Healthy boundaries.. it's a concept thrown around as something to strive for. But what are boundaries and how do you make them and do they even exist?

You can only theoretically have boundaries between separate people. It's as though, if you acknowledge where you stop and other people start, or what is yours and what is theirs, ie the two of you are distinctly separate, then any blurring of that distinction is a crossing of boundaries.

So if someone comes along and 'steps on your toes' or violates your independent freedom, as it were, e.g. they blame something on you or disrespect 'you', then they've `crossed the line`. And if you are aware of where your 'line' is, then you can tell it's been crossed, and then its up to you to respond in a way that defends that boundary.

As separate human bodies it does at first seem natural and healthy to have healthy boundaries. Except that, even when you get healthy boundaries on an individual level, you still have to constantly maintain it. And that's because there's still a weakness. You're still vulnerable. You can still HAVE your boundaries violated. And this weakness comes from the fact you are separate from others. So the very 'boundaries' that supposedly are meant to establish your security and protection in fact establish a division that renders you attackable. Your boundaries are not strong enough to fend off attack or its effects, because they themselves are based on defense and attack. And there is no such thing as absolutely-impenetrable boundaries.

There is a higher form of this idea of healthy relations. It entails you remembering and realizing that you are ONE with others. You can't really be true to your 'self' (which is a shared self) if you are not also true to the whole. This is where it gets a bit abstract.

Basically, when you are true to who you *really* are, which is the One self that you share with all, your awareness of that truth automatically shows you what is true and what is false. When someone comes along and does something you are already aware of whether it is true or not, and whether it can hurt you or not. If you are in your One self, you are invulnerable. Invulnerability does not need a defense and it does not need artificial boundaries. It is its own defense because no illusions can affect who you really are.

So healthy boundaries are a stepping stone toward self respect and security and being able to assert yourself and to have a sense of protection of your identity. But ultimately they also wall you in and cut you off from others. This leads to the dilemma that you have to 'lower your boundaries' from time to time to let people in and actually have a connection, because if your boundaries are always 'up' you will just shut people out and feel isolated. But then when you expose yourself by lowering your boundaries, it leaves people open to walk all over you. Supposedly the response to this is to 'raise' your boundaries again on an as-needed basis. This is hardly very reliable.

That's why ultimately you want to rise above this whole need for living in a castle, having walls, having a drawbridge that you raise and lower to keep the enemy out when necessary. It's a human-level, ego-level, separate-self-level strategy to use boundaries to maintain a certain level of respect and to honor your sense of ego self. And there's nothing wrong with having that firm sense of who you are and who you are not - as an ego. But you are more than an ego and eventually you have to realize that this dualistic model of protection has a lot of maintenance to it, because boundaries are as much an attack as a defense. They are the ego's substitute for real protection and security, which comes from Oneness.

Being true to who you really are is the ultimate protection because, when you are aware of who you are, you automatically are confident (certain), you automatically see sanely and clearly to be able to discern who is doing what and for what reason, you are able to see that other people are calling out for love rather than attacking, and you know that you cannot be hurt because you are invulnerable. In your innocence lies your safety. Not ego-innocence which is vulnerable to abuse, but Holy Innocence, which is strong and reliable and truly safe.

Also remember, that the only person you need protection from, is yourself. Nothing happens to you against your will, and nothing can affect you unless you choose to affect yourself and agree to it. So how can you have a healthy boundary to separate you from yourself? In that light, if you are fully responsible for your reality and you are honest about it, you will simply stop attacking yourself and thus you are safe forever.

Healthy boundaries are a myth. It's the ego's way of trying to say, being completely distinctly separate from each other is HEALTHY. This is totally the opposite of the truth. It may be healthIER than being an ego with violated boundaries, because the ego feels safer when it is in isolation and separation. But it is NOT health.

No boundaries means death to the ego, on the world level, but no boundaries means absolute safety on the level of who you really are.

Either you own what is happening inside you, or you claim that someone else owns it.

Either your identity is your own, or you believe that it is someone else's.

It's quite bizarre to recognize that we actually put our responsibility, our ownership and even our own sense of self into the hands of other people. All confusionabout who is who and who is responsible for what comes from this blurring of boundaries and it happens through what we call 'projection'.

