"The miracle does nothing. All it does is to UNdo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what HAS BEEN done . It does not add, but merely takes away. And what it takes away is long since gone, but, being kept in memory, APPEARS to have immediate effects."

What has "been done" is God's will, creation, perfection, the establishing of you as an immortal being, perfect health, eternal life, happiness etc.

But what has been IMAGINED is the ego stuff which has tried to "interfere" with creation. This has produced denial and sickness and pain and suffering and death.

So what the miracle DOES, is that it UNDOES the INTERFERENCES, the ego stuff, so that all that REMAINS is the true-nature of the immortal spiritual self.

Some people interpret this to mean literally "miracles don't do anything". This is a gross error. They actually DO ACT to "cancel" or "reverse" or "dissolve" or "heal" the "strange distortions that were manifest" and wipe them away to RE-ESTABLISH the perfection and health that has been hidden by the ego's interference.

So the miracle actually UNDOES EGO, and therefore UNCOVERS perfection, by REMOVING the manifestations, symptoms, and effects of ego.

Thus they DO produce what appears to be an IMMEDIATE EFFECT. The stuff which is "being kept in memory" is the entire ego thought system, which is dissolved and undone and shone past, to ERASE IT. This produces the "appearance" of transformation even on a physical level.

If we were ALREADY in a state, in time, of perfection, miracles indeed would not DO anything. There would be nothing TO UNDO. But because we HAVE added layer upon layer of ego denial and suffering, THOSE things ARE UNDONE by the miracle, in an ACTIVE way.

Most of us approach a spiritual path as something that we have to DO. But I'm questioning what exactly it is that we have to DO. And in fact, DOING is the OPPOSITE of what we're supposed to be doing.

For example, God has already accomplished the absolutely perfect act of creating us to BE perfect FOREVER. We have been given an absolutely perfect holy loving joyful innocent self which has eternal life and is immortal. There is nothing wrong with it and there never will be.

So in that light, what is there to DO? The course tells us that when we reach the END of our path and awaken to the truth, we will gladly realize "I need do nothing", because it's a recognition that everything true is still true, everything false is false, and you are still exactly as God created you. So there's nothing to do.

If in truth there is nothing to do, and heaven is still perfect and undefiled, then what exactly is HEALING, or correction, or waking up, or all this learning stuff? Because ultimately the actual purpose of learning is to learn that there is nothing to learn. The purpose of choice is to choose against choosing on your own and to eventually realize there is nothing to choose between. So what are we supposed to be DOING?

The truth is .. .I think... that it's all really about UNDOING. The course for example says that the miracle doesn't "do anything", it just UNDOES. That is still a change and an act, but it sort of takes away distortions and removes blocks and cancels out ego stuff. That's not a sort of "addition" of something, it's a removal. And atonement meant to UNDO. It's more like a path that SUBTRACTS, takes away, cancels out and STOPS doing. You come to God with EMPTY HANDS, not hands full of ego achievements.

So how do you "do the course" or "do awakening" if the process is really supposed to be centred around NOT doing? Perhaps the focus is on learning NOT to do the things you are already doing with ego. More of a "melting within" as the course says.

It certainly is NOT a process of building, assembling, erecting, putting together, creating, establishing, accumulating, or any other form of "I need to be the one who makes things perfect". God has already created that which is perfect. So it's certainly not our job to be trying to "perfect something". And really this makes it more clear that the spiritual path isn't a sort of "growth" towards something that doesn't exist yet, it's a RETURN to something that God ALREADY GAVE.

Along those lines, we can spend an awful lot of time hammering home course quotes and concepts and ideas trying to sort of ... induce some kind of higher state, to steer ourselves toward God. But the course also says quite simply that fear is the only problem, and the only solution to fear is love. Love is literally WHAT YOU ARE as created by God, as a self which is completely centred in and identified as that love, within God.

So what it's really saying is, just as light shines away darkness, it's really the light of God, or the love of God, coming from your true self, that CAUSES all your darkness to be shone away. As it says, "salvation comes from my one self." So the truth is that your one self has the POWER OF LOVE in it. But the question is, what is it that we are trying to heal? It seems to be more about gaining ACCESS to the love/light/self that has power in it, to let IT shine away our problem - but the catch 22 seems to be that we need that love in order to get TO that love, which is why we need help and willingness.

The self that you really are does not need any healing. It has nothing wrong with it. There is nothing to be done to it to fix it. It has no needs or lacks or faults. And it is in fact the LOVE - which is God - that is present IN AND AS what you are, that is the established "proper functioning" of yourself. It is God himself who guarantees your proper functioning, as in "my sinlessness is guaranteed by God." And God is the mind with which you think, the strength in which you trust, his will is your will etc.

So if you think about it, the love that you have in your real self, your christ soul self, IS THE REMEDY, because it is that love that heals and shines away sickness and undoes death and ego. It its the love that is ALREADY in you, that melts away the mental distortions of denial and deception.

So it's a very strange scenario where your already-perfected self is the very thing which is come to save "you" and heal you from the BELIEF that there is something wrong with you. This of course seems completely backwards. You believe you are a defective limited self that needs a lot of help and lacks a lot and is sinful and guilty and afraid.

And yet this self is NOT what you really are, and what you really are - Christ - will actually PROVIDE the LOVE that melts and heals your mind from this faulty view of yourself. So you in effect - as a perfect soul - will save you - the idea of your false self - from believing that you are not christ.

You can think ok, if I do this lesson and recite this text and say these affirmations and "do" this forgiveness, then it will get my mind into a state where I am more loving. As if to say, that all these things will CAUSE the love to show up, or will MAKE healing happen in your mind, or FIX your problems, or RESTORE your sanity.

But mind is something you have absolutely no comprehension of. It's more like a presence of living light. You have no clue how to fix it or correct it. And you'll find that it's not any of these "techniques" that CAUSE the presence of love or to get the mind to be more awake. How do you even manufacture "wakefulness"? How can you put love in place? You can't. And you don't.

So you can become actually very stuck in this cycle of trying to fix what is not broken, trying to apply all kinds of methods to somehow "put in place" what you think is missing, as if it's your job to make yourself have the perfect nature that you're supposed to have. But that's not your job, and you are completely unequipped to do it.

GOD HIMSELF has established your nature, has created you from love with love, and this love is beyond description and concepts. It is actually the LOVE ITSELF that CAUSES the miraculous healing of your mind and that of others. It is not that you need to do something to MAKE the love show up, it's that the LOVE needs to do something in order to make the UNLOVE go away. And your ego self is an identification with being the unlove - ie a lack of love, which is also called sin and fear and death. Lack of love can only be healed by LOVE BECOMING PRESENT, as light REPLACES darkness.

It is the LOVE OF GOD that shines away the darkness. This is its POWER. Remember that "healing is but another name for God." And "miracles are a universal blessing from God." God GIVES YOU the healing and remedy that you need. God operates ON YOU to heal your mind. God SENDS YOU the love that shines away all sorrows. God PUTS IN PLACE the proper perfect nature and condition that your mind needs to be in - IF you will let him.

This is why the course then says that the Holy Spirit - NOT YOU - THE HOLY SPIRIT - WILL UNDO, ALL the consequences of your wrong decisions - IF you will let him. If you will let HIM, NOT YOU. And this is to do with the question of, what's your proper function? What are you supposed to be DOING here, how are you supposed to be functioning, what is your ROLE? Your roel is NOT "I am going to separately individually and on my own fix my entire self and make it holy and spiritual."

The truth is that a "thought of God" has entered the darkness of our minds to BRING LIGHT INTO our minds, to shine away the darkness. That is a miraculous blessing from God. That's the Holy Spirit's function of HEALING. HIS function is to heal our minds WITH the eyes of christ and the love of God. With the very love that is in and comes through your real self.

So then what are we supposed to be DOING? Well, it then cannot mean that it is our function or job to DO anything really, except that, we're supposed to be WILLING to LET OURSELVES be forgiven, to let ourselves be healed, to RECEIVE HELP, and to let God do the work for us. The course even says that we do not even do the miracles and we have no clue what miracles even are really, other than vague descriptions of them. We have no idea how to ESTABLISH perfect love in ourselves.

So really the "spiritual path" is quite paradoxical. It's about using the body to make the body unnecessary. It's about using learning to learn that there is nothing to learn. It's about using change to learn that you are changeless and have never changed. It's about surrendering separateness. It's about letting God come back into your awareness and be in your mind and share himself with you - to let him GIVE LOVE TO YOU, to shine away your darkness FOR YOU.

So I think overall we're really supposed to be acting more like ... having willingness and humility and surrender to stop trying to wake ourselves up on our own, and instead open up to letting God perform spiritual surgery on us. We HAVE to get God's LOVE into our awareness.

As the course says, "identify with love and find yourself". Love itself is what you are, and in the presence of that love there is no fear or guilt or death. Nor because we hold these things at bay with the amazing power of our concepts, but because the LOVE SHINES IT AWAY FOR US. The atonement is the idea of God's love, shining away and undoing all ego and death.

All we've really done is we've gone into denial, and the solution to that is to do the opposite - which is acceptance. But acceptance isn't a DOING, it's a laying down of all the DENIALS and blocks and barriers and resistance and fear that try to PREVENT the love from doing what LOVE does. It's all an attempt to STOP GOD'S WILL. So the solution can't be that we keep doing our own separate will and expect it to work - we've God to let GOD'S WILL do its thing.

And that ultimately means coming to recognize that God's will is already DONE, because God is not indecisive or in two minds or uncertain. He already has GIVEN us EVERYTHING, and the only part missing is that we keep pushing it away, we have become ungrateful, and we do not want it. So it's a matter more of stopping the resistance - the resistance is a doing that needs to stop. And all the things we've taught ourselves have to be let go. And all the barriers we've built AGAINST receiving everything from God have to be dismantled.

Really then what we're supposed to do is LET GO AND LET GOD, receive God's love and support, let the Holy Spirit operate on us and HEAL US FOR US, let ourselves recognize that we have already BEEN forgiven, and gently let go of all the things that say otherwise. That's not so much a doing in terms of a putting in place, but more of a sort of PURIFICATION, a sort of clearing out, an emptying of self-made bullshit, a letting things come and go without attachment, a relinquishment, a purging catharsis, a kind of release from everything we made.

The very thing we need - the power of God as the love of God - is the very thing we have denied. And yet it is still there waiting to help us through Christ. As the course says, "ONLY Christ forgives." WE ARE NOT being forgiving at the level of having an ego, forgiveness is not complete until we are IN CHRIST BEING CHRIST looking out through Christ vision. Because forgiveness is a result of maximal love. The love has to be there FIRST in order to result in true perception.

From our ego perspective it's more like opening up to becoming a "medium for God", or a channel through which God can resume his expression and extension. "The extension of God's Being is the Soul's only function." We are learning to resume our function of LETTING GOD, doing his will, not blocking him, and thus receiving and extending the love he is already giving, which will heal our minds and undo ego. GOD'S LOVE WILL DO what needs to be done. There is NOTHING ELSE to do.

Accept, receive, allow, admit, open, extend, give, share, include, be grateful, recognize, acknowledge, be.

LOVE TRANSMITS, YOU RECEIVE AND EXTEND. THAT IS ALL!

"I must accept Atonement for myself, and nothing more. ***God has already done all things that need be done. And I must learn I need do nothing of myself***, for I need but accept my Self, my sinlessness, created for me, now already mine, to feel God's Love protecting me from harm, to understand my Father loves His Son; to know I am the Son my Father loves."

"***God has ALREADY given him*** all that he REALLY wants."

"With God's Word in their minds they come in benediction, not to heal the sick but to remind them of the remedy ***God has already given them***. It is not their hands that heal. It is not their voice that speaks the Word of God. They merely give what has been given them. Very gently they call to their brothers to turn away from death."

"I do NOT feel guilty, because ***the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM***.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to ***LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven***."

"When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation, and fight against giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation, or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it ALWAYS comes with just ONE happy realization, -- "***I need do nothing.***" Here is the ultimate release that everyone will one day find in his own way, at his own time. "

"THE MIRACLE DOES NOTHING. ***All it does is to UNdo. And thus it cancels out the interference*** to what HAS BEEN done. It does not add, but merely takes away."

"***The extension of God's Being is the Soul's only function***. ITS fullness cannot be contained any more than can the fullness of its Creator. Fullness IS extension. The ego's whole thought system BLOCKS extension, and therefore blocks YOUR ONLY FUNCTION. It therefore blocks your joy and THIS is why you perceive yourselves as unfulfilled. Unless you create, you ARE unfulfilled. But God does NOT know unfulfillment, and therefore you MUST create."

Denial has two applications. Either to deny reality, or to deny unreality. The ego uses it to deny God. You as a miracle worker are to USE DENIAL to deny anything NOT of God any power to do anything.

Miracle-working therefore entails DENYING that what is not of God exists at all. This strips it of all reality and power. You must withdraw all the power you GAVE it. You must not beleive in it. You must cancel its whole existence. What is not of God simply is not possible, and the illusion that it is possible can be undone by denying it any reality. To recognize illusions as nothing makes them disappear.

We are therefore asked to REJECT things which are not of God. To deny and reject sickness, suffering, and death. Not to pretend they aren't there, which is really a hidden belief in support of them. But to properly deny them. They are themselves denials of God, because sickness is the ego's religion of denying God.

To deny the world of illusions is to remain in strength and to not allow anything of the world to intrude upon you or another. Deny that your brother is a body. Deny that sickness is possible. Deny death can ever exist. Deny that "its true" that your brother has problems or is imperfect.

Denial couples with acceptance. To deny what is not real is to accept what is real. Just as to deny reality is to accept illusions into your mind. Whatever you DON'T deny, you accept and allow to remain. Acceptance is supportive. Denial is not. Using a "lack of support" AGAINST weakness and suffering and death, cancels it out, just as two negatives make a positive.

"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH."

"To deny the denial of perfection is not so difficult as the denial of truth."

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

"THIS peace is totally incapable of being shaken by human errors of any kind. It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way. This is the PROPER use of denial. It is not used to HIDE anything, but it IS used to correct error."

"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it."

"Teach no-one he has hurt you, for, if you do, you teach YOURSELF that what is NOT of God, HAS POWER OVER YOU."

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS."

"Do not ALLOW him to belittle himself in YOUR mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and escape from YOURS."

"Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him."

Holy Spirit's suggestion to take the next step in a healing, was to "cancel".

This means that you cancel, as in undo, your belief that an illusion is a reality. Whatever has been asserted by the ego as true or real, you cancel it. You confirm it is false and delete it from your mind.

So if someone seems to be sick, initially you probably believe that the sickness is real in various ways. You've seen it, heard about the symptoms, know the story, believe in the body, think it's actually happening, give it value, attribute it to various fake causes, etc. All of that needs to be collapsed because it is not God's truth.

So to cancel it, you first need to forgive, i.e. undo the delusions. You need to come to recognize that all of it is an illusion, NOT a reality. There is NOT a real sickness. The person is NOT a victim. The symptoms are NOT real. It is NOT really happening. The story is NOT the proof of how it happened. The explanation for it is NOT the real cause.

Cancel out all those false beliefs. Just reverse them. If they seem true, and if it's not God's truth, it is FALSE. This undoes all of the belief in the reality of the problem in your mind so that you're not SUSTAINING the sickness. Believing the sickness is real, at all, empowers it, fuels it, feeds it, keeps it, protects it, desires it, and chooses it.

So negate, cancel, undo, collapse, disappear, dissolve, make vanish, all of everything about 'it'. Get every single belief about the sickness being real out of yourself and out of your life. Get rid of all beliefs in sickness in yourself and others, let there be no permission for sickness to stay, reject all suggestions by everyone that sickness is real or true or permanent or justified, and do not believe in it.

Cancel the lies in whatever way that seems to be needed to get your mind to a place where you find yourself starting to state the core truths... like, there isn't even a sickness there, the sickness does not exist, there is no sickness, IT IS ALREADY GONE.

As you approach the truth, you are empowering yourself, by undoing those illusions. And you may (should) start to experience a building up of POWER in you. That's the Holy Spirit. Because you're aligning yourself with God's truth, you should start to feel His flow of 'electricity'. Your words are becoming more powerful, they are starting to contain Spirit, and you're expressing a higher vibration of love.

This is kind of like a prayer that ascends up to the truth of the Atonement: there is no real sin, nothing has happened, the sickness cannot exist because God did not create it. Or even, recognizing the sickness was a defense against the Atonement, there is no real NEED for the sickness, therefore the need for it was the problem that caused it, the need is unfounded, therefore the symptoms are unnecessary defenses. Illusions recognized as illusions must disappear.

As you hook yourself up to the truth, plugging your mind into God on one end, out of the other end you can utter miraculous healing words - commands of what MUST be, given God's truth. Dispel illusions, replace them with a higher order, something more symbolic of divine health. Speak LIFE into people. Stop them from constantly reinforcing, repeating, reiterating and compounding the reality of their problems. Someone needs to stop the madness and step in and make a statement of THE REAL TRUTH.

Later, you will then find that because you undid your own illusions about the sickness being real, you will not need to make much effort to defend against ego assertions that the healing didn't work etc... those thoughts mostly will not arise, and if they do you won't believe them. Because you already got done undoing the belief in those truths. This puts you on a much firmer footing for being convinced that, believing, that the healing has been accomplished by God and that the person MUST be healed.

Cancelling the delusions about sickness being real automatically cancels out the foundation for doubt, and doubt defends against miracles.

I remind myself of heaven's nature. I remind myself that in reality nothing has ever gone wrong. Nothing God created has ever changed. Reality cannot be affected. Nothing real can be hurt. There is no sickness or suffering or pain or death. Nothing ever breaks or malfunctions or decays or fails. Everything is absolutely perfect at all times and nothing can prevail against the Kingdom.

Then I take a look at the alternative suggestion. The notion that EVERYTHING has gone wrong. That everything breaks, dies, fails, malfunctions, distorts, decays, suffers and is corrupt. The world we made, the hell we made, space and time, with its laws of sin and rules of destruction.

Then I compare the two, and I ask myself, how can it be possible that they are both true? They cannot be. I attempt to reconcile them together as if they could exist at the same time, but one cancels out the other. They cannot both be true. They are so opposite that they are completely incompatible. Only one of them can be true.

If heaven is true and real and if I put my faith in that, then what is this suggestion that everything has gone wrong? What is that made of? How is it claiming that there's been sin? What is this feeling of disaster and guilt and things turning sour and doom and gloom? How can this experience of suffering and despair be true?

I go back and forth comparing the two options and it should become clearer and clearer that only God's truth is true. Nothing real has ever been threatened. Nothing real can be attacked. There cannot be a sin. There cannot be failure and death. So what IS this other suggestion, that everything has gone wrong? It must surely in fact be a LIE!

At first this seems surprising and shocking. Because all along we have been believing it and thinking it is the truth. We bought into it and valued it and held it as sacredly real. And now when comparing the world to another world we suddenly find out the whole idea of destruction is false. We suddenly discover that all of these notions of sin and attack and death cannot be true. What ARE they if they are not true? What IS this idea of things going wrong?

It has to be a total lie. It has to in fact be completely false. It is not what you thought it was. You were deceived. The very thing which you thought was completely true all this time turns out to be completely false. The ego has been lying to you this whole time.

There never was anything that went wrong in reality. Nothing in heaven has been changed. What a crock of bullshit this lie of sin is. What a bunch of crap that suggests anything has EVER gone wrong to disturb the perfection of God?

This may seem horrifying at first to realize, the cherished treasure of insane separation has been entirely UNFOUNDED this whole time. The whole notion of sin has been totally made-up and unjustified. The total assumption you had your whole life that failure was natural and destruction was commonplace and death was normal is upended at its root.

The whole system is totally NOT WHAT IT CLAIMS. And now you see through the illusion and can no longer buy it. Because no-one can believe something that is obviously impossible.

YOU are not responsible for establishing the innocence of yourself or others.

The nature of a soul is ENTIRELY the responsibility of God. God establishes the nature of the soul at its CREATION, and gives it its attributes. These attributes are permanent, because God's nature is permanence and He only creates that which is permanent.

God is also innocence so the soul INHERITS His innocence permanently. God does not design the soul to be ABLE to sin, to attack, to be sick or to die. These things are literally impossible in reality. The soul remains PERFECTLY INNOCENT FOREVER.

The function of forgiveness is not there to ESTABLISH the innocence of yourself or others. It is moreso a way to RECOGNIZE the PRE-EXISTING innocence of yourself and others.

Forgiveness and atonement are the same thing. To accept atonement is to accept the truth. But the truth that's being accepted isnt "the atonement" itself. The truth is OF GOD. The truth is the reality of the soul. The reality of the soul is being accepted in the atonement. And so similarly forgiveness recognizes the EXISTING innocence of the soul.

This is why forgiveness is said to be the recognition that there IS NO SIN. It is by recognizing the heavenly truth of yourself and others that you become aware that you HAVE ALWAYS been innocent, nothing has changed, and you STILL ARE innocent. This is awarenes that you HAVE NOT sinned because SIN IS NOT A FUNCTION OF THE SOUL.

Literally and without exception, every soul is permanently innocent and permanently sinless and utterly incapable of ever sinning. Atonement or forgiveness is merely the recognition and ACCEPTANCE of this FACT. It is a willingness to see reality and to put aside all notions that contradict the will of God.

Given that God WILLED, in the creation of the soul, that the soul be permanently sinless, forgiveness merely "sorts out" whether or not an accusation of sin is true of the soul or not. By clearly distinguishing what GOD WILLED in the soul's creation, which is done forever, you can recognize the truth.

"Recognize this, for it is true, and truth MUST be recognized, if it is to be distinguished from illusion"

"This is because of the miracle's inherent avoidance of within-error distinctions. Its SOLE concern is to distinguish between truth, on the one hand, and ALL kinds of error, on the other."

What Jesus refers to a the miracle, which perhaps we can also equate with atonement and forgiveness, is the state of recognition that ONLY God's truth and will are true, and nothing else is true. This is a recognition of WHAT GOD HAS DONE, versus what we believe has happened in dreams.

This is also why Jesus says: "The miracle does nothing. All it does is to UNdo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what HAS BEEN done. It does not add, but merely takes away."

Since "to atone is to undo", all we're doing in forgiveness is NOT doing the ego stuff, and cancelling out the interference to what GOD HAS DONE. That means recognizing the truth God established already in the creation of souls, and putting aside anything that contradicts that truth.

Individual miracles can also be said to reawaken the mind to the correct awareness of what the truth IS, as given BY GOD. They remind the mind of what is already true.

So forgiveness is just the process of discerning whether GODS TRUTH is true, or whether some other truth is true. Recognizing the truth of your brother is recognizing his soul nature. The truth about his soul was already established by God. Recognizing the permanent innocence of yourself and others is the way to remember God and to do His Will.

This goes way beyond "just healing yourself."

"To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother AND yourself by sharing the Holy Spirit with him. This places you both WITHIN the Kingdom and restores ITS wholeness in your minds."

Note that such healing REQUIRES that you ***SHARE THE HOLY SPIRIT*** with others. He cannot be left out of the equation.

"***Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself.*** YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, ***offering salvation to your brother AND yourself***. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect. "

Note that "the world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible" and that the physical world is "the granite block of sin", tells us that when sins are forgiven, BODY-LEVEL healing should occur to undo the presence of "physical" sin.

It's saying that unless your mind AND BODY are healed, and unless your brother's mind AND BODY are healed, forgiveness is not real or complete. Essentially, all trace of occurances, sins, events, attacks, must be ERASED from showing up anywhere at all, in yourself AND in your brother. And it must leave no trace behind.

"Idols MUST disappear, and leave no trace behind their going."

It also suggests that as you forgive, it SHOULD also induce healing in OTHERS simultaneous to your own.

This is very different to the idea that you just "do forgivenesses" for yourself in isolation, or with no effect on others. Jesus is saying that your joined minds should produce healing effects in BOTH of you.

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts." tells you something very similar.

"My forgiveness is the means by which the world is healed, together with myself. Let me, then, forgive the world, that it may be healed along with me."

"How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys: That healing sees no specialness at all."

"So does your healing (physically) show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, ***and healed along with you.***"

"It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."

"And thus is healing given BOTH of you."

"Show THIS (healed body) unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And ***he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes*** will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. ***YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health***. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

"When I am healed I am not healed alone.

Today's idea remains the central thought on which salvation rests. For healing is the opposite of all the world's ideas which dwell on sickness and on separate states."

"It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. In sickness must he be apart and separate. But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all Its parts intact and unassailed."

"Healing might thus be called a counter-dream, ***which cancels out the dream of sickness*** in the name of truth, but not in truth itself. Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred."

"Healing is shared."

"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you."

"But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift that you receive when you are healed."

"Those who are healed become the instruments of healing."

"When I am healed I am not healed alone. And I would share my healing with the world, that sickness may be banished from the mind of God's one Son, Who is my only Self."

"When I am healed I am not healed alone. And I would bless my brothers, for I would be healed with them, as they are healed with me."

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

Seeing yourself as deprived makes you perceive others as taking from you, and that you don't have enough left to give.

For example when I'm having some emotional release/healing, maybe I cried and I'm tired and crabby and feeling vulnerable. Maybe I'm not totally past it all yet and still am feeling whatever the lack is - lack of love, lack of peace, whatever... I'll see myself as being quite 'in need', i.e. needy.

When I see myself this way, I start to perceive everyone else as being needy too. Even if they're not. I'll perceive they're trying to take from me or demand something of me that I can't supply. I'll feel put upon and taxed and offended by the demand I see in them.

And especially if the other person is in a state of need themselves, it'll trigger anger that someone is so insensitively expecting something from me when I apparently don't have anything to give. I see them as trying to 'take take take'.

But what's really happening is I'm seeing myself - the demand in them is ME demanding FROM them. So I'm needy AND demanding, stating that I do not have what I need and someone else needs to give it to me. (Secret side-tip: although I'm saying I am in need and want to GET from others, I secretly do NOT want to get because then I would't be able to see myself as needy).

I'm the one who is actually trying to 'take take take'. I'm trying to GET, in order to make up for the lack that I perceive in myself. I'm accusing other people of trying to take because they're thwarting MY effort to take.

