed. Or it's breaking some kind of rules. Or some kind of 'agreement' that we all seem to have about how the common level of 'mutual suffering' is agreed upon and normal.
How dare you step out of the ego and be healed with no repercussions, throwing all guilt aside and claiming innocence. Blasphemy!
I noticed this in my path where I felt like some kind of 'rightness' in taking the very-longwinded suffering route through forgiveness, like, I was not supposed to skip any steps, was not supposed to just 'jump to innocence'.
I had to go 'through' and handle and spend time with all this guilt and fear like, it was not 'correct' (with the Course) to move on from it quickly without having 'properly suffered' first.
The ego says, you must ATONE on its terms, first, before you are 'allowed' to move on. You must atone by suffering and sacrifice and punishment, in hell. If you haven't suffered enough, it's wrong to seek healing.
Even if I were able to access healing quickly, some part of me believed I was meant to suffer for a long time and make sure to thoroughly look at every fault, and really beat it to death, just to make sure that I am really really really prepared to then start to heal it.
Silly nonsense. How can guilt and suffering be justified?
What about healing right now, full and complete, as an unconditional gift of love from God? Do we deserve it? Do we want it? Why don't we want it? Why do we believe we are supposed to suffer, right to suffer, meant to suffer, doing a service to God by suffering, carrying out God's will by suffering, going along with society by suffering, being aligned to truth by suffering, and being honest by suffering?
lol, you have to laugh.
Miracles are available right now.
You believe that it is true that you are meant to suffer and die and that doing so is right and happy and is your salvation. How nuts is that? Even worse, you do not even REALIZE you are suffering because you think it's your idea of heaven.
But here we are, in the middle of suffering, asking for more suffering, wanting to keep suffering, because we falsely believe that suffering and attack is SAVING US from something even worse.
What could be worse than suffering a death? Happiness and eternal life? The ego actually believes this. It's replaced the truth with what is false and identified what's false as true and something ELSE is where all the suffering lies.
So if you believe suffering is happiness, death is your way to be free, you deserve to suffer more because you don't deserve love, or that it's true that you need to keep the ego because it is totally your friend, then you're going to keep on suffering. The only reason you will keep suffering is because you think it is perfectly sane and real and true.
Jesus has told us, you do not need to suffer. Period. There is no call for, justification for, need for, or purpose for suffering. All you need is God's love. Yet to the ego, it has all these reasons 'why' you need to suffer more... reasons which justify suffering, reasons which build up a picture to defend suffering, to protect suffering, to want it and to keep it, because you're convinced it's actually in your best interests.
Whatever you think is true you will defend because you believe that, conversely, whatever is NOT true is against you and is your enemy. And this is how you defend against God because you think God is not the truth. Why would ANYONE want to deliberately stay away from God? Not in their right mind! Nobody has any valid reason to. But people have a LOT of really invalid reasons to. A lot of beliefs that all reinforce this conviction that what the EGO is offering is better, truer, more correct, more safe, more reliable, more trustable. We've put a lot of faith into the ego.
There is no reason to not be with God. There is no reason to suffer. There is nothing keeping you away from God other than your own desire to not be with God, based on your beliefs that tell you God is not what you want. The only way you can not want God is to not be aware of God's true nature. You MUST cover it up and distort it otherwise, if you were to RECOGNIZE God you would jump into His arms in an instant. The attraction to love is very powerful. And it is this attraction to love that you are trying to HIDE underneath and using your ego beliefs. Their only purpose is to cover up God so that you don't remember how much you want and love Him.
If you've got reasons to not accept God's love... you're definitely deceived by the ego and definitely mistaken in your grasp of what God is like. Its good to admit that. God's got a whole shitload of love coming your way.