You are responsible for all of your own reactions and perceptions. But sometimes you come to believe that someone else has caused or created these reactions, that someone else made them, that someone else put them there, and that they really belong to someone else. And then you actually believe that this stuff, which is happening inside of you, is someone else's responsibility and that they are supposed to deal with it or do something about it. And instead of doing something about it yourself you'll just stand there on the sidelines demanding that they correct it for you.

Doesn't that sound kind of crazy? That you're asking someone else to carry the burden of your own inner experiences? You want someone else to be the one to manage aspects of your own self. It's dis-ownership of your identity and a dis-empowerment of yourself.

Whenever we blame someone else or are finding someone else guilty, we start getting into this whole way of looking at the situation as though they actually are meant to clean up YOUR mess. They are meant to deal with your reaction, they are meant to change or fix your upset, and they are meant to be the ones that correct the problem. This is nothing but irresponsible. This is you shoveling your own shit onto someone else's plate and wanting them to take care of it for you so that you don't have to.

It's not anyone else's job to be responsible for your own stuff, or to own your own upsets, or to manage or fix your own dramas, or to tell you what you really are, or to correct you on your own behalf, or to set you straight, or to be you for you. You quite literally are shifting your own identity into someone else's hands when you fail to take responsibility. It's like saying, I'm not going to be myself, you be me for me and I'll just sit back and wait for you to be me for me so that I don't have to deal with myself.

This is also why people are all up in each other's business like they have some kind of a say or input to what other people's responsibilities are. When people come along and give all their opinions and tell you what you should be doing or wearing or looking like or behaving like, etc, it's all to do with violating these basic boundaries and trying to fix you, change you, or be the one who is responsible for you. When you are not being responsible for yourself you will attract this, but also when you are not being responsible for yourself you will enter into this behavior and start launching into fixing other people on their behalf. My own sense of `having to be burdened with being responsible for others` has led only to attempts to fix and change and correct and feel pressured (by myself) to make other people be what they are - all a cover-up for me not claiming full ownership of my own stuff - of myself.

Deal with your own shit and shut the fuck up about everyone else's lives!

This is why everyone that meddles in your life or the life of those who have they no business even commenting on, go to great lengths to control or prevent those people from having the freedom to be themselves (e.g. people against homosexuals or other kinds of bigotry, people who think other people are not allowed to do certain things, etc). It's none of their dam business, and is evidence that they are not being responsible for their own shit and so they actually fear that other people have an influence over them and threaten them with the power to have responsibility for them, which they themselves have granted.

No matter how the situation seems, if you are in any way placing responsibility, burden, ownership, blame, cause or power for what you are experiencing or feeling or reacting, into someone else's hands, then you are stepping across healthy boundaries and are lacking responsibility. You are basically saying that you refuse to be corrected, you refuse to own what you think you did, you refuse to acknowledge who you are and you refuse God's love. So then you want someone else to come along and clean up your mess for you or fix you or change on your behalf. And woe-betide if they refuse to play along.

Your problems aren't anyone else's problems. Your upsets are your own. Your reactions are your reactions. Your beliefs are your beliefs. Your ideas leave not your own mind. Your are choosing all the time and everything you are experiencing you have chosen and everything that's happening you asked for and nothing else is happening. Nobody else is doing anything against your will and you are not a victim. You can't be a victim and you can't be insane if you are really really clear about the fact that all of your responsibility is in your own hands and all of who and what you are is in your own hands, in God's hands.

How can you be yourself if you are someone else's fault?

You are never responsible for the freedom of others. If you make yourself responsible, you will believe they are part of your ego. Extending what you are responsible for, is like saying they are inside of the scope of yourself.

And now anything they choose, anything they do, anything that happens to them, is interpreted as being something you are responsible for. And you then are set up on a rocky boat in choppy waters, certain to be tossed around by forces you cannot control, and certain to be guilty for whatever happens.

When they suffer, you suffer along with them. When they are hurt, it hurts you. And when they die, you lose part of yourself. You will then actually grieve for what seems like part of your own self that has died along with them.

This can only possibly result from a sense of mis-identification, losing sight of who you are, and confusing yourself for another person. When you try to control the life of another person, you are effectively saying that you are them. Not in a spiritual way of oneness, but in a violating "shared suffering" kind of way.

