You no more recognize what is painful than you know what is joyful, and are, in fact, very apt to confuse them. The Holy Spirit's main function is to teach you to TELL THEM APART.
However strange it may seem that this is necessary, it obviously IS. The reason is equally obvious. What is joyful to you IS painful to the ego, and as long as you are in doubt about what YOU are, you WILL be confused about joy and pain. This confusion is the cause of the whole idea of sacrifice. Obey the Holy Spirit, and you WILL be giving up the ego, but you will be SACRIFICING nothing. On the contrary, you will be gaining EVERYTHING. But if you BELIEVED this there would BE no conflict. That is why you need to DEMONSTRATE THE OBVIOUS TO YOURSELF. It is NOT obvious to you.
You REALLY believe that doing the opposite of God's will CAN be better for you. You also believe that it is POSSIBLE to do the opposite of God's will. Therefore, you believe that an impossible choice IS open to you, which is both very fearful and very desirable. But God WILLS. He does NOT wish. YOUR will is as powerful as His because it IS His. The ego's wishes do not mean anything, because the ego wishes for the impossible. You CAN wish for the impossible, but you can only WILL with God. This is the ego's weakness and YOUR strength.
The Holy Spirit ALWAYS sides with YOU and with your STRENGTH. As long as you avoid His guidance in any way, you WANT TO BE WEAK. But weakness IS frightening. What else, then, can this decision mean except that you WANT to be fearful? The Holy Spirit NEVER asks for sacrifice, but the ego ALWAYS does. When you are confused about this VERY clear distinction in motivation, it CAN only be due to projection. Projection of this kind IS a confusion in motivation, and given THIS confusion, TRUST becomes impossible.
No-one obeys gladly a guide he does not trust. But this does not mean that the GUIDE is untrustworthy. In this case, it ALWAYS means that the FOLLOWER IS. However, this, too, is merely a matter of his own belief. Believing that HE can betray, he believes that everything can betray HIM. But this is ONLY because he has ELECTED TO FOLLOW FALSE GUIDANCE. Unable to follow THIS guidance WITHOUT fear, he associates fear WITH guidance, and refuses to follow ANY guidance at all. If the result of this decision is confusion, this is hardly surprising.
The Holy Spirit is perfectly trustworthy, as YOU are. God Himself trusts you and therefore your trustworthiness IS beyond question. It will always remain beyond question, however much you may question it. I trust MY choices ONLY because they ARE God's Will. We said before that YOU are the will of God. His will is not an idle wish, and your identification WITH His Will is not optional because it IS what you are. Sharing His will WITH me is not really open to choice at all, though it may SEEM to be. The whole separation lies in this fallacy. And the ONLY way out of the fallacy is to decide that YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DECIDE ANYTHING.
Everything has been given you by GOD'S decision. This IS His Will, and you can NOT undo it. Even the relinquishment of your false decision-making prerogative, which the ego guards so jealously, is not accomplished by your wish. It was accomplished FOR you by the Will of God, who has not left you comfortless. His Voice WILL teach you how to distinguish between pain and joy, and lead you out of the confusion YOU have made. There IS no confusion in the mind of a Son of God, whose will MUST be the will of the Father, because the Father's Will IS His Son.
Miracles are IN ACCORD with the Will of God, whose will you do NOT know because you are confused about what YOU will. This MEANS that you are confused about what you are. If you ARE God's will and do NOT ACCEPT His will, you can ONLY be not accepting what you are. But if your joy IS what you are, you ARE denying joy. The miracle therefore is a lesson in WHAT JOY IS. Being a lesson in SHARING, it is a lesson in love, which IS joy. Every miracle is thus a lesson in Truth, and by OFFERING truth YOU are learning the difference between pain and joy.
The slave of idols is a WILLING slave. For willing he MUST be, to let himself bow down in worship to what has no life, and seek for power in the powerless. What happened to the holy Son of God, that this could BE his wish; to let himself fall lower than the stones upon the ground, and look to idols that they raise him up? Hear, then, your story in the dream you made, and ask yourself if it be not the truth that you believe that it is NOT a dream. A dream of judgment came into the mind that God created perfect as Himself. And in that dream was Heaven changed to hell, and God made enemy unto His Son.