So as I see myself deprived and lacking, it's because I believe I don't have enough love. I believe the love is not in me and that I need to get it from someone else. So if they fail to give it, or if they demand it from ME, then I am left totally empty-handed with no way to resolve my problem, and that produces fear and anger... A sense that 'I can't and I won't... which often is in the form of a lot of reluctance or resistance or, comedically, "I can't take it anymore" (when secretly I am taking big-time).

But the thing is, seeing myself as deprived is actually the CAUSE of my perceiving a sense of lack of love, which led to the feeling of neediness, which led to the drama of being pressured to give what I don't have to needy people.

So an antidote for this... if I'm seeing myself as needy, and realizing it, is simply this:

Give love.

IMMEDIATELY this cancels out and dissolves all trace of a sense of neediness, all trace of not having enough, all trace of anger and reason for fear or resentment.

I'll be honest, I've only remember this a couple of times in real situations. One of them was just now. As soon as I suddenly remembered (after asking Holy Spirit to help) that my neediness is making me try to 'get' because I am seeing myself as deprived, it made me LAUGH. Because it introduces truth at the root of this bullshit and immediately corrected all of the EFFECTS.

I have to learn to remember this more often. When I feel shit and like I am deprived and don't have anything to give and don't want to give..... the way I am feeling is BECAUSE I don't want to give, not the other way around.

I choose to position myself as unloved and in need, which creates feelings of deprivation, which leads to the whole drama. If I choose NOT to see myself unloved by SHARING love (remember giving and receiving are both required, not sacrifice or greed), the whole problem is corrected.

And then, now that I've accepted healing of the actual problem - a lack of love - I can now give love and FULFILL the needs of others, which in fact then disappear, because they were never really needy to begin with. I was just seeing my own neediness projected.

Problem solved.

In the ego mind, the mind is split, and so is your will. You have willed against yourself. So now your mind has more than one will in it, seeming to act in contradiction. You are at war with yourself.

So what happens now is, your will attempts to still "cause", but then this other opposing will also attempts to "cause", and the two of them are opposite each other in every way so this "cancels out" all of the possible effects.

It's like being constipated, or a stalemate. We literally basically STOP ourselves from willing anything at all. This is why we do not produce and EFFECTS. This is also why, in a split mind, it seems like we cannot have any power over the world or use the mind's power to make anything happen directly. We're stuck in a body that seems to be cut off from the environment and our mind seems totally powerless.

When the will is reunited as whole and is not divided against itself (no ego), the mind no longer has opposition. It is able to now be single minded and to will consistently in one direction. This unopposed will has the Power of God, to CAUSE, AND to produce effects. This unleashes the power of the mind to manifest. It was in this state that we originally made the universe appear.

This is also a key in miracle working. Miracles don't work in a spirit of fear, and fear comes from separation, meaning that if you are afraid that "the miracle wont work" or "the symptoms aren't going away" or "I don't trust this power" or "I don't think I can do this etc"... the perceived "things that would oppose success" are actually other aspects of YOUR OWN WILL in your own mind, in conflict with what you're trying to achieve.

This is why when the mind and will are split, there are no miracles happening. Something has gone wrong. The mind is literally believing in an opposing will which it thinks is "out there" or is alien to it or external to it. It is not. It's inside your mind. So when you are "against yourself", you are literally stopping your will, against your will. And so you cancel out the effects of what you try to make happen.

A mind which is whole does not even regard the current state of the world, appearances, how severe a problem seems, how big the challenge, whether it's healing a headache or moving a mountain. When the mind is clearly aware that it has ONE WILL, and there is no opposing will (because nothing happens against your will, therefore everything happens BY your will).... it is more like... an artist painting new brushstrokes. The canvas does not resist the paint. There is nothing stopping an entirely new projection from happening. What was there before has NO POWER to stop the effects from showing up.

This is why in miracle working you do not "ask" stuff to go away or be healed. That is evidence that you believe there is a will opposing yours (physical matter? sickness? causes?) which has the power to stop you, therefore you have to "ask permission" for it to change. That's not how miracles happen.

Also you will find it's useful to "command" that something change. If you are certain and authoritative and whole-minded/loving enough, it must comply. But the fact is, you're ultimately not even commanding a "separate thing" to change. In your truest nature, you simply EXPRESS. You CREATE. Stuff just comes out of you joyfully and, if that means making forms, then the forms just instantly show up and materialize. Not because you asked them to, but because you simply created them.

To work miracles we must UNDO all belief that there is any cause in the world, any power over you, any alien will, any separate strength or reason or order of difficult that suggests "it might not work because" or "thats too big a challenge" or "it appears to much a problem."

I'm reminded of star wars, where Luke is being taught by Yoda, and believes he cannot lift the spaceship from the swamp because "its too big". That's the hierarchy of illusions. Yoda then demonstrated that size does not matter. Effectively he was demonstrating the miracle-working power of the mind.

A belief in separation takes place within your own mind. Your own mind becomes divided. A portion of your will goes into one part and the rest into another. Eventually this forms the conscious self and the unconscious self.

Separation leads to a splitting out of cause from effect, receiving from giving, and other from self. But because it splits the will, it results in two opposing wills which do not see things the same way.

"Being in two minds" means having an ego mind - a divided mind at war with itself. It must produce indecision and an inability to resolve conflict. It in fact must produce conflict, because one part of will is acting to cancel out the other. This creates a standoff, or a stalemate, or a situation of simultaneous push and pull.

The result of two wills acting against one another in opposite directions is that they will cancel the effects of each other and create a paralysis. One will tries to move in a given direction, the other will stops it. The other will tries to move in a given direction, the first will stops it. Nothing happens.

With two opposing wills trying to operate at the same time, there must conflict - an inner war with yourself. You will thwart everything you try to express. This conflict is literally the same thing as insanity, because the single whole mind is attempting to achieve two opposite and incompatible goals at the same time. It produces impossibility - which is the opposite of the possible. Miracles are another name for possibility. And with God, all things are possible.

When you are in this world and are in two minds, ie you have an ego and therefore two wills, you are literally against yourself. You are experiencing self attack. Your will and ambitions will be thwarted, sabotaged and undermined. You will become "stuck", ineffective, powerless and frozen.

Ultimately this leads to fear which will stop you in your tracks. Fear is a state of intensely experiencing separation between yourself and yourself, where one part of you seems like you and the rest seems like a separate enemy. Fear is paralyzing. It puts a freeze on action, it strips both parts of mind of all power, collapses the power of will and is an attempt to extinguish yourself.

No wonder then that when your mind is split, you cannot manifest miracles, you cannot see yourself as sharing God's power, you do not see yourself as causal, and every time you try to even perform a miracle it becomes thwarted and nothing seems to happen. You get used to this mode of being un-mraculous, believing it is normal to have no power over anything.

The only reason you can't make objects move, raise the dead, heal the sick, levitate or whatever else, is because your mind and heart is not WHOLE, with a single focus or goal. It is divided against itself. You try to cause stuff to happen, but the rest of you tries to stop it.

A simple example is that you attempt to produce a miracle but you "ask" for something to change, you fear that it won't change, you have doubt about seeing results, you look to form to change to see if something worked, and generally undermine yourself. You waver. You lose sight of the truth. You listen to other people's doubts and buy into the appearance that it isn't working. You listen to the ego. And this basically cancels your efforts.

But you'll think that all of these things are happening against your will or that you're really trying hard to make this miracle happen. PART of you is. ONE of your wills is. But you have another separated will - part 2 - which you are still actually USING, albeit largely unconsciously, to sabotage your efforts.

Your belief in fear splits your will. Your belief in a lack of authority splits your will. Your belief in not being completely causal, or not having power over anything, splits your mind. If your mind becomes split like this, you are literally working against yourself. One hand is reaching to express a miracle, the other quickly wrestles with it and stops it. Not physically, but in your mind and perception.

To work miracles requires an allegiance to the truth, and a loyalty and clarity about staying true to it no matter what illusions present. Holding fast regardless of things appearing to not work, or even if they seem to become worse. Is it the truth? No. But if you take it in and make it real, that's you using the other half of your will against yourself.

The only reason that a miracle won't happen, effectively, is because you stopped being causal and turned yourself into an effect. You paralyzed yourself - dis-empowered yourself. It is your false perceptions which strip you of your sharing of God's power. You can't work miracles when you're divided against yourself and thus God. It's like asking God to stop flowing. It means you do not really know what you want, and uncertainty does not produce the certainty of God's power.

Another way of saying that is that when your mind/will is split, you are asking for two things at once, which is like asking for nothing clearly at all. So you get nothing, or you "mis-create", and end up with effects that you don't think you asked for.

When you "ask" by focusing on only one thing, wholly and clearly, it must be given you. Therefore realize if the only thing stopping your miracles was your own divided will, once your will, mind and heart are whole, you will not stop yourself, and no-one else has any power to do so either. Anything is possible.

Being so used to having a split will, which renders us practically powerless and inept, we are not accustomed to being solely causal. We are not used to the power of the mind when it is expresses in one direction, with one intention, one focus, one belief, one thought, one love. We are not accustomed to giving and receiving being one. And we are not used to having so much authority over illusions.

The mind has massive creative power. It never stops being creative, Jesus says. It's just that we keep using it against itself and thus keep mis-creating, producing effects which conflict with part of what we asked for, or we create things which attack ourselves, or things which seem unwanted or a mistake. There are no mistakes. You ARE getting what you're asking for, it's just that you keep asking from a confused state of not really knowing what you want.

What happens when you cause and you do not stop yourself? You create. That's what produces miracles, manifestations, signs, healings, wonders, etc. Jesus was masterful at this, coming from such a state of pure love that He could express all of God's power, undivided, certain, with great authority, and there was nothing He could not do. You can be this way also.

I asked Holy Spirit how better to produce miracles. He said, "be truth." Truth is absolute. All or nothing. Commitment. Certainty. Confidence. Authority. Power.

"He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive."

A Course in Miracles tells us that as soon as we cease to be forgiving, we enter into an unforgiving state where judgement is automatic. Judgement is attack. It is condemnation. It is required and necessary in order to implement separation, to come between You and God.

Typically we think of judgement as something you believe about others. But this is always an illusion. Judgement is always from you, towards yourself, happening within your own mind.

Judgement also does not judge something which is separate from you and outside of you, but it seems to make a part of yourself separate from the rest of you and outside of what remains of you. It establishes part of yourself as "other" and "not me", and attacks it.

Judgement is sin. It is an attempt to attack the Truth and split the mind. It also possesses two parts, one being the vantage point of "the judger" and the other being the vantage point of "the judged". It is not possible for a mind to be only a judger and not the judged. It must be both, because that same mind must believe that being judged is possible and real to it.

The mind entering into judgement is entering into separation. The mind becomes separated within itself. It forms a victimizer and a victim simultaneously. It engenders an attitude of superiority and inferiority simultaneously. It is not possible to therefore hold an "inferiority complex" without also possessing a "superiority complex".

To believe you are inferior can only come about by part of the mind skewing itself away from what appears to be superiority or worthiness or innocence, which is required in order for the other part of the mind to skew towards judgement.

Thus the mind splits into two simultaneous attitudes, victimization and victimhood, or judgementalism and being judged. You cannot judge without being judged, and all judgement is a judgement of yourself, not another. The mind thus simultaneously manufactures an experience of being judged, and an experience of judging, and then pretends not to be doing so.

It becomes easy for a judging mind to enter into denial that it is playing both roles, because it will either side with the position of judger or judged and deny that the other role exists within the same mind, in order TO judge or be judged. A sense of separation is needed between these two "false identities" to establish that one is what it is and the other is different.

The conscious part of the mind will likely see itself either as judged or as judging. When it sees itself as judged, it will see its judger as separate from itself and likely projected outward. It will be afraid of judgement coming from "other" than itself, which is thought to be other people. It will literally use other people to judge itself, even if they are not actively judging, trying to explain how "not myself" is the cause of this.

Alternatively, the mind can focus conscious awareness on the active role of judger, in which the role of being judged is more unconscious. It sees itself as judging only, and that which is judged is separate from itself and "other". It therefore sees judgement as being against others outside of itself, such as other people, even if other people are innocent. It believes it is not judging a part of itself, having split off the target of its judgements from awareness, through disassociation.

Both of these roles coexist within the same mind, as a split personality with two identities. There is an identity of a judger, superior and righteous and condemning. This is more clearly aligned with the act of sin, whereby to judge is to affirm that sin is real, that judgement is justified because of sin, and that it is someone else who has sinned.

Yet this condemnation is itself sin occurring in the mind, because sin is an attack just as is judgment. The attacking, judging part of the mind believes it is free from the effects of its own attack, having projected them onto another part of the mind.

Then there is the second identity of the judged, the victim who has been attacked from without, and the part of mind that sees itself as powerless, unjustified, weak, vulnerable and open to attack.

It sees itself being attacked against its will and having no power to judge at all. Seeing itself as unworthy, it disclaims having its own opinion or any sense of passing judgement upon others, and acts like a helpless victim. It is the receiver of judgement, open to feeling hurt and embarrassed and ashamed by the accusations which seem to come from beyond itself, typically projected onto other people as the cause because it doesn't recognize that the cause is within the same mind it exists within.

Both of these identities are happening within your own mind, and the interplay between them is happening entirely within you. The judging "you" and the judged "you" are both fictional, illusory identities. Neither of them are true of who you really are - a whole mind with no separation. Neither of them are your real identity, given that who you really are is wholeness and innocence and is completely free from attack, given or received.

You which are the HOST MIND to these two artificial portions of ego mind must gain enough awareness to recognize that you are judging yourself AND being judged by yourself, you are the one who stands in condemnation over yourself, it is you who is the source of your victimization, and "others" have absolutely nothing to do with this.

The only reason you believe that others i.e. other people are judging you, or are the target of your judgement, is because both the judger and the judged parts of your ego mind are unaware that they exist within a larger mind which hosts both of them. Both believe they are all of your "self" and that there is nothing more to your identity than the limits or confines of each false idea of identity.

Being incapable of seeing beyond themselves, both the judger and the judged thus see the "other" which is playing a part in causing or receiving judgement, as being "not myself" and therefore must seem to be "other people". It's easy to conclude this given that other people showing up separate bodies are readily available to "project" this onto, or to see them as sharing the same location as the "otherness" which is believed to be the problem. But this all has nothing to do with other people at all.

Whether it be others in the form of distinctly separate external people, or others in the form of the other part of your own mind, it is only the separation between these identities and the fictional story about how they see each other which is maintaining the split and projecting of the cause.

Your whole mind needs to recognize that it is bigger than and containing these two false selves, that neither self is the whole truth because its story is limited and partial, that YOU as the whole mind are choosing and playing these two identities against each other, and own up to the fact that since they are both WITHIN you, they must both BE a part of your one identity.

In order to return to a single identity, their separateness and distinctness must be dissolved and seen as an illusion. For both of these illusory selves to be a part of you, neither of them can be the whole truth. And in this light, the distinctiveness between them is overlooked and dissolved. Thus do they disappear and judgement and suffering ends. You must admit that you have been playing both roles, and therefore YOU are the one identity behind the ILLUSION of two selves.

Similarly, you must realize that all of your victimization, all of the ways that you believe others are doing things to you, all of the ways that you seem so suffer because of causes separate from you etc.. these must all be recognized as being because of another part of YOU, which is perhaps hidden behind denial and unconsciousness, attacking this second part of you. You've come to identify with this one split-off part of your mind, and are in denial of the rest of you.

It is you who has judged yourself, because it is you who have believed in sin and used sin to split your mind into multiple personalities. You are both the judger and the judged, and yet you are neither because they are both ego illusions.

It is no more true that you actually are being victimized by anyone else, than it is true that you are a victimizer of someone not yourself. You must realize that BOTH of these roles are not your true self, your real identity, or the whole of who you are. They are but an illusion of a separated, split ego mind, pretending to be an identities which you made up.

You are the one who has attacked you. You are the one who is attacking you. You are attacker and attacked, victim and victimizer. And yet you are neither of these, ultimately, because they are both fictional. The ego is always attacking itself and nothing else. The ego IS your self-attack, the scene in which a victimizer and a victim both play roles and cooperate to build a fictional story of interaction.

This is all taking place within you and has nothing to do with other people. It's only because of the split in your mind and your sense of there being a self that is "other" than your self, that you then become confused and accidentally project that sense of otherness onto other separate bodies. Really the otherness your are relating to as your enemy is just a part of your own mind, and your judgement of "them" is directly an attack on yourself, appearing to be indirect, or not at all.

To judge is to attack yourself. To believe you judge another not yourself is the very denial which makes judgement seem possible. You will judge yourself if you judge, and you will never judge another person. And if you are judged, rest assured you are not judged by another, nor should you fear the judgement of other than yourself. It is really your OWN "other self" which you are afraid of judging you, because YOU are the one who is judging you from within.

Surrender both of these positions, therefore, and return to wholeness, which is a mind of forgiveness. In wholeness you will not see an other to judge or to be judged by. Forgiveness cancels judgementalism and the belief in victims and victimizers. You have but done this all to yourself and have experienced all sides of your self conflict. Self conflict always contains two selves, who believe they each are all of your self and yet is limited in its self concept.

You cannot judge without being judged. You cannot be judged without judging. Both make up the state of sin, which is a belief that you should be condemned, or are being condemned. All of it is your own doing.

Judgment of another is a position of causality, in which you are squarely within the identity of the one who is doing something to another. Being judged then is a state of being at the effect of the judgement of another. Yet by entering into the drama of judgement, you become both the cause and the effect of it. And yet, you are not really the cause because none of it has been real. There are no real consequences from separation.

Following from the judging causality of sin, there is the result of guilt, which sees itself as the effect of sin. Yet from the perspective of guilt, as the victim of sin, the mind sees itself as separate from the sinner, and therefore sin is made unconscious and the guilty mind now sees itself as causal. It then proceeds to stand in the role of cause, continuing judgement against the self, determining that because it is guilty, it must be punished, and punishment is just another step on the road of judgement.

Judgement leads all the way to death in this manner, since condemnation calls for death to atone for what you claim you did. You will both suffer and want to suffer, will die and want to die, and will be victimized and want to be victimized. This is what comes from judgement - the entire ego thought system of sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death.

Learning not to judge is only important in terms of learning not to believe in real sin, and to place your mind back into a state of forgiveness. Of yourself. Wholeness, which is the end of judgement, cancels its illusory effects and they are undone.

It is not helpful to simply stop projecting judgements onto other people, if you are not recognizing that it was you that you were judging all along. That would only mean you continue to judge yourself but now are constipated with a censorship of the judgement that continues internally, trying not to shift it onto others but still believing you deserve it. Ceasing to project onto others is only the first step.

You must realize that you've been attacking yourself, judging yourself, being judged by yourself, and that you need to stop doing this. That you are willing to stop doing this. Generally speaking, an awareness that you have been doing this at all may be enough to shine enough light into your mind to make sense of what you have been experiencing, and to dismantle the ego's construct of self attack completely.

You need but a little awareness that it is you who has been both attacker and attacked, and that if you are both of these, then you must have a single identity, and therefore the illusion of separateness between them must be false and unreal. And thus, as an illusion recognized as an illusion of separateness, it will disappear. The mind is thus healed and restored to wholeness, awareness of wholeness returned, and along with it your FULL identity is restored to awareness.

God created heaven and its reality. It is the only absolute reality. This is all that existed before the separation and ALL THAT WILL EXIST afterwards. Planet Earth and space and time are not a part of this whatsoever.

In the separation, we tried to assert the existence of something completely OPPOSITE to reality. This produced a thought system of ILLUSION, an entire SECOND world or system of thought. We made heaven's opposite, which is hell. This included the making of space and time and matter and planet Earth. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

This threw us all the way into what we call false perception which is aligned with how the body sees the physical world. "The world is false perception." This is blindness by perception of form. It is a way to make sin seem real. It is the unreal and unforgiven world. The body looks upon it all the time and cannot see anything else because it is PART OF it. "The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen." "... see only the forms of error."

This means that we perceive a COMPLETELY ILLUSORY WORLD, through illusory eyes, and are COMPLETELY DECEIVED by it, taking it to be REALITY, when in fact it is reality's opposite. Seeing an illusion THROUGH an illusion cancels its illusory nature and makes it SEEM REAL. It's a state of insanity. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." "Sin is insanity."

This insane world we made is drawn like a VEIL of illusions across heaven to disguise and hide it from sight. We look AT the physical world in order NOT to overlook it. This is unforgiving sight. It's a way of being blinded so that you DO NOT see reality. The veil seems thick and solid and heavy and made of materials. It is "the granite block of sin." If your MIND is unforgiving, it will align with this world and this view of this world, and will see sin - bodies - as though it is real. Only the insane believe an ILLUSORY world is real.

In moving out of insanity and back to the ONLY REALITY of heaven, which existed PRIOR to the making of Earth and WITHOUT it, we first move into true perception of the ILLUSORY world that we made. True perception entails two seeming aspects because there are TWO mechanisms for perception - the body's eyes AND the spiritual eye.

1) Looking upon the ILLUSORY WORLD that we made, and RECOGNIZING it as an illusory world. This is "seeing it truly" and is "accurate perception". It shows you that the world IS UNREAL, and IS NOT the reality you thought it was. Illusions are recognized, bodies are recognized as dream figures, awareness that you are DREAMING arises in your mind, and you see this ILLUSORY WORLD that you made as THE FORGIVEN WORLD. This is a perception TOWARD the illusory world you made which sees it in a light, loving, forgiving way. It makes the ILLUSION appear more beautiful and innocent, but it IS STILL AN ILLUSORY WORLD.

2) Looking BEYOND the illusory world, because to forgive is to OVERLOOK. And any world you forgive you NO LONGER SEE. And you cannot see both worlds, ultimately - heaven and hell. True perception looks PAST the world, PAST the veil, THROUGH illusions, BEYOND deception, and looks TOWARD heaven, AWAY from the illusory world you made. This is why christ vision is able to see BEYOND BODIES, BEYOND THE VEIL, and looks to THE LIGHT which is beyond it all. It sees this light without it dimming, BEYOND THE ILLUSORY WORLD, while facilitating the ability to look down toward the illusory world and see its CHAOS from an unchaotic perspective.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds ***a light beyond the body***; an idea ***beyond what can be touched***, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. ***It sees no separation***. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, ***without the slightest fading of the light it sees***."

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently ***across chaos***" - meaning the chaos is still there but there is an underlying "real world" interwoven with it at the same time, which isn't chaotic.

How to put it. .... let's say there is an ocean. You are above the ocean in christ vision/true perception/forgiveness. You look out ACROSS the ocean surface and see above the horizon. You look to the bright light of the sun shining - symbolizing heaven's light. And at the same time, you notice that the ocean is there, and the ocean hides the light, and there are things lurking in the ocean and moving around. That is the illusory world, the forgiven world. It is the veil of dreaming. So you are seeing the forgiven world BELOW, and the real world AHEAD. Then at some point YOU ONLY SEE the real world, and then it's off to heaven.

Only when THE ILLUSORY WORLD YOU MADE ends, "the world WILL END in laughter" ie you stop believing in it entirely, does the veil part, the illusion vanish, and you see ONLY the face of christ. And then you are taken swiftly OUT OF ILLUSIONS, OUT OF THE WORLD, BACK INTO REALITY.

"Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love."

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

To know God is to be IN REALITY in heaven with God where THERE IS NO WORLD - no planet earth, no bodies, no space, no time, no illusory world, no real world, no forgiven world, ONLY THE KINGDOM.

Separation HAS occurred? Sort of.

Some people claim that it is impossible to explain the "tiny mad idea". It seems logical at first, because when the ego asks a question like "what if", it's not really a question, and the tiny mad idea hasn't "really" happened in reality. It has no real consequences in reality, and it's just a dream.

But the tiny mad idea HAS happened in IMAGINATION. It HAS happened in your mind, and you've "made it real to you". That is why you are sitting there right now reading this on your screen, which *seems* real. A dream "at all" wouldn't even be possible unless God gave you free will to choose to mis-create and dream.

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

Your mind has FREEDOM, and therefore can be used to choose EITHER to will with God's will, or to will against it. Either in service to the soul/spirit, or in service to a fictional ego. This freedom granted you the very REAL "possibility" of being ABLE to make this choice, to use will against will, and to mis-create. God would not give you an `option` that could *actually* hurt you at all, and it has not, but this freedom HAS given you the ability to OPT not to laugh at the idea of separation, if you choose.

Jesus also describes below how while you have free will, it is necessary to choose both FOR (toward) God and AWAY from the option of ego/dreaming.

"While the ballot itself is a secret one, and the right to vote is fully protected, voting ALWAYS entails both election AND rejection. If two candidates are voted for for the same position, the machine cancels the ballot automatically.

This is necessary, because a split vote does not represent ANY REAL allegiance.

Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God.

The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished. The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

So you can see here that the mind actually has the freedom to "choose to dream" if it wants to. It CAN place itself under tyrranical rule and seem to "sleep". Of course this dreaming is FICTIONAL and it is not REALLY happening in reality, it has no real consequences in heaven, but it IS still a "valid option" that you are free to entertain or ELECT.

This essentially means that, the tiny mad idea is a POSSIBLE CHOICE, but it is not a REAL choice. That's a vital distinction. You COULD choose to dream if you want to, to mis-create, to opposte God's will (or try to), but it's not a REAL option. It's an option of unreality that the mind is quite capable of making if it chooses to. This is why "heaven is a choice I must make" - the mind HAS to freely, willingly, elect to choose heaven, ie the only real option, and not the ego, which is an imaginary option you've tried to MAKE real.

Does this mean the dream "has happened"? It has not happened IN REALITY, but it HAS occurred within the context of the mind's freedom to dream. It doesn't have REALITY to it, but it IS something you are CAPABLE OF PRODUCING through mis-creation. And when you DO freely choose it, with your free will, it will become seemingly real to you because what you accept into your mind becomes your reality.

"To "change your mind" means to place it at the disposal of True authority. The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has elected to be guided by Christ in HIS service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow him."