You'll have constant concern, worry, fear, guilt and desperation, resulting from believing that this person is part of you, in an egoic way. They are part of you at the level of spirit, but not at the level of separate egos having special relationships.

Special relationships always entails a strange kind of manufactured "bond" or connection between two people. A two-way horizontal cause-effect relationship. It's like a way of trying to fuse two separate people together. To say, you are my ego and I am your ego. Or that you are the cause of me and I am the cause of you. This can only lead to mutual suffering.

In specialness, anything that happens to the "other", who you have tried to "possess", you feel as happening to your self. This can only mean that you literally believe they are you. Which also means you don't even really acknowledge them as a distinct whole person, and instead are really relating to a projected form of your own ego, which is overstepping its bounds."Yet the special relationship which the EGO seeks, does NOT include even ONE whole individual. For the ego WANTS but part of him, and sees ONLY this part, and nothing else."

Egos everywhere love the idea of violating other people's freedom. They are tyrannical rulers, selfish, hoarding, possessing and controlling. They overstep boundaries and invade other people. They are like psychic vampires. They feed off other people. They leave no room and have no humility for allowing others to be themselves. They want to devour and infest and take over other people. Egos overflow and try to spread, to inflate themselves and make themselves consume the space of those around them. And the worst of them even attempt to destroy others to remove the competition.

If a relationship entails any of this encroachment, and of this arrogance, this over-inflation of self, the invasion of other's boundaries and free willed choices, in any way tries to control or manipulate or coerce, or moves into areas of submission or dominance, then the relationship is ego driven and is unholy.

"The dominance-submission problem is related to the perception of helping others VERSUS helping the self. This is a misperception resulting from the failure to recognize the equal worth of both individuals in the interaction."

"No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance onto free will himself."

What we need to do is get our grubby little opinionated hands off other people's merchandise. Or as Jesus puts eloquently, "be passerby". We need to step back and let go of people. We need to withdraw control and stop coercing. And to do that we have to surrender not only the desire to be more than we are, but also let go of believing we are lacking in the first place.

It's really a sense of inadequacy, lack, inferiority, weakness, unworthiness or guilt that often drives us to overstep our bounds with others. We try to take from them through possession. We try to complete ourselves by assimilating someone else's soul. We try to unite in separation, through sacrifice and dominance. And this will always lead to a loss of peace.

The unwillingness to accept love for yourself is the key driving force behind all of this, producing compulsions of seeking outside of oneself. And that can only turn into an attempt expand the ego. Egos that see themselves as having nothing, attempt to possess everyone and everything.

Most of the time, people consider themselves confined to their bodies. The body itself forms a barrier around their mind, shutting it in. The only place on the body where it seems the mind is 'visible' if you will, is perhaps through the eyes. The mind can express through the body in terms of moving the body and expressing, but generally speaking the mind stays inside the body behind the scenes, hidden behind the flesh.

However, some people who are perhaps more open in some ways, either by being 'psychic' or 'empathic', have in some way awoken the ability to go beyond the confines of their own body. This means, they are capable of moving or extending their 'mind' to locations outside the body.

A person for example who is empathic, you can kind of tell (especially if you are also empathic), because you look at them and can feel and sense how some part of their mind is NOT blocked by the body, and instead flows outward past the physical form. Particularly out of the stomache and power-chakra area. In a way, it's almost as if being able to see the mind of the person shining out of this area, as if the physical form of the body isn't even there at all.

Similarly, folks who are psychic tend to be more skilled at projecting a part of their mind outward and locating it at any other location, therefore quite literally being 'aware' in that location and receiving sensations, images, perceptions etc from that location. For example I once experienced a person who claimed to have psychic abilities, and would notice how his mind would quite often come and 'visit', as though he wasn't just over there in a body, but also over here in my body.

This may sound weird at first. But, even these examples of going beyond the boundaries of the body are barely even scratching the surface of what it means to be in Oneness.

In Oneness, the body's boundaries have absolutely no limiting effects on the mind whatsoever, and mind then is effectively capable of being everywhere and anywhere. This is in fact our 'natural state', and it's in fact unnatural and a sickness to not be able to join with other minds, to experience Oneness all the time, or to blend with others.