How can His Son AWAKEN from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge NOT, and he WILL waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is PART of it. Judge not, for he who judges WILL have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. Nor CAN he know the Self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a PART of evil dreams, where idols are your "true" identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid, in terror and in guilt, upon yourself. All figures in the dream are idols, made to save you FROM the dream. Yet they are PART of what they have been made to save you FROM.
Thus does an idol KEEP the dream alive and terrible. For who would wish for one UNLESS he were in terror and despair? And this the idol REPRESENTS, and so its worship IS the worship of despair and terror, and the dream from which they come. Judgment is an INjustice to God's Son, and it IS justice that who judges HIM will not escape the penalty he laid upon HIMSELF within the dream he made. God knows of justice; NOT of penalty. But in the dream of judgment, you attack and ARE condemned. And WISH to be the slave of idols, who are interposed BETWEEN your judgment and the penalty it brings.
There CAN be no salvation in the dream, as YOU are dreaming it. For idols MUST be part of it, to save you from what you believe you have accomplished, and have done to make you sinful, and put out the Light within you. Little children, It is there. You do but dream, and idols are the toys you dream you play with. Who has need of toys but children? They pretend they rule the world, and give their toys the power to move about, and talk and think and feel, and speak for them. Yet everything their toys appear to do is in the minds of those who play with them. But they are eager to forget that they made up the dream in which their toys are real, and recognize their wishes are their own.
Nightmares are childish dreams. Their toys have turned against the child who thought he made them real. Yet CAN a dream attack? Or CAN a toy grow large and dangerous and fierce and wild? This does the child believe BECAUSE he fears his thoughts, and gives them to his toys instead. And their reality becomes his own, because they seem to SAVE him from his thoughts. Yet do they KEEP his thoughts alive and real, but seen OUTSIDE himself, where they can turn against him for his treachery to them. He thinks he NEEDS them that he may escape his thoughts, because he thinks the THOUGHTS are real. And so he makes of ANYTHING a toy, to make his world remain outside himself, and play that HE is but a part of it.
There is a time when childhood should be passed and gone forever. Seek not to retain the toys of children. Put them all away, for you have need of them no more. The dream of judgment is a children's game, in which the child becomes the father, powerful, but with the little wisdom of the child. What hurts him is destroyed; what helps him, blessed. Except he judges this as does a child, who does not KNOW what hurts and what will heal. And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made. Yet is the real world unaffected by the world he thinks is real. Nor have its laws been changed because he did not understand.
The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray. It is a dream in which no-one is used to substitute for something else, or interposed between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. No-one is used for something he is not, for childish things have all been put away. And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into a dream where all is joy, because that is the PURPOSE that it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms which enter in the dreams are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love.
Forgiving dreams have little need to last. They are not made to separate the mind from what it thinks. They do not seek to prove the dream is being dreamed by someone ELSE. And in these dreams a melody is heard which everyone remembers, though he has not heard it since before all time began. Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar which abides forever deep within the Son of God. And when he hears this song again, he knows he NEVER heard it not. And where IS time, when dreams of judgment have been put away?
Whenever you feel fear in any form, - and you ARE fearful if you do not feel a deep content, a certainty of help, a calm assurance Heaven goes with you, - be sure you made an idol, and believe it will betray you. For, beneath your hope that it will save you, lie the guilt and pain of self-betrayal and uncertainty, so deep and bitter that the dream can not conceal completely all your sense of doom. Your self-betrayal MUST result in fear, and fear IS judgment, leading surely to the frantic search for idols and for death. Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety, and have NOT attacked yourself.
So do your childish terrors melt away, and dreams become a sign that you have made a new beginning, NOT another try to worship idols, and to KEEP attack. Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in the dream. And so they bring the dreamer full release from dreams of fear. He does not fear his judgment, for he has judged no-one, nor has sought to be released THROUGH judgment from what judgment MUST impose. And all the while he is remembering what he forgot when judgment seemed to be the way to SAVE him from its penalty.