The mind has to ELECT (choose) to be under service to Christ. This IS a free-willed choice, not something forced upon you. God does not create slaves.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea"

There DID creep an idea, a thought, an imagining, into the mind, because IT COULD. The mind CAN DREAM. But the dream that it produces is not real or like God. Elsewhere Jesus refers to it as "an order of reality", meaning that you gave reality TO it to try to turn it into reality, through belief, but the belief is based on a false premise, so it is ultimately unfounded and fundamentally unreal at its core.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea", at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them BOTH away, and understand that time can NOT intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time."

I will leave you this statement by Jesus:

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

What he means here, is not that the separation is REAL, but that in the MIND, it HAS OCCURRED as a thought, an idea, an IMAGINED possibility. There HAS been an attempt to usurp God's will. There HAS been a "dream". Not REALLY, but ... in the proper context, in the mind, this IS something that we CHOSE, something we TRIED TO MAKE REAL, something we tried to DO, to will it, to mis-create. We DID mis-create. That's the ONLY reason that you are able to be sitting there seeming to be a body reading this text right now. But the ultimate truth is, this is a dream, an unreality, it's ultimately based on a false foundation or premise - that there is an alternative to God's will, and because that is untrue, it is not REALLY REAL. So it hasn't REALLY happened in truth, in the biggest picture.

You DO, in a sense, dream a dream. But you CAN stop dreaming, by changing your mind. Dreaming is a state of MIND, of insanity, believing that time can replace eternity and space can replace God's presence. Effectively, there HAS been a "fall of man", but the fall is imaginary. It is ONLY an idea, but it IS an idea, not less than that. The "existence" of this idea, however, must be temporary, because it is an idea of being temporary, and is naturally limited and finite. It is therefore INEVITABLE that the dream will end and the IDEA - in which this entire physical universe dwells - will disappear.

Your natural condition is that you are a powerful, loving, mind-causal, capable, miraculous being, who can do literally anything.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles."

That "nothing" is utterly literal and all encompassing. Anything you can possibly imagine you can do, no matter how radical.

When there are blocks to awareness, these blocks are blocks to this natural ability. It is a block to love, a block to power, a block to will. A block to awareness is a form of denial, which is part of a split mind. And a split mind is willing against itself, which cancels out the power of the will because it's now a divided will, working against itself instead of being undivided and unopposed and powerfully causal.

There is a lot of emphasis in ACIM on removing these blocks. In fact, most of the course is aiming towards the removal of the blocks rather than the "teaching of the meaning of love" which it says is impossible. "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin" speaks to how you need to give back your willingness to love so that you aren't blocking it, but the love and power in you naturally EXPRESSES when it is unblocked.

The thing is, a vast majority of course folk see this emphasis on block removal and think it is the entire course. To the point where they are constantly focusing on "shifting perception", undoing their false beliefs, stopping judgements, etc to try to heal their minds. Which is valid, and we are supposed to be doing that. But the emphasis on this process, which is "the work" that needs to be done one way or another using whatever process, the REASON for doing this work starts to become eclipsed and forgotten and denied.

What happens when the blocks are removed, is that the flood gates are opened and the power of God starts to stream out. The will becomes unopposed, whole and powerful. Thought begins to express causally with the power to make things happen. The blocks are literally like resistances to allowing the power to come out. They are a reluctance to EXPRESS love. When the blocks are removed you NATURALLY become more loving. The lovingness and power are already there underneath or behind the blocks. When the blocks go, the love expresses and you get back in touch with being miraculous, powerful and capable. Capable of moving mountains with your mind.

"Miracles are natural and should be happening all the time. When they don't, something has gone wrong" (awareness is blocked).

"Miracles are everyone's right but purification is necessary first" (block removal - purification - must be done first in order to REVEAL the miracle working power).

So there are really two parts to this. You first remove the blocks by doing "work" (purification)and THEN when the mind is free enough the light is free to shine. The Holy Spirit can extend through the body. Mind can extend to and join with other minds. Separation can be undone and erased. And it is this EXPRESSING (all expressions of love are miraculous) that a vast majority of ACIM students are missing, ignoring, hiding from, even not wanting.

It has resulted in a widespread belief that all you have to do is basically do this work, undo the blocks, and then sit on a cloud in a state of happiness and peace DOING NOTHING. NOT EXPRESSING. NOT BEING MIRACULOUS. It's a very "safe", self-help-ish way of going about it. People think you just need to get rid of these false beliefs and attain a STATE of mind in which you will dwell with no further need to do anything. This state of mind is "miracle mindedness". Right mindedness, true perception, atonement etc. And the course very much DOES focus on attaining that state. And you could say it's a state of acceptance.

But the part that a lot of people are missing, afraid of, avoiding, in denial of etc, is the EXPRESSING. The stuff that happens when the blocks are gone. The fact that you become part of the atonement plan and perform miracles all the time every day. The fact that you now regain the power of the mind and will OVER the body and the world. The fact that you can now move mountains, heal the sick and raise the dead. That you can DO ANYTHING. Even things which BREAK the laws of physics.

"Miracles break all the laws of this world." "What the holy spirit allows you to do is clearly not of this world." "You cannot see the Holy Spirit but you can see his manifestations." "Your mind has the power to make worlds."

This is the aspect which I find very commonly LACKING in a vast majority of teachings and interpretations, especially those that focus on "accepting the world" or "accepting what's happening".

The "going within" and "doing nothing" becomes a trap, which completely ignores the outward expression, miraculous power, ability to heal others, the performing of miracles etc. I just don't see enough people talking about this part of it. The whole REASON for doing "the work" AT ALL is to get the blocks out of the way so that you can perform miracles all over the place! It's not just about you and about your ego becoming peaceful.

It's almost as if people think they have this state of "peaceful non-activity" lurking buried underneath a stockpile of ego stuff, and all you need to do is uncover it and then settle into this peaceful, non-expressive state, where you dwell forever. This is a complete failure to recognize the real NATURE of that peaceful state, the fact that it entails the POWER OF GOD, the fact that it EXTENDS naturally, the fact that it goes out and expresses and HEALS, and the fact that you naturally WANT to share it with everyone and help them to experience this natural state as well. THAT is what the Great Crusade is about.

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did." (your natural state isn't just peace and non-action, it's having everything and being able to do everything)

"Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself." (you accept the atonement NOT to ignore everyone, but to become PART OF A LARGER PLAN TO HELP OTHER INDIVIDUALS).

"You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself ***and in everyone else***, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO." (this is not voluntary, Jesus says you MUST help others)

"This means: Listen to MY Voice, Learn to undo the error, and DO something to correct it. The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers." (It is not ENOUGH to not "do something"! You must ACT in the world).

I cannot comment on whether particular teachers are doing this or not. Maybe some teachers are in support of this also but often it sounds not to be the case. Many avoid the supernatural aspect of the course. There is a lot of fear surrounding the power of the mind.

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don't believe it. People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them. "

I just want to make sure we're not JUST focusing on purification/work, we're also clearly focused on what is NATURAL to us, the expression of the power of love and the willingness to help others. It's not just about attaining miracle mindedness, it's about MIRACLE WORKING. And you don't even BEGIN to perform miracles until AFTER a large amount of blocks to awareness have already been removed. Until love can express, you are not miraculous. But when the blocks are gone, you ARE miraculous. And now you can be OF SERVICE TO OTHERS.

The ego has built some very terrible things which we regard as extremely real. These include pain, disease/sickness, fear, death, emergency, intensity, attack, and separation. When these things seems to be happening, the ego is sending out a very strong message to us.

The message says, "you should stay the hell away from this it's really bad". (Beware, this advice may be misleading ;-)

Pain quite literally tells you in an experiential way that it is something you do not want. And nobody wholeheartedly wants to be sick or dying. And attack can be particularly upsetting. The ego keeps reinforcing the idea:

"This is really really terrible and it's really happening and you should want it to stop" (Beware again, this ego advice may not work ;-)

And so typically that is the reaction that we have. If I've got pain, I want it to go away. If someone is attacking someone, I want them to stop doing it. If I am sick or diseased, I want to get rid of it.

The trouble is, these attitudes... These reactions... These ways of experiencing these 'temptation', is precisely the OPPOSITE of what will actually HELP the situation. The ego's counsel is ALWAYS completely opposite of the truth and leading you down exactly the wrong path that results in things becoming far worse. What it claims will save you, and what it claims will heal you, and what it claims will fix the situation, DOES NOT, and so you seek for but you do not find peace.

So let's look at the opposite, which the ego warns you against.

If you are in pain, love the living FUCK out of it. Welcome it. Don't resist it. Drop all desire to get rid of it. Don't make it wrong. Don't judge it as bad or a mistake or something that shouldn't be there. And in particular, stop being a victim and OWN the CHOICE to put it there.

Instead of being a passive victim of it, instead be proactive in choosing how you wish to perceive it. It is also useful to extremely exaggerate how much you WELCOME the problem. For example:

"I am choosing this pain (or whatever the thing is)."

"I really wanted to have this and this is what I've received."

"This pain is absolutely beautiful and lovely and I love it with all my heart."

"I am the one who chose this pain and I've done a really excellent job of choosing it."

"This pain is absolutely amazing I totally love it and welcome it and want it."

"I allow this pain to stay for as long as it wants to, it is completely free to do so and I don't even want to get rid of it or make it go away."

"I feel really happy about this pain being there, and I am truly grateful that it has shown up just like I planned."

"I love this pain. This is the best pain I've ever created. This pain makes me completely happy because it is exactly how I wanted it to be and it has met all my conditions."

"I accept this pain and allow it to remain."

"I let go of resisting this pain or trying to make it go away."

"I let go of labelling this pain as negative or a fault or something I did wrong, there is no guilt in it at all. I am completely innocent."

"I surrender all attack on this pain and give it to you Holy Spirit."

"I am open to being completely still with this pain and simply observing it without any desire to change it or judge it."

"I surreneder this pain to you God, please heal it in my mind and I gently let it go to you now."

Notice that we're having an ATTITUDE which is completely the opposite of what the ego says your attitude SHOULD be. When something goes wrong, the ego puts it into the hierarchy of illusions and tells you exactly what kind of severity of reaction this calls for. If you let it, you'll react according to this hierarchy and be a victim. So the ego says this pain is not something you can possible want - that YOU are not something you can possibly want - so go ahead and WANT IT, to defy the ego and reverse its assertions.

The keys here are you need to include:

1. Complete ownership for having created this

2. Complete ownership for actively still creating it and wanting to

3. Gratitude for having created exactly what you wanted

4. Openness and welcome that is heartfelt

5. Allowing and accepting whatever it, letting it BE without you changing it

6. Surrender of all of the reactions you were having about it and all the ways you were making it out to be something wrong

7. Willingness to let it be free so that you can be free

8. Offering it up to Holy Spirit now that you have LET GO OF IT and have stopped trying to attack it or make it wrong or get rid of it yourself

9. Willingness to ASK Holy Spirit/Jesus/God to now heal it and take it from you

10. Actually DOING SO and letting go of it in peaceful surrender.

To the ego this is total madness. It will tell you if you try to accept or allow something that's clearly bad or awful, that you have regarded as real and upsetting, you will just condone it and keep it. This is not true. It will tell you that you should stop even trying to 'live with it' because if you do, you literally will be stuck keeping it and have to live with it. This is also not true.

The reason the ego's attitude is false is because there are a whole shitload of attitudes that you are having which are REINFORCING the pain and making it worse. In fact, you are the one who put it there. But while you keep REACTING to its appearance, which typically is "I want to get rid of it because it shouldn't be there", that just makes it worse and keeps it. When you lift away all of those reactions and layers of condemnation, judgement, guilt and wrongfulness, you are stripping away layers of 'making it real' and holding it in your mind, which actually FREES YOUR MIND from the illusions surrounding this. So you're actually undoing your reactions, seeing innocence and harmlessness in the thing, and thus getting yourself to the point where you can LET GO of it. You can't be free while you won't let IT be free.

The reason for this is that whenever there is pain or suffering or sickness, it is because there's some part of you that you do not LOVE. Some part of you where you see guilt or wrongness or non-acceptance or sinfulness. So that part of you that you refuse to accept HURTS and turns into sickness. This may or may not produce physical sickness but often it does. So you're not really dealing with your body being sick, you're dealing with your mind being sick - some part of YOU (not the body) needs love. So as you look at the body sickness and you keep launching counter-attacks and defenses against it, all you're doing is hurting the part of you that hurts, even more. That only compounds it and keeps it. Plus it makes you very unhappy because the ego's default reaction to pain and sickness is unhappiness. And yet the fact is, it is a choice to BE unhappy by not loving a part of yourself that MAKES the sickness appear in the first place.

Do you really HAVE to be unhappy and afraid and guilty and lost and hopeless 'because of' a pain or sickness? Do you not have any choice in the matter? At the very least, even if changing your attitude about it does not have any effect on making the sickness BETTER at all, physically, at least you will FEEL GOOD instead of feeling like shit. It IS far better for you to choose to be happy because of sickness than to add a layer of feeling shit on top of the physical sensations or symptoms. Having a headache is one thing, but also having a headache and feeling depressed and unhappy is a whole extra layer of despair. You don't HAVE to have that experience. And what you might find is, if you CHOOSE to have a happier experience about what is happening - a more welcoming, loving, open, allowing experience, then maybe, just maybe, your body will fall into line and actually HEAL to match your change in attitude. Since the physical sickness is just a symptom/projection of your unhealed attitude about yourself, internally, changing your attitude MUST change the projection.

The more support for sickness you can strip away the better, and all of your default negativity and victimhood about being sick DOES compound and support and reinforce it. What happens when you withdraw that support? How can a sickness have a strength, when you weaken it by withdrawing all of your mind's support for it? Make no mistaken, seeing yourself as victimized BY sickness or BY attack or BY someone dying or whatever, that very much strengthens the EFFECTS of that thing happening. Choosing to be happy and loving toward it, instead, which is completely against the ego and does take some WILL (affirmations help too), CANCELS OUT your belief in the effects. When you deny that something has affected you, the cause is undone and you are HEALED.

Jesus DOES ask us in ACIM to cancel out all of the effects of things in order to undo them and to DEMONSTRATE that you are invulnerable. You can't do that if you insist that there's no way you can love or be happy about whatever seems to have gone wrong. You've got to start somewhere. Worth a try?

How much of your life have you spend in the default reactionary space of feeling shitty about bad things that are happening? Has it worked? How much effort have you spent fighting against things that have gone wrong and failed and that are malfunctioning? Has that really helped at all? It has not worked. Try something radical. Try the exact opposite way of dealing with it and see what happens. Holy Spirit can amplify the effects of your willingness to SEE YOURSELF AS WHOLE AND HEALED, because it is in line with the truth.

The only thing you need to be wary of is the ego turning this into a reason to become SARCASTIC, which means that you're saying one thing and believing another. You need to find some amount of belief and meaning in what you're affirming. And because you're trying to UNDO the beliefs you already put in place in your negative reactions, it may take some effort of will and persistence to change your beliefs and to actually FEEL that what you're saying is true. After a while of saying it and MEANING it, you should feel a growing sense of peace and acceptance about the issue, and it should seem easier to be less upset about, and to surrender all of your counter-attacks upon it. Then you will have a GENUINE WILLINGNESS to hand it over to Holy Spirit.

Go for it.

Forgiveness is a state of mind in which you recognize that there is nothing that NEEDS forgiving. It is a recognition in which you know there is no sin, sin is impossible, attack is impossible, so nothing can have happened to be forgiven. It's an awareness of innocence.

Forgiveness however isn't "passive", it is ACTIVELY converting illusions into truth. It is actively translating sin into error. It is actively interpreting and changing something. It is causing a healing and radiating life.

What you do to get your mind INTO the state of forgiveness, in which forgiveness is "complete", or in which you are "completely forgiving all the time", as an attitude, is what we might call "purification" or correction or healing.

Healing, or shall we say, being in a state in which you or another is healed, must entail similarly a recognition that "there is nothing that NEEDS healing." If we are focusing on "something is wrong", we are reinforcing and giving reality to sickness and damage. If we think a person "is a sick body", that's actually an attack on their immortal nature.

Like forgiveness then, proper healing entails a recognition that there is nothing to heal, because it recognizes immortality and wholeness and harmlessness. It recognizes invulnerability and permanence and the impossibility of attack/sin/guilt. It ASSERTS only "you are fully alive".

Perhaps we can then say that you can ONLY correctly heal, as in correctly forgive a sick person, by looking for and focusing on the NON-SICK self in them. Finding the pre-existing UNCHANGED perfection in them. Recognizing them as NOT SICK, as not broken or damaged, as not guilty or punished, and as not a victim. And certainly not a body.

Holding this light for the person, shining the truth into them, seeing them IN the light WITH light AS light, is the absence of a BELIEF IN sickness. It places no attention ON the sickness. When you have made sickness real and are reacting to it, even trying to "fix it", you're giving it power and reinforcement. In order to heal sickness you have to NOT give sickness any power. Which means giving it no direct attention. The symptoms will disappear naturally when the UN-SICKNESS is given power.

Now, we have to be careful that we're not saying .. I'm not just going to "do nothing". We're not talking about NOT performing a miracle of healing. We're not talking about just idly sitting there. We're talking about HOW TO HEAL. You heal by actively choosing to "see health". To join with your brother's mind in the light and through a light-based vision. To SHINE LIGHT into them on purpose, to deliberately FILL them with light so that they are enlightened.

Just because we're recognizing that the person doesn't REALLY need healing, and isn't REALLY sick, doesn't mean we're just ignoring it or doing nothing about it. We must focus on their immortal self, remembering the truth about them, taking all attention off any illusion of a mortal self or a body self, and putting all attention on who they really are. Acknowledging who they are FOR them.

Recognizing their LACK OF SICKNESS for them. This is a SERVICE. "A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

To reject and thus to CANCEL all belief in, reality of, attention given to, power in, sickness or damage, WITHDRAWS power from those things and weakens them in your mind. Because you are joining in love/light with your brother's mind this weakens it in their mind also because you do not support their belief in being mortal.

Simultaneously, to not support death is to ASSERT LIFE. This is an actual active assertion, an EXPRESSION of love. Something which goes out and is given and is can be received by another. Something that can be shared. While you remove all power from death and mortality and ideas of a person being a body, you GIVE all power to where it belongs - to their immortal christ self which is flawless and perfect and has nothing wrong with it.

Miracle don't just "take away" the illusion of sickness which seemed present. They also ASSERT and EXPRESS and RE-ESTABLISH or "repair" what was given by God. By "cancelling" what is not really there, miracles remove the ego and the guilt and the symptoms of sickness. This IS A CHANGE, but it a change in the direction of REMOVAL, resulting from an ASSERTION or expression of love's power. "THE MIRACLE DOES NOTHING. All it does is to UNdo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what HAS BEEN done. It does not add, but merely takes away."

"A miracle inverts perception which was upside-down before, and thus it ends the strange distortions that were manifest."

All fearful reactions to someone's physical state are your own unforgiven deceptions. Trying to manage, control, defend against, make go away, all physical APPEARANCES of sickness is wasted effort. It's part of you giving power away to them, because you do not remember who you are. Having stopped knowing yourself, you have entertained the idea of mortality and death YOURSELF, and have forgotten you are unchangeable. As a result you begin to believe that you are a mortal body, that other people are mortal bodies, that your bodies are being changed and that you need to desperately do something to stop it.

None of that business and reaction helps at all. As Jesus frequently tells me, "relax", ie chill and stop dwelling on what's going wrong. Stop buying into the appearance of a LIE, and let us remember that ALL sickness is an illusion. There is no REAL sickness. And focusing on the body of another results from your OWN body-identification, which is you forgetting your own true nature. That means YOU need a miracle of healing for yourself.

"He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

To get your own mind right requires you remembering and knowing yourself, tuning into the fact you remain as God created you, recognizing why you cannot change or be changed, and identifying with your IMMORTAL SPIRIT. Knowing that you cannot be hurt, cannot be sick, cannot die and cannot suffer. Once you have accepted this for yourself and have thus received healing and correction, you can now GIVE what you have received. And this is where you become able to give a miracle as "a creative energizer."

It is creative energizers that are GIVEN TO OTHERS. This is where you now EXTEND the light of christ you've seen in yourself, and SHARE it with another. Where you have joined the Holy Spirit in his view of you within yourself, and now see that same unchangeability in another, focusing on their immortal nature and their incapability of being sick. You tell them psychologically, "you are immortal and perfect and you can never be sick." You recognize in the light of truth that their body and their sickness IS NOT TRUE. That it cannot be true in light of God's truth. Only God's truth is true and nothing else is true.

It is in this "joining in christ" or "sharing light" with another that both of you are resurrected. In which "those who temporarily have more give to those who temporarily have less." It is where you recognize your brother's inestimable worth as equal to your lovable value in God. And where you see the other as ALREADY HEALED AND WHOLE. Already perfect, created by God to be perfect forever. ALREADY devoid of sickness. INCAPABLE of suffering. In which death and sickness and deformity and disability as IMPOSSIBLE.

Thus do you know you brother as one with you, like you, whole like you, healed like you. Thus do you know your neighbor as yourself. Thus do you support ONLY LIFE, and completely give no attention whatsoever to the illusion of death or the goal of death. In which your ONLY goal is life, shared with the Holy Spirit, in which you ONLY RESURRECT, and CAN ONLY HEAL.

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept Atonement himself. This means that he knows that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors ARE healed by the Atonement. Once he accepts this, HIS mind can only heal (others). By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others (heal others). The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them (because they are immortal)."

"To the ego, the goal is death, which IS its end. But to the Holy Spirit, the goal is life (life=eternal life/immortality), which HAS no end."

"When you heal, that is exactly what you ARE learning (doing). You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by perceiving (knowing) that he could NOT have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is ONLY the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he CAN, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self IS. If YOU see only the changeless in him (his immortal self), you have not really changed (healed) him at all (have seen him as not NEEDING healing). But by changing your mind about HIS FOR him (recognizing his immortality), you help him undo (heal) the change his ego thinks it has made in him. "

"Your brother has a changelessness (immortality) in him beyond appearance and deception both. It is obscured by changing views of him which you PERCEIVE as his reality. The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds (symbolic of his immortality). The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form BECAUSE IT CAN SO EASILY BE CHANGED."

The idea of non-duality is an attempt to describe reality or the nature of God. What is really real and really exists. At first we have the idea of duality or polar opposites. Then we reach the idea that the world is secretly "all one thing", as though all the objects are connected together by a singular "one" something.

Then we're presented even further with the idea that if we're being really "pure" about it, the forms and objects really don't exist at all, and the "oneness" beyond them is all that really exists, ie God. In this model of "pure non-duality", there is no world", and this is what SEEMS to correlate to SOME of what ACIM says. This usually leads to conclusions such as "oneness" as in "a count of one something", "its all God", "it's all mind" etc.

So various people took up the idea that ACIM is pure non-duality. But this has some problems. Let's put it this way - the idea is not pure enough. Because if this is a logical concept and we're trying to get down to the purest essence of "what is", usually you'll find that the pure non-duality folk will ACCEPT that "God has one son". There's a lot of material about God having a son - "The Son of God". And while this is accepted, it's not actually pure.

How can God have a son, at all, if there is only God? How can you even label some aspect of God - like his "radiance", as "a son"? God would not be able to have parts, or aspects, or anything you can ever attach a label too. Not even in the most vague of ways. Some people like to try to get around this by suggesting that the Son of God is so joined to God that there is nowhere he ends and God begins... while STILL keeping somehow in their minds this loose idea that SOMEHOW, you can still point a finger at this "part of God" and call it God's Son. THAT is still not pure. It's a bandaid attempt to explain it.

The problem is that if you get really pure about it, and we remove all sense of separations, divisions, multitudes, labels, parts and aspects etc... and we REALLY boil it down to "one thing" as in the traditional idea of "oneness" (the ego's idea of purity), we end up with .... there literally is only God. And that means God, sitting there ALONE, by Himself, WITHOUT a Son, without a sonship, without any creations or thoughts, just totally alone, no-one to share with, nothing to communicate with, just complete a total loneliness. THAT, actually, is the purest possible interpretation of "pure" non-duality. That "there is only God" all by Himself and he doesn't even have a Son at all. Not even one.

But many people will not want to "go there" because to suggest there isn't even one Son flies in the face of a lot of ACIM material. And certain popular teachers have taught for a long time that a) there is only one thing but b) a slight exception is made for there being a single son. This sort of hybrid mishmash of logical concepts has been quite widely accepted as a correct mapping to what ACIM is saying. One God + One Son, who is God, but isn't, but is. It's a bandaid and not logically pure nor does it match what the Course itself says.

The fact is, if there is truly this "oneness" in which there are not "many" of anything, in an effort to avoid "duality", there is **no son** there whatsoever. Not even as an aspect or expression or radiance or thought or part of God. And that leads also to the super watered-down conclusion of "it's all God" ie "there is nothing else". And that conclusion by itself has problems because e.g. the Course speaks of how a) God does not will to be alone and b) God is a creator and c) God has at least one Son and d) God created the Holy Spirit and e) God created angels and f) the Son has his own creations as well. Which is shaping up to be a lot of "parts", a lot of "somethings" that are sufficient enough to say there isn't "just" God there - that there HAS BEEN an act of creation. That something has been ADDED TO reality.

There is also an issue of freedom. If everything in reality is God and God is just being God in all of His ways, then there is no freedom in which any part or aspect has any free will. There is no way that you as a Son of God can dream of exile. There is no way that anything can occur without it being God doing it Himself, directly. And any idea of a Son must really be an idea of some kind of PUPPET that God is manipulating that has no mind or life or will of its own - no freedom at all. Which really runs counter to what Jesus tells us of the Son of God, free will, the ability to choose and the separation seeming to happen.

If you also blob it all together and say "its all God" then you end up with the alarming scenario that God therefore MUST be dreaming of exile, God must have invented the illusion of death, God is REALLY cruel, and God has attacked himself. This renders God insane, and that just isn't acceptable. Because if God could go off the rails, there is no way He would ever return to sanity, and all of existence would vanish.