In effect, humanity is really a large, collective entity which has upon its surface many many seemingly individual points of awareness, which we think of a separate people, and yet is still all connected. It would be NORMAL for any one person in that collective mind to experience things that other people are experiencing also, not only as if it is their own, but that it actually IS their own, because it is shared.

I can tell you from experience personally, in fact, that it is possible for all forms of energy, emotions, even physical sickness, to be transferred and shared between people. You think certain things are contagious? Well, for someone who is quite empathic it is possible to actually, literally, take upon themselves the energetic presence and form of another person's discomfort or illness. And that illness then manifests or plays out in your own body. This can happen on emotional or mental or physical levels. In effect, 'ownership' of matter or form of body stuff can actually be shared and transfer between people.

This shouldn't really be an unusual exception, it in fact should be the rule, that all of us are so connected and One that we share in everything together. And it should not be at all surprising when we experience things that other people are experiencing.

In fact, it would be far clearer and more accurate to say, that NOT experiencing what other people are experiencing means you are very SEPARATE from other people, which means you have disconnected yourself from Oneness and do not 'share well', which means ultimately that you are in a state of sickness. Lacking empathy for example is a sign of a sociopath who has barely any sense of what others are feeling. Isolation, separation, aloneness, loneliness, sickness, withdrawal, darkness, etc are all the same condition of disconnection from the whole.

It isn't healthy for people to be disconnected from each other. And in A Course in Miracles, Jesus clearly lays out how it is by JOINING MINDS that we are capable of healing sickness in ourselves and others, because it is the *separation* of minds and the perception of separation between individuals that causes ALL sickness.

This means, there is a healing that can occur if you are willing to step out and be part of a Oneness, to unite with others empathically, to join with them, to resonate with and unite with them in 'spirit' and in 'energy', and to then transmit and share love and light and truth with that person. Or in other words, to allow Holy Spirit to erase all sense of separation between you, such that wholeness and unity and light are restored to the person, producing what we call a 'healing'.

1) Get quite and join with Love/Holy Spirit/Jesus

2) Become one with another person/empathically tune into them

3) Invite Holy Spirit to heal the separation in them and to send them healing love.

It's as simple as that. We simply join minds with others, share love with them, and love does the rest.

I think one of the main reasons people seem to be homophobic, is just because we expect men to be men and women to be women. And if we ourselves are "straight" which largely means squarely or "purely" male or female and not a mix of the two, we project that onto everyone.

I think we become conditioned to think that there are only 100% males and 100% females. Then we project that onto people and expect them to comform to that.

When someone is more of a mix of gender traits, partly male, partly female, in whatever ways, it starts to fall outside of the standard "heteronormative" society model.

This is where a person starts to become offended, because whenever something seems to go outside of our beliefs, it registers to us as false. Whatever we believe or think is the acceptable standard is always regarded as true. When something seems opposite or doesn't fit with our truth, we judge it as false, and that also gets lumped in with negativity, evil, darkness, sin, guilt, perversion, rejection, etc. It's quite a basic mechanism.

So then if some man is partly female, but the model in the viewers mind is that they are supposed to be purely male, the person will seem to be violating the model. That will register as that they're not conforming to the norm, and are doing something they're not supposed to be doing. That registers as sin and violation and offence.

It's interesting that if a man is feminine and doing some things that a straight man would judge as wrong, but if you then ramped up the femininity of that man to the point where he turns into a complete woman, then the straight man suddenly would find no problem with them, because now they are conforming again to the model of strictly separate genders. So it's only the middle-ground where someone isn't entirely fitting into the strict model, that registers as an offence against the model.

This then leads to the viewer becoming offended, feeling violated, attacked, threatened, upset by the hideous creature they they see, which seems to be doing things and acting in ways that are not "normal" to them, or rather, not conforming to their model of what a man or woman is.

The problem really is that there is an expectation and a projection of the idea of what a man or women must be, and the ego especially likes to keep these extremely separated out. That you can be either one or the other, not both. "Not both" is the ego's standard function of "not God", because God's whole system of truth is based on both/and. The opposite of both/and is either/or, which the ego loves to uphold.

And indeed its sense of identity requires a strong contrast between exclusive opposites, in which the males try to keep the females outside of themselves so that they "know who they are" and have a firmer and clearer sense of identification with their gender. Or rather, so that their ego can stand out as being more separate and different, in order to have an identity, because the ego depends on opposition. And if you are not being "man enough" then you somehow are becoming too feminine and are stepping over the line.