The ego is the idea of the TOTAL opposite of God. It is vile bitter hatred and death and darkness.
Usually, however, we are not really aware of just how vicious it is, because it hides most of its viciousness behind the persona, which covers up most of the "special hate" with "special love" and other illusions of things being okay.
The world we live in is largely populated by personas and fake identities all colluding together to repress and hide and reject everything that they deem unacceptable. They shove all of this hatred and darkness into the 'shadow' which is the more unconscious, more opposed-to-God aspect of the ego.
Sometimes, when you work on becoming more authentic, you are dissolving the persona and undoing the fake sense of identity it contains. As you do this, however, it's going to 'unmask' the ego. It's taking the covers off the repressed vicious darkness that lurks under the surface.
Now, in regular day-to-day interactions most people are quite fake and they will not genuinely, authentically or fully express how they 'really feel', regardless of what that feeling is. So a lot of actually genuine feelings become heavily repressed and stuck in the unconscious layers of the ego. These feelings might actually be more genuine than you realize, because they might express how someone actually DID betray you, or how someone actually WAS being dishonest, or how you really DID feel victimized... given that you probably instead covered up these 'genuine' awarenesses for the sake of saving face or not confronting people or people-pleasing or whatever other persona-tactic you were using.
So then when the ego persona mask comes off, even temporarily, it can sometimes trigger the exposure of and 'release of', or shine a light upon, the darker hidden repressed expressions of yourself. The shadow self. This is where the vicious ego experiences a much more immediate and unfiltered engagement with every form of negativity. So all of those repressed feelings, regardless of their subject matter or justification, start to flood out. They flood into the conscious mind and take it over and make the mind become unconscious, meaning that you are put into the dark, cannot see, cannot think clearly, lose sight of what is real, become lost in intense negative delusions and can't see past these strong feelings.
So these strong negative feelings arise, as all the feelings you repressed and didn't experience due to the persona saying it was not 'appropriate' or 'allowed' or 'acceptable' at the time, or due to you holding onto them for some reason. And so then the person experiencing this might start to point out much more bluntly how other people suck, how other people are deceptive, how other people are liars, how other people are haters, how other people are victimizers, etc... all the repressed feelings which might actually have had a basis in 'reality' of some kind, start to flood out. And it can be extremely negative. But these are, if you like, genuine feelings, which really are trying to be released and fully processed.
So what we then have to do is become willing to find ways to actually be more authentic, to be more real, and to make it okay and acceptable and allowed to have these negative feelings, at least so that you can fully feel and process them and release them. Fuck society if they don't like it or its not appropriate, society is completely fake anyway. So this release of 'darkness' is really a release that's asking for healing and light and forgiveness and acknowledgement. When seen as such we can become willing to let go and allow and accept this darkness of the furthest extremes of the ego, and instead of fighting with or trying to repress or get away from it, find instead ways to transcend it and transmute it and transform because of it. And this can produce awakening.
You who were created by Love like Itself can hold no grievances and know your Self. To hold a grievance is to forget who you are. To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body. It is the decision to let the ego rule your mind, and to condemn the body to death. Perhaps you do not yet fully realize just what holding grievances does to your awareness. It seems to split you off from your Source, and make you unlike Him. It makes you believe that He is like what you think you have become, for no one can conceive of his Creator as unlike himself.
Shut off from your Self, Who remains aware of His likeness to His Creator, your Self seems to sleep, while the part of your mind that weaves illusions in its sleep appears to be awake. Can all this arise from holding grievances? Oh yes! For he who holds grievances denies he was created by Love, and his Creator has become fearful to him in his dreams of hate. Who can dream of hatred and not fear God?
It is as sure that those who hold grievances will redefine God in their own image as it is certain that God created them like Himself and defined them as part of Him. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will suffer guilt as it is certain that those who forgive will find peace. It is as sure that those who hold grievances will forget who they are as it is certain that those who forgive will remember.