It is vital that there be some kind of freedom between God and the Son in order for God NOT to be pulled into insanity along with His Son's dreaming. Free Will is absolutely vital in order to prevent this. But to have free will means, you guessed it, there MUST be a kind of "independence" or individuality, in which the Son CAN, if He so chooses, try to will against God. And this is based on the fact that God is the CAUSE of His Son, His Son is the EFFECT of Him, and God has given His son FREEDOM to SHARE His freedom with Him, or deny it. Either way, without freedom there is no free will and no son at all.

There is also another major problem with non-duality. God by His nature is love and love MUST be given. Unless it is given ie shared, it does not extend or shine and so becomes essentially lifeless. IT MUST go out and create. If God has no son, there is nothing TO love or to SHARE it with. And so love cannot love. And this means, ultimately, logically, that God is dead because He isn't LOVING. This again is unacceptable as a conclusion. God can't be dead or unloving. But to be alive, GOD MUST CREATE, so we must accept God has created ADDITIONAL BEINGS in a state of freedom.

And this is the key part that non-duality shits all over. Regardless of the fact that it destroys the sonship and ignores God's creations, it basically denies that God CREATES at all. It's the idea that God is just sitting there alone twiddling his thumbs. And this means He is not creating a son, not even one. It means there is no Kingdom. No Heaven. No HOME for the Son of God. No inheritance. It means the denial that God has a family. It denies that God's SON is a creator, AND it denies that God's son has created children. It's not conceptually a good FIT for ACIM's metaphysics.

So non-duality basically suppresses the MANY thought creations of God, denies many aspects of REALITY, and overthrows the Kingdom. It kills off God, puts a stop to Creation, eradicates sharing, makes it impossible for God to create many children, and interprets the Sonship as a collection of egos. Now, WHO exactly do you think comes up with such a concept of "what reality is like"? THE EGO. These are the EGO's conclusions, non-duality is an EGO CONCEPT, and like all ego concepts it actually NEGATES what is true and cancels or denies reality.

All non-duality models are the ridiculous FALSE conclusions that the ego comes to when trying to understand something TOTALLY BEYOND the ego. Something whose nature is NOTHING LIKE the ego, and so the ego is utterly clueless as to its nature. Non-duality is not really an attempt to define or describe reality, it's an attempt to destroy it.

At best, and only loosely, non-duality MIGHT describe "God Himself", if you could isolate Him and say, God is one whole being, PRIOR to creation. But beyond that, in terms of God being a CREATOR, who HAS CREATED CHILDREN, it totally falls flat on its face. There is no sonship without creation. Non-duality is Kingdom-denying. Reality IS NOT a state of "its all God" or "its all mind". It's all God AND God's creations AND their creations. Because you can ADD TO REALITY, reality cannot be non-dualistic.

"HE created the Sonship, and YOU increase it. You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

"God created His **Sons** by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they were created neither partially nor in part."

"You should know that all God's children are fully worthy of COMPLETE courtesy."

"We are creation, WE, the Sons of God."

"And we, God's children, rise up from the dust and look upon our perfect sinlessness."

But let's back up a moment. The Course DOES say that there is only God. It DOES say God has one Son. It DOES say there is only one mind (Christ mind). It DOES speak of oneness. "Into eternity where all is one" "I and my father are one" "God has but one son" etc. And that *seems* to support the idea that "its all God". But here's the thing. IT IS all God, it IS all "one", BUT.... THERE IS **ALSO** CREATION. And all created BEINGS are LIKE God, share with God, are one with God (of the same nature, joined to Him), yet have THEIR OWN FREEDOM.

God HAS created a family of beings. God IS a creator. God DID create at least one son. SO non-duality is out the window. Reality is not some giant expanse of singularity. It's more like a womb in which God has given birth to creations, WITHIN His own being, and has given them FREEDOM. Living, whole-minded, willfully free beings. Children of God. And if that makes you uncomfortable because it "does not compute" or "it sounds like duality", too bad. It is what it is and its your job to accept it.

It's not the same thing as duality. Duality means the localization of parts which are split off and kept separate by NOT SHARING with each other, confined and isolated and different. Duality is the nature of space and time, where nothing shares. Non-duality is the idea of the opposite of that - that the differences are illusions and everything is one thing. But that too is not accurate. Reality isn't some "state" where God is contemplating his navel. Reality isn't like duality even with its many parts because they STILL are all "one" AND YET also many. And each part SHARES with all the rest and IS EVERYWHERE. "One mind is all minds."

Love is EXPRESSIVE. "Divine abstraction takes joy in application." "God did not will to be alone." And as such God has gone BEYOND the concept of "there's only one thing there". God has CREATED children. He has ADDED to existence, and your function is to add to it further. That's not non-duality by a long shot. Nor is it duality (spacetime where things are separated and limited).

God has created a Kingdom. A home for His Sons. Who are one, but many. This is what's miraculous and ego defying. Because of SHARING ("nothing real can be increased, except by sharing"), God has "made room" for beings within Him who share with Him FULLY (oneness) but who STILL retain their own souls. The soul has been FULLY ADDED to existence.

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

After the ego is undone, after the separation has ended, after the universe has disappeared, after all divisions and artificial UNNATURAL separations are gone, when duality is no more... the children of God WILL REMAIN children of God, just as they were BEFORE the separation.

"I am as God created me".

"The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed."

"The Voice of the Holy Spirit is the Call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete ***and the whole Sonship is healed*** there will be no Call to return. But what God creates (Holy Spirit) is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with ***the Sons of God***, to bless ***their creations*** and keep them in the light of joy."

A Course in Miracles is NOT non-duality. It only loosely teaches that "its all ONE" or "we are all one". That's TRUE. We're woven from the same cloth. BUT, it's not the WHOLE truth. We are ONE, BUT, God as the Oneness has created many of us WITHIN His being. And this is NOT contradictory to God, only to the ego. It is miraculous. And this is because God is MIRACULOUS. He HAS done what seems impossible to the ego. He HAS created a Kingdom filled with souls, beings of light, who share everything together as one united family, WITHOUT destroying reality and without fragmenting existence.

"God, who encompasses all being, NEVERTHELESS (regardless of whether you like this or it makes sense) created **separate beings**, who have everything **individually** and want to share it to increase their joy."

"Sick bodies are accusers." "Behold, brother, at your hand I die."

Ok now, this is a lesson in cause and effect and what happens when it is reversed.

When your mind is sane, it knows it is "cause". It causes, it creates, it extends love. It knows that what it causes is its "effect".

As mind starts to deceive itself and go insane, it begins to reverse cause and effect. It sees itself as "at the effect of" something, and places "the cause" (sinner) seemingly outside of itself (its a split mind with victim and victimizer in it).

If you can imagine little arrows coming out of the mind pointing in the direction of causality, when cause-effect is reversed, the arrows start pointing AT your mind as if from outside of it. This is self attack. The mind starts producing "effects", which correspond to what it *perceives* are the kind of effects that the "outside cause" is causing.

So as the mind goes into perception and starts perceiving "backwards", it sees itself as under attack from outside of itself, even though the split part of the mind is what's attacking the other part from the outside in.

At the same time, placing causality outside of your mind or "separate from me" or "not part of me" (the split involves disassociation), you "project" ownership of that causality onto "others". You see your sin in them, and see them as causing you.

If you are an effect of an external cause, that external cause is "to blame" for putting the effects in you. They are the ones who are launching the arrows in your direction. So as your perception reverses and you now have level confusion and belief in magic and an authority problem, your mind is now attacking itself "through" what it sees as others - brothers.

This is a state of mental illness. It is sickness. And because the mind, your mind, is attacking itself in a split state, IT is putting the "effects" into you which IT is also causing from an external vantage point. A vital element to a flipped perception is that you actually perceive as if the "cause" is outside you, or that you are perceiving yourself through the eyes of others. If they are the ones causing your "effects", so you claim, you are *accusing* them of causality, or sin.

Simultaneously, the "effects" which you are visualizing as coming from elsewhere, YOU put in place, and so you actually implement sickness in FORM. This sickness shows up as your body becoming sick! If you can visualize this, it's kind of like you dress yourself in an appearance of suffering and show this to your brother, and hold this "picture of crucifixion" up in front of his face, and say "behold brother, at YOUR hand I die", as an attempt to PROVE that HE is the cause of your effects.

So on the one hand, your body starts to manifest symptoms of sickness because your mind is sick/split and is attacking itself, and on the other hand you are simultaneously condemning your brother for being the one to cause it. You've displaced causality onto brothers and now hold them accountable for your suffering. This is why "sick bodies are accusers".

Now, here is the key central teaching, which many people don't get or don't want to accept. While it's true that bodies are not real and don't matter etc, while you have one, it is PART OF the way in which you are attempting to accuse your brother of sin. While the attack is really happening on a mental level, your body IS REPRESENTING a picture of your mind's attitude about itself. And its self attitude is the SAME as its attitude about others, due to the Golden Rule.

So now, that means, the only way that you are going to stop accusing your brother of sin, is that two things need to happen. 1) Your mind needs to have its perception corrected so that it's not backwards, and so that your mind does not perceive itself as "being affected by" a separate external cause (brother), and 2) Your body needs and MUST reflect that attitude through its FORM, in order NOT to show a picture of crucifixion to your brother.

Now, some people might say that it doesn't matter what form your body is taking or whether it "looks sick" or has some disease etc, that this has no bearing on your brother because bodies don't really exist anyway. This is true at this level. BUT... the body can only get into that state of sickness when the MIND has USED IT FOR ATTACK, meaning that it is only IN that state BECAUSE the mind is attacking your brother (by accusing him of causing your suffering). So while the body is "secondary" or a "symptom of" the mind's condition, the body does tell us what state your mind is in.

Jesus goes on to be quite clear that the only way that you can absolutely PROVE to your brother that he is not a sinner, is not merely by your mind being free from a reversed cause-effect, but also that your BODY DEMONSTRATES a picture of innocence - a body which has no flaws, no damage, no disease, no death, no harm and no breakage, in order to SHOW HIM something which is SO CONVINCING, and so irrefutable, filled with "conviction", that he will not be able to deny his own innocence when he looks upon it.

When he looks at your sick body, it stands there accusing him of sin. If he is not in his right mind, he will take this as proof of his sinfulness. He can "opt out" of that by choosing the light for himself, but if he does not, he IS CURSED by your body and mind. Jesus speaks of how those who are sane cannot be cursed, but those who believe in separation CAN be negatively affected by others, because it compounds what they already believe. This is how you "imprison" your brother.

In order to set your brother free AND YOU AS WELL, your mind has to have its perception corrected, which means that you see yourself as ONLY CAUSE, with no effects happening to you. And when your mind does that, it will USE the body to SHOW a picture of "having no effects". If your body has no effects or attack in it, and is a picture of invulnerability and harmlessness, it comes across as lovely and pure and holy. There is no "temptation" in it to suggest to your brother that there are effects in it, and therefore no PROOF that he can have done anything TO IT in sin or attack. This EXONERATES HIM. "Miracles are teaching devices."

So while the body itself may be a secondary symptom or illusion, the state or picture of what it presents to others still correlates to the state of mind. If the mind is sick the mind WILL see the "self" as attacked, and having identified itself with the body, will attack the body, and perceive the body as attacked, resulting in the body BEING attacked by the mind. Sickness will then show up in the body, proving your brother's sinfulness. Even if you think your brother had nothing to do with your sickness, your sickness IS an attempt to come between BOTH OF YOU, because separation is a two-edged sword. Dead bodies are ego weapons.

When your mind is sane, it WILL heal the body, because it will no longer be visualizing "effects happening to me". Thus no effects will show up. The mind HAS power OVER the body at all times because it is the CAUSE of the body. The mind is on a higher level than the body, and trumps all of the body's states. "The mind is responsible for EVERY condition of the body." - whether it looks like sickness or health. And a sane mind will ONLY SHOW A HEALTHY BODY, otherwise it is demonstrating condemnation! And what the body shows up, is a TEACHING DEVICE, and will teach others they are sinners if shows up as sick!

So when your teaching becomes unified, and you "teach only love for that is what you are", your body will be healed by the mind ("the mind, being sane, heals the body"), and will ONLY show to your brother a lovely HEALED body, which has been healed through miracles of love. "The mind must be stronger than the body, EVERY miracle DEMONSTRATES this", because miracles correct perception and heal the mind and restore the order of the levels, which REVERSES THE EFFECTS. "You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

Once you demonstrate to your brother a healthy body, you are showing him "brother, by your hand I LIVE." This cancels out sin and proves he must be innocent, because he cannot find the "effects of sin" in your appearance. Your healthy body exonerates him and teaches him he CANNOT have sinned, and so must be innocent, merely by looking upon it. This is why, IF YOU HAVE A BODY, it MUST reach a state of only life, only health, and only healing, and SURMOUNT DEATH, in order to reach the state of "resurrection."

Resurrection is the opposite of death. It is a state in which your mind is sane and ONLY WILLS TO SHOW LOVE, and therefore refuses (and cannot) show a body that appears to be attacked. It teaches only love by using the body as a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY. It is still only a symbol, and is limited, but it does represent the eternal life of Christ. It is in resurrection that the curriculum ends. And it is in resurrection that you overcome death entirely, SWEARING NOT TO DIE, and choosing to NEVER CHOOSE DEATH AGAIN.

You choose never to die by simply choosing to only represent life and to only unite with your brother in recognition of your mutual perfect union and innocence forever. "You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No one dies without their own consent". All death is suicide. This is a course in the living, in life, in restoration of life, in raising the dead, and expressing live-giving miracles. When the conditions of sickness are removed from the mind (guilt) there is nothing for it to return to. Love heals the body. Love heals the mind. Love shines away the body. And all that is left is love.

Sometimes it *seems* as if something happens to us that we did not choose. Let's say, something physical in the world comes along and hurts your body. Maybe its a car crash. Maybe someone is having a bad day and spills hot coffee on your body. Whatever it is, the question arises, did *I* cause this to happen? Am I a victim?

If ever the answer is that I DID NOT choose it, what are the implications? It means that there must be something that has power over me, I must be a victim, I must have no hope for a cure, I must be vulnerable to external attack, and I must be capable of being made to suffer against my will. This whole belief is especially wrapped up in sickness and death, via perceived external or bodily causes.

There is also the fact that we are co-dreaming this world with others, and that means some other brother, not in his right mind, might elect of his own free will to attack your body. Is this also asked for? Did I CHOOSE to be attacked? Have I harmed myself or used my brother's body in some way, perhaps in agreement with him, a mutual attack? Surely if I did not participate in its choosing, HE is the sinner, and my victimhood and proof of attack in my body accuses him. "Sick bodies are accusers." "Brother at your hand I die."

Jesus says this.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true."

So EVEN if there is a seemingly completely distinct attacker, some other person who of their own free will seems to be trying to attack your body, EVEN THAT is somehow chosen by you. And if you are pain or are suffering physically or emotionally, it is STILL true that you are causing it. In essence, there are NO EXCEPTIONS to the secret of salvation, and the instant that you believe there are, there is NO WAY TO FIND SALVATION, because now you've ruled out of the possibility of being FREE FROM "unwarranted external powers" or an "alien will."

Jesus goes on to say:

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

Here he seems to me to be saying, if you were sitting high up and were dreaming of a world down below you, which YOU populate with figures, and YOU animate, and you make "do things", like a child playing with dolls causing the dolls to pretend to interact or fight, then you'd realize that YOU are not identified with any of these figures and so these things are not happening to YOU. By being spirit-identified, you are not dream/body identified. So any activities in the world - in your dream - which you made do what it does, has no real effect on who and what YOU really are. But this does require a total clarity and atonement-level acceptance of the awareness of dreaming and the fact that you're making the world happen.

Jesus continues:

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

So now he's telling us that the form of the issue does not matter. Whether it be a violent person or a car crash or a disease or unhappiness. There is ONE truth about them all, and that truth is that YOU are doing them to yourself, by identifying with the body and dreaming a dream in which you CAUSE the bodies to hurt each other. For this to be true, you as a dreamer has to be a really high-level, powerful position. Can you comprehend the power entailed in dreaming a planet? Can you accept or own that this entire environment is in your mind?

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

"Both heaven and earth are in your mind."

The issue with your body is a tiny speck of the dream that your mind is supposedly dreaming. Like in your dreams at night, where your mind invents an entire environment and then puts a little body in it, perhaps too it is true of this physical world. We dream up an entire ecosystem of events and activities and people and then make stuff happen and the only way we'd feel that we're vulnerable to any of it, is if we forget we're dreaming it and identify with some part of it, such as believing you are a body. Jesus is practically saying that what you are transcends ALL bodies. Is this too lofty of an interpretation? Too hard to relate to?

Jesus says to let them be as vicious as they may. And that seems to mean, even allowing the body to be attacked and damaged.

""In my defencelessness my safety lies." - You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the "gifts" it merely lends to take away again, attend this lesson well. The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

But somehow, if you were conscious enough of being the dreamer and not the dream, you would not be even slightly confused or believe that anything the body is experiencing is anything to do with what you are. That it is having NO EFFECT on you. It's not disturbing your peace of mind or happiness.

The problem with this is, "A guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body." So one moment Jesus is saying to let people be vicious, which presumably could mean your body is damagable, which is backed up by his statements about "only bodies can be attacked". And then the next he's saying that the mind should heal the body, and if it doesn't, the mind is not healed. "A damaged body is proof the mind has not been healed." Yet if another person did the damage, does that mean your mind is not healed? Is your mind not healed because YOU dreamed of the other person? Is your mind not healed because you made up another body to attack this body, in your dream, thus literally doing it to your body self?

Jesus seems in some ways to say, you can transcend all worldly happenings, all bodily situations, be fully spirit identified, recognizing you are mind not matter, and be free from every possible dream scenario no matter what happens in the world. BUT, he also seems to teach that a mind in such a position would therefore have the miracle-working power to UNDO or correct or heal, anything that arises. This seems to imply the body can be attacked and is vulnerable, BUT that the mind CAN heal it, and if the mind has not healed it the mind must not be healed simply because it's not sane to allow the damage to remain. "Forgiveness is not real unless it has brought a healing to your brother and yourself." "A miracle of healing proves separation (attack world) is without effect."

A question arises, is it possible to somehow supernaturally cause the body to be INCAPABLE of being attacked? Jesus speaks of a "protection" near the end of "sickness is a defense against the truth". He speaks of the body being unable to be sick, or to die. But if bodies can be attacked, would some other person come along in the dream and still attempt murder? And would it still produce a wound on the body? Does mind wield a power capable of essentially making the body literally immortal and undamagable?

Or would this be simply impossible, given the body is not real and only real things are free from threat? It would suggest the body can still be attacked, but that the mind could heal the attack. And that would seem to line up with Jesus's body being crucified in spite of his profound advanced mental state. If his mind has permanent projective power over the body, it would not have been crucifiable. The spear would not have been able to penetrate the hands and the nails could not be driven into his limbs.

It's true that, nevertheless, "the mind that made the body can make another". So in a sense, if the body is destroyed the mind, which is not the body, could manifest another illusory body, which also has inherent susceptibility. ie bodies fundamentally exist only as illusions, illusions can be attacked (illusions of attack) fundamentally, and so there is no way to render a body immortal or permanent. The mind CAN however heal the body, can project new bodies, and has the power to perhaps supernaturally manipulate events, utilize divine guidance and therefore find a "safe" path through the dream of attack.

One line says, "without the idea of death there is no world." Another says "to see a sinless body is impossible" and "the body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards." Which means, if the body seems to exist at all, it depends on death. It is made of death. And at best, it can symbolize eternal life but cannot BE it. Mind can maintain it and heal it. But there are limits - and short of a supernatural miracle, a body wouldn't survive a direct encounter with a supernova.

We know the body is just an image, an illusion, projected by the mind. It SHOULD, in the "movie projector analogy, mean it's possible possible for the DREAMER to NOT dream attack scenarios. In fact, "my self is ruler of the universe speaks to this."

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

How absolute does this sound? It seems to literally mean, as the ruler of the universe, nothing can happen without your consent. No events can occur, without you dreaming them. Wars cannot take place unless you make them happen. Not only does what you desire happen, what you DON'T want to happen does not occur either. ie, you have TOTAL CONTROL over the dream.

And if that is true, does it not mean you could organize that there will NOT BE an attack upon your body? Unless you CHOSE that there be one and made it happen, that perhaps Jesus orchestrated every aspect of his own crucifixion? But does not this also mean that he must've dreamed of the "rest of us" too? Why not just dream of everyone being fully awake and bring an end to the dream entirely? How are we co-dreamers? Through a shared will?

Jesus also speaks of the body disappearing upon awakening. This suggests, in a co-authored dream, when a dreamer wakes up, he stops making a body. The recognition of its NOTHINGNESS cancels its illusions, making it impossible for it to appear to exist at all. A light shines so brightly, the body vanishes. "And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar of the Son of God."

If mind has the power to make a world, it would seem mind could have the power to force the body not to age, be sick or die. That mind would take authority over any occurrences. Mind could supernaturally make it impossible for the body to be attacked. It could "sustain the body indefinitely, BUT within time, where all bodies exist. This would require an ongoing maintenance, a vigilance, in orer to maintain this projection. And this seems to be what is spoken of here:

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible.

Yet this ***protection*** ***needs to be preserved*** by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer."

So Jesus is suggesting a potential for indefinite sustainability of the body's health and state, where mind is overriding any worldly causality. This feasibly could continue for thousands of years. And there are stories of certain masters who have accomplished this longevity. St Germain, Babaji, etc. These advanced teachers of God apparently have the power to reverse, heal, and resurrect the body. At least for as long as it is useful in the atonement plan. The purpose is the plan. And once fulfilled, bodies are no longer needed.

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand."

"Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does. And then - and then - I cannot speak of that. A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death."

"This is the message of the crucifixion: there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This is the message of the resurrection. Illusion are illusions. Truth is true. Illusions vanish. Only truth remains."

So what's the conclusion?

Mind has power over everything. Mind is co-dreaming the world with others. All illusions are attackable IF the mind CONSENTS to it. Due to free will, other minds can use their bodies to try to attack your body. This possibly cannot happen at all if you do not consent to it. If it does happen, you have agreed to a mutual attack scenario, and now your brother seems able to attack your body. But now your mind has the power to miraculously heal it, and being sane it would do so. And this the body can be "protected" by the mind indefinitely while useful, eventually to be laid aside ie vanished when no longer useful. You can choose the body cannot be sick, age or die, by protecting it actively, or through miracles of healing. But the time of bodies will come to an end.

In terms of possibility, and impossibility, heaven is the only possibility. God has made it possible, because God is possible. God's freedom is all possibility, and the one possibility or outcome is the creation of the Kingdom.

In the separation from God, we imagined an opposite to possibility. We tried to be unwilling to do what is possible. We placed limitations on ourselves and hid behind denial. This produced what seems to be a world. And this world seems to make possible what is utterly impossible in heaven. But what seems possible here is in fact an impossibilities disguised as a possibility - an illusion of a possibility.

In heaven it is not possible to die. In this world, however, death seems so common and possible that it's even considered inevitable. Some kind of a given that death is certain. But if in heaven's reality death is impossible, death cannot actually be possible. Which means whatever this death thing is, it's something utterly impossible and must be at best pretending to be possible. This means death must be an illusion of death because real death is impossible.

In terms of miracles, we say that the things of this world are possible. We see sickness and regard it as possible. We see things breaking and destroyed and regard it as possible. We see death happening and attack and murder and think these things are possible. But they cannot be possible in heaven's reality and so they cannot really be possible.

The things then that we consider to be possible in this world, are actually impossibilities. They appear to be possible because they are illusions. They are lies. They are deception. They are wishful thinking and a belief in things which are false. They simply cannot be possible and are utterly impossible. Yet to the everyday person we would say all these things are possibilities. They are so possible that everyone believes they're totally normal and natural.

In light of this, and not recognizing that we live in a world of such limitation that we have in fact limited possibility heavily, we would regard certain things as "impossible". We'd say, it is impossible to reverse death. It is impossible to break the laws of physics. It is impossible to heal a sickness in a split second. It's impossible to be in two places at once. It's impossible to turn water into wine or cause bread to multiply out of thin air.

We think these things are impossible because they ignore and break all the rules that we've made up as to what is possible in this world. But what we think of as possibilities here are lies at best, and fiction at worse. They are not really possibilities at all.

They are attempts to do something that is NOT possible, but disgused as something SO possible that it seems to be PROVEN that it is happening. You can see and touch and taste and so on to sample the evidence. Because "only the body makes the world seem real." But in truth all the things of this world are impossibilities, masquerading as ALL that is possible, while shutting out everything that is REALLY possible. And we think this is reality.

Someone being sick in any way is not possible in reality. Someone dying is utterly nonense. These things cannot happen in reality. We say they represent the natural scope of what "can happen" in the world, but they aren't even remotely possible AT ALL. Except in some kind of tiny mad dream of hell.

Miracles then recognize that this is a world in which seemingly impossible things present themselves as possibilities. Miracles reverse all the things the world says are possible, by recognizing they are in fact not possible. Sickness and death are recognized as NOT possible.

Miracles then enable you to do things which the world would consider or label as impossible, because these things not only cancel all notion that the things of this world are even possible, they reverse and undo all things the world says can NEVER be undone.

Essentially, to be miraculous is to assert life, which is the assertion that only heaven is real. It is the assertion that what the world calls impossible is the ONLY possibility, and the things the world claims are the ONLY possibility are in fact IMPOSSIBLE. This is a complete reversal of what the world thinks can happen, and it results in things being able to happen which defy the world, break its laws, undo its consequences, and cancel the world entirely.

Only the laws of God are possible. Only the truth is true. Only the kingdom is real. Only miracles can happen. Everything else is impossible. Miracle workers are NOT BOUND by the laws of this world. They operate based on the laws of God, laws which this world would judge as IMPOSSIBLE. And yet God's laws are the ONLY POSSIBILITY, rendering the impossible fictions of this world as truly imposible. It is by recognizing their impossibility that they vanish.

"All power is of God. What is not of him has no power to do anything."

"miracles reverse the physical or lower order laws"

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

"THE MIRACLE DOES NOTHING. All it does is to UNdo. And thus it cancels out the interference to what HAS BEEN done. It does not add, but merely takes away."

"The miracle but shows the past is gone, and what has truly gone HAS no effects."

"The miracle does nothing but to show him that HE has done nothing."

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind."