If someone seems to fall outside of the projected model, it registers as false, evil, wrong, offensive, upsetting, an attack, violent against their very sense of identity. This does two things - it threatens the clarity of distinguishing who they are, in which they need to keep male and female separate in order to "exist", and secondly it seems to threaten the model of what a man or woman is.

This perceived violation is then interpreted as that the stranger is actually breaking rules, attacking their truth, going outside the bounds of what is acceptable into territory of "perversion", is seen as unnatural, vile and disgusting, can't be tolerated, and is seen as actually a direct attack upon the viewer and everything they stand for and are. Indeed if the person IS really purely a man AND then proceeds to act like a women, that would be register as an actual perversion.

Having perceived that the not-quite-straight person is threatening them and offending their ways, this then produces the perception of justified anger, because they feel actually literally under attack by the non-conforming person, as if that person will infect them, change them, influence them, invade their integrity, remind them of the fragility of their masculine identity, invade their boundaries, and do things to them which persons of a given gender are not supposed to be doing.

This can take on ridiculous forms such as fearing that the queer person will turn the kids gay just by living nearby, or radiate gay rainbow vibes into their minds, or have ultra evil sexual powers of lust after their treasured ones such that they'll be taken into a cult and subjected to satanic abuses, or that the queer person is simply am abomination against their God and breaking all the laws of heaven in a state of sin and madness.

So then they project hate and rejection onto the queer person, which they see as completely justified, because they've perceived that the queer person has attacked them first just by existing, and now this evil spectre must be destroyed in order to protect oneself. Which means the homophobia is seen as a justified and needed act of self-preservation based on fear. This is where the "phobia" part comes in, because the anger and abuse literally stems from a perceived fear, that something outside of what is acceptable is threatening to undermine their truth. Not just their truth, but their whole sense of identity and reality.

Because if a man can be partly not a man, and a woman can be partly not a woman, then that brings into question what is a man or woman, how are they defined, and how to distinguish a sense of self in the midsts of the seemingly "vague and muddy" mixture of gender and identity.

The ego would like things to be clear-cut, but the queer person is presenting a picture of something not so clear-cut, something which appears to be crossing over boundaries, "gender bending", breaking the ego rules of either-this-or-that, and corrupting the whole model of "man and woman produce male or female kids only." And now queerness is a boundary-violating attack upon families and marriage and religious institutions. And all this is is a concern for what happens when something transcends the rigid boxes that everyone wants to live in.

Really all of these reactions, which are just ego projections of a rigid model of identity, are only happening because the viewer lacks discernment and sees things in a very black-and-white exclusive and special way. They are not recognizing something, which is always the failing of the ego mindset. By not recognizing that the person is not JUST male or JUST female, and that people actually can be "not entirely one thing", there is no account made for people who seem to blend across the boundaries. And then "non-binary" is seen as the ultimate sin and rejection of all that is good and proper in the human race.

If they would open their minds from the closed-off either/or mindset of male/female strictness, which is closed-mindedness and a lack of spirituality, they would consider that some people (in body terms) are not purely male or purely famale, and that such people are completely acceptable and part of "nature".

If the viewer would then stop trying to force the person to be eieither man or woman, they wouldn't actually produce all the distorted reactions - which they do to themselves - that arise from trying to fit something into a box that it doesn't belong in. It's only because of the projecting of the "I know what a man is!" that a person requires someone else to conform to that.

There has to be an opening up to a greater repertoir of how many different types of human bodies there are, just as we have to open up to accept people from other countries and enthicities without judgement. And to then drop the expectation and conditioning that says you have to be one of only two things, and you must never be a mixture in any way. It's only those strict rules that give rise to a sense of the rules being violated, which then leads to the fear of invasion and the discomfort of being "pursued by a gay rapist", which then leads to the angry projections of guilt, which becomes homophobic abuse - all an attempt to maintain the ego.

If we could better recognize what people ARE, rather than what we think they SHOULD BE, we'll be better able to accomodate everyone and stop trying to force people to conform to a rigid tight little structure. The problem is really that egos are JUDEGMENTAL, and this judgement is always flawed and narrow and wrong.