Would you not be willing to relinquish your grievances if you believed all this were so? Perhaps you do not think that you can let all your grievances go. That, however, is simply a question of motivation. Today we will try to find out how you would feel without them. If you succeed even by ever so little, there will never be a problem in motivation ever again.
Begin today's extended practice period by searching your mind for those against whom you hold what you regard as major grievances. Some of these will be quite easy to find. Then think of the seemingly minor grievances you hold against those you like, and even think you love. It will quickly become apparent that there is no one against whom you do not cherish grievances of some sort. This has left you alone in all the universe in your perception of yourself.
Determine now to see all these people as friends. Say to them all, collectively, thinking of each one in turn as you do so:
"I would see you as my friend,
that I may remember you are part of me,
and come to know myself."
Spend the remainder of the practice period trying to think of yourself as completely at peace with everyone and everything, safe in a world which protects you and loves you, and which you love in return.
Try to feel safety surrounding you, hovering over you, and holding you up. Try to believe, however briefly, that nothing can harm you in any way. At the end of the practice period tell yourself:
"Love holds no grievances.
when I let all my grievances go,
I will know I am perfectly safe."
The short practice periods should include a quick application of today's ideas in this form, whenever any thought of grievance arises against anyone, physically present or not:
"Love holds no grievances.
Let me not betray my Self."
In addition, repeat the idea several times an hour in this form:
"Love holds no grievances.
I would wake to my Self
by laying all my grievances aside
and wakening in Him."
All things are given you. God's trust in you is limitless. He knows His Son. He gives without exception, holding nothing back that can contribute to your happiness. And yet, unless your will is one with His, His gifts are not received. But what would make you think there is another will than His?
Here is the paradox that underlies the making of the world. This world is not the Will of God, and so it is not real. Yet those who think it real must still believe there is another will, and one which leads to opposite effects from those He wills. 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.
The gifts of God are not acceptable to anyone who holds such strange beliefs. He must believe that to accept God's gifts, however evident they may become, however urgently he may be called to claim them as his own, is being pressed to treachery against himself. He must deny their presence, contradict the truth, and suffer to preserve the world he made.
Here is the only home he thinks he knows. Here is the only safety he believes that he can find. Without the world he made is he an outcast, homeless and afraid. He does not realize that it is here he is afraid indeed, and homeless too; an outcast wandering so far from home, so long away, he does not realize he has forgotten where he came from, where he goes, and even who he really is.
Yet in his lonely, senseless wanderings God's gifts go with him, all unknown to him. He cannot lose them. But he will not look at what is given him. He wanders on, aware of the futility he sees about him everywhere, perceiving how his little lot but dwindles as he goes ahead to nowhere. Still he wanders on in misery and poverty, alone though God is with him, and a treasure his so great that everything the world contains is valueless before its magnitude.
He seems a sorry figure, weary, worn, in threadbare clothing, and with feet that bleed a little from the rocky road he walks. No one but has identified with him, for everyone who comes here has pursued the path he follows, and has felt defeat and hopelessness as he is feeling them. Yet is he really tragic when you see that he is following the way he chose, and need but realize Who walks with him, and open up his treasures to be free?
This is your chosen self, the one you made as a replacement for reality. This is the self you savagely defend against all reason, every evidence, and all the witnesses with proof to show this is not you. You heed them not. You go on your appointed way, with eyes cast down lest you might catch a glimpse of truth, and be released from self deception and set free.
You cower fearfully lest you should feel Christ's touch upon your shoulder, and perceive His gentle hand directing you to look upon your gifts. How could you then proclaim your poverty in exile? He would make you laugh at this perception of yourself. Where is self-pity then? And what becomes of all the tragedy you sought to make for him whom God intended only joy?
Your ancient fear has come upon you now, and justice has caught up with you at last. Christ's hand has touched your shoulder, and you feel that you are not alone. You even think the miserable self you thought was you may not be your identity. Perhaps God's Word is truer than your own. Perhaps His gifts to you are real. Perhaps He has not wholly been outwitted by your plan to keep His Son in deep oblivion, and go the way you chose without your Self.
God's Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will. There was a need He did not understand, to which He gave an Answer. That is all. And you who have this Answer given you have need no more of anything but this.