"Today we practice making free our minds of all the laws you think you must obey; of all the limits under which you live, and all the changes which you think are part of human destiny."

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

"My oneness with the Christ establishes me as Your Son, beyond the reach of time, and wholly free of every law but Yours."

"For fifteen minutes twice today escape from every law in which you now believe."

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order"

"Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are ALWAYS miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws."

"Christ inspires all miracles, which are essentially intercessions. They intercede for man's holiness, and make him holy. They place man beyond the physical laws, and raise him into the sphere of celestial order. In this order, man IS perfect."

"The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked."

"time and space are under My control"

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

"Pain is impossible."

"In fact, it is impossible. But you must remember that when you put yourselves in an impossible situation, you believed that the impossible WAS possible."

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

"You CAN wish for the impossible, but you can only WILL with God."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

"Fear is deception. It attests that you have seen yourself as you could never be, and therefore look upon a world which is impossible. Not one thing in this world is true. It does not matter what the form in which it may appear. It witnesses but to your own illusions of yourself. Let us not be deceived today."

"The laws of this world cease to hold any meaning at all."

"There are no laws except the laws of God."

"Magic imprisons, but the laws of God set free. The light has come because there are no laws but His."

"Healing is also a science because it obeys the laws of God, whose laws are true."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God."

"What I seek today transcends all laws of time and things perceived in time."

"Reality observes the laws of God, and NOT the rules you set."

"As you awaken other minds TO Him through HIM, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that the laws you ARE obeying WORK."

"Time can have no sway upon you, nor can any laws of earth have power over you. Your hands will heal, and give the gifts that you accept of me."

"The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one."

"When you feel guilty, KNOW that your ego has indeed violated the laws of God, but YOU have not. Leave the sins of the ego to me. That is what the Atonement is for."

"Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream."

"But you can show him his suffering is purposeless and wholly without cause. Show him YOUR healing, and he will consent no more to suffer. For his innocence HAS BEEN established in your sight AND his."

"Show him that he CANNOT hurt you, and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself."

"Show THIS (healed body) unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true.

Eternity, Heaven, is the living world of light, our home in God. It is reality. It is a "world" of light, in which there is only light. There is no darkness, no shadows, no blockages to resist the light. "Nothing there but shines and shines forever."

The separation is an attempt to deny that this is so, by trying to resist the light. It's an attempt to block awareness of the pervasiveness of light by being unwilling to accept it into the mind. We put up walls that block the light, and this SEEMS to produce states of darkness.

An extremely important thing to realize here is that the seeming presence of the darkness ENTIRELY DEPENDS on the light being absent. It is a direct consequence or "effect" of the light being blocked. When the block is removed or the light is allowed to shine and pervade, what happens to "the darkness"? It doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't displace, it doesn't hide. Darkness cannot make light go away. Light completely overpowers it and cancels it. It simply vanishes.

Where is the darkness, in the light? There isn't any. In perfect light, infinite light, there is no darkness anywhere. So what happens to the darkness when the light shines? The light SHINES AWAY the darkness. How does it do it? Because darkness isn't really a THING in its own right, it is ONLY the temporary, illusory result of blocking the light.

The darkness's entire "existence" is 100% dependent on the light remaining blocked. The darkness is like a shadow. The shadow doesn't determine for itself what it is, it is a consequence or result of the way the light is blocked. It acquires all of its properties, shapes and forms, from the blockage, and can only symbolize the blockage. Having no inherent qualities, properties, behaviors, characteristics, life, or existence of ITS OWN, it is merely a side-effect of the appearance that "light is absent."

When you block the light of Heaven's reality, the world God created (the Sonship, not the Earth), you seem to produce in your mind a blockage to the light, which produces shadows or "darkness". Or to put it another way, darkness SEEMS to come out of nowhere, when the light is blocked. It just sort of "appears", like a mirage or hallucination. It isn't caused by anything real, it is "caused by" the illusion that reality is not present.

Darkness is sort of like a "hole" in the light. And the darkness seems to take on various shapes, forms, sizes, appearances. It may seem to represent objects. It may even seem to take on the shape of a human body, a tree, a planet or a galaxy. It may even SEEM as if these "objects" are actually alive or moving and thinking for themselves, as if they have an actual existence or identity, which none of them have. Shadows have no inherent properties of their own, no mind, no will and no life. These "life" FORMS are the illusion of what *separateness* looks like - the absence of Heaven's light. Shadows are always fragmented and conflicted.

All of spacetime is a bubble of darkness, like a hole in Heaven, where light seems "shut out". The "world you made" to block the light, the world which is "an attack on God", the world which is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's son", the world of "death" or the "dream of death", are all this same one thing - the illusion of the absence of God/Light.

The entire "physical universe" is this appearance of a non-existent, lifeless, unreal, illusory world, which houses and includes the Earth and all bodies and objects. All of these things can ONLY seem to exist, WITHIN the absence of light, AS the absence of light, and only so long as the light is absent. They are "made of darkness", lack, emptiness, absence, NOTHINGNESS. They are not made of light. And darkness is only an illusion. It's a strange hallucinated imagined appearance of what it would look like IF light could be made to be absent.

When you are in a dark room, and you switch on the light, what happens to the darkness? Does it go somewhere? Does it turn into light? Is it retained? Does a chunk of it still persist in the light? Are its dark forms and shapes kept? No. The light DISPELLS them. They simply vanish. They "cease to seem to be." They don't transform into light. They just disappear. They are the OPPOSITE of the light and do not really exist. When the light is allowed to shine, the darkness or "lights absence" is corrected, light is supplied, and there is nowhere - no gap or hole - in which the darkness could SEEM to exist.

The world, including the Earth, all its forms, creatures, oceans, forests, the moon, the sun, the entire galaxy and all the thousands of galaxies, the void of space and all of time, are all symptoms or side-effects of what it seems to look like when light is absent. They are HELD in place by minds who are resisting the light and trying to enforce a blockage or denial of the light. When these minds come around and are healed, they will no longer desire that light be absent, and so there will be nothing "to keep a separated world in place." Without an active resistance to the light, there is nothing to prevent light/love from entering and dismissing the illusion that darkness exists. OR the illusion that the world exists.

It does not matter in the big picture whether you view this world through false perception or true perception. It does not matter whether you glimpse the real world or see the world as wholly forgiven and benevolent. "A forgiven world cannot last" because the world is nothing but "a thin veil over the face of Christ." When the light shines brightly enough, the dark veil that LOOKS LIKE a planet, will become transparent, thin, like a puff of smoke which can easily be dispelled. The entire universe, all forms of matter, all objects and bodies, will become increasingly invisible. As though you are pushing past a thick heavy curtain which is finally parting to reveal the LIGHT behind it which it was BLOCKING.

The world, including Earth, IS nothing but a blockage to the light. It DEPENDS ON the light remaining blocked in order to SEEM to exist at all. It is MADE OF and exists only WITHIN the illusion of darkness. Nothing about it is real. Nothing about it is light or life. It's a shadow. What happens to shadows when the light shines? They do not exist. They are REPLACED with light. The ego is where the darkness WAS. The world is where the darkness WAS. Bodies are where the darkness WAS. And they absolutely DO NOT EXIST in the light.

Being MADE OF darkness, if you take them to the light they will be dissolved, shone away. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The body cannot remain without illusions." Try taking an illusion of light's absence INTO the light, and it cannot remain. Its nature, which is light's absence, IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH HEAVEN'S LIGHT. It is THE OPPOSITE of Heaven's light. Never the two shall meet. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

The closer you approach the light which is BEYOND the body and BEYOND the world, behind them, the world will become less and less of an obstacle. It will seem less and less heavy or serious. It will seem to become lighter, itself, as its transparency begins to allow the light BEYOND it to shine through. As you begin to "see God in everything you see" because God is BEHIND the things you see. The things you see are BLOCKS to God. To forgive them is to OVERLOOK them (NOT SEE THEM) and to see PAST the "granite block of sin" (the veil of matter) TO reality.

"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams (not Earth). And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as **behind the dream**, **beyond all seeming** (behind the world) and yet surely theirs." It is the light BEYOND hell/dream/darkness/Earth that appeals to you, it is that light which you WANT to see, it is that light which is coming from ANOTHER WORLD (Heaven), and it is that light which is God which you see "in" or "through" or "behind" the things you see, while you are traveling TOWARDS the light.

As you move closer and closer to the light BEYOND the veil of matter (wall of sin), the veil dissolves. The veil ITSELF (the world you made - including Earth) thins out, stops seeming so solid, stops seeming to represent "real sin" or "real guilt", and it in a sense will seem to stop looking like "hell". It may even seem to become lovely or holy. But the loveliness is not there AS the world which is still made of darkness, it is there because there is increasingly LESS darkness (world) and increasingly more light (Heaven), revealed through spiritual sight/vision in parallel to the darkness that the body's eyes see.

The FORGIVEN WORLD is the thinnest, lightest, least dense, least heavy view of the SHADOW WORLD that's possible, while still seeing it. It's a perception of the ILLUSION of light's ABSENCE, in which the light is barely absent at all, such that the illusion seems to slightly remain as a THIN VEIL over Christ's face, and Christ's face is almost fully seen.

The forgiven world, Earth and spacetime, grows lovelier ONLY because it is DIMINISHING, and only because a loveliness is shining FROM BEYOND IT, coming from behind it, as the veil of matter dissolves. It is the SOURCE of the light that you want to get to. Just because the forgiven world seems illuminated BY this holy light, does not MAKE IT holy. It is NOTHING. It merely becomes like a spotless mirror in which you see a *reflection* of the light of Heaven, where it is obscuring the light the LEAST while still seeming to slightly exist. Once the light of Heaven beyond the world world/veil shines FULLY, the veil LIFTS, the face of Christ is seen, the WORLD IS FORGOTTEN, there IS NO WORLD, and Heaven is uncovered at last. And it is Heaven that you want.

Here, all the things made of death and darkness are shone away into oblivion, the "world spins into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came", the stars disappear in light, the dark world of shadows vanishes, the world is consumed by the light, shone away because the world is nothing but an ILLUSION of light's absence, and light's presence forces the impossible world to cease to exist and "Heaven is all that remains."

Not one single FORM of darkness (matter, energy or otherwise) remains in Heaven because ONLY LIGHT can remain in Heaven. "Gone are bodies in the blazing light of the Son of God." "Gone is perception". "Gone are walls" (objects, planets). "Nothing there is seen, only known." The Kingdom of God in all its glory. It was merely HIDDEN behind the blocks to love, the illusion of sin, which took the temporary illusory form of worlds and planets and bodies, made "as a place where God could enter not". These walls must go. Matter is an illusion. Spacetime is an illusion. Death is an illusion.

THERE IS NO WORLD. THIS IS THE CENTRAL LESSON THE COURSE WOULD ATTEMPT TO TEACH. Means simply... there is no shadow, no darkness, nothing OPPOSING the light. There is ONLY the Light of the Kingdom of God.

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world (physical) has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true." ... "Nothing so blinding as perception of form" (objects, bodies, planets).

To behold (see) the world (Earth and space) in ANY way, is to be blinded to God. Not one single FORM, object, body, or planet, can remain in your vision if you are to experience God. You cannot keep the world, or the body, and be with God. "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there." "To be without a body is to be in your natural state." To be in/with/having a body is unnatural because the body is darkness (" in the body's darkness"). "The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes."

Light is natural. Light is eternal life. Light is your home. Light is what you are. "Eternity will shine away the world."

When you are having true perception.... "M-8.6. The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be ***HEALED*** will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There ***will be those who seem to be "sicker"*** than others, and the *******body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before*******. 4 But ***the healed mind*** will put them all in one category; they are unreal.

5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories (false and true) are meaningful in ***sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world.*** (through the body's eyes) 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."

As you begin your journey towards truth and are using the body's eyes, which SEEM to see the physical world, but isn't REAL sight, and is actually a state of not seeing anything real, you start to open the spiritual eye and develop christ vision. The whole workbook is designed for the purpose of developing christ vision, which, by the way, entails the simultaneous use of the body's eyes to READ the workbook lessons ;-)

The body's eyes, made not to see, are always functioning as biological machinery in the same way. They are sense organs, which pick up photons of light which are DENIED by surfaces of objects, and bounce into your retina, sending "signals" of "images" into your mind. The eyeballs obviously do not see at all even at the physical level, they are just relays or sensors, which pick up light and transmit it to the brain, where the mind then "sees" the images. Only the mind really sees.

The thing is that, if you BELIEVE these images depict truth or reality, that you are seeing reality when you see physical objects, you are deluded IN your mind, and your MIND is having false perception. That is, your mind is believing in, investing in, and "making real", the images coming from the body's eyes. So now the body is fixed having false perceptions of an unreal world, it's trying to send these pictures to the mind and the mind is deciding one thing: "are these images real, or are they unreal?" "are they true, or false?".

So yes, you can continue to SEE THIS WORLD.... EITHER as "it is real" or as "it is unreal". It's not a matter of "do I see the world or not", at the level of perception. Perception EITHER sees the ILLUSORY WORLD and BELIEVES it is true (false perception), or it SEES the SAME illusory world and BELIEVES it is false (true perception). In both cases, the world IS SEEN STILL!! It's a dream! Either you are seeing the nightmare dream of false perception or the HAPPY DREAM. A happy dream is the illusory world RECOGNIZED as being UNREAL!!! You are happy BECAUSE You know it is BULLSHIT!!! How else COULD you be happy but to recognize that images of hell are NOT TRUE?

In order to come to realize that these images are false and unreal, that the physical world is an illusion, the mind has to learn to FORGIVE. "To forgive is to OVERLOOK". Through forgiveness, you train the mind to recognize illusions as illusions, to NOT believe they are real, and to NOT see value or truth in them. This results in the continual transmission of images into the mind by the body's eyes but when the mind looks AT these images, it learns to OVERLOOK the ILLUSIONS they are trying to present, the temptation, and the mind learns to CATEGORIZE ALL of these images as UNREAL. Yet, the mind STILL IS SEEING THEM. It simply shifts its vantage point and sense of TRUTH, to be able to discern that NONE of these images depict truth or reality.

Therefore Christ Vision is gradually developed in parallel to having body eyesight, and the more that you progress in forgiveness of ILLUSIONS, which means THE WORLD, the more your mind is able to recognize the world is FALSE, and the world now registers with you experientially as something false. You still SEE IT, but it doesn't seem believable. It doesn't strike you as "really happening". In this state, your mind can be SIGNIFICANTLY HEALED, and very very close to awakening, while STILL seeing simultaneously with the body's eyes.

So what now is happening is, your mind is being STILL presented with images of hell - physical world - which it can still see, but these images become so OVERLOOKED, that they start to become transparent as if you are literally looking THROUGH them rather than stopping at the surfaces. You start to glimpse the face of christ BEYOND the physical images, beyond the universe, beyond the body. And so now you are starting to see God "in everything you see" because you are seeing God BEYOND the physical illusion of objects.

In this state, you are a teacher of God, who is still in the world, having a body, SEEING WITH the body's eyes, AND simultaneously seeing with Christ Vision which OVERLOOKS what the body sees. In this state, it is TOTALLY NORMAL to be able to still see the bodies of other people, moving around, doing things in the physical world, while ALSO overlooking them and recognizing them as unreal. Since the body's eyes do not "Switch off" at this point, it's kind of like you're getting bombarded with images of hell at the same time as trying to approach heaven. And so you have to learn to NOT BELIEVE what the eyes are showing you. BUT YOU DO STILL SEE IT "mixed in" with your Christ vision.

Jesus speaks of this again in this statement:

"M-12.6. Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. 2 God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. 3 It is a conscious choice. 4 For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. 5 The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? 6 Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. 7 They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. 8 Yet they are not deceived by what they see. 9 They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. 10 Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. 11 And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

Notice how it says that such persons are AWARE of dreaming, which means they can SEE the dream world - the physical world. Notice how it says THEY WATCH DREAM FIGURES come and go, shift and change, AND ... SUFFER AND DIE! All seen from A HEALED MIND!!! They CAN SEE bodies being sick, they CAN SEE "people" suffering, they CAN SEE DEATH, EVEN THOUGH they themselves are having a very healed mind, a very "sick free" mind, which does NOT BELIEVE IN sickness, and IS NOT PROJECTING SICKNESS ONTO OTHERS. And this is because the body is still dangling in front of the mind picking up signals from the dream world. The body will continue showing the mind pictures of sickness and death EVEN IF the mind does not believe in sickness and death. The result is that the images are SEEN, but they are NOT BELIEVED. They register as UNREAL, FALSE, NOT TRUE. It's a shift in vantage point which makes the whole world be RECOGNIZED as an illusion, instead of BELIEVED to be real.

In this state, it is perfectly possible for a teacher of God to be "in the world but not of it". To walk around the Earth, seeing bodies still, but overlooking them as well. Seeing people with broken legs, severe diseases, missing organs and so on, or even states of death. But the miracle worker in their right mind DOES NOT BELIEVE any of these things are true of any brothers, and they do not AGREE WITH what those brothers ARE BELIEVING about themselves and their bodies. The brothers ARE recognized as calling for love, since it is forgiving to recognize this and not that punishment is real, and as such there is EFFORTLESS perception of the "need" that people SEEM to have. And that means, you recognize who is viable as a recipient of A MIRACLE. It means you CAN SEE A CALL FOR HELP.

This combination of body vision and christ vision is precisely why JESUS was able to walk the Earth, SEE people sick and dying, and DO SOMETHING. He could tell that someone's body was showing up to his mind as "it is in the form of sickness", EVEN THOUGH he did not BELIEVE in sickness being TRUE. He did not merely "switch off" the ability to SEE the body at all, at that point. He did not have a state of "if I see sickness, I am sick". You have to remember there are TWO functions of seeing happening at once. In His mind, in his Christ Vision, he OVERLOOKED the sick body and it registered to him as NOT REAL. But in his body vision he could still SEE the state the body was in. And this is how he was able to SEE, those who were suffering and sick, even though HIS MIND did not believe the images he was seeing. HE was not sick. HE was not projecting sickness. HE was not MAKING people be sick. He knew the were not REALLY sick. But he also knew he could SEE that THEY believed they were suffering. So he HELPED THEM!

This is precisely the scenario that sets up a foundation for being a MIRACLE WORKER. Because now a teacher of God is HEALED, and yet CAN SEE those who are NOT healed. The teacher of God now has an abundance of love, while recognizing that those whose dream bodies still seem to suffer, are SEEMING to LACK love, and are "in need". That they are, from their own perspectives as individuals, suffering. Their minds are sick, their bodies are sick. And this establishes the dynamic where the miracle worker IS HEALED, but OTHERS ARE NOT. Thus, "Miracles supply a lack". and "Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less." It would be absolutely impossible to EVER be in a situation where you HAVE MORE, while others HAVE LESS, if the commonly-held mistaken view of how perception works were correct. And it would VIOLATE numerous miracle principles.

See, this is how most people think of perception, and it's wrong... the idea that "I have perception", it's one thing, it looks upon the world, and "I need to shift it". And the idea that projection makes perception, implying that whatever I see, I am putting there. So now it's like, my perception was aiming at hell, because I was putting hell there, and I need to redirect it towards heaven, so that I will perceive heaven and NOT SEE HELL at all. This is a big problem. Because if that's your model of perception, it means you become BLIND TO what is happening in the world as soon as you no longer believe in it. So like, if you stop believing sickness is real, in this model, you would literally expect to not be able to SEE anything that is sick, ever again. And this would imply, if you see sickness, YOU are sick, or you are attacking, or you are trying to make your brother be sick. That their sickness is your sickness. And this essentially makes you TOTALLY INCAPABLE of seeing whether or not your brother is in need of help.

Also in this broken model, it results in a situation where there is total inner and outer equality between what you believe and what you see. Therefore, you will assert that the outward picture (equated also with what the body sees) matches my inner condition and the world is like a mirror. So I see only myself. I'm all that exists (narcissistic, selfish). And thus you can never be in a position where "you have more" and someone else "has less". It means thus you never see any reason to help or heal or supply a lack for others, because you think "their sickness" is just a reflection of "your sickness." You think if you see sickness at all (e.g. broken leg), YOU must be making it be broken, and you need the healing, and no-one else needs anything. This is in TOTAL DENIAL of the way the body's sight functions continually in parallel to spiritual sight.

This is a very prevalent belief about how perception works, and it is totally bullshit. Or rather, it's only one half of the picture. It leads to a justification for NOT PERFORMING ANY MIRACLES FOR OTHERS. It completely WIPES OUT, the entire situation where miracles given to others could EVER be seen as "needed" or "making sense" to "called for", because the person now thinks that all they see is themselves. That the whole world is their own self. This thus becomes SELFISH. And it cancels the entire practice of miracle working in the world. It completely obliterates any reason why you would be able to SEE the "call for love" of another, yet alone giving a reason to respond to it. And this model of perception is treasured by those who do not want to work any miracles ever. It is a miracle-fearing, course denying paradigm of a mistaken understanding of how perception functions.

There is SOME truth to this false model, in the sense that it IS describing the transition from false perception to true perception. It is describing the healing of the BELIEF IN sickness being real or true. It IS a movement towards healed perception and christ vision. It IS the opening up to forgiveness and the overlooking of illusions and lies. It is recognizing the you DO project stuff onto others and see it. And it recognizes that YOUR MIND DOES need healing when you see illusions AS REAL. But that's a far cry from believing that you must not see the world AT ALL in order to be healed, which denies what the body's eyes are doing. It is taken in isolation to mean, THE BODY STOPS SEEING ANYTHING, or that, you will see through the body's eyes and NOT SEE AND BROKEN BODIES, with is totally a level confusion. It completely IGNORES and shuts out the FACT, that the body's eyes CONTINUE to send images from the physical world into the mind, right up until the atonement is accepted and you leave the world behind.

The result is that the body still sees "the veil", which is the physical world, while the mind is overlooking those images and seeing THROUGH them to the light of heaven BEYOND the physical. In that state, let's say the veil/body images are registering with 1% visibility and perception of heaven is registering at 99% visibility. You DO transition from one to the other, but body vision does NOT END until christ vision is TOTALLY 100% PERFECTED. seen.9

The result is that the body still sees "the veil", which is the physical world, while the mind is overlooking those images and seeing THROUGH them to the light of heaven BEYOND the physical. In that state, let's say the veil/body images are registering with 1% visibility and perception of heaven is registering at 99% visibility. You DO transition from one to the other proportionately, linearly, because "you cannot see two worlds", but body vision does NOT END until christ vision is TOTALLY 100% PERFECTED. Meaning you're going to HAVE TO still keep seeing the physical world UNTIL you are practically ready to ascend to heaven.

WHEN Christ vision is absolutely complete, the face of Christ appears. That means, heaven becomes "visible". And it also means, Earth become "invisible." Literally. If you look upon the face of christ it should last merely an instant before God takes you to Heaven. The forgiven world has disappeared from your sight. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." And then perception ends entirely, the body's vision ceases to send anything to the mind, because the mind is now free of bodies forever. And that's what it means to be 100% spirit identified. And ONLY THEN, when you no longer HAVE A BODY AT ALL, ONLY then do you no longer have a PERCEPTION with which to see the illusory world of hell and death.

UNTIL THAT HAPPENS, you WILL continue receiving images from the body's vision! You WILL continue being able to see bodies in various states of health. YOU WILL be able to discern "who" is calling out for love and who isn't. Who is SICK, and who isn't. Who is DEAD, and who isn't. Who is mistaken and delusional and who isn't. But your mind will recognize these things are not REAL. The people BEING sick DO think it is real, but you do not agree with them. And this is how you are able to set them free and weaken their belief. This is how you are able to PERFORM MIRACLES IN THE WORLD. To help others, to heal the sick, to raise the dead. To let the Holy Spirit USE YOUR BODY'S EYES for HIS PURPOSES! Because he is very much ready and willing and desiring to PERFORM MIRACLES IN THE WORLD TO HEAL THOSE WHO ARE IN THE WORLD. And that DOES include healing of sickness in mind AND body!!

Only when you ascend to heaven and leave the body entirely will you cease to be able to see the suffering of others in this world. And until then, you are to be a miracle worker. And if you're not doing that, you're in denial and being selfish.

Cause produces effects. This is God's permanent law, without exception. It applies everywhere always. There is a secret to performing miracles based on this, resulting in the undoing of effects. This is directly tied into the Atonement and The Miracle.

"the word "atone" really means "undo." (remove illusory effects)

"The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo (removes effects). And thus it cancels out (by not causing) the interference (effects) to what has been done (caused in reality). It does not add, but merely takes away (removes effects)."

I have experienced several times the instant vanishing of symptoms when causation was removed. This takes place at the level of the mind and the mind's belief in causes. As I stripped away belief in who or what caused this, the entire symptom literally disappeared in a split second.

Nothing happens without causation. Effects can only appear when there is a cause. This includes the **belief** in there being a cause, even if the cause is made up in dreaming. When the cause stops causing, or is undone, the effects immediately disappear. Causation is like a broadcast, emitting consequences, effects, symptoms and results. Effects come from it.

Just as God is first cause, He MUST create effects. His effects are His Kingdom of Creation, including the Sonship. Because God is permanently causal, and true cause means creation, His creations have eternal life and always exist. True causality creates permanent, living beings. You did not cause God (which would be sin, authority problem, level confusion), God caused you.

"I am forever an effect of God."

There is also what we call "making", which is also a form of causality. It causes destructive illusions instead of creative reality. It is a made-up BELIEF in a cause, as an attempted cause, in the mind. It's a made-up cause that we believe is real, and which in turn produces made-up effects which we believe are real. Just because it is made-up doesn't mean it does not DO something.

A **belief** in a cause isn't a real cause, or of God. So what it produces is not a real effect, but is an effect nonetheless. Artificial causes produce artificial effects. But they DO produce these effects, which includes symptoms of sickness in the body, and ultimately the body itself.

"The body cannot remain without illusions (illusory causes)."

When the mind believes there is a cause, it MUST include the belief that there are effects. The mind thus believes in BOTH. They are made together, and are undone together. Effects cannot remain without a cause of some kind. When you switch off the broadcast projector, there is no more making of images. Both the broadcaster and the broadcast disappear.