Homophobia is actually just an expression of the regular ego doing its regular ego thing, just in the same way as any other conditioned belief which results in a sense of being offended by anyone or anything that outside of that belief - be it someone of another religion, another race, another gender, another color, size, hairstyle, whatever.

The fact is that the world is not black and white, it is not purely either/or, it quite often happens - though to less of a percentage usually - that there are exceptions to rules. Flowers that sometimes grow double heads, creatures which sometimes are half female and half male, humans that sometimes have a mix of sex-oriented organs, people with darker skin who become albino, people that are sometimes born as siamese conjined twins instead of separate bodies, etc.... nature isn't completely strict in its forms.

People only have prejudice against various aspects of the physical world when they think it's supposed to be a very very basic black-and-white model, where you have to be 100% this or 100% that. And as the mind believes strongly in separation the egotism emphasizes this contrast and exepcts everything to conform to it. And anything that deosn't is labeled as a sin. That's standard ego functioning, nothing special. It's unforgiveness. It's based on the belief that the world is absolutely real, and therefore separation is truth.

To be more forgiving we have to be willing to really look at what things are, not what we wish they would be, or what category they're supposed to fall into, or to judge them based on appearances while trying to fit them into neat little boxes. Some people are such a mix of things that you'd have a hard time even describing them accurately. In the past society was much more recognizing of the fact that everyone is to some degree bisexual, which is still true, even if people try to deny it.

Long story short, society needs to become more forgiving and learn that the human race isn't composed of pure men and pure women, but rather than absolutely everyone is at least to some degree partly both. All human embrios start out as female and even the males still have some trace of that in them. This is a world of relativity, in which nothing is absolute and nothing is extremely pure and nothing is completely separate. There is no real man or real woman. We are ALL hybrids, and everyone is queer. That's not wishful thinking etiher, that's the nature of spacetime.

Jesus is encouraging you to open your mind, transcend your boundaries, and develop your psychic abilities. All abilities can be used with the Holy Spirit for good. In fact minds are joined naturally and those who have become better at accessing this are moving closer to God. We have to find ways to reach out past the body with the mind, join with other minds, and use the power of the mind for good.

"It is equally obvious, however, that each individual has many abilities of which he is unaware. As his awareness increases, he may well develop abilities that seem quite startling to him." "Certainly there are many "psychic" powers that are clearly in line with this course. Communication is not limited to the small range of channels the world recognizes."

"The limits the world places on communication is the chief barrier to direct experience of the Holy Spirit, Whose Presence is always there and Whose Voice is available but for the hearing. These limits are placed out of fear, for without them the walls that surround all the separate places of the world would fall at the holy sound of His Voice. Who transcends these limits in any way is merely becoming more natural. He is doing nothing special, and there is no magic in his accomplishments."

"The seemingly new abilities that may be gathered on the way can be very helpful. Given to the Holy Spirit, and used under His direction, they are very valuable teaching aids."

"no-one has any powers that are not available to everyone."

"There is, however, a particular appeal in unusual abilities which can be curiously tempting. Here are strengths which the Holy Spirit wants and needs. Yet the ego sees in these same strengths an opportunity to glorify itself."

"Any ability that anyone develops has the potentiality for good. To this there is no exception. And the more unusual and unexpected the power, the greater its potential usefulness. Salvation has need of all abilities, for what the world would destroy the Holy Spirit would restore."

"Psychic" abilities have been used to call upon the devil, which merely means to strengthen the ego. Yet here is also a great channel of hope and healing in the Holy Spirit's service."

"Those who have developed "psychic" powers have merely let some of the limitations they laid upon their minds be lifted."

"The Holy Spirit needs these gifts, and those who offer them to Him and Him alone go with Christ's gratitude upon their hearts, and His holy sight not far behind."

When I used to see people making mistakes with the course - "believing the wrong thing", not understanding it right etc, I would see that as a sin. I would react to it and pounce on it with a correction.

Somehow over time "it's not a sin" has taken hold, and I see people as being simply mistaken, and at many varied stages of learning. In the past I would have even chastised a beginner if they sounded stupid or were not getting it right away, without recognizing people are at different places in their path.

By moving past "it's a sin", expanding past "my ego says so", and becoming more allowing of differences, I see more that everyone's at different places and with different learning. A person making a mistake is given more gentle credit and their mistake is more recognized without it meaning that they are "wrong" for it.

After all, if this is a classroom and we're all children who are rather unwise and have lost our way, then we're all at different places on our path and have different mistakes to overcome. The people who are newer or are making classic mistakes or whatever might not have yet even read enough material to get past it.

Sin tends to isolate and exclude, and it narrows perception down. It focused on what one small fault a person has, draws a fence around it, makes it separated off, and then focused purely on that one thing, as if that is the whole of the person. Do one thing wrong and they're totally sinful. The sin shuts out all love and so obscure all good things about the person, casting them in darkness with no light.

Forgiveness breaks down these tiny boxes and looks at more of the big picture, more of the whole picture, to see other areas where the person is to be credited and is correct and not mistaken. It's more inclusive and open minded and recognizing calls for love rather than attacks. And without all the "taking it personal" it makes things a lot easier.

More forgiveness, less judgment. More acceptance less rejection. More love less hate. More inclusion less exclusion.

"And faith in innocence IS faith in sin, if the belief excludes ONE living thing, and holds it out, APART from its forgiveness."

"Our lessons now are geared specifically to widening horizons, and direct approaches to the special blocks which keep your vision narrow, and too limited to let you see the value of our goal."

"Each one must share one goal with someone else, and in so doing, lose all sense of separate interests. Only by doing this is it possible to transcend the narrow boundaries the ego would impose upon the self. Only by doing this can teacher and pupil, therapist and patient, you and I, accept Atonement and learn to give it as it was received."

Lately Holy Spirit has been starting to push me to do things I don't think I can do by myself, or that I don't believe would be a good decision.

I was not going to eat pizza, claiming that it would congest my sinuses too much. He said, eat the pizza. I ate the pizza. It wasn't a problem.

I was not going to buy a dairy ice-cream for similar reasons, and he suggested it was okay, so I did it, and I had no symptoms.

Today, I was tired and emotionally wrought after some release and healing, and I didn't want to go to the store, but needed some stuff. Holy Spirit said, "go!". So I went. And I didn't go based on my own belief that I would be able to rely on myself, but based on the belief that because He supports it, I WILL be able to go. I had FAITH!

And as I went, I exclaimed that I will go and I will shop and I will be fine because I will be infused and sustained by the power of God, I will be filled with his strength, and I will have no problems. And as I got to the store, I could FEEL the presence of a strong, light, joyous energy in me, and not only did I have no problems with tiredness etc I even felt open with other customers, seemed to attract people who were laughing and happy, and generally felt supported. I even believe there was an angel there who showed up as a man... sometimes I can tell, and that man spoke to me about bananas, and it was funny and it was all good.

So this is what I am finding now. There are certain things that I believe are true of the "natural world" based on the ego's natural laws. But then, there is God's will, God's power, and His SUPERNATURAL strength. And as you step out to do things which push you beyond your natural boundaries, and which go out on a limb, and which you could only do IF you had God's strength to support you, then knowing that you do and inviting it to do so, God DOES come to support you in supernatural ways! That means you are walking with God.

And so I am learning, more can be done through me and by me IF I have God with me. There is a power that can work through me. There are goals that I can achieve which I could not achieve alone but which are achievable because God rushes in to make them so! Ahhhhhhhhh.

"I am sustained by the love of God" - ACIM

"God goes with me all through the day" - ACIM

This doesn't just mean I have a buddy to talk to, it means if I will step out and take a risk and go beyond the ego's laws, God's Will be done!!!

Can I get an amen?!

Probably most of us start working on a spiritual path from a state of isolation. We see everyone else as flawed or a reason to want to be more spiritual, and so we work on ourselves - separately from them - in hopes that even if they suck, we can improve. We see ourselves as separate with the potential to separately grow.

You might then pursue some spiritual practices, usually on your own, maybe in secret, and maybe only at certain times or under certain circumstances.

But then at some point, you come to realize, you literally cannot become any more spiritual in isolation without bringing the isolation itself into question. The compartmentalization of your spirituality into a little box also has to be reconsidered. And when you allow yourself to 'get spiritual' or connect with Spirit has to shift from 'only when its really needed' to 'all the time'.