Now do we live, for now we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the sight that looked upon it now has been replaced by vision which perceives that you are not what you pretend to be. One walks with you Who gently answers all your fears with this one merciful reply, "It is not so." He points to all the gifts you have each time the thought of poverty oppresses you, and speaks of His Companionship when you perceive yourself as lonely and afraid.
Yet He reminds you still of one thing more you had forgotten. For His touch on you has made you like Himself. The gifts you have are not for you alone. What He has come to offer you, you now must learn to give. This is the lesson that His giving holds, for He has saved you from the solitude you sought to make, in which to hide from God. He has reminded you of all the gifts that God has given you. He speaks as well of what becomes your will when you accept these gifts, and recognize they are your own.
The gifts are yours, entrusted to your care, to give to all who chose the lonely road you have escaped. They do not understand they but pursue their wishes. It is you who teach them now. For you have learned of Christ there is another way for them to walk. Teach them by showing them the happiness that comes to those who feel the touch of Christ and recognize God's gifts. Let sorrow not tempt you to be unfaithful to your trust.
Your sighs will now betray the hopes of those who look to you for their release. Your tears are theirs. If you are sick you but withhold their healing. What you fear but teaches them their fears are justified. Your hand becomes the giver of Christ's touch; your change of mind becomes the proof that who accepts God's gifts can never suffer anything. You are entrusted with the world's release from pain.
Betray it not. Become the living proof of what Christ's touch can offer everyone. God has entrusted all His gifts to you. Be witness in your happiness to how transformed the mind becomes which chooses to accept His gifts and feel the touch of Christ. Such is your mission now. For God entrusts the giving of His gifts to all who have received them. He has shared His joy with you. And now you go to share it with the world.
Everyone who is sent to you is a patient of yours. This does not mean that you select him, nor that you choose the kind of "treatment" that is suitable. But it does mean that no-one comes to you by mistake. There are no errors in God's plan. It would be an error, however, to assume that you know what to offer everyone who comes. This is not up to you to decide. There is a tendency to assume that you are being called on constantly to make sacrifices of yourself for those who come. This could hardly be true. To demand sacrifice of yourself is to demand a sacrifice of God, and He knows nothing of sacrifice. Who could ask of Perfection that He be imperfect?
Who, then, decides what each brother needs? Surely not you, who do not yet recognize who he is who asks. There is Something in him that will tell you, if you listen. And that is the answer; listen. Do not demand, do not decide, do not sacrifice. Listen. What you hear is true. Would God send His Son to you and not be sure you recognize his needs? Think what God is telling you; He needs your voice to speak for Him. Could anything be holier? Or a greater gift to you? Would you rather choose who would be god, or hear the Voice of Him Who is God in you?
Your patients need not be physically present for you to serve them in the Name of God. This may be hard to remember, but God will not have His gifts to you limited to the few you actually see. You can see others as well, for seeing is not limited to the body's eyes. Some do not need your physical presence. They need you as much, and perhaps even more, at the instant they are sent. You will recognize them in whatever way can be most helpful to both of you. It does not matter how they come. They will be sent in whatever form is most helpful; a name, a thought, a picture, an idea, or perhaps just a feeling of reaching out to someone somewhere. The joining is in the hands of the Holy Spirit. It cannot fail to be accomplished.
A holy therapist, an advanced Teacher of God, never forgets one thing; he did not make the curriculum of salvation, nor did he establish his part in it. He understands that his part is necessary to the whole, and that through it he will recognize the whole when his part is complete. Meanwhile he must learn, and his patients are the means sent to him for his learning. What could he be but grateful for them and to them? They come bearing God. Would he refuse this Gift for a pebble, or would he close the door on the savior of the world to let in a ghost? Let him not betray the Son of God. Who calls on him is far beyond his understanding. Yet would he not rejoice that he can answer, when only thus will he be able to hear the call and understand that it is his?