It would be easy for us to switch on and off causes and effects at will. This always takes place in our minds. The problem is that we keep disassociating from the part of our mind that is causing or believing in causes, and project the ownership of the causation onto external things - anything other than our own mind.

So if we think a person is causing us to be upset, we're in false perception. We see cause as separate from and outside of our own mind. Yet this BELIEF in cause, is INSIDE our mind because "ideas leave not their source."

We are confused in thinking that someone else is causing our upset. But the IDEA of "someone is causing me to be upset" is our own mind's idea, which projects, resulting in a false perception. And this idea IS STILL CAUSAL. By believing, "I am being caused", we literally are CAUSING ourselves, and our mind DOES produce effects within us, from it. And this is actually part of the belief that we are creating ourselves, the result of a split mind.

It is not possible to believe in a cause, WITHOUT the belief itself having an effect. Even if the visualized cause seems to be mapped onto some other person, it is STILL a "belief in cause" in our mind, and this gives it power. If our mind is generating, picturing, imagining, "there is a cause", it WILL and MUST also picture, generate and imagine an effect to correspond to it. And usually the severity of the effect lines up with where the cause falls in the hierarchy of illusions.

This now means that as we picture ourselves as being caused, we WILL also picture ourselves as being affected. This believing in and use of causality, no matter how it is dressed up in appearances about others, will result in OUR MIND producing EFFECTS in ourselves. These will show up as symptoms in mind and body, as emotional reactions, fearful thought responses, justified anger, and other effects.

As the secret of salvation tells us, it does not matter how it appears that someone is a victimizer, or who is doing what. When your mind "sees itself" as being victimized, that way of seeing itself ALONE victimizes you. And you cannot see yourself as being victimized WITHOUT seeing yourself ALSO as a victim.

Funny that - as you believe in victimization it sets up a causal belief in your mind which causes you to MAKE YOURSELF a victim. Your mind then generates the effects and symptoms of having been affected. It pictures itself in the roles of victim AND victimizer.

Now, here's the key. Based on this law, that even your BELIEF in a cause IS CAUSAL, and has illusory believed-in effects, removing this belief in a cause MUST remove the effects. This even includes the physical symptoms of sickness which YOUR MIND put into your body, as a result of YOUR MIND visualizing itself as at the effect of its own causal beliefs.

If my belief is that a person is upsetting me, three things are happening. 1) I am "projecting" causality onto the person falsely, resulting in a false perception that "they" are causing me. 2) MY belief in being caused is causing me, 3) I am inventing the upsetting effects because of this belief, BY this belief. If I clear up the confusion about WHO is causing who, and then STOP causing through this belief, the effects MUST go.

If my mind is thinking, "I am upset because of them", and I"m feeling the upset, my mind MUST be seeing a line of causality starting with "them" and coming into me and impacting upon me, producing upset. This is what my mind is picturing. This is HOW I am making the effects. If I tell myself, "they are not causing me to be upset", I am taking a step towards undoing the cause.

I'm almost saying, "since they are not causing this upset, I am not upset." or "everything that came from them, has not come". They then become your savior because now you are using them to explain why you are NOT affected negatively, or as a way to say "I am healed because of you". Or as the course puts it, "Brother, at your hand I live." This requires the removal of all symptoms of attack in the body and mind, accomplished by removing fake causality or accusing your brother of causing (sinning against) you.

Sometimes, if the causing seems fairly clear-cut and well defined as to who I think did what, and I remind myself I am NOT caused by the person, it can be enough to undo my mind's belief in the cause, and thus stop causing my own upset. Symptoms of upset vanish instantly. Even physical symptoms, because *I* was producing them.

Other times, I've found I've built up a collection of beliefs in causes, which have to be dismantled more methodically, piece by piece. I have to remove all belief that anyone or anything else is causing my issue. I must not believe that I am at the effect of anyone else's mind or any "causes" that I THINK are in the world. My BELIEF in them being causes does not make them causes. This is confusion/projection/disassociation.

MY BELIEF in being caused is what causes me to suffer. When something is seen as having NO causes left, and being the cause of nothing, it disappears.

I have to also remove all belief that I am causing any issue in others, because this too ties me to guilt. For example if I have an argument, it is not enough to undo the belief that I am being upset by them. I will likely believe I upset them also, and this too is fake causality. Anything THEY are experiencing, THEIR mind has chosen to cause. I must be accepting of this by dismantling my belief that I caused them, which in turn will heal them and set them free from imprisonment.

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself."

Once this is clarified, that no-one caused my effects but myself, and that cause is in my mind because I believed I was caused, I must now recognize that my own choice to believe I am being negatively caused DID produce my own symptoms. I am responsible for it. This is the secret of salvation. But we can't stop there. WE must STOP causing our own suffering.

This requires us to stop believing that even WE have caused our suffering. Seeing that we did it to ourselves, and recognizing our own mind is causing itself, may be enough to collapse it. Recognizing the futility of hurting ourselves, we will drop the desire to continue. Seeing that we are causing our own suffering, we cannot escape the causation or blame it on anyone, have to admit the truth, and admitting the truth presents us with a fact - we did this, and we no longer choose to.

We might have to work on undoing the belief that we are caused, as well as being willing to no longer suffer the role of victim. Without a cause that we believe in, we cannot believe in being affected. In recognizing we were the victimizer of ourselves, we can stop being the victim. No-one has ever been victimized by another person.

Remember that you have no neutral thoughts. All thought creates form on some level. All thought is causal. You cannot neutrally casually think about stuff without producing effects. Imagining fearful things happening to you, IS actually you DOING them to yourself. Dreaming about scenarios isn't a freebie thought. We deliberately DO, or DO NOT. We cause, or do not cause. And only what we cause happens.

""My Self is ruler of the universe." It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens (effects) is what I desire (cause). What does not occur (effects) is what I do not want (cause) to happen. This must I accept."

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

Stripping away all sense of "the cause of this", MUST undo the effects. When you cease attacking yourself with thoughts of being attacked, you will not be attacked or attackable.

Without a cause, there can be no effects. Without belief in separation, there can be no sickness. Without seeing yourself as a victim you cannot be victimized. Without victimizing yourself you cannot be hurt. Without belief you are sinful (caused bad stuff) you cannot be guilty, and without guilt you cannot frighten or threaten yourself. Without a cause, your sickness must vanish. And without a cause, the dead must rise.

All illusions have no REAL cause. The causes are made up beliefs, which DO cause illusory effects, and without maintaining these beliefs the effects cannot stay. Anything not of God or made without love has no real cause. We MADE sickness and death by believing they have been caused and are the cause of us (the God of sickness and death), and can abolish it by believing they have NOT been caused.

To recognize something has NOT been caused, is to recognize it CANNOT have happened. Without a cause, the effects must go. What has not been caused cannot exist. And since illusory effects and symptoms DEPEND on the mind believing in them, without believing in them they MUST vanish. Which undoes physical suffering, sickness and death

This is forgiveness and atonement. The recognition that separation has not been caused and sin has not caused effects because there is no sin. The lack of belief in sin as "causing evil" erases death. The knowing that there is no death. Withdrawing causes of illusions will undo them all.

"Illusions recognized (I caused this myself, it did not cause me) must disappear."

This literally is tied into the atonement. If to atone is to undo, then by cancelling the fake causes that we were using to make things "be done", and if miracles undo and take away the effects by recognizing they have not been caused, then to accept the atonement is to accept that there are NO CAUSES other than God. We HAVE NOT CAUSED separation, there is no cause of death (sin), illusions DO NOT exist, and we are no longer manufacturing fake effects.

This will ultimately UNDO the world because the world is nothing but an EFFECT of a belief - the spacetime belief.

Shifting away from made-up causes, and aligning ourselves with God's Will, which is truly causal and creative, we become miracle workers. Operating from vertical causation, not mis-creation. Our causing now becomes love-based, constructive, creative, healing and miraculous. No longer against ourselves, no longer affected by the world, we regain invulnerability and power. We can now give life and cause resurrection.

We become a cause that does not cause itself. We become free from effects of our own making, or the illusion of effects made by others. Our will is now undivided and single-minded. Nothing can oppose us as ruler of the universe. We are free to carry out the will of God. To cause with IMMEDIATE effects. And to be truly helpful to others through causal miracles.

"This is a course in cause and not effect."

"miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.""

"Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet, without effects, there is no CAUSE."

"Who can predict effects without a cause? And who could fear effects UNLESS he thought they had BEEN caused, and judged disastrous NOW?"

"Who can perceive effect WITHOUT a cause? What can the causeless BE but nothingness."

"And this DENIES the fact that ALL are senseless; EQUALLY without a cause or consequence, and CANNOT have effects of ANY kind."

"In its passing went its consequences, left without a cause."

"And to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause, and with no power to accomplish anything."

"Nothing can have effects without a cause, and to confuse the two is merely to fail to understand them both."

"Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness."

"It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way."

"Fear cannot be real without a cause, and GOD is the only Cause."

"The healing of effect WITHOUT the cause can merely shift effects to other forms."

"A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect. What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief."

"And therefore all your sins have been forgiven because they carried no effects at all."

"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression."

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

"What is projected OUT, and seems to be EXTERNAL to the mind, is NOT outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has NOT left its source."

"Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move (cause) mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don't believe it. People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert (cause) real control (effects) because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place?"

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

Everything within the ego thought system, every part of separation, this universe and world, issues with bodies, all forms of sickness, every problem or upsetting situation, all appearances of external causes and even death, can be described by one SIMPLE statement:

The sequence of cause and effect has been reversed.

This BEGAN in Heaven when you attempted to will against God's will. To will something separate from God's will. This "authority problem" was an act of trying to CAUSE GOD.

God is cause. You are God's effect. God did grant you the power to cause and create, but He did NOT grant you the power to cause HIM.

The entire separation and everything that followed from it, was formed on the basis of this belief that you are willing against God's will, and therefore God's will is outside/separate/external to your will and acting against your will.

This is the idea of sin. That you could cause and therefore produce EFFECTS in God, to hurt Him, to change His mind, to make Him not love you anymore, or to destroy Him, and that you have in fact been capable of doing this with "real effects".

This was the beginning point of all dreaming.

It's all entirely because you tried to stop being the effect of God and to instead cause God.

Let's describe that in terms of levels. The higher level is causal (God). The lower level is effect (You/Son of God). You are as God created you, as God intended, as God willed. When you, who are on the lower level, attempt to CAUSE the higher level to change, this is LEVEL CONFUSION. It is the authority problem. It is the belief in magic. It is the belief in an external will. It is the source of ALL SICKNESS. Eventually to will so strongly against your own cause, against God, is to deny God and deny life, and results in DEATH.

This all comes from reversing what the Course calls the "divine order". The proper sequence of creation. Cause produces effects, not the other way around. The world that we are in now, is also a "level", and it is being caused by a higher level. It is a dream-effect or a causal mind "above" this world. Everything in this world is an effect, not a cause. But when anything in this world is given properties of "causing" or "willing" or "making effects happen", that is LEVEL CONFUSION also, another layer of it. And this is the source of all our suffering.

Everything in your life that you "need to forgive", is BASED ON this same dynamic. Every upset you have. Every perception that someone is acting against your will. Every form of victimhood. All states of sickness and death. Every argument. Every conflict or war. All special relationships. Every part of the ego thought system is based on this reversal of causality. "All sickness is the result of confusing the levels". Whenever something "below" or an "effect" is believed to have an ability to CAUSE, that is level confusion, it is mental illness, it is an illusion, it is false, it is ego, and it encapsulates the entire ego thought system.

It causes you to "perceive" that cause is outside of you, causing AGAINST you. This is because instead of God flowing into you from "behind", and you extending it outward and "forward", you have instead turned around and taken a stand "against" God's outflowing will, to try to will in the other direction, to STOP God's will. Like a rock in a river trying to stop the flow. ALL your suffering and problems come from this.

So to CORRECT IT, to "apply forgiveness" as we like to say, you ONLY need to correct this one fundamental error in the dynamic. You need to re-reversed cause and effect so that the levels are in their proper ORDER, and so that you recognize yourself as the effect of God, so that you are not against God's will, and thereby do not perceive that there is a will acting against you.

That also means you no longer perceiving or believing that there is a "separate cause" outside of you, or a cause in the world, or a cause on a lower level, or a cause in the body, or a cause in other people, or a cause in laws of physics in the environment, or any other externalized cause. Cause is IN YOU. God is IN YOUR MIND, so Cause is in your mind, and your mind is the effect of GOD and nothing else.

Every situation in your life which seems like 1000 DIFFERENT problems with different dynamics and issues and reactions and emotions and so on.... all those differences are illusions COVERING UP the simple CORE THREAD which is the SAME in all of them. That is, somehow, you have become mistaken about what is a cause and what is an effect. And so now you see causes as doing stuff to you against your will, when they are not. And you've turned yourself into an effect of the world, instead of the cause of it. This same simple concept runs through EVERY FORGIVENESS LESSON.

Now, before you can undo this problem in real life situations, or even recognize it in your upsetting situations, you need to recognize something.

The ego has invented its own idea of cause and effect. It believes that causes and effects are "horizontal". This has resulted in "horizontal perception". That means, it believes and perceives that something in the world on this same "level", has the ability to "cause" something else on this same level, and produce effects in it. So now it seems possible that an object can produce a reaction in another object, a person can come along and hurt you, someone can be to blame for doing something to you etc. Causes and effects are seen as linear on the horizontal plane, or sideways. This is totally opposite to the truth, which is that the HIGHER level is the only cause and the LOWER level (this world) is ENTIRELY EFFECT.

So part of what you have to realize is, this world does not contain any real causes AT ALL. It is all effect. It is all a dream, all the effect of you dreaming from a higher level. It doesn't matter how it APPEARS, that a cause is outside you on this same level. There are NO CAUSES IN THE WORLD. There are no causes in your body. There are no causes in other people doing stuff. There are no causes in the environment. Cause is on a higher level, and it's in your mind, "above the battlefield."

The recognition that causality is VERTICAL, results in what the course calls "vertical perception." It also says a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception is required in order to produce a miracle. Miracles are expressions of VERTICAL CAUSALITY in which the levels are in their proper order, there is no level confusion, there is no belief in something in the world causing something else, and therefore the higher level which MADE the word can CHANGE it in total defiance of any illusory laws or horizontal cause-effect relationships. This produces supernatural miracles which are ABOVE (super) the "natural" (nature) of the horizontal illusion and prove through demonstration that cause-effect on this level is ENTIRELY AT THE EFFECT OF YOUR MIND.

So what you're going to need to do in an everyday upsetting situation, something you "need to forgive", is UNDO BELIEF IN horizontal cause and effect, so that you CAN SHIFT to a vertical perception, in which God is cause, you are His effect, and YOU ARE THE CAUSE OF THIS WORLD that you're dreaming.

Recognize therefore that the ego INVENTS the idea of being caused by things outside of you on this same level. It is never true. This forms a kind of fictional "connection", mentally and energetically, between you and other people. You perceive and believe they, or the environment, or you food, or events, or the body, can "cause you". This is FALSE. So what you need to do is COLLAPSE the ego's horizontal cause-effect beliefs and relationships. Cancel them out, separate them out, and that leads to a pretty simple goal:

Recognizing that there is NO CAUSE OR EFFECT between any two things in this world. This whole world is an EFFECT of your mind ON A HIGHER LEVEL. And therefore you are NOT ON THIS LEVEL, you are ABOVE IT.

So what you want to do is effectively "SEPARATE" cause from effect on this level. It's like two boxers in a ring who are fighting, you need to separate them, get them back to their corners, and stop them from affecting each other. Break them up. Put a GAP between the horizontal causes and the horizontal effects so that you can believe and perceive that YOU ARE NOT AT THE EFFECT of anything in this world.

The only way you can believe and perceive that you are not at the effect of anything in this world, is to not believe in CAUSES in this world, of any kind, and therefore to shift into a VERTICAL perception which is miraculous, which recognizes that this ENTIRE WORLD is made up, its a dream, it was all made at once, and every ILLUSION of causality or effects were made TOGETHER simultaneously. There ARE no real causes here.

I like to do this with a simple process of "correcting ideas" something like this:

You did not cause me. I am not at the effect of you. You have not made me upset. You are not the one who attacked me. You did not do anything to me. You have no power over me. I am free of you. You are not the source of my upset. Everything I am experiencing I have chosen. These feelings are my own. This hurt is something I put there myself. I am responsible for everything I am experiencing. It's got nothing to do with you. I must've wanted to experience this. I chose this myself and made a wrong decision and can choose again.

Notice regardless of the words you use, that there is only ONE THING happening here over and over. I am CUTTING TIES between myself and the other person. These are ARTIFICIAL ties of horizontal causes and effects. They are not real or true at all. I am SEPARATING MYSELF from the "fictional causes" so that I am not at their effect. You could express this a 1000 different ways, whatever words or aspects you need to use to break up all of your personal perceptual errors and beliefs in how something is affecting you.

But note that in order to FULLY CANCEL the ego's illusion of horizontal causality, you need to also apply this same set of clarifications to the other person or cause as well. This helps to "balance it out" or to complete the undoing of any other beliefs or perceptions which you might have such as that YOU affected the other person, resulting in guilt etc. This really helps to clean up any possible effects which have come from what you falsely experienced. For example:

I did not cause you. You are not at the effect of me. II have not made you upset. I am not the one who attacked you. I did not do anything to you. I have no power over you. You are free of me. I am not the source of your upset. Everything you are experiencing you have chosen. Your feelings are your own. Your hurt is something you put there yourself. YOU are responsible for everything you are experiencing. It's got nothing to do with me. You must've wanted to experience this. You chose this yourself and made a wrong decision and can choose again.

When you do this, you BREAK the ego's chain of fake causes and effects on the horizontal level. That means you actually will no longer believe or perceive or experience that there are ANY CAUSES on this level affecting you. While this is still a horizontal state of perception, it actually lays the groundwork for you being able to then shift into VERTICAL perception. You may be still in the world not affected by the world, but now you need to position yourself ABOVE the world, above the battlefield.

You got into your right mind, now you need to get into the ONE mind. So if there are no causes in the world that you believe in, this makes it pretty easy to then recognize you are ABOVE, in terms of levels and causality, the divine order is re-established, the levels are in their proper sequence, and you recognize that everything in this world is AN EFFECT and you are a HIGHER CAUSE.

This readies you to be MIRACULOUS. Miracles flow from a higher level to a lower level, like love or creation does. God causes you, you are the miracle of God. You then cause a level below yourself, and these are your miracles. When your higher mind CAUSES effects in the lower level of this world, these produce SUPERNATURAL EFFECTS. This is what miracles really are about. A higher level causing a lower level and proving that the lower level is nothing but an effect of the mind - that mind has total power OVER it.

This more or less is ALL you need to do. If you can really go deep with this, it will undo all your false perceptions, your upset, your stress, your emotional reactions, your fears, your obsessive thinking which can't let go of the situation, and it will bring you back to peace AND empowerment. Then you are in a position to ACCEPT THE ATONEMENT by recognizing that you are the effect of God, you accept that you are STILL as God created you, God has NOT been affected or changed, and therefore is not willing against you.

This process ALWAYS WORKS to undo ego because it addresses THE ENTIRE EGO THOUGHT SYSTEM at its foundation. There is not one part of the ego that escapes this, because the ego is BASED ON the reversal of cause and effect, so the correction of cause and effect cancels out the entire ego. Therefore it can be applied to EVERY situation and will always lead you back to truth.

Try it.

We can perhaps summarize this way:

God causes me.

I have not caused God.

I am the effect of God.

I am the cause of what I made/projected/created.

What I made/dreamed is not the cause of me.

Therefore I am still as God created me.

"The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man (souls/sons) by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind (his own free-will creations).

The latter (the son’s ability to create) required the endowment of man by God with FREE WILL because all loving creation is freely given (God gave us freedom).

Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement (no separation)or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects (each aspect being a son of God with free will) are of the same order."

Also...

"In the service of the right mind the denial of error frees the mind, and re-establishes the FREEDOM OF THE WILL. When the will is really free it cannot miscreate, because it recognizes only truth."

When we have free will, and it’s really free (not under illusion) it creates like God creates, freely, independently. What we will is the same as what God would will. But it is still our free will which wills it. When we enter into illusions, the will becomes NOT free, because entering into separation is a denial of freedom and a denial of will. Therefore the ego does not have free will. The ego is the denial of freedom and will. The ego only has WISHFUL THINKING. And to wish is to not will at all. To have no will at all is to not will to live, which is the choice to die.

Because EACH SON has free will, each son INDEPENDENTLY gets the TOTAL FREEDOM to decide, whether or not to believe the ego and oppose God’s will, or to co-create with God. Blocking will means you are choosing to be against your own will. This creates the split ego mind, within which you have multiple conflicting wills. At the very least two (typically persona and shadow, or conscious and unconscious).

When your mind is split your will is split, and you will be in CONFLICT with yourself. At war with yourself. You will attempt to will one thing with a partial will, and another part of you will attempt to oppose it. Trying to oppose God’s will opposes your own will. This puts you into a tug of war between yourself and yourself. This cancels out the effects of your willing, because each time you will one thing, you also will to stop it and bring about an opposite. This puts a FREEZE on your will, making you POWERLESS, and incapable of willing anything at all. To use your free will against itself renders you impotent and UNWILLING. It also means you no longer will LIFE, and therefore make death as a statement of your unwillingness to live.

The ego has no will. It only has wishful thinking. Death is wishful thinking, because it is impossible to kill God’s son. The secret to salvation tells us we are doing this all to ourselves. That’s because we are the one WILLING against ourselves in a split mind. Willing against God’s will and against our own will produces an alien will which we fight against within ourselves.

When our will is split, we cannot perform miracles. When our will is WHOLE, we are SINGLE MINDED, with a single unified will which does not stop itself from expressing, and a whole mind is a miraculous mind. Miracles express from wholeness. Spit-minded people are anti-miraculous (anti christ). To be miraculous you must use your "whole heart", or whole will, not a partial will. Being "in two minds" (with two wills) means being in fear, and miracles cannot be performed in a spirit of fear. Whole mind has no limits to what it can create because when it wills, it does not oppose its own will, and therefore what it wills MUST be expressed and manifest.

Also since we all have our own FREE WILL, this does not mean we are necessarily contradicting each other. It does not mean we are willing against each other provided we all want the same thing. We are all willing the same thing. We all will to expand and create and share love and joy. It is ONLY when free will is used against ITSELF and against God, that we attack ourselves and go into a state of a split mind, where our will ceases to produce real effects.

This produces a private world of dreaming in which our will is divided and fragmented, along with our identity. We then seem to have a "separated will" which is attempting to implement the authority problem. It is an improper use of will. It is an attempt to will something that God would not will, a fiction or an idea of loss/lack/attack etc. Willing to "create death", is actually a will to create NOTHING, and so is an attempt not to will anything at all. This is why nothing real can be threatened - no opposing will can truly will anything.

Also because we have free will, this FAR MORE CLEARLY explains the workings of perception. In that, it is our task, each of us individually, to take full responsibility for what we are experiencing. It means as an individual son, *I* am responsible only for what *I* am doing to myself. It is not possible to do anything to other people against their will. It is not possible to be affected by anyone else’s will. Everyone’s will is equally powerful, which is why Jesus can’t force us to wake up. Whatever I am experiencing, I did it to myself.

Having free will means that I am responsible only for the INNER content of my mind, which is my state of self attack and conflict with myself, in which my own will is opposing itself. It also means I am responsible for my own mental and physical health. It also means therefore, because other souls have FREE WILL, the state of their mind and their body is NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY. Nor does the state of their mind or body have ANY POWER to cause me to be UNABLE to choose absolute atonement and awakening for myself as ONE SON in the sonship. Jesus has already proven this. We are not holding him back. If other people were part of his mind "lagging behind" he would not have been able to wake up because we would be holding him in hell "against his will."

No-one has the power to stop you from returning to God. No-one has the power to choose for you. No-one has the power to force you to be awake. No-one has the power to force you to heal. No-one has the power to make you be "not sick" if you want to be sick, and all sickness is the choice of THE INDIVIDUAL FREE WILL to select sickness for themselves. Each individual Son with free will DOES select and create THEIR OWN BODY. Bodies are not created en-masse like some kind of production line by a single "son" - EACH SON materializes their own body and they are responsible for it.

Other people’s sickness is NOT in my mind. The only thing in my mind is my additional layer of projected sin that I ADD to their pre-existing condition. Taking that projected sin OFF of them, which wasn’t even ON them to begin with because ideas do not leave my own mind, WILL NOT heal them. All it will do is it will allow me to PERCEIVE CORRECTLY and clearly, recognizing that THEY STILL are insisting, by their own free will, that THEY want to make themselves suffer. They also have to be willing, idependantly, to want to receive help and healing, otherwise there is nothing we can do. This is why every part of the sonship has to become WILLING to return to sanity on their own.

The idea that there is only one son, or no son, or the son is god, or there are not multiple sons, or no-one has free will, or there is only one free will, or the entire content of my perception includes all other people’s un-freely-chosen suffering, or that other people’s sickness is my sickness, or that other people are inside my mind, or that I cannot perceive other people’s free will choices (even the choice to be sick or dead), is ALL BULLSHIT.... derived from a basic fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge that God gave FREE WILL to every single Son/Soul he created, and He created multiple equal sons each of them ABSOLUTELY FREE to choose on their own, AND therefore each is 100% responsible for their own self, mind, choices, consequences, suffering, death, or choice to accept atonement.

Without free will it is impossible to properly explain the functioning of perception or the choice to be sick or how the mind works or what the course means on wide variety of topics. And without acceptance of multiple free wills, everything will just get lumped together into one big soupy MUSH ... which is the equivalent of putting the sonship in a blender.

YOU have free will. YOU are responsible for what you create. YOU are responsible for what you choose. YOU are responsible for what happens to you. YOU are responsible for accepting the atonement for YOURSELF. YOU are responsible for making yourself sick or well. YOU are responsible for extending God’s will or choosing to oppose it. YOU, one of many sons of God with free will, are NOT responsible for the FREE WILL CHOICES of other free-willing Sons of God. And their free will choices have nothing to do with you, nor can they do anything TO you, nor can you do anything TO them against their will.