So then, it occurs to you, that to move forward in your awakening, you have to open up your spirituality to be more inclusive. You can't continue to have certain pockets of the world that you don't forgive. You can't keep certain people in the dog house forever. You can't withhold forgiveness from key individuals that you especially can't get over. And what you are attempting to access through your spirituality is opening up into an inclusive, shared oneness, which means it is surpassing the boundaries you set up.

So now to go further, you have to realize, as ACIM says, that you have to see everyone as Christ in order to see it in yourself. You have to forgive everyone to forgive yourself. "What you do unto the least of my brothers you do unto me" - Jesus. What you do to one member of the sonship you do to everyone. And what you are entering into as you advance is actually a SHARED spirituality where your identity is actually ONE with other people. Equality. Christ consciousness. Sonship/one-ship.

So at some point you have to confront all of the reasons why you want to keep your spirituality in a box, in order to progress further. You can no longer withhold love and forgiveness from those special-hate candidates. You can no longer think about your awakening as something that happens to you AND NOT other people. You can no longer see yourself as being ABLE to wake up `in isolation` to the exclusion of everyone else. You are waking up TO everyone being awake.

As the course says, we all wake up together. And as Jesus says in the course, until He awoke, the entire sonship was in darkness. And when he awoke, because he was a part of the sonship, the entire sonship woke up as one. And also because Jesus is part of the sonship, this absolutely means (this came to me last night) that Jesus is 100% included in your awakening and will be a PART OF YOU and is actually going to be fully present with you as part of the sonship - he's not just some occasional drop-in that goes away and hides behind a mind-cloud.

No stone left unturned. No person left unforgiven. No grievance left undone. No fear left uncorrected. No love left unshared.

Your sense of who you are depends entirely on the extent of your awareness. Awareness is your IDENTITY.

How much of your mind you are aware OF, determines the boundaries of your sense of Self.

If you have a lot of repression and denial and unconsciousness, your sense of Self will be little and confined. This is what Jesus refers to as "littleness".

You will still be aware, but your awareness will be limited. And yet, you will believe that the amount of Self you are aware of, is all of yourself. You won't even suspect there is more to you.

Everyone always believes they are their whole self. Whether they are actually aware of the whole of their self, is another matter. You could be aware of only 10% of yourself, and still believe that you are aware of your whole self.

The amount of awareness you have, if your awareness of your wholeness is limited, will also be limited. You will think you wake up in the morning and are "fully aware", at the maximum of your ability to be aware. But you won't be.

Your mind is vast. But it is blocked and divided and segmented. Your conscious self has been sectioned off into a small corner of the mind, and the rest has been made unconscious in order to hide your sin and guilt.

You will still, as the conscious self, believe that you are all of yourself, and that you are a whole person.

When obstacles to peace, blocks to awareness, denial and suppression and unconsciousness begin to be lifted away from your mind, you become aware of parts of your mind that you didn't even know existed.

That means your awareness of your whole mind increases.

Realize, that IDENTITY, is very tightly tied into how much awareness you have of your mind. If you are only aware of 10% of the mind, you will believe that everything you ARE aware of is all that there is to you. Your sense of SELF is limited by the outer edges of your awareness.

As your mind becomes freer of blockages, and things which were unconscious become conscious, your awareness is going to increase. And along with that, you are going to become more aware of a "larger Self", or a bigger sense of Identity. Your identity is going to expand.

Gradually your sense of "Who am I" is going to expand away from littleness into magnificence and grandeur, and thus your sense of Self will expand. You will "turn into" your Higher Self.

Really, it is just a matter of revealing, uncovering, remembering, making conscious again, and becoming aware of again, parts of your own mind which have been hidden and kept in the dark for a long time.

We call this clearing out of the clutter, "purification", and it produces an "awakening", i.e., simply an increase in awareness. Becoming aware that there is more to you than you realized.

That you are not just a little self stuck in a body. You are not just some little victim in a dream. You are huge and powerful, you are Christ.

And the amount of awareness that you are going to have as a result, is going to be much more than you have been used to. You literally will be MORE AWARE than you ever thought was possible, because you will be AWARE OF more than you ever thought existed.

When there is nothing left hiding in the darkness, no secret sins or hidden hates, and no more unconsciousness, and no more shadow or persona, the mind will be made whole again - fully aware of all of itself at once, and that is what it means to become aware of your Real Self. Spiritual awakening.

Aware of all that is - God.