Here's some quotes explaining why what ACIM terms as "the real world" IS NOT Heaven - they are two entirely difference "places" or experiences. The real world is firmly rooted in perception, Heaven is beyond perception, beyond Earth, beyond this universe, beyond bodies of any kind, and can only be known and experiences in real awareness. This is why "Heaven is an AWARENESS (not perception) of perfect Oneness".
You are to reach the "real world" first and then God will scoop you up into Heaven. But the real world, itself, is actually NOT REALITY, and is UNREAL. This terminology has confused many people. It merely means, "the world AS IT IS" (the "real" version of it) rather than your perceptual distortion about it. It's "relative" terminology, not absolute.
Also Heaven is still very DIFFERENT to Earth, due to the fact that even the real world and Earth are still illusions based on separation.
"THE REAL WORLD STILL IS BUT A DREAM. Except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray. IT IS A DREAM in which no-one is used to substitute for something else, or interposed between the thoughts the mind conceives and what it sees. No-one is used for something he is not, for childish things have all been put away. And what was once a dream of judgment now has changed into A DREAM where all is joy, because that is the PURPOSE that it has. Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms which enter in the dreams are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love."
"Perception of the truth is not the same as KNOWING it."
"For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to oneness far beyond themselves."
"The world stands like a block before Christ’s face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
"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 were a body is sin possible."
"Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."
"For where God’s memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, NO BODIES"
"The Holy Spirit has no need of time when it has served His purpose. Now He waits but that one instant more for God to take His final step, and time has disappeared, taking perception with it as it goes, and leaving but the Truth to be Itself."
"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers."
"For, as your sleeping and your waking dreams represent the same wishes in YOUR mind, so do the real world and the truth of Heaven join in the Will of God. The dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality."
Here is where you move BEYOND THE REAL WORLD:
"Here (in the real world) are YOU forgiven, for here you have forgiven everyone. Here is the new PERCEPTION, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought you laid upon it. Here there is no attack upon the Son of God, and YOU are welcome. Here is your innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you, and make you READY FOR the final step (to heaven) in the journey inward. Here are the dark and heavy garments of guilt laid by, and gently replaced by purity and joy.
Yet even forgiveness is NOT THE END. Forgiveness DOES make lovely, but it does NOT create. It IS the source of healing, but it is the MESSENGER of love, and NOTits Source. Here you are led, that God Himself can take the FINAL STEP unhindered. For here does nothing INTERFERE with love, letting it be Itself. A step BEYOND this holy place of forgiveness (beyond the real world). A step still FURTHER inward, but one you CANNOT take, transports you to something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (heaven). Here is the SOURCE OF LIGHT; NOTHING PERCEIVED, forgiven, nor transformed. But merely KNOWN." (heaven).
Also
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange WORLD *YOU* MADE and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."
"There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here and all the seeking of the world, WHICH ENDS together as you pass beyond the door."
Entry to heaven: "Put out your hand and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams."
How does one overcome illusions? Surely not by force or anger. Nor by OPPOSING them in ANY way. Merely by letting reason tell you that they CONTRADICT reality. They GO AGAINST what must be true. The opposition comes from THEM, and NOT reality. Reality opposes nothing. What merely is, NEEDS no defense, and offers none. Only illusions need defense, BECAUSE OF WEAKNESS. And how CAN it be difficult to walk the way of truth, when only WEAKNESS interferes? YOU are the strong ones in this seeming conflict. And you need NO defense. Everything that needs defense YOU DO NOT WANT. For anything that needs defense will WEAKEN you.
Consider what the ego wants defenses FOR. ALWAYS to justify what GOES AGAINST the truth, flies in the face of reason, AND MAKES NO SENSE. Can this BE justified? What can this be, except an invitation to insanity, to save you FROM the truth? And what would you be SAVED from, but what you FEAR? Belief in sin needs GREAT defense, and at ENORMOUS cost. All that the Holy Spirit offers must be DEFENDED AGAINST, and SACRIFICED. For sin is carved into a block out of YOUR peace, and laid BETWEEN you and its return. Yet how can peace BE so fragmented? It is STILL whole, and NOTHING has been TAKEN FROM it.