You are NOT responsible for other people being sick. You are NOT responsible for other people choosing fear. You are NOT responsible for other people staying asleep when you wake up. You are NOT responsible for making others sick or well. You are NOT responsible for putting suffering into the world as though it is part of your own mind, when in fact it put there either by other people’s free will or as a collective decision. You are NOT responsible for fixing other people’s freely chosen suffering. You are NOT responsible for anyone else in any way, OTHER THAN.... to offer a SERVICE to them, by offering them miracles, and becoming open to SHARING WITH THEM.

Since you have free you can give miracles because you temporarily have more, and can give miracles to those who temporarily have less, to fulfill a lack - a lack which another brother HAS, but you DO NOT have. Their lack is NOT your lack. Their lack is NOT part of your mind. God created many sons, many free wills, and MANY MINDS. You must forgive and awaken IN SPITE OF the free will choices of others.

Here are some more statements about our free will which clearly tell us that we have free will as given by God:

"But I trust in You. You Who endowed me with my freedom as Your holy Son will not be lost to me. Your Voice directs me. And the way to You is opening and clear to me at last. Father, my freedom is in You alone. Father, it is my will that I return."

"How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom’s name. Unless you do your will, you are not free. And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never lose your will, when He gave you His perfect Answer. Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His Love, and learn your will. God would not have His Son made prisoner to what he does not want. He JOINS with you in willing you be free. And to oppose Him is to make a choice against YOURSELF, and choose that YOU be bound."

"Think not He wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless."

"The world awaits the freedom you will give, when you have recognized that YOU are free. But you will not forgive the world until you have forgiven Him Who gave your will to you. For it is BY your will the world is given freedom. Nor can you be free apart from Him Whose holy Will you share."

(Please note, when this part says you share God’s will, that DOES NOT mean that God takes over your freedom and you have no freedom to will. It means you AGREE with God’s will and extend His will which is the SAME as your will in its character or attitude. You have the same KIND of will that God has. God is free, and so are all of his children.)

"Any split in mind must involve a rejection of part of it, and this is the belief in separation."

What is a WHOLE mind? A whole mind is at least as large as the universe. As Jesus states, "both heaven and earth are in your mind" and "you maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts". Realize that your mind has to be LARGER than planet Earth in order for Earth to be in your mind. It's not appropriate to try to imagine that your tiny little self inside your body is projecting this entire world. In fact, "the world" is this entire universe, and so let's say a WHOLE mind is large enough to contain THE WHOLE of everything.

A SPLIT mind, is a mind which believes in separation. The split is like a division, which literally seems to divide your mind into TWO halves. The division is upheld by some kind of "wall of sin", which comes between the two halves. This wall is made of illusions. This wall IS THE WORLD YOU SEE and the world you made. It is the physical matter of this universe. "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

So if your whole mind is larger than the universe, what does a split mind mean? It means you place a wall WITHIN the universe, to separate off one part of your mind from another. What is that wall? It's all physical matter, actually, but more symbolically it is your BODY. Your body is the wall of flesh that you surround a part of your mind with.

The body is a device for separation. It has two functions. It keeps part of your mind INSIDE, and keeps the other part of your mind OUTSIDE. Remember you were WHOLE before, you were unlimited in size, and now you've SECTIONED OFF only a PART of your mind and placed it "inside the body", so all the stuff outside the body is THE REST OF YOUR MIND. You, who seem to be in a body, are only PART OF YOURSELF.

You're used to thinking in terms of everything applying only to the mind that seems to be inside the body, as if that is "you". And as if everything outside the body is "not you". And THEN you think that the whole of ACIM applies only to this "is me" that's inside the body. But it DOES NOT! THAT is part of the illusion of the split. It's a state of massive disassociation. In fact this is also part of how you pretend to be a figure in a dream.

When you dream, you dream an entire ENVIRONMENT. A world. But then you divide up that world, you fence off part of it as a body, and then place a fragment of the mind seemingly INSIDE that body. That part of mind now peers out through the body's eyes upon the environment, but because it is a DISASSOCIATED part, it does not believe that the environment is part of ITSELF. It thinks it is "not me". And it also does not believe it PUT IT THERE.

It doesn't see itself as the DREAMING mind, only as PART of the dream. And you in your human body right now experience exactly the same disassociation - you do not believe or perceive that this ENTIRE WORLD is inside your mind, or that you are dreaming it from a larger mind. You think you are ONLY the thing "inside" the body. This is part of being a split mind.

When you have a split mind, one half of your mind disassociates from the other. The ego splits off some parts of you and labels them as sinful, guilty, wrong, bad, and tries to destroy them. It does this in order to try to only preserve the appearance of being "good" and successful and perfect and innocent. In psychology terms, this is the PERSONA, which is ONE HALF of your mind and yet believes it is ALL of yourself. This is to do with where the course talks about the sunbeam believing it is the sun. This split off part of mind thinks it is ALL of you.

The parts of your mind that it disassociates FROM, and keeps believing is "not myself", it sees as "outside of me". Separate from me. And the wall of flesh that is the body acts as the divider between your persona and the REST of you. The rest of you is OUTSIDE the body. Due to disassociation you do not believe that the outside world is you AT ALL, or has anything to do with you. That you didn't put it there nor is it the location of your SELF. But it is, and you did put it there. You needed to make a world outside the body in order to be able to have a world to disassociate from.

What then happens is, within your mind, within the whole of your mind, there are now two seeming selves. There is the part that you think is all of you, and there is another part that you think is not you at all. That "not me" part is hidden behind a wall of denial, which is a block to awareness, which makes the REST of your mind unconscious. Since your persona self sees the REST of your mind as "outside of me", or separate from itself, it regards the "shadow" as OUTSIDE the persona. Now, the BODY IS the persona. Within the dream, it represents this fake "face of innocence", and everything OUTSIDE the body is YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND.

Within your mind, then, since "ideas leave not their source", everything that your mind can ever experience HAS to be within your mind, otherwise the mind cannot be aware of it. So that means your "inside self" is in your mind, your BODY is in your mind, and the outside WORLD is in your mind. And your mind is larger than all of them.

Within your mind, you will experience that there is war happening between one half of you and the other half. There will be a perception of "your self" (one half) as "the innocent victim", and it will seem that "the not me" self (outside "you") is the sinful victimizer. Your will is going to be divided against itself, because both parts of your mind are not in agreement. They conflict. And so the inner you, your persona, believes that it is under attack by "an alien will", that it THINKS is "outside of it", but which really is just another part of the mind.

You have this fully INTERNAL war with yourself, between these two parts, but because of the disassociation, your inner part BELIEVES that the "other me" is OUTSIDE the body. That your enemy is out there and is "not myself". So it is seen as "beyond yourself". And since your idea of yourself is confined within the body, that means you think it's outside the body. Even though it's in your mind.

It then becomes very EASY, to "project" or map this dynamic of a split mind, ONTO The world. Whereby you seem to "project" your sin onto your brother. But it's not really projection as such. It's more like, your mind actually believes that YOUR sinful parts are separated off from your "self" and are SEEN outside of you, beyond the body, and so you see them IN the world as if they are external. Your mind locates them externally because that seems to make sense in terms of them being disassociated from what's inside your body.

And so if you're believing/perceiving that the sinful part of YOUR mind, your "inner enemy", the "not me self", is OUTSIDE of your body, it's VERY VERY easy to assign or associate that with OTHER BROTHERS in the dream, whose bodies are walking around the same environment having split minds. Since you already believe "the sin is not in me, it's outside me", and since you believe" I am inside the body", you'll easily believe "the sinners are outside the body". And so there's a very small step from there to actually being deluded that some actual OTHER brother is the separate self who is sinful. And so you attach your split mind TO him and accuse him of your sins.

But in truth, all of this is really taking place inside your larger mind. Both what is inside your body and what is outside your body is WITHIN the confines of your larger mind. The innocent seeming victim that you see your PARTIAL self as, and the external victimizer evil sinful menace, are BOTH parts of YOUR mind. And this is what the secret of salvation is designed to show you. To merely look and realize that your brother has NOTHING to do with you being attacked, there is actually ANOTHER PART OF YOUR MIND ATTACKING THIS PART OF YOUR MIND. You are at war with yourself, and you literally are your enemy.

ACIM: "The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true." - that external attacker IS PART OF YOUR MIND.

So that means you are ACTING the part of being the victim, AND you are acting the part of the victimizer. You are BOTH. You are the inside and the outside. And until you can recognize that what you see in another is part of your own larger mind, you won't stop projecting it onto them. When you own it, and take responsibility for it, that means realizing that this "separate enemy" is actually a character IN your larger mind, seeming to interact with this other persona character IN your mind, and BOTH of them are like puppets that your LARGER mind is operating. Your larger mind is pitting parts of ITSELF against each other.

What makes it SEEM as if there are two identities or characters, is illusions. Illusions present a picture of images and appearances and behaviors that SEEM to make it look like there are TWO distinct persons, two wills, two minds, to selves. But the challenge you have, is to OVERLOOK (forgive) those illusions. When you do so, you should come to realize that your larger mind is responsible for playing the roles of BOTH of those two characters. That who YOU are, as a whole, is WITHIN BOTH of them. If you can see that YOU are literally playing BOTH sides and ARE both of them, that "unity" will transcend the illusions, and it will dissolve the split.

You won't be able to believe in the split, or in being only one of the two halves of the split, if you can see how your WHOLE mind is in BOTH sides. It's like owning up to being one who has been pulling all the strings, MAKING THE DREAM ENVIRONMENT, and causing all things to happen. That means moving UPWARDS, from a position of "I am only this little self in a body" to " I am the whole of everything everywhere". And it is from that larger WHOLE mind that you are the DREAMER OF THE WORLD.

ACIM: "For you would not react at all to figures in a dream (as a smaller part of mind) you knew that YOU (your larger mind) were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you (your larger self), unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR (whole mind's) dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." - this is a shift in identity from "I am a PART of mind in a body" to " I am ALL of mind everywhere."

If your mind transcends the separation, ie you stop believing illusions of separation, you will become aware of your wholeness. That's a transition from being two selves on a lower level, to being one unified self on a higher level.

What that also means in terms of the fact that your mind is the size of the universe, is that you should eventually heal the separation that is DIVIDING THE WORLD, which means removing the WALLS that the world is made of, which means undoing physical matter which is the illusion of separation, and that also means ERASING THE BODY. The body IS the device that acts to implement the split mind, WITHIN the larger scope of what you are.

In order NOT to have a split mind, your body HAS to be undone. It acts like a wall that is literally keeping part of you inside it and the rest of you outside it. It is made of illusions. "The body cannot stay without illusions". That means without the idea of being PART OF the world and not ALL of it, there cannot be a body there, representing the split in the mind and dividing and separating your universe-sized mind into two parts.

The body must vanish. It must be transcended and it must disappear. It is made of the illusion of separtion. "The body is a dream." And it is also the way by which the whole dream is maintained. There is no dream WITHOUT the body, because you have to MAKE a separation - a split in your larger mind, in order to go INTO dreaming. A split mind is a dreaming mind. And MAKING that split in your mind MAKES a body. It puts a wall there. Therefore when this dream of "opposition" and "competition" and "taking sides" is ironed out and ends, so too does the body wall disappear, and so too does the dream disappear, and that includes the Earth.

In effect, the undoing of the belief in separation is the undoing of the WALL within your split mind which IS the body, and this cancels out the differences between the inner and outer parts of mind, makes the mind WHOLE, and a whole mind CANNOT BE ASLEEP DREAMING. A whole mind cannot have a body. And a whole mind cannot be IN a dream world. The dream world only lasts so long as there is an illusion of separation, which depends ENTIRELY on having a split in your universe-sized mind. And this is also why "you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge." Knowledge collapses spacetime.

As you return to being whole, you will also return to a state of mind where what is inside you is also seen outside you. ie it is everywhere the same. That means seeing the holy spirit in all your brothers because he is in your mind. Seeing God "in the world" because God is in your mind. Your wholeness reunites you with THE REST OF YOURSELF WHICH IS IN YOUR BROTHER. Your wholeness rejoins and reconnects YOUR mind, to the REST of your mind, which is currently believed to be "not inside you". Your sense of SELF, therefore, has to expand from "I am that which is inside the body" to "I AM EVERYWHERE". That results in oneness with all brothers.

To be whole is to be restored to an awareness that YOU are everywhere, you are larger than the universe, you are unlimited and infinite and immortal, you are not partial, you are not located in space or time, and you are beyond the dream of death. You are beyond the world. The world was merely YOUR SPLIT MIND, while you were dreaming. It's forms were YOUR SPLITS. Its walls were your illusions of disassociation. Without you having a split mind there can be no dream world. Waking up is waking up to WHOLENESS. Wholeness is reality. In wholeness, there is no world and there are no bodies and no walls.

You are unlimited. You made this entire world as a result of splitting your mind. When your mind is whole, the world will disappear. You are a huge, unlimited, spiritual being and this TINY world is nothing against your magnitude.

What is true is true. God's truth and reality are the only truth and reality. God's truth is permanent and cannot be changed or damaged. This means that you can either accept tit, or you can PRETEND it is not true, but you cannot change it into something truly false.

This means you can accept or deny it, and you have no other options. Denial does not make the truth change or go away, it merely is an attempt to hide FROM it, pretending it is not there, while it still is there.

When we went into the separation from God, all we did was enter a state of denial. An attempt to shut out God from our awareness and bury our head in the sand pretending that God does not exist. The world was made in an effort to be somewhere where could doesn't exist, made in a thought of denial and completely insane.

This denial comes about through the belief that sin is real, which induces guilt. Guilt then becomes a block to the awareness of love, because you can only be guilty if you are unforgivable.

"The world was made as a place where God could enter not."

"For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane."

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

So we made a world, opposite to God's world, made of denial, built on guilt and sin, in a state of insanity, attempting to go unconscious to God and therefore deny our own existence, aiming towards a state of self destruction and death.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

"We CANNOT be united in crucifixion and in death."

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so."

"The hell you made."

So we end up with a hellish world which is a state of the DENIAL OF GOD.

What we essentially did is we took our natural ability to DENY ILLUSIONS, to deny death, to deny attack and fear and sin and guilt, and we flipped it on its head. We used denial AGAINST reality instead of FOR the protection of it.

We're now in a position where this must be reversed. The world, and the body, are MADE OF denial. They are the denial of reality. They are the denial of the Kingdom. It now becomes our task to flip denial back around and USE IT properly, as a corrective device, to UNDO the "denial of God". To use denial in its proper way, as a defense and a protection AGAINST illusions, and as a way to keep illusions OUT of our minds.

The ego, our belief in the world of sin, is the denial of truth. This denial is in turn an ASSERTION that the opposite of the truth is true. That the opposite of eternal life, which is death, is true. False denial is therefore the ASSERTION of death. It's an attempt to EXPRESS death, to make death real, to make death happen, and to make death permanent.

The opposite to this assertion of death is the assertion of LIFE. And this is what resurrection means. And by asserting life we do the complete opposite to denying the truth. This runs AGAINST THE GRAIN of the world, against every way the world is set up, against all its forms and natures and laws, and VIOLATES every law of space and time.

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

To use denial correctly, ie the proper use of denial, you are to DENY that every aspect of the world of illusions is real. You are to DENY, reject, not believe, assert against, oppose, cancel, undermine, question, remove faith in, stop trusting, detach from, overlook, forgive, and let go of, all of the insane manifestations of the denial of God. And that includes the rejection of death.

"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it."

"It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way. This is the PROPER use of denial. It is not used to HIDE anything, but it IS used to correct error. It brings ALL error into the light, and since error and darkness are the same, it abolishes error automatically."

An improper use of denial happens when you first of all believe that something about the world is TRUE. Such as the belief that the body really exists. If you hold this belief, AND THEN claim that it does not exist in an attempt to "deny its existence", but without letting go of the denial of God that PRODUCES the body.... your belief in it, you are simultaneously denying God while trying to deny the body. This is now a denial UPON a denial, and is now twice removed from reality. It's a double-denial and this is what an IMPROPER use of denial means - using denial to make denial worse.

"The body is merely a fact. Its ABILITIES can, and frequently are, overevaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence. Those who do are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial." This does not mean bodies are REAL just because they are "facts", it just means the body is what it is and is an inherent part of the dream. It only means that if you PRETEND not to believe in them while YOU STILL HAVE ONE, you are probably in a double-denial. True denial would erase the body completely.

You have to be willing to question the ORIGINAL denial of God, the assertion of death, the belief that bodies really exist, the belief that the world is real. If you KEEP these beliefs while DECEIVING yourself, lying to yourself, that you believe the opposite, then you are IN DENIAL about being in denial. And that is how the ego operates. It is worse and not an improvement. The ego is always about INCREASING denial of the truth this way.

The body and the world and sickness and death MUST be denied, but they must be CORRECTLY and HONESTLY denied. That means recognizing how the world and body etc ARE denials of God's truth, and then DENYING them any power, reality, truth, belief, withdrawing all investment in them, cancelling your belief in them, and therefore UNDOING them. Doing this is ATONING, because "to atone is to undo." This is also why miracles UNDO. They cancel ie DENY illusions of death any existence.

"The miracle does nothing. All it does (which IS a kind of doing) is to UNdo. And thus it ***cancels*** out the interference to what HAS BEEN done. It does not add, but merely ***takes away.***"

"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

It's important to realize that when you attempt to "cancel a sickness", that you don't get lost in making it real. If you assert, for example, that "that sickness does not exist.", which has some cancelling/denying properties to it, you ARE first of all making the sickness REAL and then are attempting to DENY the existence of the sickness. This is a double-bind and is an improper use of denial. In effect you work against yourself by asserting BOTH positions at once.

When you make statements of asserting the cancellation of sin/attack/death etc, if your focus is on what you see/dream of as "the apparent sickness", the physical real-seeming problem, know that your cancellation efforts are in fact attempts to CORRECT YOUR OWN MIND.

By reminding yourself of why what you see is NOT THERE, you are attempting to move from false perception TO true perception. You are trying to use denial to undo your own mistaken perceptions. This is important to do, but it is not the end of the story.

If you see a sickness and then work on "cancelling" your belief in it, this is an act of receiving CORRECTION for your own false perceptions. It's an attempt to correct your faulty beliefs and remove YOUR denial of the truth. This prepares you because it opens the way for true perception and for love to extend, but it should not really be mistaken for healing of ANOTHER person.

Focusing on someone's sickness and using cancellation/denial to try to "deprogram it", you're really just battling with your own false perceptions try to to get your own mind corrected so that you can SEE and RECOGNIZE that the sickness is not there. But this effort is one of moving UP TOWARD forgiveness/true perception, and isn't itself an EXPRESSION of healing love.

Once you have cancelled out your OWN mistaken judgements, and have used proper denial to remove your wrong beliefs and projections, moving into forgiveness, you regain vision. You become able to express love. You become able to extend. Your miracle working power THEN switches on. Because it is the expression of love and the ASSERTION OF LIFE that actually heals.

To atone and forgive and cancel and undo is really an act of flattening out, diminishing, depleting, taking power away from, what has been projected by you. This is preparation. Or you could say, this is your own purification. It's necessary in order to get your mind into a miracle minded state. But once you're IN that state, that's when the light starts to radiate unhindered, when you recognize that illusions ARE illusions, and when you can now GIVE life to another.

In the Song of Prayer, Jesus says, "forgive first, then pray." This is what it means. Cancel out all of YOUR beliefs in the reality and existence of the "real sickness" first, to purify your mind and perception, so that you can attain whole mindedness. "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness." THEN you can pray to God to receive the love that you then can express as a miracle.

"Through prayer love is received. Through miracles love is expressed."

So you use a form of denial to get your mind back into the forgiving state. Then you are ready to ASSERT LIFE, and thus BE the resurrection. And now you can GIVE the strength and power of God's love, because you have opened yourself up to it. HIS love then does the healing for your brother through extension.

"They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification."

The assertion of LIFE is more than just to say, that you don't believe death exists. It's more than just the UNDOING of the idea of sickness. It's the active powerful forceful EXPRESSION of ACTUAL LIFE. The radiation of light into your brother's mind. The recognition of his holy christ self, and the willingness to extend love to him.

To assert life means to believe that ONLY LIFE IS TRUE. Add this means the COMPLETE REJECTION of the idea of sickness and death. Not merely to believe the IDEA that there is no death, but to actually BE THE LIFE that OVERRIDES it.

What this really boils down to is, we need to learn how to approach people from the perspective that they ARE AS GOD CREATED THEM. Even if they seem to be in a body. Our BELIEF about them must ONLY be that they are still as God created them. NOT off on some distant plane of existence, in some other dimension, but HERE AND NOW!

My brother, I do not believe you are a body. My brother, you are Christ. My brother, you are immortal. My brother, you cannot be sick or die. My brother, there is no sickness. My brother, you are still perfectly innocent. My brother, you are always happy. My brother, you deserve God's love. These kind of sentiments must be expressed and shared and given. Towards the person standing in front of you.

In a sense, we are to treat people NOW, while we're here, the way we WOULD treat them if we were in heaven. This is what holy relationship is about. It is a reflection of heaven's real relationships. You are to believe that the only things true of your brother are what GOD defined as true of him. And you are to relate to him in recognition that HE IS THAT NOW. From that perspective.

If he is pretending to suffer and be sick and die, you should be DISMISSING his attempt to prove his sinfulness and LAUGH in the face of his efforts to destroy what cannot be destroyed. You are to REMIND HIM of what is true of him. And that includes the FIRM CONVICTION that he is immortal and NOT SICK, HAS no faults, IS not sinful, CANNOT be hurt, HAS NEVER attacked, is UNFOUNDED in his guilt, and IS LITERALLY immortal and sane right now.

To do this requires YOUR denial that what the physical senses show is true. It requires YOU not being deceived by illusions. It requires YOU recognizing your brother's innocence and holiness. It requires YOU not being deluded to think he is a body, or you. It requires YOU to ASSERT that THERE IS ONLY ETERNAL LIFE, and anything else you might assert has to be dropped. And by affirming the truth about him only, devoid of ego bullshit, you INFUSE him with his own light and heal him.

"Teach only love, for that is what you are."

You must not believe that ANYONE is sick. Sickness is a lie. You must believe that everyone is immortal and can never die. There is no death, the son of God is free. EXPRESS THIS. Treat everyone like they are permanently alive, and recognize in this light that anything ELSE to the contrary must be a ridiculous lie. By affirming ONLY LIFE, you are the resurrection and the life, and you now SUPPORT AND HEAL your brother of HIS self-inflicted suffering.

By NOT SUPPORTING your brother's delusions about being sick or dead, or unhappy or depressed, or suffering or victimized, you WEAKEN his belief that these things are true of him and REMIND HIM of what is true. Your remembering IS HIS.

"Do not allow your brother not to remember (that he is immortal innocent spirit), for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."

Use true denial OF denial, to reject what is not true, and assert what is true. The world, the body, sickness, suffering, death, MUST all be denied. Even the notion that any of these things EXISTS must be denied. There literally IS no real death or sickness. There is no real sin or guilt. This whole world is a LIE. It is the denial of truth. It is utterly FALSE!

You must not believe its ASSERTIONS that sickness, malfunction, damage, attack, vulnerability, corrosion, decay, or any other kind of imperfection exists. They were illusions made to blind you and keep you in hell.

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

REJECT THE WORLD. DENY IT ANY TRUTH. REJECT DEATH. CHOOSE LIFE. ASSERT RESURRECTION. HEAL YOUR BROTHER. REMIND HIM OF HIS IMMORTALITY.

In ACIM we're told about "the real world" and many people have different ideas about what that's referring to. Here's my take on it. It took me quite a long time to realize this.

Contrary to popular belief, the real world is actually another name for Heaven. God's creation. Reality. This is why Jesus correctly uses the word "Real" in relation to it. It is the Heaven that God created, which also is another name for the Sonship. It is described for example in this quote:

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever."

The shining forever only takes place in Heaven. It's not a temporary shining or an intermediary place. There is no Earth there, no bodies, no walls, and no sun to cause "night and day." No buildings, no streets, nothing physical. It's talking about Heaven.

Now, in some OTHER statements Jesus makes, he is speaking in a context of having perception still. And when He is speaking within this context, He refers to "the real world". But is now referring to the real world, Heaven, from a perceptual standpoint. So now what he's calling the real world, is the PERCEPTION OF the real world. It's a symbol, within a dream. An interpretation or judgement, a partial glimpse or reflection of Heaven within the separated state. He refers to that "image" of the real world AS the real world, because you are PERCEIVING the real world - heaven - but this is not the same thing as being IN Heaven.

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made."

"The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."

Jesus says for example that you can PERCEIVE the real world, which means that you can be still OUTSIDE of the Kingdom, looking in from a separated state - because "perception is a separated state". It's like window shopping.

"To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself."

"The forgiven world", is actually a reference to Earth/this universe which is seen through, past, and beyond, as a thin veil which covers the face of Christ. The "face of Christ" is another synonym for the PERCEPTION OF the real world of heaven - sort of an outside exterior look at the surface of Heaven from a separated state. The forgiven world is Earth, the real world is Heaven. And "the real world" (perceived) is what you see BEYOND "the forgiven world" (earth) when you overlook it with forgiveness but are still having perception. And "those who perceive still need healing" and "perception of the truth (perception of the real world) is not the same as knowing it (being IN IT, one with it)".

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world (perception of heaven), reaching quietly and gently across chaos (earth/hell/forgiven world), and removing ALL illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf (part of the forgiven world, NOT the real world) becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection (signs are symbolic, not the ACTUAL thing - the perfection seen is the real world BEYOND the forgiven world of the leaf). From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there, in peace."

Similarly "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" really means that you look at/through/beyond the forgiven world of Earth, it becomes transparent, and you see BEYOND IT, to the real world, and it is the real world that is GOD... that you SEE BEYOND the physical, beyond forms, and seems to be "in" what you physically see, because you're seeing both the physical AND the real world at the same time. This does not in any way make the forgiven world REAL, NOR does it associate it with God. God is IN what you see because he is BEYOND the forgiven world that forgiveness is OVERLOOKING and seeing PAST, TO reality. And when you forgive the world and see God "in" it, the world disappears and reveals there is ONLY GOD, no world.

"Every illusion brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked, and disappears."

"A forgiven world cannot last."

Once the face of christ is seen, ie real world is perceived, the forgiven world - the veil - actually disappears from sight completely, because "it is impossible to see two worlds."

"This world you see (earth/forgiven world) MUST BE DENIED (not put on a pedestal!!!), for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS (there ARE TWO WORLDS, heaven and earth, and Heaven is HERE, Earth IS NOT HERE). For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER." - its like a seesaw, you can be up or down but not both. As true perception dawns, false perception ends. As heaven is recognized, earth is forgotten.

"For what appears to hide the Face of Christ (earth/forgiven world) is powerless before His Majesty, and **disappears** before His holy sight." (thus earth can't be holy)

"Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows MUST give way to light." (body is made of darkness - "the body is a dream" "the body is the IDEA OF SIN made flesh and projected outwards.")

Here for me is the key distinction between these "four" different worlds/terminologies:

Unforgiven world" Earth/this world, not overlooked, it is an illusion, and IF YOU BELIEVE IT IS REAL, you are delusional and insane and are blinded by perception of form. You are not seeing PAST form so are no forgiving. This makes the world seem like a real place, a real nightmare of hell. Where "things happen", people suffer, and there is real death. THIS is "the world you made." It has nothing to do with God, and the Holy Spirit DOES NOT see it because His forgiveness COMPLETELY overlooks it and fixates on the real world.

Forgiven world: Earth/this world, overlooked with forgiveness, seen through, recognized WITH truth of true perception as BEING FALSE, becomes transparent and disappears when the face of christ/real world is seen. True perception overlooks it. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." Teachers of God (not advanced) still see it overlaid on top of the perception of the real world as a thin veil and so can operate "in" the forgiven world/earth from a state of "mostly awake" or "Awareness of dreaming is the function of God's teachers". This awareness is NOT awakening. It is "conscious sleep", because dreams are still being DREAMED.

Real world (as perception of heaven from outside): Also is the same thing as the face of christ, and "the real world still is but a dream". This perception OF the real world isn't reality, it's a reflection of Heaven within the dreaming state. It seems heaven-like and "holy" but it is still an illusion. Perceiving this FULLYy you NO LONGER SEE planet Earth and cannot remain in this state longer than an instant before God scoopes you up and you return to awareness of BEING IN Heaven.

Real world (as Heaven itself): Being IN heaven, with no perception, no forgiven world, no bodies, no buildings etc. This is the living world of light. God's creation. The sonship. Reality. The REAL world that is not earth in any way.

"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike (no perception IN the real world of heaven). Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done (includes atonement). And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God (all physical forms/worlds). God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant (perception of real world has made it impossible to see physical worlds), and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause (forgiven world disappears in this perception of light). For where God's memory has come at last (in heaven) there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies (no f'ing bodies in heaven!), and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

Here for example is a reference to how Heaven, the REAL real world, can reach into THIS world - the forgiven world.

"This aching world (Earth/physical/unforgiven world/hell/even as the forgiven world) has not the power to touch the living world (real world of Heaven) at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world (Heaven IS ANOTHER WORLD - the REAL world). But the REAL world (heaven) HAS the power to touch you even here (outside the Kingdom, in this illusory world), BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT (heaven). And what you call with love WILL come to you (from Heaven). Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made (earth/unforgiven world), and do not want (earth holds nothing that I want). The only effort you need make, to give this world (earth) away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (God created Heaven not earth), is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE. (Earth, un/forgiven world, is FALSE!)."

"The world you made (earth etc) is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself (heaven)."

God created the real world of heaven: "The real world (heaven, perceived) is the way that leads you to remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true and WHOLLY YOURS. For all else you have LENT yourself in time, and it WILL fade (earth will disappear). But this one thing is ALWAYS yours, being the gift of God unto His Son ("And God so loved the world (heaven) that he gave it TO His only begotten Son - God doesn't give planets."). Your ONE reality (heaven) was GIVEN you, and BY it, God created you as one with Him. (in heaven)"

Now, the Holy Spirit is a simultaneous MAKER (not creator) of the world you made. You made hell, but he repurposes it to direct you towards Heaven, and to change your perception of/making of it so that you stop interpreting it as hell and reinterpret it as a REFLECTION of Heaven, once removed from Heaven. HE, therefore, made "the real world" as in, the PERCEPTION OF the world GOD CREATED, Heaven, from inside the dream. And this real world is the face of christ. It is NOT EARTH. He ignores, overlooks, cancels, everything of the forgiven world and points beyond it.

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God; NOT as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it (heaven), but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error. There IS another purpose in the world that error made (you made earth in error/sin), BECAUSE it has another Maker Who CAN reconcile its **goal** with His Creator's purpose.

In His perception of the world (forgiven world, totally overlooked), nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness (and "to see a sinless body is impossible" because perception does NOT SEE bodies). Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it."

You can only perceive bodies if you believe in sin. You can only see bodies if you are Unforgiving. You can only see bodies/the forgiven world if you are NOT fully forgiving! Because a forgiven world cannot last and sinlessness is not OF the forgiven world, it's of the real world. Holy Spirit totally overlooks Earth and bodies and the forgiven world and fixates on the real world, temporarily through perception OF the real world and simultaneously IN the real world (heaven).

The Holy Spirit offers a happy dream to replace the nightmare dream that you made. It does not replace the world you made, it reinterprets it, OVERLOOKS it, and looks toward Heaven. The world you made as opposite to Heaven is hell, this planet, this universe. Spacetime. It is opposite to Heaven in every way. Holy Spirit allows you to forgive it and overlook it and forget it. This does not mean looking AT IT and LOVING IT. IT means learning TO SEE, by NOT SEEING THE WORLD - not allowing "perception of form" to BLOCK YOUR SIGHT. To look away from dark dreams of hell towards the light and eventually beyond it entirely. The real world is BEYOND the forgiven world. Christ Vision is like x-ray vision.

"You will first DREAM of peace (forgiven world/perception of real world), and THEN awaken to it (in Heaven/THE real world). Your first exchange of what you made for what you want, is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love (false perception vs true perception). In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams (earth + symbol of real world) where ALL perception is."

"And the real world is but your welcome of what always was (perception of heaven gets you ready to wake up TO heaven). Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening (being IN heaven) to what you have NOT lost. "

"The world you made" and "The world you see" are this planet and the surrounding environment. All of spacetime. You are not supposed to hold it dear or value it or want to keep it. *****SIGHT OF IT, IS COSTING YOU*****. "This world you see (earth, with body's eyes) MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. ****YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS****. (very key mechanic, one or the other not both) For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER." - you cannot see earth if you see heaven, period. You cannot see even the perception of the real world/face of christ and still see physical objects.

"You do not really want **the world you see** (earth + space), for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built (yes physical houses) have never sheltered you. The roads you made (yes physical roads) have led you nowhere, and no city that you built (yes like chicago, new york, london) has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of ***death*** upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it." (get rid of that shit!)

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

True perception, perception of the real world (heaven), the face of christ, the happy dream, are all the same. Perception is always within the dream, OF the dream, or as an interpretation of heaven. It can reflect heaven or rather you can shine heaven's light into the dream from heaven and illuminate it and shine it away or overlook it, and see YOUR reflection of your IMAGE of your real self there. Once removed from reality.

"Knowledge is power BECAUSE it is certain, and certainty is strength. Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love. Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge. True perception is the BASIS for knowledge, but KNOWING is the affirmation of truth."

Knowing occurs only IN heaven, not through perception.

Notice also there is a huge difference between the REFLECTION of heaven, and ACTUALLY BEING IN heaven.

"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them (YOU are the reflection), are ready at last for Heaven. There, ***holiness is not a reflection***, but rather the ***ACTUAL CONDITION*** of what was but reflected TO them here (on earth, BUT IN YOU, Earth does not become holy). God is no **image** (reflection are IMAGES in a dream), and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely REFLECT the truth, for THEY ARE truth (ACTUAL holiness). When **no perception** stands between God and His Creation, or between His Children and their own (perception is gone), the knowledge of creation MUST continue forever. The **reflections** that you accept into the mirror of your minds in time (within the dream of spacetime), but bring eternity nearer or farther.

But eternity ITSELF is beyond ALL time (beyond spacetime!) Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its ***reflection IN you***, and you will turn FROM time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven. For the REFLECTION of truth draws everyone TO truth. And as they enter INTO it, they leave ALL reflections behind. In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected. By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of His Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality."

PERCEIVING the real world (heaven) is seeing the "face" or "surface of" Christ from the outside. Outside the kingdom essentially. "The world", aka Earth etc, is a block - a literal physical blockage - a wall of sin - the veil - standing before and in the way of sight of heaven. Jesus refers to it as "the granite block of sin" which the body's eyes are totally blinded by and cannot see past. PHYSICAL sin.

"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 (earth) forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

So as stated in you cannot see two worlds, once you FULLY perceive with true perception, you become INCAPABLE of seeing the world of bodies. The veil - which houses all the bodies and planets - DISAPPEARS, and now you PERCEIVE Heaven only. This is perception of the real world. What many people think "is the real world". But this reference, this perceived IMAGE of a real world, is a dream. ie "The real world still is but a dream"

The world of bodies, planets, animals, forests, civilizations, galaxies, is a dream world. It becomes the forgiven world. HELL, becomes forgiven. And this "forgiven world" WAS made of the idea of sin and separation and death. And by forgiving it, you are OVERLOOKING it, which causes it to DISAPPEAR. If you forgive hell, it will disappear. If you overlook sin, things MADE OF SIN, will disappear. If you overlook the separation, THE GAP, which contains spacetime, will disappear. And leave no trace in its going.

"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 (earth is made of sin), for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world (spacetime world) in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. (spacetime ends) Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible (bodies cannot exist in heaven, they rely on spacetime). Forgiveness proves it is impossible (no exceptions) because it sees it not (forgiveness, complete as the atonement, DOES NOT SEE THE WORLD OF BODIES). And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty. This is the shift that true perception brings"

Once the world is forgiven by all beings/souls, the forgiven world will entirely vanish. It is made of darkness. It is the ABSENCE of light. It is the idea of death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." It is opposition to reality. It is denial. It is made of the attempt to claim that light does not exist and darkness exists. When the light comes, light shines away darkness because darkness is not a real "thing". It's merely the illusion of the absence of light/love/God, and being an illusion it vanishes when it is recognized as such. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The body cannot stay without illusions."

"They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight, and happy in the body's darkness, where they can hide, and keep their secrets hidden, along with them."

"And the seeming reality of the darkness makes the idea of light meaningless."

"No darkness abides ANYWHERE in the Kingdom, so your part is only to allow no darkness to abide in your OWN mind." (yes, your OWN mind, as an individual mind, one of many)

"Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it does shine it away."

"The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes." (body's eyes cannot see reality ever, and it also cannot perceive the real world!)

"The body is darkness."

The universe, as we know it, the physical, with Earth and other stuff, will disappear in the light. Earth does not translate INTO light, because it an ILLUSION of light's absence. It does not BECOME heaven. Earth is the ILLUSION, that there is an absence of heaven. It's a lack of light, which is impossible. "It is the world you see that is impossible." It's NOT THERE NOW. It's just an illusion, not a real thing. IT doesn't have an "it". When there seems to be darkness it is only because there seems to be a lack of light. There is a huge difference between light's seeming absence, and ACTUAL real darkness. Real darkness does not exist. The world, does not exist. It will simply vanish as an hallucination. There is no world. There is no body. There is no earth in heaven.

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

THERE WILL NOT BE A SINGLE SHRED OF EARTH KEPT WHEN IT IS SHONE AWAY BY THE LIGHT, just as all darkness VANISHES COMPLETELY when you switch the light on. "Illusions leave NO TRACE in their going."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it (because to SEE it you will NO LONGER see earth). For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."

And yes it does say literally, the SUN.... will vanish.

And then... there's being IN heaven.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made (earth) 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 (earth does this) 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."

Yes the physical planet earth, hell, is opposite to Heaven in EVERY WAY. And God would've have to have been SPLIT MINDED In order to make it because he DID create Heaven and heaven is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to Earth's nature and laws. "The laws of this world go against your nature." So he could not have created Earth AS WELL as Heaven. And earth IS NOT Heaven, it's a "sorry outcome".

"He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find. " (you think you abide in, live, in reality, on planet earth. It is not reality, it is hell)

You can go beyond this world to the world of light, Heaven, which God created as your true home. Your REAL HOME. The REAL world.

"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. (talking about PERCEPTION of the real world/forgiven world).

You cannot fail today. 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." (into heaven).

"This loveliness is NOT a fantasy (perception OF the real world from outside). It is the real world, bright, and clean, and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has BEEN forgiven, and there ARE no fantasies to hide the truth. (forgiven world has disappeared). The bridge between that world (perception of the real world) and this (Jesus talking from INSIDE OF HEAVEN - the REAL world) is SO little, and SO easy to cross, that you could not believe it is the meeting-place of worlds so different (yes, two entirely different worlds, earth and heaven). Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world (earth/forgiven world/perception OF real world) at all (from beyond it). This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time (spacetime) into eternity (heaven), and beyond all ugliness (YES EVERYTHING IN SPACETIME IS UGLY - the forgiven world is ugly), into beauty that will enchant you (the beauty of HEAVEN ITSELF), and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection."

I took a deep dive into every single statement about "the real world", to find out all possible implication of what it IS and IS NOT referring to.

It is clear to me that what Jesus calls "the real world" IS "the borderland of thought" in between the world we MADE in false perception, and the reality of Heaven. The real world is a REFLECTION of heaven, seen in forgiveness through the eyes of Christ. It includes your ability to see WITH love, looking with forgiveness upon/past the world you made, so that the world you made in attack is seen in the holy instant present as the forgiven world.

The real world also clearly comes BEFORE your re-entry to heaven, and this is backed up in numerous statements. It is entirely within the realm of perception and consciousness, as the highest state of consciousness possible prior to awakening to knowledge. It is still a DREAM but it is a happy dream, a forgiving dream, in which there is no idol worship or illusion or fantasy. And Jesus does distinguish that it has "reality" to the extent that it shares or reflects the reality of heaven.

The real world was also given by God to REPLACE the world you made. In essence, you MADE hell, which is an illusory world of sin and death. Then the Holy Spirit answered this in the co-making of the real world, which is like an alternative dream. A dream of forgiveness and light and love. It REFLECTS heaven, but is not heaven. It is true perception, salvation, atonement, the miracle, right mindedness, and is GIVEN by God. God GAVE you this real world to replace the one you made, made by the Holy Spirit.

God loves the real world, because it is seen WITH love, and seeing the world you made WITH love makes it impossible to see the world of sin and death. Forgiveness overlooks bodies and looks beyond to the light of the real world, the face of Christ. BY loving the world, the UNREAL world is not seen, because love influences perception. And by projecting love, the HOly Spirit projects the real world for you to see, IN PLACE OF the unforgiven world.

What I found also are many statements clearly discerning that the term ILLUSION refers to an UNFORGIVEN world only, to false perception. The world we originally tried to make without God/Holy Spirit. The world of sin and death and sickness. The world of bodies and forms and planets. That is the world WE made, through unforgiveness, and through attack and guilt and sin and fear.

Jesus refers to THAT world as "an illusory world" and quite consistently, all references to ILLUSION appear to refer ONLY to that world, not the forgiven/real world. Because IN the "real world" state you reflect truth and DISPEL all illusions, RECOGNIZING what is there. This is why true perception is ACCURATE perception.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." thus refers to the false perceptual world of bodies, UNFORGIVEN, unreal, untrue, in which the truth is obscured and lies seem like truth. A world seen without any reason or sanity or light. A world of deception. When you approach true perception, ILLUSIONS are seen through and undone and removed, and so true perception does not see an ILLUSORY world, it sees "the real world". The world as it is WITHOUT the distortion of illusion, and free from the ego's shadow. It's kind of like the world with minimal ego.

The real world, or the sense of it "having reality", doesn't mean it IS reality as in Heaven, but it does mean it is "as is", founded on love, and is not MIS-perceived. True perception is accurate perception and LINES UP WITH what knowledge or direct sight would see. It is truthful.

I also saw references indicating that THE VEIL, which is a reference to the physical world hanging in front of the face of Christ (whereby the face of christ is another synonym for the real world/true perception), refers ONLY to the unforgiven world. The veil entails the world of bodies, the granite block of sin, the forms of error, the gap, etc.

This veil is SEEN THROUGH AND PAST to see the real world/face of Christ. Also when you see the real world you DO NOT SEE the unforgiven world of sin and bodies. It is forgotten. And in its TOTAL forgetting you ONLY see the real world. And as Jesus says, you will barely have time to thank God for this before he takes you home. The veil of illusions parts, the real world is seen, then you go to heaven.

There are numerous references to you FIRST arriving at the real world, the borderland of thought between the world of sin that you made, and actual Heaven which is God's Kingdom, and THEN God taking the last step to take you home. Out of time, into eternity. Out of bodies, into the light of eternal life. There is a clear distinction between Heaven and the real world, whereby the real world is at most Heaven's REFLECTION, and is seen through the eyes of Christ. And also interestingly, we are to recognize Christ FIRST, before we move onto the love of God.

So the "real world" is a state of light and awareness and wakefulness, WHILE still dreaming. It is a DREAM OF being awake. And in this sense as you approach the real world you DO seem to be waking up, becoming more aware. And at the real world you are practically fully awake, but slightly asleep still. Only moving on from the real world INTO heaven do you fully awaken. But prior to this you can be exceedingly wakeful while still in a body.

The real world, being a reflection of heaven, also is a state that reflects sharing. Holy relationships reflect real relationships. There is equality and a kind of oneness. There is a lack of separations and divisions. A kind of unity is seen spread across chaos. And what used to be a world of sin and death is reinterpreted in such a way that a hidden song of gratitude and light is seen and heard radiating from it. Sights of war and death are reinterpreted, through perception, as harmless and gentle and welcome. And the healed peaceful mind projects peace and love and sees only peace and love in it.

Note that seeing from love, you look toward love, which is a light BEYOND BODIES. The illusory world, the veil, is seen through, and overlooked, by forgiveness, through extension, which is christ vision. The world is seen as "forgiven" because it is recognizes as an illusion and is not seen as real sin. It is seen PAST. And this overlooking makes the illusory world seem holy and forgiven. But simultaneously sight (spiritual eye) reaches beyond the illusory world TO the light of the real world. Eventually it sees ONLY this light, as the veil disappears, fully revealing the face of Christ.

After this, the real world DOES END, because it IS a dream, except for the eternal love that was reflected in it through thoughts of love, which are saved as gifts. Because the real world IS still a dream and it vanishes as true perception is converted into knowledge. Being FULLY in the real world is like being on the OUTSKIRTS of the world, standing on the edge, not involved, not confused, not caught up in the world. Being passer by. Seeing from love and truth. Illusions recognized and dispelled. In a state of mind outside of separateness and form. Awareness of dreaming. A borderland of thought just shy of heaven and outside of heaven's gate.

I have a lot of quotes, but here's a handful of the clearer snippets that I highlighted along the way...

"Only this is the real world, and perceiving ONLY this will lead you to the real Heaven"

"The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you, out of what you have made"

"your new and ONLY real perception"

"For as Heaven and earth become one, even the real world will vanish from your sight."

"In the real world, there is no sickness, for there is no separation and no division."

"For you share the real world as you share Heaven"

"When you perceive yourself without deceit, you will accept the real world in place of the false one you have made. And then your Father will lean down to you, and take the last step for you, by raising you unto Himself."

"If only the loving thoughts of God’s Son ARE the world’s reality, the real world MUST be IN HIS MIND"

"God DOES love the real world, and those who perceive its reality CANNOT see the world of death."

"For death is not OF the real world, in which everything is eternal." (eternal means something a bit different than "will be there forever", because the real world does end).

"God gave you the real world in exchange for the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."

"relinquish your investment in the world as YOU have projected it, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world TO you"

"Make the world real (loving, innocent etc) unto YOURSELF, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit"

"In His sight, the Son of God is perfect" "He will SHOW you the real world"

"The awakening of His Son begins with his investment in the REAL world"

"And then the real world will spring to your sight, for Christ has never slept. He is waiting to be seen" "He looks quietly on the real world, which He would SHARE with you"

"we will look upon the world as God "created" it together. Through the eyes of Christ, ONLY the real world exists, and can BE seen"

"The real world was given you by God, in loving exchange for the world YOU made, and which you SEE. But take it from the hand of Christ, and look upon it. ITS reality will make everything ELSE invisible, for beholding it is TOTAL perception"

"And perception has never been. Being corrected, it gives place to knowledge, which is forever the ONLY reality."

"as His from Love. And He sees FOR you, as your witness to the real world. "

"Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real world FOR you when you wake" (sleep means false perception, waking is true perception, but is not the FINAL awakening FROM sleep)

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever."

"YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other.

"The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance"

"You will first DREAM of peace (the real world), and THEN awaken to it (heaven)."

"This loveliness is NOT a fantasy. It is the real world, bright, and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has BEEN forgiven, and there ARE no fantasies to hide the truth. The bridge between that world and this is SO little and SO easy to cross that you could not believe it is the meeting-place of worlds so different. Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world at all. This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, and beyond all ugliness, into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection."

"The real world, in its loveliness, YOU learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone"

"by YOUR OWN forgiveness, you are FREE TO SEE. And WHAT you see is only what YOU HAVE MADE, with the blessing of your forgiveness on it."

"the REAL perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose."

"The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."

"The real world is attained simply by the COMPLETE forgiveness of the old; the world you see WITHOUT forgiveness"

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the T(634) - 461 - past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God’s perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home (heaven). "

"For salvation IS the end of dreams, and, with the closing of the dream, will have no meaning. Who, awake in Heaven, COULD dream that there could ever be NEED of salvation? "

"The spark of beauty, or the veil of ugliness (the veil is the unreal world seen in false perception only!); the real world, or the world of guilt and fear; truth or illusion; freedom or slavery"

"The holy relationship, a MAJOR step toward the perception of the real world, is LEARNED. It is the old, unholy relationship, transformed and seen anew."

"In your relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world; the world of happy dreams, from which awaking is so easy and so natural."

"The dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this dream comes from your will, JOINED with the Will of God."

"This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here, the world OUTSIDE is seen anew, WITHOUT the shadow of guilt upon it."

"There is a borderland of thought that stands between this world and Heaven. It is not a place, and WHEN you reach it is APART from time. Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought TOGETHER; where conflicting values MEET, and ALL illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven. Here is every thought made pure and wholly simple. Here is sin denied, and everything that IS, received instead.

This is the journey’s end. We have referred to it as the "real world.""

"Salvation IS a borderland"

"Salvation (real world/forgiven world) stops just short of Heaven, for only perception NEEDS salvation. Heaven was never lost, and so can not be saved. "

"The real world is the second part of the hallucination time and death are real, and have existence which can be perceived. This terrible illusion was denied in but the time it took for God to give His Answer to illusion"

"The real world still is but a dream. Except the figures have been changed. They are not seen as idols which betray (idols are part of false perception)"

"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."

"The real world is the state of mind in which the ONLY purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. "

"No-one outside of Heaven knows how this can be. For understanding this is Heaven itself. Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity. But fear is gone, because its purpose is forgiveness, NOT idolatry."

"The real world is a state in which the mind has learned how easily do idols go when they are still perceived, but wanted not."

"Thus is the real world’s purpose gently brought into awareness, to REPLACE the goal of sin and guilt. "

"Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror"

"This understanding is the ONLY change that lets the real world rise to take the place of dreams of terror."

"The real world is achieved when you perceive the basis of FORGIVENESS is quite real and fully justified."

"As the world I see arises from my thinking errors, so will the real world rise before my eyes as I let my errors be corrected. "

"Today the real world rises before us in gladness, to be seen at last. Sight is given us, now that the light has come. We do not see the ego's shadow on the world today. We see the light, and in it we see Heaven's reflection lie across the world."

"and the sight of the real world which has come to replace the unforgiven world you thought was real."

"Healing might thus be called a counter-dream which cancels out the dream of sickness in the name of truth"

"Just as forgiveness shines away all sin, and the real world will occupy the place of what you made, so healing must replace the fantasies of sickness which you hold before the simple truth. When sickness has been seen to disappear in spite of all the laws which hold it cannot but be real, then questions have been answered."

"Christ's vision pictures Heaven, for it sees a world so like to Heaven that what God created perfect can be mirrored there. The darkened glass the world presents can show but twisted images in broken parts. The real world pictures Heaven's innocence."

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made. Your world is seen through eyes of fear (world you made without hs, false perception), and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind. The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes forgiveness blesses, so they see a world where terror is impossible, and witnesses to fear can not be found."

"The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world"

"The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. "

"There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing here remains outside forgiveness. And the sights are gentle. Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself."

"The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God's Son no longer sleeps. His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father's Love; the certain promise that he is redeemed. The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless."

"hymns of gratitude the world is singing underneath the sounds of fear. There is a real world which the present holds safe from all past mistakes. "

"How surely, therefore, must the real world come to greet the holy sight of anyone who takes the Holy Spirit's purpose as his goal for seeing. And he cannot fail to look upon what Christ would have him see, and share Christ's love for what he looks upon."

"There is no point at which the contrast between the perception of the real world and that of the world of illusions becomes more sharply evident."

"RIGHT-MINDEDNESS listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place. This is the final vision, the last perception, the condition in which God takes the final step Himself. "

"Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened. Therefore it is not the ONE-MINDEDNESS of the Christ Mind"

"Consciousness has levels and awareness can shift quite dramatically, but it cannot transcend the perceptual realm. At its highest it becomes aware of the real world, and can be trained to do so increasingly. "

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."

"THE FACE OF CHRIST has to be seen before the memory of God can return. The reason is obvious. Seeing the Face of Christ is perception"

"But the Face of Christ is[5] the great symbol of forgiveness. It is salvation. It is the symbol of the real world."

"Whoever looks on this no longer sees the world. He is as near to Heaven as is possible outside the gate. Yet from this gate it is no more than just a step inside. It is the final step. And this we leave to God. "