See how the means and the material of evil dreams are nothing! In truth, you stand together, with NOTHING in between. God holds your hands, and what can separate whom He has joined as one with Him? It is your Father Whom you would defend against. Yet it remains impossible to keep Love out. God rests with you in quiet, undefended and wholly undefending. For in this quiet state alone is strength and power. Here can NO weakness enter, for here is no attack, and therefore no illusions. Love rests in CERTAINTY. Only UNcertainty can BE defensive. And ALL uncertainty is doubt about YOURSELF.
How weak is fear; how little and how meaningless! How insignificant before the quiet strength of those whom Love has joined! This is your "enemy;" a frightened mouse which would attack the universe. How likely is it that it will SUCCEED? Can it be difficult to disregard its feeble squeaks that tell of its omnipotence, and would drown out the hymn of praise to its Creator that every heart throughout the universe forever sings as one? Which IS the stronger? Is it this tiny mouse, or everything that God created? You are NOT joined together by this mouse, but by the Will of God. And can a mouse BETRAY whom God has joined?
If you but RECOGNIZED how little stands between you and your AWARENESS of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within YOU, there is a force which NO illusions can resist. This body only SEEMS to be immovable. This force IS irresistible in truth. What, then, MUST happen when they come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended for what is quietly PAST THROUGH, and GONE BEYOND?
Forget not, when you feel the need arise to be defensive about ANYTHING, you have identified YOUR SELF with an illusion. And therefore feel that you are weak, BECAUSE YOU ARE ALONE. This is the cost of ALL illusions. Not one but rests on the belief that you are separate. Not one that does not SEEM to stand, heavy and solid and unmovable, between you and your brother. And not one that truth can NOT pass over lightly, and so easily that you MUST be convinced, in spite of what you THOUGHT it was, that it was nothing. If you forgive each other, this MUST happen. For it IS your unwillingness to overlook what seems to stand between you that makes it look impenetrable, and DEFENDS the illusion of its immovability.
What appears to be the physical world is not actually "direct reality". It is in fact once removed. It is an effect of an entirely other layer of causality which seems hidden. Just as in the holographic model, the underlying "source" of the appearances you see, is obscured by "sight of form" and you end up believing that this physical world is "verbatim", ie this is all there is.
In understanding why miracles are supernatural, it is very important to recognize this. In order to be supernatural there has to be an order or layer of reality deeper or higher than what appears to be the physical surface of this universe. We have to recognize that bodies and objects are not "immediate reality", they are once removed, and are EFFECTS caused by some other hidden level of causality. There is a whole other layer of causality, and everything in this world is "coming from" that hidden realm, making this world entirely an secondary effect.
When observing just the appearances of the surface of this world, there is a tremendous vast illusion before your eyes, which seems to operate in terms of "horizontal cause and effect". It seems as if some parts of the world cause and effect other parts. But this IS entirely an illusion. It's not what is happening. Anything which looks like being "different" in this world, ie one thing is a cause and another thing is an effect, is an illusion.
What secretly is happening is a higher, hidden level, a more immediate level of reality, is causing this entire universe all at once. Causality moves in a "vertical" direction from above, downwards, projecting the universe below. This means that there is a realm where you are "outside of" or above the entire field of horizontal illusions, outside the dream, where you are under absolutely none of the illusory horizontal laws and free of ALL limitations.
In that realm, you essentially are like a movie editor, someone who can reach into the movie and rearrange parts of it, orchestrate what goes where, and make significant changes. While within the movie itself it seems there is this consistent "story" playing, which utterly depends on the existence of many limitations and props and illusions of things which "must" happen according to certain rules or laws, realize that all of these stories of causality are entirely a fiction, where nothing seems to betray the illusion, nothing hints at this not being all there is, and nothing "blows the illusion" of horizontal or linear causality.
An example is a movie that you go to the cinema to watch. When you watch the movie you believe it is a single seamless story, in which certain limits and rules have been put in place in order to paint a seemingly "consistent" picture. But the fact is, if you could've been in the studio when the movie was being created, you would realize it was simply a bunch of people "acting" and a bunch of computers producing CGI special effects, working "behind the scenes". You as as a miracle worker as a BEHIND THE SCENES OPERATOR who orchestrates and produces the second-hand "effects" or "results" of a creative process. We used this same process initially when FORMING the physical universe, which is an entire order of reality removed from those who pull the strings.
When expression is made from the higher level, the more immediate level of causality, that expression is able to cause changes to the expressed world below. Just as an editor would make changes to a movie sequence from outside the movie which has the potentially to "break the illusion" of linear consistency within the movie itself. And when it DOES "perform a miracle", it literally BREAKS the illusion of linear cause and effect - the horizontal consistency or predictability of one thing leading only to another specific consequence. It's like someone editing the movie, and to those observing from WITHIN the movie, it will look like reality just did something "impossible".
If you seem to be living in the movie and you think that all that can happen is what's inside the movie, then suddenly a spaceship appears out of nowhere because the movie director decided to insert one, you will "witness" what appears to be a miracle. Something happening that seems impossible based on the linear laws. If you think of The Truman Show - a great movie, the same laws and rules and limitations had to happen day after day to maintain an illusion that nothing could happen outside the law, but when the main character started to "wake up" and see through the limitations, the world around him started to "break" and he eventually stepped outside of the whole illusion, coming face to face with the "directory" of the movie. You as a miracle worker are a director of the physical movie.
Or similarly, if it appears that there is a law of gravity where, over time, objects are attracted towards the center of the earth, and therefore human bodies are almost glued to the surface (you can jump, but only so high before you are attracted back down), and if suddenly a human body were to fly up in the air or walk on water, this would BREAK the illusion of horizontal laws. That means, the laws "within" the linear dream, within appearances of horizontal causality, could not have "resulted in" this effect, and it must have required someone to reach in from OUTSIDE of the laws and make an adjustment that the laws themselves are incapable of producing.
The key point to realize is that all of the linear laws are VERY LIMITING. We are confined by them. We are trapped by them. They seem to play out as if having a force or power over us. We don't seem able to escape gravity, time seems to proceed in one direction, one object seems to collide with another, no objects share the same space, very large heavy objects like mountains seem completely immovable, even sickness seems to have a causality in the body or due to external forces. These are all very limiting illusions of things on the SAME LEVEL causing other things on the SAME LEVEL to change.
From the point of view of the miracle worker, who is under no laws but God's, there are NO LIMITS. And so when the miracle worker manipulates the limitations in ways which defy and BREAK the linear laws, this appears to those in the horizontal dream as SUPERNATURAL MIRACLES. Things which should technically be "impossible" according to the limits we have accepted, suddenly become possible. Things we have assumed to be "normal" or "natural" are shown to be ARTIFICIAL LIMITATIONS.
Since we don't generally recognize that we LIVE IN WORLD OF LIMITATIONS, we don't realize that there are additional FREEDOMS and flexibilities that we have decided are off-limits or impossible. Miracles are capable of exercising that freedom and of PROVING that you are NOT BOUND by the horizontal laws of the ego's illusory world. This is why miracles are super-natural, they have a freedom of potential way beyond what any physical law in this second-hand universe suggests is possible.
There is therefore literally NOTHING that they cannot do. We have to open our minds to see past the limitations of physical illusion and realize that even the things we think are impossible are perfectly possible. There is NO REASON why you cannot do anything you can imagine. "There is nothing my holiness cannot do."
So the main keys to this are:
1) This physical world is once removed from true cause, it is not immediate reality
2) This world has no real causes in it, they are all effects of a higher reality
3) Cause-and-effect in this world are totally fictional illusions designed BY a higher level causer, to create a "story" in which limited things happen according to limited rules
4) Miracles wield a freedom way beyond the limitations of this world and express and demonstrate that ANYTHING is possible because they originate in the FIRST ORDER of causal reality, and therefore can BREAK and OVERRIDE any of the limitations or laws present on the physical level, since those laws are limitations PUT IN PLACE BY someone from the more primal level of reality. This is why Jesus says "you made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."
Here's what ACIM says:
"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."
"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."
"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence."