""I am forever an Effect of God."

"Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its home. I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide, and all Your attributes abide in me, because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable. Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You."

You are at the effect of absolutely nothing, except that you are forever an effect solely of God. Being an effect of God means God is the cause of everything you are. He decides what you are, He defines you, He creates you, He sustains you, and His will is constant and permanent and good.

Being an effect of God, however, doesn't mean you are ONLY an effect. Because you are so like God that you must inherit every attribute of Him. This includes the ability to CAUSE, and therefore to create. By God creating you, He has created you to BE A CREATOR. To be causal. And so you inherited His Power and can use it to create. You have done this, creating your own creations, co-created with Him and with everyone else.

It can be very powerful to focus on this. Contemplate the various ways in which you are in relationship to God. Ask yourself, if God is the cause of me, what does that mean? What does it imply? If it is true, and if nothing else is true, what does that mean? This can be very useful in clarifying your relationship with God, and the truth about you. Because only what God established as true about you can be truly true.

You are caused by God.

You have no say in what you are.

You cannot change yourself.

You are perfect because God is perfect.

You are holy and loving because God is holy and loving.

You cannot die because God cannot die.

You are sustained by God at all times.

You are permanent because God is permanently willing you.

You are welcomed and wanted by God, as what God wants.

You are exactly what God wanted you to be.

You have all power because you inherit all power from Him.

You can create like and with Him as a co-creator.

You only have what came from God.

You have nothing that God did not give you.

You have everything real because God shared it with you.

You are defined solely by His will and causation.

You can be affected by nothing but God.

You are eternal and immortal because He is.

You are constantly happy because He makes you happy.

You are a reflection of His love and nature.

You are so like Him that you share everything with Him.

You are never alone because God is in you.

You cannot be attacked because God is the only power.

You are forever safe from harm because God is harmless.

You cannot change what you are even if you try to.

Your salvation and safety are guaranteed.

Your inheritance is permanently given you.

You are what God has given and you give thanks for this.

You know God because He created you by knowing you.

You cannot be separate from Him.

You cannot be abandoned or rejected by Him.

You have freedom because He insists you be free.

You are immortal because He eternally broadcasts you.

You are forever maintained by Him in perfect condition.

Your health is guaranteed because He gives it to you.

You can never be sick or suffer because He can't.

You can't make yourself sin or be guilty.

You can never lose the innocence that He created you as.

You don't have to do anything to earn His love.

You can never sin because He makes it impossible.

You cannot transform yourself into and evil monster.

You have never changed yourself from His divine design.

You must be still totally as He created you.

You cannot be affected because of His permanence.

You are in constant joy because He created you with love.

You can never be alone because He created your brothers.

You will always be friended because He created Holy Spirit.

You will always be protected by His angels.

You can never die because He wills you live forever.

You can create worlds because He gave you that ability.

You are permanently miraculous and you are His miracle.

You are unlimited because He placed no limits on you.

You have constant peace because He keeps you safe.

You are loved forever by His Will.

You are strong because your strength is His strength.

You can see because He shines a light for you to see in.

You are beautiful because He creates you beautiful.

You share everything with everyone He creates.

You are harmless because He does not will you harm.

You can never be lost to Him, He knows where you are.

You are forever encompassed by His heavenly being.

You can never be distant from Him because He is in you.

You are all powerful because He shares His power with you.

You are real because He added you to His reality.

Your identity is defined by Him alone.

You are his Son/Daughter/Child because He created you.

You have nothing real that He did not create.

You have no faults or flaws because He created you perfect.

You lack nothing because He gave you everything.

You have no needs because He supplies all your needs.

You cannot be a body because He is not a body.

You are like God in every way because you are part of Him.

You are God's investment and you have His inheritance.

You are blessed because God has blessed you.

You are a priceless part of God's Kingdom.

You can never change or be changed or change yourself.

You are already divinely perfect and complete in every way.

You have nothing wrong with you and everything is right.

You are pure, clean and new because He creates you new.

You are immaculate and impeccable and magnificent.

You are a shining star in the heavenly Mind of God.

You are what comes from Him alone.

You can only be what he wants you to be.

You do not want to be anything other than He wills.

You have free will because divine creation is freely given.

You are free to be what God intended you to be.

You were not created capable of sin or attack.

You have never sinned or attacked or been attacked.

You cannot oppose His Will because you are His will.

You can only accept and be glad that you are as He desires.

You are forever God's effect and share His causality.

You can do what God can do.

You will always be a child of God, and not his sibling.

You are authored by God and you share His authority.

You are in awe of God because He spans your brothers.

You are a made of light because He is made of light.

You will always be loved by God and God loves you now.

"To all who share the love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that it is theirs forever."

On the surface, it seems that fighting against something is a noble attempt to bring about change.

But what's really happening is that the ego has split the mind in two, one part is now opposed to the other part, and the two parts are at war with each other.

That means one part is positioning itself as this righteous savior or hero or protestor or fixer or helper who has come to "correct" the wrongs done by the other part. And the other part has been positioned as the evil enemy who must be overthrown and stopped.

The part which acts as the savior of the world appears on the surface to be doing everything to care about what is right, to fight for rights, to uphold some kind of ideal, BUT.... and this is a big but.... that role DEPENDS entirely on KEEPING the enemy separate, attacking them, stopping them, disallowing them, rejecting them and therefore maintaining their position of power.

It is ineffective and inefficient to protest in this way. And it is dishonest.

Your mind when whole is powerful enough to directly dissolve all concepts of enemies and wars and opposition. It undoes all illusions of separation. It simply would extend and create peace and love. It wouldn't be engaged in this INDIRECT attempt at getting the opposition to change, which really is a belief that you do not have the power to change things directly.

Indirect confrontation always shows up AS IF it is direct confrontation. It always shows an illusion of people marching and signs being held and things being shouted. It always involves a lot of offense and defense and people being offended and outraged. It's a good show, by the ego.

But it doesn't really work very well because it's a state of war, which is the ego's attempt to prolong separation. The mind can only be acting against itself with a split will, fighting with itself, making an enemy of itself, and therefore struggling to make any headway whatsoever because it keeps working against itself.

Trying to get "someone else" to change when, in truth, that someone else IS YOU, simply means you're are fighting with yourself and not realizing it. One part of you is willing one thing and another part of you is willing another. You think you have no way to influence the other, so you make a big stinking war against them to try to convince them or defeat them. But they are you, their will is your own, and it's really YOU fighting with your own will. This is what happens in a split mind. Anyone with an ego does this. To realize this and to become singular and whole in your will will show you that there IS no enemy and there IS no opposing will and therefore there IS nothing to stop you bringing about peace and love.

Enemies are not outside you. You are making an enemy of your own self, inside you. You are fighting against your own will. You are split in your interests and have conflicting simultaneous goals. You are the one who has offended you, and it is you that you are outraged against. It is you that you are trying to stop. And that's really going to ramp up the frustration and anger, which is highly ineffective and weak.

Those who thus protest seem to be those who are making the most effort to bring about a "positive change", but secretly, their egos are actually the ones who are attempting to make the LEAST amount of change by seeing themselves as disempowered, making disempowerment real, using separation to attack opponents and keep them separate, using hate as a weapon against hate, and basically this just leads to a stalemate, or in extreme cases, violence.

All attack is self-attack. All protests are against yourself. All opposition is within your own mind. When your mind is made whole and is undivided against itself, it will admit that it was its own self that it was fighting with. It will realize how FUTILE it is to be split against yourself, trying to bring about one thing while another part is bringing about something else. When your will becomes ONE, singular, and whole, you then are much more POWERFUL because now you have no opposition at all. You are not canceling out your own efforts, and you do not see enemies. And thus are all your problems solved and there can be peace.

YOU are the cause of everything you think your enemies are doing to you, and you WANT them to keep doing it to you, and your attempt to portray yourself as believing otherwise is a stay of pure DENIAL.

You can decide only this:

a) I am caused by God.

b) I am caused by the world.

When believing you are at the effect of the world, upset by someone, hurt by something, vulnerable in some way, offended, attacked, damaged, sick, etc.... you are believing that you are CAUSED BY the world, and thus that the world is your creator. It means you have forgotten that you are ONLY the result of God creating.

Anything true of you, anything about your nature, your condition, what you are, who you are, is entirely OUT OF YOUR HANDS. Who and what you are is purely God's decision and you have absolutely no power to change that. You can however deny that you are as God created you and pretend to be something else, but to do that you HAVE to make yourself be caused BY something else, hence needing an entire world and false God to be your new daddy.

Essentially, by rejecting God as your father and source of your inheritance, you are forced to see yourself as a victim of the world. You can't be denying God's fatherhood and expect to "get away with it" by being in a world but not attacked by the world. Either God will cause you, or the world will cause you. The only choice you have is which thought system you want to be caused by or a part of.

To know yourself is to recognize and remember that you are ONLY what God created, you a AS God created you, you have NO desire to make anything else of yourself, you cannot and have not changed, and you are STILL the perfect divine innocent being that HE chose to create. Accepting your real identity and nature, is accepting God as your father, and therefore accepting the truth about you.

You don't get to be the source of yourself, nor do you get to redefine who and what you are. As soon a you try to do so you deny God and your own self and invent an illusory identity. This is a state of denial, and so your false self is rooted in denial of yourself. It can hardly function in any healthy way when it is constantly attacking itself.

Either you can be in self attack, thus see yourself as caused by the world, or you can be healthy by seeing yourself as caused by God. If you are caused by God, you cannot be sick or dead or unhappy or vulnerable. If you are ONLY as God created you, and are under NO laws but God's, you are not under the laws of the world, nor are you caused BY the world or anything in it.

"Nothing in the world can bring oppression"

"I am not at the effect of the world I see."

"I am not a victim of the world."

"I am under no laws but God's."

"I am still as God created me."

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

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."

The truth is that this world is merely an EFFECT, coming from the mind, and mind is the only cause.

Since the world is only an effect, we are deluded when we believe that it has some kind of causal power. We look at the things that seem to happen and we say, this caused that, and that caused this, but this is not true. Effects are not really causing anything.

To recognize the world is nothing but an EFFECT, is to recognize that its seeming ability to cause things is only an illusion. You as the dreamer of the dream are NOT being caused by the dream. You are cause, the dream is the effect.

This means if the world can't cause anything, it has no power, it can't create, it can't change what you are, it can't act against your will, it can't do anything to you, it can't hurt you, it can't make you sick or suffering or dead.

Effectively, the world IS NOT CAUSING YOU AT ALL. It is literally not doing anything whatsoever.

You are only ever caused by God - forever an effect of God. Gladly what God chooses that you be, is good, and gives you eternal life and happiness. You are caused by God, you are not caused by the world. The world is doing nothing to you at all.

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

"There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically."

"It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did."

"You may cause a dream, but never will you give it real EFFECTS. For that would change its CAUSE, and it is this you CANNOT do."

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream."

"He CANNOT doubt his dreams' reality BECAUSE he does not see the part he plays in MAKING them, and MAKING them seem real. No-one can waken from a dream the world is dreaming FOR him."

At each stage from separation through sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death, there is always some amount of projection of the cause of the problem.

When we believe in separation, i.e. sin, sin actually makes the separation unconscious, and then we are unaware of what caused sin. That which has no cause is considered to be a cause in its own right and not an effect. We will then go searching for the cause somewhere external, other than accepting that we caused it.

So we'll claim, I am sinful because God says I'm sinful, instead of that its because we chose to believe in separation.

Then at the next stage, feeling guilty, we won't just say I'm guilty because I sinned, we'll project the cause of the guilt outward and find an external cause for it. I'm guilty because someone else says so, or because society finds me guilty. Always someone else deciding that the guilt is true. And once again the guilt renders awareness of sin unconscious, so you go looking for reasons that caused the guilt.

This carries on down to fear, whereby even though guilt causes fear, fear makes guilt unconscious, and then you go looking for a projected cause for the fear. You start to claim that you are afraid "because of" all the external things or future things which are making you afraid. But none of these things are the cause of fear, your guilt is.

Then when punishment is happening, instead of admitting that you are punishing yourself, you'll be claiming that you are punished because someone or something else is punishing you. You'll look to all these reasons and causes why you are punished, other than that fear causes punishment.

And on it goes to death. Death is someone else's fault, happens by someone else's hand, is entirely out of your control, is not chosen by you at all etc. Punishment causes death but here you're claiming that death is caused by everything other than yourself.

Projection happens at all levels, because every level is an attempt to disown the level before it, and thus disown responsibility for choosing it. As soon as there is separation there is a cascade of irresponsibility and projection. It doesn't just happen once you get to guilt. It happens at every stage of separation all the way through to death.

These projections, these stories about who or what caused or justified the guilt or sin or fear etc, are defenses protecting the defenses. Guilt defends against sin, and the story that someone else found you guilty or you're guilty because of what you did to someone, is a defense that protects guilt from being undone. These fictions and stories have to be dismantled in order to look squarely at the problem, and then you can dismantle the problem itself.

The story about what caused the fear or the guilt or the sin is a cover-up story. Underneath it is your own belief that you are sinful guilty and afraid. Then these believes also are a cover-up story. Fear defends guilt, guilt defends sin, sin defends separation. Collapse these one at a time and you'll end up at the Atonement.

Jesus tells in ACIM things like:

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"You but condemn your brother of your own sins"

"You never hate your brother for his own sins but for your own"

In fact large sections of the Course really go into detail about how you put your stuff onto others, how you accuse them, how this accuses you, how you feel guiltier for this, and how you need to demonstrate your brother is innocent.

There is a very deep and simple truth in these statements.

Every time you ever believe it's someone else's fault, its your own stuff.

Every time you feel like some reaction in you is caused by someone else or something else, its really just your own stuff coming up inside you.

Every time you think someone has the power to influence you in any way whatsoever, you're mistaken because you can ONLY do stuff to yourself.

Every time you feel guilty that you have the power to do something to someone else, you are mistaken, because you cannot harm anyone.

It all boils down to this profound and life-altering fact:

Absolutely everything you are experiencing or have ever experienced is entirely contained within your SELF.

Its all from yourself, to yourself, about yourself, in yourself, as yourself. That's all.

There is no influence from others, there is no harm from others, no causes coming from others, nobody is capable of yet alone actually doing things to you against your will. Just as you are not capable of doing anything to anyone else.

Everyone is "Self-Contained". You are like a container of pure water (truth), and into that water you've spilled some oil - that you made up yourself - dark black thick oil which obscures the purity a little. So now you're walking around, still self-contained, and what you're attempting to do in an act of "ego" is to try to get rid of that oil by going outside your self containment. You're trying to give away ownership of it, trying to project it, trying to blame it, trying to shovel it onto someone else, trying to relinquish responsibility for it, and and you're trying to make out that every single time you notice the darkness in yourself it's someone else's fault for putting it there.

Nobody else has ever put darkness in you. Nobody else has ever influenced you or affected you or caused you to feel anything. Nothing.

Every single time you have a "re-action"... you're not really having a re-action to something outside your self containment. You are, instead, bringing up the dark oil inside your container and are experiencing it. And because YOU chose to bring that oil to the surface of awareness at the same time as some other person seeming to 'do something', you conveniently are thinking that they caused it. They didn't. Nobody else put that there but you and they are just reminding you that you need to clean yourself up.

Look at your life. Look at how every single time something happens you 're-act' in the belief that this something has 'caused' you to feel this way. It hasn't. You already feel this way. You just keep trying to bury the darkness out of sight so that you can escape from it. You need to learn to take responsibility for it and to transform your experience, internally, within your self containment, so that you can experience something better. You need to learn to catch yourself when you're believing and experiencing that someone or something else has put this upset into you, or caused you to feel unhappy, or pissed you off, or unloved you. Nobody has ANY power to do this. Its all you, because this is all about who you are and what you are.

It's very simple. God is the ONLY cause of you. God is the ONLY cause of anyone. Everyone who exists is solely caused by God and NOTHING else. Whatever God wills that we all be, we are that, and even we have no say in this.

We are all totally EQUAL and next to each other, and God is above. God creates me fully and creates you fully. I do not create you, and you do not create me. It is nonsense to suggest that I am your creator or that you have caused me to exist.

This means that your brothers are NOT the cause of you. Nor is the world. Nor is the body. NOTHING ELSE can EVER cause you. Not one single person in the world is causing you right now, nor who has ever caused you, nor have you ever caused anyone.

When you believe someone is at fault or doing something to you, you MUST be confused about who your creator is. Whoever creates you causes you. No-one else has any input to this or any power over you. To believe someone is causing you is to believe you are NOT caused by God. To blame someone is to reject God as your creator.

Forgiveness then can very simply entail deprogramming yourself from ANY belief that ANYTHING other than God has power over you. This is the same as saying you should use the power of denial to deny anything NOT of God ANY POWER over you. That includes denying that your brother has any power over you, or that you have power over anyone.

The EGO is the confusion about cause and effect, about who your creator is, and therefore where CAUSE is coming from. If you assign cause to your brothers, or to the world, or to the body, then you are confused. They are NOT the cause of you in any way. When you believe cause is outside of you making you its effect, or you are at the effect of the world, you are claiming that the world is your creator.

You DO actually have creations which YOU HAVE caused, which are the living beings in heaven that you co-created with God and your brothers. These are not the people of the world. You DO have power over these beings because you are the CO-CREATOR of them. But you have created them by giving them freedom, just as God has with you.

If in any way right now you think that some person is doing something to you, or some company, or some group, or something in the body, or some aspect of the world, or anything at all in this dream, then you ARE MISTAKEN.

The ego will then form notions of a kind of cord or connection or chain or cause and effect, between you and others, between you and the body, or you and the world. It will suggest there is a tie or bridge across which stuff from another person "comes into you" and "does things to you" or "makes you" or changes your emotions or induces reactions in you. The belief in these artificial cause-effect relationships have to be SEVERED.

Whenever you are mistaken about causality you will find a belief in your mind that someone or something has kind of latched onto you, is outside you, causing you from the outside in, and now you are at its effect. This is NOT true. This belief has to be undone.

You can simply do this by just looking at the beliefs you DO have about these horizontal cause-effect relationships, and UNDOING your belief in them.

I am not being caused by that person. That person is not doing anything to me. I am not at the effect of them. They are not responsible for how I feel. They are not making me upset. They are not doing anything to me. They are not the cause of my feelings. They have not attacked me. They are doing NOTHING to me.

You can see then that this leads to the fact that your brother is innocent, because if they truly are NOT CAUSING you at all, then you cannot claim that they are in ANY WAY sinful, guilty, wrong, bad, evil or attacking. So they must be innocent. Sorting out the fact that they are NOT the ones doing anything to you, helps you to see their innocence and yours, and places responsibility for sight back your own court.

It is also important to affirm that you are not doing anything to anyone else. I am not attacking them. I am not hurting them. I am not abusing anyone. I am not causing anyone to feel anything. I am not making anyone upset. I am not responsible for anyone feels. I am not making anyone sick or afraid. I am not attacking anyone. This is simply because YOU are innocent. You CANNOT DO ANYTHING TO ANYONE.

God himself PROTECTS everyone by his will. No-one but him can touch his children. His children CANNOT hurt each other in reality. This is the simplicity of forgiveness and atonement. Simply putting cause and effect back into their proper place, being willing to be forever an effect of God, and realizing that LOVE is all that you can actually share with anyone.

"It is God's Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything" "I am forever an Effect of God."

"Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its home. I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide, and all Your attributes abide in me because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable. Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in Heaven, so on earth. Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will disappear, and separate things unite in glory as the Son of God."

"I am not the victim of the world I see."

"How can I be the victim of a world which can be completely undone if I so choose? My chains are loosened. I can drop them off merely by desiring to do so. The prison door is open. I can leave it simply by walking out. Nothing holds me in this world. Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner. I would give up insane wishes, and walk into the sunlight at last."

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's. I am constantly tempted to make up other laws, and give them power over me. I suffer only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all. I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of freedom."

I am not affected by anyone.

No-one has caused me to be upset.

I am responsible for everything I am feeling.

I am choosing to be this way myself.

Nobody has done anything to me at all.

I have never been hurt by anyone.

The world has never done anything to me.

I am not caused by anyone or anything outside of me.

I have no enemies or attackers.

I am immortal and eternal and invulnerable.

I am not a victim of this world at all.

I am not vulnerable to attack.

No-one has ever attacked me, they are all innocent.

This world is not really happening and its not happening to me.

There are no problems.

I do not need to suffer.

Everyone is innocent and so am I.

I am immortal spirit.

I live forever and cannot be harmed.

Nothing has happened to me.

I am still as God created me.

I am love.

I am immortal.

In this world, which is 100% the effect of dreaming, there is an ILLUSION of cause and effect.

To recognize how it is an illusion, consider how children play "make-believe" with toys.

1) There is an empty scene.

2) The child grabs his toy car, imagining that it is a real car.

3) He makes car sounds appear, "broom broom" to try to add life to the car

4) He moves the car along to pretend that it is driving by itself

5) He wants to increase the fun so puts a plastic tree in the scene

6) He drives the car toward the tree and just at the point where it's supposed to hit the tree, he grabs the tree and whisks it away up in the air, to simulate being hit by the car

He moved the car, he "gave life" to the car, animated it, controlled it. He moved the tree, "gave life" to the tree, animated it, controlled it. He made the ILLUSION that the car bumped the tree up into the air.

If viewed from within the fantasy, it SEEMS as if a real car causes a real tree to be damaged.

Viewed from outside the fantasy, we see that ONE CAUSE (the child/son of God), is responsible for everything that happens. He is responsible for the car and the tree and everything that both of them show.

The car could not move on its own. The tree could not move on its own. The care DOES NOT cause the tree to move! HIS MIND caused them to seem to produce effects. HIS MIND *pretended* that the car was "a cause" and that the tree was "at the effect" of the car.

We see this stuff happen from inside the dream, inside the fantasy play of the Son of God, and we think, that car really "caused" that damage to the tree, or, that food I ate caused my upset stomach, or, that person hitting me caused a bruise, or, throwing the ball at the window caused the window to break.

ITS NOT TRUE. This is an illusion. An illusion of simultaneous effects pretending to be causes.

When we are in touch with who the dreamer is, who the CAUSE is, the ILLUSION of cause and effect inside the fantasy can be shown to be an illusion. Miracles DEMONSTRATE this.

Miracles are acts by the ONE CAUSE of the entire dream content, to rearrange or change the effects in the dream, ie the objects or people or whatever else is showing up. Because IT is responsible for everything that moves, all side-effects, all consequences, how everything SEEMS to be affected by everything else, when it decides to BREAK the illusion of cause and effect, demonstrating that IT is the only cause and all cause and effects are actually EFFECTS, that's how the miracle defies the laws of the ego.

If the Son of God decides, hey, when that car hits that tree, nothing is going to happen, and the tree shall not have any damage put into it, then SO BE IT... the car will not damage the tree.

If the Son of God decides, hey, when I put that poison into the body, I will not put an effect of sickness into the body, then SO BE IT, the body will not be sick.

If the Son of God decides, hey, when I make that one body throw that one ball towards that window, I will not allow that window to break, SO BE IT, the window will not break.

Those witnessing these things will be probably astonished to see that the "laws" of cause-effect, the EGO's illusory laws, HAVE NOT WORKED. They did not apply. Something OVERRODE THEM. Some higher power somehow managed to manipulate THE LAWS THEMSELVES, to produce a result which "shouldn't be possible".

Illusions of "causes" in this world are entirely that, illusions. The world has NO causes in it, and it does nothing. That's because it is NOT ALIVE. And that's also because it is only an EFFECT of dreaming. All "life forms" here are NOT ALIVE. They are illusions of separate causes. All bodies are fictional. All objects are make-believe. The way they all interact is PRETEND.

Miracles completely bypass the illusion of horizontal/linear cause and effect. They demonstrate that these laws are NOT TRUE, and this is profoundly educational if you witness such a miracle. It PROVES that what you thought was true of this world, IS NOT TRUE. No longer will you be able to believe that "this causes that", because it was clearly demonstrated that this is NOT THE CASE.

Therefore, anything which you think has been caused by something happening in the world, can easily be reversed, changed, undone, or kept, entirely at the will of the mind. There is nothing that cannot be undone. There is nothing that cannot be reversed or healed. There is no sickness nor death which can prevent this higher-level mind from PROVING that it can be EASILY UNDONE. And Jesus demonstrated this at the resurrection.

Death has NO POWER OVER YOU because you literally cannot and will not MAKE DEATH HAPPEN unless you choose to do so, and if you choose that, you will be doing it to yourself, and NOT BECAUSE of any causes in the world whatsoever. You will be pulling all the strings, manipulating all the circumstances, putting all the sickness into your body, adding all the effects, and faking your own death, all deliberately and intentionally. Nothing happens to you against your will!

This is why death is optional and is always a choice. No-one dies without their own consent. No-one needs to die or suffer or be sick or upset or afraid or damaged or hurt in any way.

USE THE MIRACLES!

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. "

"The world you see has nothing to do with reality. "

"The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. " ... This is NOT a statement about how you perceive what's out there.... it's telling you, YOU PUT THE STUFF OUT THERE with your mind. You put that car there. You put that house there. You put those effects there! It Is WHAT YOU GAVE!

"There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad. "

"On confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. "

"Projection makes perception. The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you." ...... !!!!! This actually means that YOU PUT THE WORLD OUT THERE PHYSICALLY! You projected it from your higher-level mind! This is a statement about the Son of God, projecting the universe, literally, it is NOT to do with "how you look at the world"!! You MADE IT, and it can be CHANGED BY YOUR WILL!

If you are caught up in an emotional interaction with someone, upset by them or about them or struggling to forgive them, trying doing a forgiveness where you sever the connection of cause and effect between you.

By that I mean, make statements which completely cancel and undo all ideas about how the person is *causing* anything to happen to you whatsoever, and vice versa.

That person is not doing anything to me. That person has not upset me. That person isn't the cause of my upset. That person has not affected me. My feelings are not caused by that person. That person has no power over me. That person did not make me be this way. I am not dependent on that person to be happy. I don't need that person to treat me a certain way. I am not at the effect of that person.

Also, I have not done anything to that person. Everything they are experiencing is their own choice. I have not caused them to be upset. I am not responsible for their happiness. I have not made them be the way they are. I did not influence them. I have not hurt them. They are not at the effect of me.

Come up with as many statements like this as you can think of to reflect on how neither of you have caused the other anything whatsoever.

As you do this you should notice a sense of relief and also a growing clarity that you are both innocent, you are both powerful, you are both responsible for yourselves, and you are both free of the illusions relating to how you are doing stuff to each other.

The illusion that you are doing stuff to each other is entirely unreal. The ego can only attack itself. The ego in the other person can only attack itself. The ego in you can only attack yourself. Anywhere that it seems that something goes from one person to another is an illusion, just an appearance that both of you are doing something similar, or that you're each triggering off your own upsets. Neither of you are really causing the other to experience anything at all. You are both in your own ego's private worlds, interacting with your self.

Take full responsibility for everything you have done to yourself. Recognize they are responsible for everything they have done to themselves. Recognize that nothing has TRANSFERRED between you, neither of you has CAUSED the other to do or feel or experience anything, and both of you are entirely free of the ego influence of each other.

Whats mine is mine. What's theirs is theirs. This at least applies to the ego because egos are separate. What is OURS is OURS, which is love.

Only love is a shared experience. Only love can be joined in. Only love can be mutual and only love can be a real relationship in which two people are connected or communicating. All of the other stuff, all of the ego expressions, are not relationship or communication. They are just noise that each person is making from themselves about themselves to themselves.

No-one has ever done anything to anyone else. Everyone is doing everything to themselves. Nothing has really happened.

Jesus asks us to be responsible for everything we experience. Part of this entails being responsible for all of your feelings and reactions.

This sounds simple enough but you might not realize how much you don't do this. I know I am just starting to find out.

Most of the feelings we have are 'caused by', or are reactions to, things outside of us. External causes. These external causes seem to have power over us. Anything that happens in the world seems to be 'reality', and what is real is true. So as anything happens, it's as though it is a statement of what is true. For example, if someone attacks you, and if it's a statement of what is true, then its saying "it's true that you deserve to be attacked".

Left unchecked, your ego will take this suggestion and agree with it. "Yes, it's true that I deserve to be attacked", Ie that you don't deserve love. And in order for you to align with that, you'll attempt to CHANGE YOURSELF into a different identity. You'll try to make yourself into "a self that isn't loveable". And what will that feel like? It'll feel like guilt, like unworthiness, like sadness, like shame.

So 'reactions' are actually your attempt to comply with the power that an external cause is trying to have over you, which is trying to dictate and change what you are. So if you go along with it, you will 're-act' by acting as if you are what it tells you you are. In other words, you attempt to be an EFFECT of this external cause. By being the effect, you are 'affected by' it. And this doesn't feel good to turn yourself into a condition that runs against your true nature.

You'll also notice that when you have these reactions, these effects, which accounts for most emotional responses other than real love or joy, the way you EXPERIENCE the feeling entails a sense that the feeling isn't just inside your body. Or that it isn't yours. Because you perceive the feeling as having been caused by something external, the feeling ITSELF will feel like it is connected to, attached to, and dependent upon that external cause. If that thing caused you to feel this way, then the feeling essentially "came from" that thing, and was dictated to you by that thing. In your awareness, as you have this reactive feeling, you feel like your feeling is going outside your body and projecting onto that external source, or at least that it is "about" something other than you.

You're very used to this, so it seems to you that it's completely normal for reactive 'feelings' to feel like they go outside your body. Since you're so used to believing that you are "affected by" external stuff, and that this upsets you (changes you into an upset person by redefining what's true about you), you don't believe you are responsible for your feelings. It's someone else's fault. Something else is making you upset. It's not 'yours'. So quite literally you perceive that YOUR OWN FEELINGS are NOT YOUR OWN FEELINGS, that they belong to someone or something else "out there". And that therefore you don't have control over them. And this makes you into a victim. This also has a lot to do with why you block and deny and do not want to feel these feelings, because you believe they are not really yours.

Now, what I'm going to suggest is that you need to learn to take full responsibility for the *experience* of feeling. Whatever the feeling is, no matter who seemed to create it or cause it, you need to OWN IT and own up to the fact that this is YOUR FEELING, not someone else's. And that means, this feeling is actually INSIDE YOUR BODY and not extending out to project into other people as the cause of it. And it also means, these feelings are not really there BECAUSE OF someone or something else, but BECAUSE OF YOU.

A phrase which I've begun to remind myself with is:

"I am responsible for these feelings".

So no matter what's going on, if I'm feeling upset that my neighbors are making a lot of noise.. I have to say, "I am responsible for these feelings". I'm not having these upset feelings 'because of' my neighbors. I'm having these upset feelings because I AM THE ONE who is having them, which means I am the cause of them, which means they come from ME. They're mine. If I were to assert that I'm being caused to be upset by my noisy neighbors, then I would have to believe my feelings are caused by them, so my neighbors are responsible for my feelings, and not me.

Or how about, your parent doesn't love you enough and you come to believe it means you're unworthy (because you believe they're treating you with the truth so that must imply you don't deserve love). If you feel hurt because of them, by them, or they caused it, then you will not be responsible. So long as you disown how you feel, and blame the cause of the feeling on them, you are stuck. So really... your feeling of hurt or abandonment or unlove or unworthiness is NOT because of them. It's NOT them that caused it, otherwise that would mean these are their feelings. Yes, you tried to take on their feelings as your own. But it's not yours. What YOU are feeling is YOUR feelings and YOU are the one choosing to feel this way.

"I am responsible for these feelings". This frees you. It affirms that no matter what you feel, that feeling is IN YOU, because it is YOURS. It's confined to your body. And as you claim this responsibility and detach from blaming it on someone outside of you, you'll notice something odd happens.

You'll start to become aware that no matter what, no matter how severe circumstances are, no matter who is doing what 'to you', your feelings are YOUR responsibility. Which means you cannot project the onto anyone else or blame anyone else. This is a whole new level of responsibility. To walk around in this world with all kinds of stuff happening and people doing stuff and to NOT see them as having the POWER to CAUSE YOU to feel a certain way. This is a step toward invulnerability.

This takes pracice, mainly because we're so used to being victims and so used to tying our feelings to other people and events. I have to own up to the fact that no matter what I'm feeling or 'why', I am ONLY feeling it because I WANT TO and because I'M CHOOSING TO. Otherwise I am a victim. These are MY feelings, and it's nobody else's fault.

The odd thing that happens, and I've found this quite unexpected, is IF and when I claim responsibility for what I'm feeling, quite often I suddenly start laughing, or the feeling disappears really quickly. If I see that this feeling is entirely within me and has nothing to do with anyone else, it has nowhere to go. This perceptive change of 'being responsible' prevents me from buying into victimhood, or into believing that someone external 'caused this'. This SETS ME FREE. It completely undoes the foundation of victimhood, which largely undoes the foundation of the feeling itself, which really was just a mistaken thought or attitude.

I've also noticed something else very weird. A couple of times now I have been in situations where, normally, I would have a 're-action'. Like getting cut off by a driver in traffic. I noticed I was 'supposed to' or normally would react in some kind of anger or skapegoating. But instead, I didn't do anything. I stayed responsible, which meant staying responsible for my own feelings, which meant that person didn't have the power to cause me to feel differently. And I watched as my feelings.. ... didn't change. It was like, I'd switched off 'reacting'. Same event still happening, but no reaction. Hmm.

There is something else odd that I've been experiencing. If all my feelings are my own and I am feeling them BY CHOICE and not really because of or at the effect of anyone else, then I must be quite literally walking around INVENTING feelings on-demand, just spontaneously, in order to take the opportunity to try to scapegoat, but nevertheless creating these feelings for NO REAL REASON. All of my supposed re-actions are really just me choosing to feel something at a given time, all on my own, all within myself. It's got nothing to do with anyone else. Ano if that's the case, then WHY am I doing that? What's the point? Maybe I should just stop making this shit up!!

This is part of how we show our brother that they have not done anything to us, by demonstrating that WE have not been affected. We haven't been affected because we are not the EFFECT, we are the CAUSE of what we feel. This happened to me one other time too and I found it remarkable that, even in a situation which would have 'called for' a big reaction, there was no reaction at all. It's like being unplugged from the story. Being immune and invulnerable. It seems like CHEATING! Lol .... But it works.

I know I will keep practicing this and will continue to become more responsible for what I am and what I feel. I encourage you to do the same.

1. Everything other than me is responsible for sin happening. Everyone else is responsible for my condition and happiness. Everyone else is doing everything to me. The world is causing me. I am not responsible for anything (face of innocence, victimhood, death). They need to change, not me. This is "forgiveness to destroy".

2. I am the one who caused sin to happen. I did this to myself. "The Secret of salvation is that you are doing this to yourself". "It can be but myself I crucify." Owning up to what you THINK you did. At first this induces ego guilt because it still regards the sin as real. "I did it" ... "to myself". You have to pass through this stage, you can't bypass it. You do have to recognize you *believe* you did sin, before you can recognize you did not. You HAVE made all sins real, and need to move towards NOT making them real.

3. No one caused any real sin, so no one is responsible for what hasn't occurred. "Forgiveness recognizes what you think your brother did has not occurred." No-one has sinned, including me. There is no sin. What I believed I did, did not happen. It has had no consequences. I am responsible for being innocent. I am responsible for owning up to the Christ self that has not sinned. I am responsible for accepting the atonement. This is true forgiveness. Recognizing there is no sin TO forgive. All is forgiven. "I am still as God created me." "Enlightenment is but a recognition".

If I'm afraid or anxious, and I want to do something about it, I will probably start asking myself "why am I afraid?"

My ego believes that asking this question will help me to find the cause of it, and that I might then be able to fix the problem.

But what's going to happen is, I'll start searching for causes. If I seem to find a possible cause, it's going to tell me "the fear is caused by..." But no matter what it says, it is not really the truth.

Every cause of fear that we think is the cause of it, is not the cause. Fear is not caused by something happening to us. But it seems to arise at the same time as perceiving there's something happening to us, or threatening to happen.

If this.... then that's going to happen. If I do this.... that might happen. But it's still me perceiving and imagining the situation and creating the fear.

I'll think the fear is caused by the 'thing' that threatens me, but the thing that threatens me is not really the cause of fear. So long as I perceive that there is a threat, there WILL be fear. I can't keep the perception of the threat and get rid of the fear. I have to change my perception.

The reason I am afraid is because I am choosing to be afraid. I am choosing fear by choosing to see myself victimized and threatened. I THEN perceive the threat and experience the fear, but neither is the cause of each other.

I am afraid because I am using fear to deny God. I am afraid because I believe fear is a trustworthy guide that tells me the truth. I'm afraid because I want to invent a reason not to be happy and awake. I'm afraid because it allows me to have an ego.

It would seem fear is stopping me from doing what I want, but really fear is an excuse, a made-up reason why not. Without making it real, or believing in the threat being true, I couldn't be afraid, and then there'd be no reason not to.

Fear is part of the device for separation.

I still feel compelled to find out "why" I am afraid, but I sense that the "reason" will be an illusion, and that there will be deeper dynamics than just that I am afraid. Ultimately it cannot be true that I am afraid, it can only be an illusion.

As Jesus says, we only become afraid when we think that illusions are real, and that God is not on our side. I must be incorrectly perceiving an illusion as real truth, or wanting it to be truth, otherwise there'd be no grounds for fear. If nothing has really gone wrong and nothing real can be threatened, there is no basis for fear.

I need to forgive myself for my self-made fear and undo the need for it.

Two fighters are in the boxing ring. They move around and jab at each other. As they become closer, they fight more. They punch and hurt each other, trying to defeat the other. There is no love here. It is anger and aggression and forcefulness gone wild. They seek revenge for what they see the other as having done to them.

This is representative of all ego confrontations, in which one person is trying to attack another, to justify the attack, to try to "win", and to hurt and destroy the other in order to achieve some kind of prize.

Now, the round ends and the boxers are required to go to their corners. Notice what happens. The fighting stops. There is temporary peace. There is relaxation and relief.

What also has happened, is "distance" has been put between the two. They have stopped lurching at each other, they are no longer trying to inflict pain on each other, and have recoiled into themselves.

This is symbolic of forgiveness. In forgiveness, what you want to do is look at the horizontal cause and effect relationship in which you are believing someone else did this to you, you plan to do that to them, etc... you need to cut all of that out and essentially "separate" the two fighters.

You do this by examining how you believe that you caused the other person, and how you believe they they caused you, and you STOP believing that. This collapses the horizontal causality.

So.... that person did not hit me. That person did not affect me. I am not caused by them. They have done nothing to me. I am not at the effect of that person. They have no power over me. I am responsible for everything I am experiencing. I must have done this to myself.

And.... I have not done anything to that person. I did not affect them. I did not cause them. I have not done anything to them. I have no power over them. They are responsible for what they are experiencing. They must have done this to themselves.

This is prying apart an ARTIFICIAL CAUSALITY which the ego has tried to establish between the two of you. You are withdrawing all blame and projection from them, and recognizing that their blame and projection onto you is nothing to do with you. This dismantles the entire ego thought system of believing that someone else is the cause of you, or affecting you, or that you have been affected in any way.

This breaks and reverses the ego's use of cause and effect. There is no cause outside of you. You are not at the effect of anything outside of you. You are returning to your "corner" and disconnecting from the other person and are ceasing to try to make them responsible for your experience.

So be like the fighters in their corners. Back off. Take back your projections. Stop trying to attack others. Stop believing they are attacking you. The ego has no defense against this because it literally lowers defenses and exposes you, which paradoxically makes you invulnerable.

Forgiveness corrects a reversal of cause and effect.

In every single situation, every false perception, every belief, every error or mistake you can make, every relationship, every drama, you CAN only really make one mistake.

You can only get cause and effect back to front.

The ENTIRE ego thought system, all of the separation, everything that happens in this world, all events and experiences, are ALL entirely based on a reversal of cause and effect.

God is cause. You are God's effect. You also can cause, because you are like God. But you cannot cause God, being His effect.

HOWEVER, because you are free to choose, when you choose to TRY to cause God, all hell breaks loose.

This is simply because you are trying to upset the divine order. You are trying to convert God, who is PURE CAUSE, into an effect. And you are simultaneously trying to change YOU, who are purely an effect of God, INTO the cause of yourself.

In this is the entire authority problem, usurping of God's will, all sense of sin, and every consequence that comes from sin including guilt and fear and sickness and death.

Every form of level confusion is a reversal of cause and effect. All belief in magic, every state of victimhood, every delusion possible in the mind, all conditions of the ego and its thinking, the emergence of a physical body, even death, are all SYMPTOMS of an inverted cause-effect relationship.

Therefore, THE ONLY CORRECTION, the only "forgiveness you need do", is to set cause and effect back into their proper relationship. In all ways, at all levels.

So when you're in the midst of some drama story about who did what to whom, or why you're afraid of this and that, or how you've been caused to be sick against your will, or why death is looming, or why you "can't" or "won't", or why someone else is responsible for your existence etc, this is ALL because somewhere in your mind you are mis-perceiving and have attempted to reverse cause and effect.

There are two parts to this error.

1) The belief that God is causing you against your will and you don't want to be affected.

2) The belief that you are the cause of making yourself and do not need to be an effect of God.

This plays out in all kinds of ways and in all kinds of dramas.

ALL you have to do, to forgive, is fix the causality.

That means, you need to UNDO, ANY belief that says anything to the contrary of how God naturally creates. If there is any aspect of what you believe or perceive that is saying "its happening to me against my will" or "I did not choose this" or "I am not responsible for causing this" or "they did this to me", that's a mistake. That must be flipped around.

It's very EXTREMELY SIMPLE. There is NOTHING ELSE that has gone wrong. It's not merely a sense of separation from God being corrected. That sense of separation arose through attempting to change causality. You wanted to be the cause of God instead of his effect. That's all. And because of that, you now see other people as being the cause of you against your will, which SECRETLY is your desire to be NOT caused BY God.

So you fix the causality. I am not being caused by that person. That person is not doing anything to me at all. I am not experiencing anything because of them. They did not cause this. I am not a victim of them. They can do nothing to me. I take back all of my power that I gave to them. They are not responsible for my life or existence or feelings or experiences. I chose everything I am experiencing myself. I am completely responsible for this whole thing. I am not at the effect of the world I see. I am not a victim of anyone or anything. etc

This is placing you in your proper role of *causing the dream*, but also is placing you in your proper role of BEING THE EFFECT OF GOD.

Because as you acknowledge YOUR causal power, which you inherited from Him, you are acknowledging that God's causal nature is IN YOUR MIND, and therefore so is God.

All you are doing is cancelling out all belief in "horizontal cause-and-effect". There are no causes on this level. There are only effects on this level. You are NOT one of those effects, because you CAUSED this whole level from above.

Fix the broken causality and EVERYTHING ELSE will fall into place.

Miracles are examples of vertical causality which defy all horizontal laws of cause and effect.

When you're having an emotional reaction to anything, you usually believe it's because something outside of you is causing it.

But more accurately, you previously created a self condemnation within yourself and this is rising to the surface of your awareness. It's like a bruise which it *seems* like someone else is activating or triggering.Its your guilt about separating from God - your sin.

Our reactions are often so quick to happen that it seems like someone or something outside of you 'causes' the feeling.

So I'm sitting here, and if someone comes along and pokes me with a stick, if I suddenly feel angry and annoyed, initially it might look like I've been made to feel this way BY that person. Or that I'm only feeling this way because of that person. Its an illusion of cause and effect.

But what's really happening is, my mind already contained guilt and anger and upset which was buried unconsciously, and being poked with the stick has somehow triggered it off, like a memory or an association, and its come up in my mind quickly and now I'm experiencing it. It's easy to bridge the gap and say, well this person has inflicted a 'fresh wound' upon me, but really it's something that was already in me.

Remember as ACIM says, "we but accuse our brother of our OWN sins." - meaning that our brother does not HAVE any sins that we can accuse them of - its all your own stuff that you project onto them.

The only reason we are here in bodies is because we tried to separate from God by condemning ourselves, attempting to destroy ourselves and to punish ourselves. WE are the ones who believe in our own sinfulness and our own guilt. It's got nothing to do with anyone else and nobody else put it there. And it is this inner self-guilt that becomes 'activated' in EVERY situation where we think someone or something else does 'something' to us to 'make us' unhappy. We simply 'recall' our own guilt and re-suffer.

So instead we hire people to come along and to seem like they are the cause of our suffering, because this triggers off our AGREEMENT that what they're insinuating about us is true (that we deserve punishment or mistreatment), even if we protest violently that this is uncalled for. We cannot get upset UNLESS we agree with the person, and we cannot get upset UNLESS we already believe deep down that we deserve this treatment.

Its not other people that take our power away. We are the ones who keep trying to GIVE it to other people, to give them our own self-responsibility in an attempt to ask them to take over the rights and responsibilities that WE have for ourselves and for our own feelings. We want someone else to be to blame for the separation from God because we have blamed ourselves heavily and can't bear the burden. But OUR suffering has NOTHING to do with anyone else.

So its extremely convenient when someone comes along and triggers you or pushes your buttons. And even though you will react in such a way as to suggest your entire reaction is their fault, or you were just sitting there innocently minding your own business, the fact is they would not be ABLE to upset you if you were truly free of your own guilt. So all they are really doing is helping you to become aware of what you are hiding from, and your hidden unconscious self-hate is actually calling for you to be punished, which is why you hire and attract people to do it to you, for you, even if you fight with them about it consciously.

Ok so, this is really all about taking responsibility for who you are and what you feel and what you believe is true about yourself. You need to learn to decouple and detach the lie, that how you feel is caused by someone else. How you feel is NEVER caused by someone else. Whoever is in your life that is pissing you off, ITS NOT THEM... its not their fault, they're just helping you to see that you pissed yourself off. You HAVE to stop blaming other people for what you are feeling. Fully. Totally. "You are never upset for the reason you think" and "anger is never justified" (ie blaming another).

I have been finding that I am so incredibly used to being a victim, that whenever someone does or says something to 'upset me', and I experience a reaction (which is really just my own self-attack surfacing in my awareness) I immediately add two-and-two together and find the other person to be 'guilty of' upsetting me. It seems like they caused the upset, and its all their fault. I actually buy into this really quickly. And it totally glosses over the fact that I am only experiencing what is already in me, what I already believe it true about myself, and I am only reminded of my own self condemnation.

So what I have to learn to do, which I am experimenting with now, is to remember to remind myself... "I am completely responsible for these feelings". Whatever my reaction is, I have to stop blaming the cause of it on other people. I have to stop seeing myself as having been at the 'effect' of anyone or anything other than myself. If anyone else has 'done this to me', then I am a victim. If I am a victim I can't find peace, no matter how much I protest. No matter what my feeling is, or how much it seems justified or unjustified, or how much it *seems* to have been activated by another person, I HAVE to get to where I admit honestly that EVEN THIS FEELING is not there 'because of' that other person, it's there because *I* put it there because its MY self-attack. "The secret to salvation is this - that you but did this to yourself."

To stop being a victim, or seeing yourself as victimized, you MUST own up to the fact that everything you are experiencing is YOURS. It is your own inner experience. It is not someone else's. It is not something that anyone else put there or created or caused or made happen or reinforced in any way. Its yours. This is your shit.

You have plenty of your own shit in your own mind which you put there to cover and explain absolutely all of your reactions and upset feelings and unhappiness, without needing even one other person to explain why you feel this way. You're doing a fine job of condemning yourself without needing to resort to trying to claim that someone else has 'added to' your load.

Nobody else has ever done anything to you. Period. Let that soak in for a minute. Nobody else has EVER done anything to you, and ALL of your reactions and feelings and experiences are INSIDE YOU, because you put them there. They're YOURS.

You are completely responsible for everything you experience and everything you feel and you are NOT at the effect of anyone else, ever.

Now, this is very tempting for the ego/hurt parts of yourself to want to skapegoat and this happens very rapidly and automatically when you are not being truly honest or observant. And you are so used to this happening that every single time someone or something outside of you 'goes wrong' or 'offends you' or 'attacks you' or 'does something to you' or whatever... you immediately launch into the mistaken perception that this OTHER has 'caused you'. Caused-you, in general... ie... they are the cause, you are their effect, you have no say in who you are, and you must change to match what they say you should be feeling. Victimhood.

So.... now your job is different. Your job is to notice whenever you are in the midst of an 'interaction' with someone or something, in which it has triggered off some feelings. Some upset. Some hurt or anger or whatever it is. If you are not happy, then chances are you are currently `holding a grievance` which you THINK is a grievance against someone else. You blame them for it.

BUT... your job now is this.... you MUST CLAIM OWNERSHIP of every part of what you are experiencing. All of your feelings of hurt, anger, rejection, pain, loss, suffering, sadness, offense, frustration, unfairness, etc... all of it... it is YOURS. It's inside you. And the ONLY reason you are experiencing it is BECAUSE YOU PUT IT THERE. We have to learn that it is NEVER about the other person, you are NEVER affected by someone else, you are NEVER at the effect of the world you see, you are NEVER experiencing something as the effect/result of someone or something else, and nobody has EVER done anything whatsoever to change who you are.

It's actually completely true that nobody has ever done anything to you. As in my quote yesterday - "you are completely harmless and you cannot be hurt." Only you can do this stuff to yourself. Only you can STOP doing this to yourself. This doesn't require a crazy mental somersault or perceptual trampolining in order to see it this way. It's actually the way it IS. You're just allowing yourself to acknowledge things for how they really ARE instead of making up the story that someone else is to blame.

When owned up to with responsibility, you have ONLY done this to yourself. Everyone else is innocent. You have never been hurt by anyone. You ARE immortal and invulnerable. Admitting to this and seeing this is simply the truth. There is no distortion in it and no fairytale needed to paint a picture to make it believable. The truth is that everything you're feeling, you are choosing to feel, on your own, without any help from anyone else.

As you learn to OWN what you are feeling, something really interesting happens. Or at least this is what I am finding. If someone does something that usually I'd say "they caused me to feel xyz"... if I say to myself, ok, I'm upset and feeling hurt and angry... but its NOT because of them... these are MY feelings, ALL of this experience is MINE and has nothing to do with them.... this ownership/responsibility does two things. 1) It completely detatches from the other person and withdraws all blame from them and correctly identifies WHERE the problem is (its in me, in my mind, not in the other person), and 2) It puts me in touch with what is MINE and who I AM.

What I'm finding is that as I own my feelings and stop blaming them on other people, ALL of them... I am owning up to being MYSELF. My 'personality' is coming out. I am feeling freer and happier. My unhappy feelings are dissolving away very quickly and I remain in the victim role for FAR less time. Taking this responsibility immediately detaches me from the other person, and severs the 'tie' that was trying to pin my feelings on someone else. The door is closed, and now I'm within myself. And as I sit with my own feelings in awareness that these are MY own feelings, no matter what seemed to happen, it shines a LIGHT which dispels them. It makes me laugh. I end up laughing rather than crying.

Owning my feelings completely undoes the foundation of victimhood and completely removes victimhood from my perception, which means I now see myself as NOT victimized which means whatever I'm feeling is my OWN creation which means it's really quite hilariously silly that I've chosen to create this feeling. It shows me how ridiculous it is to choose to feel this way. Why would I choose to deliberately feel upset? I am recognizing it is not TRUE that its someone else's fault and its not TRUE that I have been attacked, and this therefore (through oneness) reminds me that I can't have been attacked therefore there CAN'T have been any effects, and therefore I have no reason to be upset. So I can let it go much more quickly and return to happiness.

I'm finding my 'personality' is coming out a lot more, my persona is diminishing, my happiness is increasing and I see myself as much less victimized. I have less reason to be afraid because I'm starting to believe that nobody else is doing anything to me, and that they can't. And by owning my own feelings I am owning BEING ME which means I am allowing myself to be myself freely without all this conditionality of my fake ego victim self. Yay.

Good times. Freedom.

When you're upset, you're having an experience. It seems very real to you. It's frightening. It seems that something has happened or something is true, and because it seems true it's scaring you.

But what you need to realize is that "you are not upset for the reason you think."

You think you're upset because of what a person did, or didn't do, or what happened, or what you saw. You think something other than yourself caused it, or that something's happening beyond your control. But this isn't really why you are upset.

You're having an experience right now of upset and fear and guilt and anger and shame, and that is inside of you. Its yours. But the main problem is you've placed the cause of this experience into something separate from you. You think it's that person who put these feelings there. You think it was that thing happening that caused this upset. And you see yourself as having been unfairly victimized by them. And now you're suffering and you can't get out of it.

Well all of this experiencing is inside you because it's yours, and it was already inside you BEFORE this person or event came along. You had it stored away in the back of your mind, unhealed. You are already full of all the upset and fear that you could possibly need to account for all of your upsetting experiences in every lifetime. You don't even need to find extra causes for adding "new stuff".

This upset that's in you wasn't put there by anyone else. It wasn't just created in you by some event that just happened. Nobody made you feel this way. Nobody is doing anything to you.

This is old stuff. It's always old stuff. Its the sense of sin and guilt from separating from God that you buried in your mind long ago, coming up inside of you to remind you of how you feel. And yes, it was maybe "triggered by" someone or something happening, or what they did, and because it was triggered by them you mistook this to mean it was caused by them. But all they did was mirror to you how you already felt, deep down, and so it popped into your awareness. And you asked them to do this for you.

Its not their fault.

This is about you. Its your stuff. Your feelings. Your experience. Your attitude. Your beliefs. Your way of looking at yourself. This is about your sense of separation from yourself and God and how you haven't forgiven yourself for what you think you did. That's what needs to be forgiven. You CAN'T forgive anyone else because nobody else is capable of doing anything to you!

You need self forgiveness. And that entails admitting that all of this stuff is self-inflicted and self-chosen and it's all your own stuff. It's not anyone else's fault. Nobody has made you feel this way. You agree that you should feel this way.

And so then, why do you feel this way? What is it you believe about yourself, in relationship to God, that has brought about this nightmarish experience? This fear, and guilt, and sin? Is it really true of you? Is God really against you or upset with you? Is he really abandoning you? Do you really need to be afraid of his revenge? Are you really a sinner?

Will you forgive yourself and recognize that you have NOT done what you thought you did, that it has had no effect on God whatsoever, that you are still innocent and loved? How about some relief, in knowing that nothing's gone wrong and you're still worthwhile? Or that God still unconditionally loves you right now and always will? That you haven't made Him go away and He isn't bearing any grudge or anger toward you? All you really want is to love and go Home.

"The body cannot create, and the belief that it can, a fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms. Physical illness represents a belief in magic"

Interesting huh. Jesus isn't saying that some illnesses are caused by a belief in the body having the power to create sickness. He is saying that ALL sicknesses of all kinds are produced by believing that the physical level of 'existence' has CAUSAL POWER over your mind.

Essentially, MAGIC, is the belief that something separate from the mind has power to cause the mind. This is the same as being a victim. It's the same as believing things outside of you do things to you. It's the same as the belief that your brother does something to hurt you and that you then demonstrate this is true by showing harm in your body. That is magical. It's a fantasy about how a 'special power' has come along and produced an 'effect' WITHOUT the mind being involved and WITHOUT YOU CAUSING IT.

The reversal of cause and effect is a gross "confusion of the levels". Confusing mind with body. But moreso, confusing the fact that mind is the creator/dreamer with the body which is the created/dream. Such confusion produces 'magical' explanations for why things happen - they don't seem to happen just because YOU had anything to do with it, they seem to happen through some kind of magical mysterious unexplainable 'something' that happens entirely outside your awareness.

Let's reiterate - ALL SICKNESS is caused by a belief in magic. A BELIEF IN magic. That means, every single time we see ourselves as a victim, every time we are irresponsible for our causal power, every time we are disempowered by ourselves, every time we are 'confused' about WHERE THE CAUSE IS (in our mind - GOD is the ultimate cause), that's when sickness is generated.

Sickness then is an attempt to mis-create by using creation against God. It's where we turn around and instead of extending God, we go AGAINST God. We attempt to block God, stop God, attack God, attack the mind, and prevent Him from being the Cause. That produces every physical, emotional or mental illness. ALL of them. Every sickness on the entire planet in the history of mankind AND all animals and creatures AND even that of the earth and air and water and whatever else... *every* form of sickness in the universe, is caused by this 'level confusion'.

We are looking at a 'creation' - the body - the world - and we are attempting to believe that IT has the power to create, to make things happen, that it has its own alien will, and that it can do things to you ON ITS OWN. That is magic. That will result in sickness.

But even moreso, what we're doing here is, we're trying to deny that God is the cause of all creation. It's not just about 'the cause is in my mind'. God is in your mind, or rather, your mind is IN GOD. When we try to deny that God is the Father, that God is the CAUSE or source of everything real, that produces sickness. We are sick because we're blocking the extension of eternal life (creation). We are sick because we don't want love. We are sick because we believe we are separate from God. We are sick because we don't want to love other people unconditionally. When God is not the cause, we're actually saying, the body/world/ego/separation IS GOD. And we worship it. And all its forms. We replace God with the world, and that means we will be sick.

Put God first!

An interesting insight I had is that what we see as causing us, we literally take to mean it is causing us to exist. If we are the effect of it, we are whatever it decides we are.

When we are caused by God, we are forever an effect of God. Whatever God wills us to be we are that. God has total authority and privilege in this and we have absolutely no say in it.

Fortunately God's idea of us and what he wants us to be is very loving and beautiful, and so we are created and "forced to be" perfect happy immortal beings forever.

But if you switch your idea of what causes you to anything else, anything of the world, the body, the ego, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, a similar thing happens. Your SELF is once again defined by it.

So let's say the world does something to "you", someone attacks your body or something, you might see it as not changing YOU but maybe changing your body or causing upsetting feelings. But you assume that YOU are still you.

However, this can't be true, because if you perceive that these external things are CAUSING you at all, you MUST believe you are their effect. YOU, your self, your identity, is the effect of them. And they have the power to change you, alter you, upset you, affect you, modify you according to their will.

This is part of how the mind shifts its IDENTITY from being identified with spirit/Christ to identifying with other things like the the ego or body. When we try to become one with these things, or we give them power, or we see ourselves as caused BY them, our very sense of SELF actually changes.

You begin to see yourself kind of like through the eyes of this other thing, the thing you gave power to. However it's treating you, whatever it's doing to you, is redefining you. You now become the effect of it and your whole sense of identity repositions as a victim and a sufferer and that which is attacked and weakened.

When we look for things to forgive, we might say that a person did this or that to us, or something in the world is upsetting us. But it's not just that it does something to upset us, it does something to CHANGE us, and that literally changes our sense of who we are.

When you believe the world, which is your dream, is dreaming you, and it has power to affect you or change what you are, your sense of self shifts from an immortal being to a temporary mortal suffering entity. The mind shifts its view of itself as though it's now being caused BY the world, and loses track of the soul. As if what causes you CREATES you.

Who you see yourself as, the role you play, how you are positioned, who you are in the drama or story, all becomes defined BY the causes you perceive to be having an effect on you. This can happen even with emotions and thoughts where you start developing a sort of sense of being a suffering person who the emotions or thoughts are happening to.

To wake up from this we have to become clear that we're not only not affected by anything in the whole world, but that nothing in the world has any power to CHANGE us in any way. Otherwise it has the power to change our SELF, and convert our identity into something we're not. Even a slight upset emotion is a change in identity, a twinge of unhappiness, a minor fear, it's all going to change your view of what is true of you.

So we have to learn to stop making ourselves CAUSED BY anything other than God. Nothing in the world does ANYTHING to us. We are UNCHANGEABLE, and nothing anywhere can change us except for God - who has no intention of ever changing his mind about us. We have to let ourselves be only what he wants us to be, and accept the truth of ourselves, in order to recognize WHO we really are.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you." W191L9

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea." M6C3

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are." URW190L5

"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 is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept." UrW253

The simple transition which occurs as the result of A Course in Miracles, applying forgiveness correctly, is that you transition from blaming everyone else to becoming responsible.

Auto-pilot for the ego is that everything you experience is caused by everyone and everything else outside of you. When you think about that, it's a pretty strange way to live - only ever experiencing what life throws at you, reacting to it like a passive victim.

As you begin to see that the person you were blaming is not the CAUSE of your problem, that the cause is IN you, not outside of you, and that you are completely responsible for EVERYTHING you experience, you stop seeing others as justified targets for blame.

Now you begin to see that it is not really the person being blamed that has a problem. It's the person doing the blaming.

If a person is upset, it is NOT the person they are upset with that has the problem, its the person who is upset.

If someone seems to have been hurt by someone else, it is NOT that other person's fault, it is the responsibility of the person who was hurt. You cannot BE hurt without the consent of your mind. Your mind is powerful and CREATES the *response* of hurt in your body in cooperation with the attacker, otherwise your body could not possibly show effects.

All of the attention of blame and projection and scapegoating onto others, all finger pointing, all perception of being attacked, all perception that someone or something is causing you positively or negatively, and all ideas of being changed by, affected by, caused by or upset by, anything whatsoever outside of you, has to go out the window. There perceptions are false and they are incompatible with health, happiness and sanity.

Imagine realizing that absolutely nothing outside of you has ever affected you, absolutely nobody has ever done anything to you, absolutely nobody is to blame for anything, there is absolutely no-one worthy of being judged or reacted to, and that YOU are the sole responsible agent for what you are experiencing. And if this is true, then notice how freeing this is, how safe it feels, how deeply peaceful it makes you.

If the world is NOT attacking you, if other people are NOT hurting you, if there ARE no causes outside of you, and if you cannot ever be at the effect of anything in the world... you are SOOOOO safe, so protected, so calm and reassured, and so permanently transcendent of all suffering. Yes please!

I was thinking about why we seem to have a body at all.

It occurred to me that all ego illusions are put in place as a form of level confusion. When the dream (effect) seems to have a causal ability, it does something "to you". This produces illusions of effects in you, and in your body. Believing that cause is outside of you instead of inside of you, makes the world basically tell you what you are. And you comply.

The body showing up, then, shows us not so much that it's being projected from inside the body itself, but is showing up as an image which is being "caused by" the world. By all of the ego's laws, the body is only there because the world put it there. It's only there because there is level confusion. It's only there because you believe in magic. And it's only there because you see yourself as an effect of your dream.

Effects within dreams show up as "forms". All thoughts produce form at some level and all ego thoughts produce illusions of forms. Belief in ego therefore means you believe the world is the cause of you, and this belief ALONE places an IMAGE of a body over your mind. It is a picture of what is seen from OUTSIDE of you looking inwards (reversed cause-effect), which is why everyone ELSE sees it.

But really the body is nothing but a state of a belief in external causes, a projection of ego sin. "The body is the belief in sin projected outward and made flesh." - ACIM

So we believe in sin, which sets up a reversal of cause and effect, which creates level confusion, which makes it seem like our dream is dreaming us, which feeds back towards us as a body which is perceived, from the outside in. Projection makes perception.

This is also why when level confusion is completely corrected, what is true is recognized as true, and what is false is false, THERE CANNOT BE A BODY. The body cannot SEPARATE YOU from what is or from yourself. You are no longer being "caused" by the world. There is no longer proof that you were made by matter. You now have mind over matter and your inverted perception from the outside-in will now turn inside out and be in its correct order. The body cannot show up at all when there is no belief in separation or illusions. This is why Jesus's body disappeared.

At the very root of the ego thought system is something extremely simple, which is the foundation of the entire thought system. It's even more fundamental than the idea of sin.

In Heaven, God is the cause of you, and you are the effect of Him. But you attempted to REVERSE THIS. This is THE ONLY PROBLEM IN ALL OF EXISTENCE.

Your belief that you are the cause of God, and that he is the effect of you, is the ENTIRE PROBLEM. This is the authority problem. It is the basis of the idea of sin - which is the idea that you caused God and produced effects in him and therefore defined and changed him against His will.

Absolutely EVERY possible dynamic and situation you find yourself in in life, all your encounters with people, all forms of sickness and suffering, and every possible problem or upset you might experience, are ALL ENTIRELY BASED on the reversal of cause and effect. That is their FOUNDATION.

There is one problem.

And this one problem needs only ONE SOLUTION.

It is a single solution, a single lesson, which applies to EVERY situation no matter the form.

This one problem is ALL that you need to correct. Every forgiveness process, if it works at all, MUST accomplish the correction of CAUSE AND EFFECT. If it doesn't, it is not solving the problem. It doesn't matter what words you use or how you go about this, but ultimately you MUST get the levels back into their divine order. You MUST correct the level confusion and restore God to the rightful position of CAUSE, with you as HIS EFFECT.

Because God caused BOTH you and your brothers EQUALLY, you are BOTH caused by God. This means, a fundamental truth: you are NOT the cause of your brother, and your brother is NOT the cause of you.

Now, the entire ego thought system is based on the belief in cause-effect reversal, and that MEANS that you have a belief that YOU ARE THE CAUSE OF YOUR BROTHER, and that HE IS THE CAUSE OF YOU. This is an ILLUSION. It is the illusion of "horizontal causality". That means, it's the idea of two things on the SAME LEVEL, causing and affecting each other. IT IS NOT TRUE. AT ALL. EVER. ***You can't both be the cause of each other!***

The entire ego world was set up to try to prove and make seem true, the idea of HORIZONTAL CAUSALITY, whereby one thing causes another on the same level. This is built into physical matter. It's built into the laws of physics (chaos). It's built into all egoic encounters with people and problems. They all tempt you to believe that GOD IS NOT THE CAUSE. They are all attempts to shut God (mind) out of the picture and associate mind with FORMS and bodies. This is nothing short of believing that YOUR DREAM IS DREAMING YOU.

This perception, which is false perception, automatically puts you in a position of seeing yourself as a victim. A victim of people, a victim of the world, a victim of the environment, a victim of your body, etc. IF ITS TRUE that there is cause SEPARATE from you in this way, other than God, then you automatically MUST enter a state of threat and danger and fear and attack. This is the basis for justifying all anger. This has to be corrected.

So now it comes down to, "how do I apply the course"? Or, "how do I apply forgiveness"? Well, it boils down to the ONE PROBLEM. If you will just correct ALL FALSE CAUSALITY, which is the idea of horizontal causes and effects, if you will totally CANCEL and UNBELIEVE and WITHDRAW all of those perceptual beliefs in horizontal causes, it will put the cause back into your mind where it belongs.

See, at this level, you are the dreamer of the dream. You are the CAUSE OF THE WORLD. When you perceive or believe that anything IN the world is the CAUSE OF YOU, you have backwards perception and are a victim. The secret of salvation is that you are doing this to yourself. You use the world to attack yourself. If you are not aware that you are the CAUSE of it, that you are dreaming it, you will perceive and believe that the world is hurting you against your will.

So the ONLY FORM OF FORGIVENESS that works and that is needed, is to GET THE CAUSALITY RIGHT. To remember that you are the dreamer of the dream, not the other way around. That there is NO CAUSE in the world. That the world is the EFFECT of your dreaming mind. That means your brother in no way causes you whatsoever. And it also means you in no way cause your brother whatsoever. It also includes realizing your body does not cause you against your will. Your mind has power over the whole universe. "My self is ruler of the universe."

It's quite simple really. Just get the levels back into their proper order. This corrects all level confusion, magic, victimhood and even death. You are the cause of this dream. You have to OWN RESPONSIBILITY for being the cause of EVERYTHING you are experiencing and making happen. This is the only way out of hell. The ONLY WAY to escape victimhood and death by realizing that.... if you do not CHOOSE TO DIE, IT CANNOT HAPPEN. "No one dies without their own consent."

This is what "forgiving" is all about. Own the causality. This is a course in cause, not effect. YOU ARE 100% CAUSAL. You are 0% AFFECTED by what you've caused/made. You are the projector of the world. Projection makes perception. Once you own full responsibility for causing/dreaming, the world can do NOTHING to you against your will. This is how you overcome death and reach resurrection. And in that state you cannot be attacked, victimized, hurt, or suffer in any way. It is literally the end of all suffering because it is THE END OF THE WORLD.

The very first level confusion occurs when we as Sons of God attempt to "cause God".

Whenever an effect, or a lower level, attempts to cause effects in the very cause that caused it, ie a higher level, that is level confusion.

The first level confusion was the separation from God itself.

God is cause. God creates and produces effects. We are his creations/effects.

As effects, effects do not cause the thing that caused them.

Sons of God do not have the ability to cause God. If they did, and this is what the whole separation is about, this would mean that we can produce effects in God and therefore change God. If they were to do that, they would be capable of destroying the very causal power which maintains their own existence, which is impossible.

There is a cause-effect distinction between what is God and what is a Son of God. God is "first cause". Sons of God are His effect. His Sons have been given the ability to cause ie create in God's likeness and their own, but they do not have the ability to actually cause anything other than this.

When Sons of God attempt to cause something unlike God, or something which goes against the freedom of will granted by God to extend love, "fiction" happens. A dream of impossibilities. Make-believe worlds and pretend bodies. That all comes from wishful thinking. And it's all a level confusion.

The attempt by the Son of God to cause His Father, to produce effects in the father, is the idea of sin. To make God change and be attackable/hurtable/modifyable is the very idea of sin. It is also the same thing as the authority problem - believing we have power to will against God's will.

So the very moment we entertained this tiny mad idea of being separate from God, it was an idea of being able to cause effects in God and therefore usurp his will. This was the first act of level confusion.

Every single thing that takes place inside the egoic dream of impossibilities and death, is also level confused. Absolutely every part of the ego is level confused. It is all entirely an attempt to reverse cause and effect. It is all a belief in magic and victimhood. And it is all impossible.

A Course in miracles does not mention the phrase "unconscious guilt". However, Jesus does teach about it. In fact, the whole course is about removing the BLOCKS TO AWARENESS. A blocked awareness is indicative of UNCONSCIOUSNESS - not being consciously aware of love.

Here for example he refers to "veiling in shadows", things which must be "raised to understanding" (brought back into conscious awareness), in order to make the choice for heaven consciously:

"Heaven is chosen consciously. The choice cannot be made until alternatives are accurately seen and understood. All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with Heaven’s help, and all mistakes in judgement which the mind had made before are open to correction as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized."

Anything which is a hidden hate, a secret sin, something concealed, any form of denial, all illusions, all forms of sin guilt fear sickness and death, are forms of unconsciousness.

The entire idea of "awakening" is of returning to full conscious awareness, out of a state of semi-consciousness or, in the case of death, unconsciousness. It is also the same thing as the idea of "forgetting".

Here are for example paragraphs from 5 separate chapters talking about unconsciousness...

"These mad beliefs can gain UNCONSCIOUS hold of great intensity, and grip the mind with terror and anxiety so strong that it will not relinquish its ideas about its own protection."

"Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be UNCONSCIOUS but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them."

"Like to a dream of punishment, in which the dreamer is UNCONSCIOUS of what brought on the attack against himself, he sees himself attacked unjustly, and by something NOT himself."

"He is merely making every possible effort, within the limits you impose upon Him, to re-establish your own will in your consciousness. You have imprisoned it in your UNCONSCIOUS, where it remains available, but cannot help you."

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of consciousness. This is a pathetic way of trying not to know by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

So you can see our unconscious states are quite well discussed in the course and this is only the tip of the iceberg.

There is one test by which you can find out if you have "unconscious stuff". First of all, realize that even if you have some amount of conscious awareness, it does not mean that you do not have an unconscious. When something is unconscious, you LITERALLY are NOT AWARE of it. There can be huge sections of your mind which have been walled off and kept hidden in the dark, which you do not even know are there.

It is the assumption of just about everyone that because you have conscious awareness, you are aware of EVERY part of your mind. This is usually far from the case. The test to determine whether you have an unconscious mind is simple:

If you perceive there is a cause affecting you which has not come from yourself, you have an unconscious mind.

This must be true because the only way you could perceive that something is happening against your will, is by being unaware of the way that you do everything to yourself. The secret to salvation is realizing you do everything to yourself. Therefore, if you are not directly confronted with AWARENESS of the way in which you are CAUSING everything you are experiencing, no matter what form it takes or how it is projected, YOU DO have a part of your mind which is unconscious. And yes, that means pretty much most of us.

It is valuable to realize you have unconsciousness, because you DO need to bring those parts of your mind back into conscious awareness in order for your mind to be FULLY AWARE OF LOVE’S PRESENCE, and to be able to consciously choose heaven. You cannot enter heaven while part of your mind is unconscious.

Typically, most people walking around this planet, believe that they are FULLY aware. When they wake up in the morning, they believe they have woken up fully. They believe that everything they are aware of comprises the sum total of all things that exist. And therefore, whenever they are trying to make sense out of what caused something to happen, they will reference everything they are aware of, trying to make sense out of how this could happen. And since they believe they are fully aware (but are not), they HAVE to find an explanation for what causes thing, usually by blaming it on someone else.

If you are blaming others or the world for causing ANYTHING, it is proof that you do not recognize that YOU are the cause, you did not SEE yourself cause it, and you seem to have asked for something without realizing it. So recognize this, if you are a victim in any way, you are unconscious.

That means there is a whole bunch of information, facts, truth, and content, which has been BLOCKED from your conscious awareness. These are nothing less than blocks to the awareness of love’s presence. These blocks, these barriers of denial which make the mind unconscious, is precicely what we are REQUIRED to UNDO, in order to restore our awareness of God.

But if you are walking the world thinking, you know everything there is to know, and are aware of everything there is to be aware of, and yet stuff is happening to you seemingly against your will, in any way, then YOU ARE IN DENIAL. And that means, you have a portion of mind which is currently NOT CONSCIOUS, which you are not aware you even have. It is tucked away, out of sight, and you don’t even SUSPECT that you have it.

It is vital to uncover these portions of mind and to heal their content. Too many people think that "forgiving" only means taking back projections. This is beause they have no idea that they have unconscious stuff in their mind. They think that they only need to deal with what they are consciously aware of, ie what someone seems to be doing, and to take back that projection.

That’s a fine stepping stone, but if it does not lead to a) removing the denial that made guilt go unconscious (fear), b) removing the denial which made sin go unconscious (guilt), c) removing the denial that made God go unconscious (sin), by bringing all of those into conscious awareness and undoing them, and accepting Atonement, then this is NOT complete forgiveness. It’s scratching the surface, and many people are NOT forgiving fully.

These hidden dark secrets are hidden behind shadows and illusions and layers of denial. Fear for example is made entirely to make guilt unconscious. Fear defends against guilt and protects the guilt. It causes you to fixate on what the fear is being caused by, anywhere other than within, so that you will not look within to see where the fear is really coming from.

All fear has its source in your unconscious belief that you are GUILTY. It has absolutely no other cause. But while you remain unconscious/unaware of that guilt, you will keep trying to make sense of why you are afraid by blaming the cause on something outside of you. And since that is never the cause, it will not provide you with a solution.

Fear has to be recognized as a decoy, an illusion that is nothing more than an effect, not a cause. It is the effect of guilt. Fear is not causing anything because it is only guilt that can cause it. When you can recognize fear as an effect of guilt, the implication as to what caused it automatically will start to give you some breadcrumbs which will bring that guilt back into conscious awareness. Then you can work on undoing the guilt.

Guilt also is a problem because, guilt is not the problem. Guilt actually is another decoy like fear, designed to block and keep sin unconscious. It’s sole purpose is to pretend you did not sin and did not want to sin. It disowns the sin and disassociates from it, projecting blame for it on something or something outside of you. So long as you are feeling sorrowful and guilty and allegedly unworthy of forgiveness, this will block the dishonest fact that YOU DID WANT TO SIN, and that you yourself believe in it. Guilt keeps sin real and prevents you from looking at it. It keeps it out of conscious awareness.

Guilt has to be then recognized as just an effect of sin, and not a cause of anything. It’s bullshit lies of "didn’t mean to do it" has to be seen through. Guilt is fake. It is there solely to stop you from bringing your unconscious belief in sin into awareness. When you can see that guilt is just an effect, and all guilt is caused by a belief in sin, that will help you to bring the sin into conscious awareness. It will resurface as soon as you make the connection of causality that sin caused guilt, therefore behind guilt there is sin lurking there.

Once the belief is sin is in your awareness, it is not going to be pretty. Always look at this stuff with Holy Spirit, because there is some really dark murderous death-wish kind of beliefs tucked way in the unconscious mind. But these beliefs like all the rest are fake. You have to realize then that sin actually is yet another block to awareness. It keeps something out of conscious awareness. Can you guess what it is?

God.

The belief in sin makes God unconscious. Not only is it a belief that God is dead and IS unconscious hisemself, it also shuts awareness of God out of the mind. It can only do this through denial and unwillingness to accept the truth. It is just another block to let go. You must recognize sin is not a cause of anything. Sin is just an effect of a mistaken idea of separation. It has not caused anything, and therefore has not happened. Undoing this will REVEAL GOD to you, consciously.

So you see, we have a LOT of shit that’s just sitting there in the unconscious areas of mind, and yet not exactly inert or inactive. Unconscious self-hate will project outwards and cause all manner of SHIT stuff to "happen to you", and it will seem to come out of nowhere, because you will not see that you asked for it. And so you will think you are just an innocent victim.

This is the big problem. Believing you are "innocent" just because you are not AWARE of the fact that you attacked yourself, is the entire foundation for projecting blame outside of yourself for everything you experience. You won’t be able to ACCEPT that you have done this to yourself, until you can consciously own up to it and actually SEE that you have in fact been the one who did it. To recognize that YOU PUT THERE all of the suffering you are experiencing, including all of your sickness. Until you can own it, you cannot let it go.

Just because you THINK you are innocent right now, on the basis of not being fully aware of your whole mind, is FAKE INNOCENCE. And it is this fake innocence which leads many people to not even suspect that they have unconscious shit to undo. It also leads many to believe they DID NOT CAUSE the shit that happens, which actually is an act of profound irresponsibility. It is this irresponsibility, the disownership of self, that produces all suffering.

Remember that the secret to salvation is that you have done this ALL to yourself. This is a course in CAUSE, not effect. You are to learn you are the CAUSE of everything in the world, not the effect of it. And you can only do that by becoming AWARE consciously that you in fact DO cause things. That means removing the blocks to AWARENESS, which are simply forms of denial which have made you partly UNCONSCIOUS. And extreme denial produces all denial of life, which leads to sickness and death as total unconsciousness.

If you want life, you must become willing to bring this unconscious stuff back into awareness for healing and release. And that’s going to have to mean, taking full responsibility for everything you are experiencing. Otherwise, guaranteed, you will suffer at your own hand without even realizing it. No-one dies without their own consent!!!

"Maybe I am causing this" "I must be responsible for this" "I am doing this to myself" "I am the cause of this" "I must have some unconscious stuff to heal if I seem to be suffering against my will" "There must be something I am not aware of where I am attacking myself" "I need to undo my belief that I sinned by bringing it back into awareness and letting it go."

Remember, "heaven is a choice I must make" - a conscious choice. You cannot have stuff lurking in unconsciousness, otherwise you are in denial, and the beliefs you are denying will make you unwilling to accept the atonement. A healed mind is a wholly conscious mind.

Yesterday was quite a breakthrough. After making a video about immortality and writing a long post about how fear is self attack, Holy Spirit invited me to "practice" the ideas during a visit to a doctor. Usually at these visits (for another person) I pick up all kinds of anxiety and have reactions and fear thoughts.

So what I did was, remembered that every single fearful thought is in fact my attempt to attack myself, and attack others. Every fear thought is actually me trying to undermine my immortality. Every fearful idea or response, whether it's mine or not, is an attempt to get rid of, push away, attack, myself and others.

So as I sat there, and as fear thoughts started popping in, I instantly saw.... hey, that's me attacking myself. That's me trying to attack. And it completely diffused the thought in a split-second, made it disappear, and didn't allow it to "progress" or linger. I felt empowered because I realized that I was doing all of this fearing TO MYSELF, and I did not have to do that. It turned out to be the calmest, easiest, most relaxed visit ever. Total success.

Because you see, while I think that fear is "just fear" and it's justified or caused by external things, I'm not really being aware of what's happening. If I reframe it that fear is actually an attempt to attack (e.g. my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability, and fear is an attack thought), then I'm much more compelled to not do that.

I mean, if you realize that fear is actually you attacking, yourself and others, and you don't want to attack yourself or others, perhaps even because you would feel guilty about doing so, and if you realize that your fearing is you attacking, then you become motivated in quite a different way. It's now about not wanting to be a murderous asshole towards yourself and others, instead of it seeming to be about you being just some victim that is entirely affected by others doing stuff to YOU, and not the other way around. When you are afraid, YOU are the one doing the attacking!

So it's a complete reversal of cause and effect. It acknowledges that fear is coming OUT of you, towards the situation, towards other people, and NOT that the fear is being caused from the outside in. And that really is the secret of salvation. Because it then suddenly becomes starkly obvious that you are doing the fear to yourself. You are literally attacking your invulnerability with your fearful thought. You are trying to undermine, weaken, overthrow, get rid of, diminish or destroy your immortality. And you don't want to do that.

The reframing of fear as "attack coming from me" is very very useful as a tool. Because it has truth in it. Fear actually IS coming from you. It IS your attempt to separate. It's your attempt to push things away (which is attack/murder). It's your attempt to stop things (which is attack/murder). It's your attempt to 'kill off' the thing that you perceive as a threat.

All of the sense you have that you are "afraid of" something and "want it to go away" or "want it to stop", if you look at it, is really you trying to destroy it. You want to get rid of it. That's murderous thinking. You want it to end. That's an attempt to end life. Resistance isn't passive, or a defense, it's an attack. And similarly, "if I defend myself I am attacked". Fear seems like a defense, a protective mechanism. It's not, it's totally a weapon.

And in fact you will hear stories from some people as to how 'fearing' caused someone else to suffer. How being anxious and doubtful and uncertain and concerned and worrying about someone, actually sends nasty psychic attack vibes to them. These kind of thoughts are actually attacks. They're attempts to picture someone as weak and suffering and vulnerable and threatened. It's a belief that there's something wrong with them, they're sinful, they're capable of being hurt, and this "fake concern" is entirely an ego thing. A weapon of attack disguised as "caring".

The opposite of being concerned about someone and telling them "be careful you don't...." or "try not to"... etc... is to EMPOWER them, to support their integrity and strength, to affirm why they are confident and fearless and will prevail. To focus on their strength, not their potential weakness. That's empowering, and it's totally the opposite of what can pass for "caring" in the form of worries and fears and "concerns". Concern is fear, full stop. Concern is seriousness. Seriousness is attack. And fear is an attempt NOT to acknowledge someone's immortality, but to deny it and make the person weak.

It's very eye opening. The way I felt lighter, brighter, stronger, fearless, and more tranquil after nipping all these self-attack fear thoughts in the bud, was a reward in itself. Definitely something to keep applying. I had like 10 fear-driven attack thoughts before breakfast this morning. I had to re-frame every one of them as attempts to attack myself, and to stop doing so. I had no idea just how many of my thoughts are attack thoughts. It seems that almost all of them are driven by fear. And every one of them is my attempt to prove I am not immortal.

So long as you remain in a position of causation, you are all-powerful. And that means the truth comes out of you, it is given and shared, and reinforces itself. You see it in everything you project it onto, and in your harmlessness you are safe.

Being all-powerful, you are invulnerable. Nothing can happen to you against your will because you are the one doing the happening. Being purely causal and creative, you have tremendous strength and ability. There is nothing your holiness cannot do.

Centered in your power, which you share with God, you know that you are safe and protected. So long as you do not hurt yourself, you cannot be hurt. So long as you do not cause something to happen to you, nothing can happen to you. Your will is as powerful as God's will, and nothing can prevail against it or intrude upon it.

""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 is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

(Urtext W253L to W253L1)

"There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. "

(Urtext W190L5)

It is only when you deny that you are all powerful that you enter into what we call fear. Fear is a seeming absence of love, so if you've denied yourself you've denied love. Seeming to lack power, to be weakened, to see yourself as not the cause, you now see cause and power and strength as separate from you - because you believe you are separate from them.

Cause and will and power and mind are now projected outward and are seen as outside of you, beyond your will, outside the limits of your mind and of your control. They seem therefore to be able to act without your consent, to will on their own. ACIM calls this an "alien will".

Once you see cause or power as outside of you, separate from you, you HAVE to also believe that you are no longer powerful or causal. And this begins the slippery slope toward seeing yourself as being able to be affected. If you are not all powerful, something else has more power. If you are not causal, something else could cause you.

As soon as your mind believes that power and causation are external or separate or disowned, it also sees itself as an EFFECT of that causation. It believes it can BE affected, because it is no longer strong, or safe, or protected by the love of God. Being in uncertainty about its own causation, the mind goes into doubt and fear.

If there is an alien will out there, and if it is separate from your own, then it must be against you without your permission. This is the root of all fear. The belief and perception that the word is transpiring against you, choosing without consulting you, determining your future, deciding whether you will live or die, and generally "happening to you" beyond your ability to stop it.

You can't seem to stop the world attacking, threatening, troubling, upsetting you etc, once you're on this slippery slope into hell. And the only response to that is fear. If you do indeed see power and causation as outside your scope of control, beyond your reach to manage, then stuff can happen to you at any time, without your seeming to choose it. And who wouldn't be afraid of that? It is disturbing to think something can happen that you cannot prevent.

You're afraid because you see yourself as a victim. A victim is a role where somehow, in some way, you seem not to be the one causing or choosing, and you seem to lack the power to stop it, simply because you believe something has power over you. A power that is not yours, a power you do not share in, a power that you cannot wield, and a power that you have lost.

Ultimately then it is in fact YOUR OWN POWER that you have dissociated from and projected. It is YOUR OWN CAUSATION that you have put outside of you, pretending it does not belong to you. It is YOUR OWN MIND that is giving this power away and is trying to associate it with things that do NOT have it. And it is YOUR OWN MIND that positions itself as being "at the effect of" that very same power.

This means of course that you are doing it to yourself. All fear is you attacking yourself from the outside in. All fear is you believing that you are at the effect of a cause that's separate from you. Yet ideas do not leave their source. Your mind houses the idea that cause is separate from you. Your mind houses the causation that it visualizes as outside of it. And your mind houses the effects that it puts into itself to demonstrate what the cause is doing to you.

Really this means that all fear is self-threat, you can only be afraid if you threaten yourself, it is only YOUR OWN POWER that you are afraid of, fear is an attempt to hide from your own power, and being a victim is an attempt to pretend that you are powerless. All sense of fear then comes from the belief that you have no power over "that power" which seems not to be yours, and is an attempt to PRETEND to be powerless. Yet you USE your power to do this.

If in any way you believe that anything in the world has the power to do anything to you at all, you have for a start associated YOUR power with external things. You've GIVEN your power away to things that don't own it. You WANT those things to have your power. Now you see and perceive external things as being powerful over you, causing you, sinning against you, justifying your anger, and making you afraid and upset.

But notice that YOUR MIND also manufacturers all of the sense of "I am at the effect", it visualizes an appropriate "reaction" to the threat, it PUTS THE EFFECTS IN YOU, and literally materializes all the symptoms and consequences that it imagines must come from such a cause. If it for example believes that some other person has power over it, it will not only give that power TO the person, it will also visualize itself as affected BY the person, AND put symptoms into itself to correspond to the "amount of threat" that it has invented.

This is where the hierarchy of illusions comes in, along with orders of difficulty. You may have noticed that when you believe something external is big and serious, important and powerful, authoritative and trusted, or has some sense of capability or truth, you have MORE reaction than when it's something mild, weak, insignificant, unimportant, or that you don't believe in.

If some educated doctor suddenly tells you you have a terminal illness, you will very likely go into into much bigger fear than if someone tells you their opinion about the weather. If there seems to be an external threat to your "life", ie the body seems to be being caused against your will, and you think it is your self, then you will have a huge amount of terror.

But in every case, in every scenario, no matter how it looks, or who seems to have the power over you, or who is doing what to you, or what role they play, it is ALWAYS YOU, always your own mind which is DECIDING to believe in a) the disowning of your own power, b) the projecting of it onto another, c) associating it with another, d) seeing yourself as caused BY that power, and e) therefore changed against your will by that power. And your mind itself will invent AND PUT IN PLACE, all of your symptoms, effects, altered feelings, consequences and results of what you believe that power can do to you.

This is also precisely how the symptoms of sickness come about. And it is also what happens when you project your sin onto others, through the body, which uses the body to accuse another of sin. Your mind sees itself as under attack by an external power - its own power that it has disowned - and to try to prove it, it manifests changes in the body to symbolize the various ways that you are under attack. The body is then held up as a picture of crucifixion to show to another that THEY caused this effect in your body, even though YOU put the effect there.

It's all part of your attempt to FORCE them to have power over you. It's your wish that you would even crucify yourself and make yourself seem to die, to attack the body with terrible afflictions, IF only it can mean that, at the same time, your brother is assigned all your causing, thus all your "doing", is framed for your murder, and can be accused of causing YOU to change.

"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

This all simply happens through false perception which is the reversal of cause and effect. Whenever you see cause in the world in any way, you are projecting YOUR power to cause. And you must see yourself as a victim or effect of that. Perception is now backwards because you perceive the world is happening to you instead of you dreaming the world. To see the world causing you is false perception. To see YOU causing the world, is true perception.

"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT, of what it made. "

(urtext T28C11)

What this all means is really the secret of salvation, that "you are doing this to yourself". No matter how it looks or who plays the role of victim or victimizer, still this is the truth. Your mind disowns its own power, your mind frames others and the world for having this power, your mind decides to position itself as affectable, your mind puts the effects in place, and your mind uses the effects to accuse others and the world of what YOU did, so that you can keep disowning your power.

Effectively, using the body as a scapegoating mechanism to get rid of your sin. Because sin is very closely aligned with causation. You think that you used your power to cause the death of God, to attack reality, and to change the truth. And now you try to keep projecting your power in order to avoid admitting to this, even though it's not true. If you maintain yourself as powerless, you can claim that you have no power, and therefore cannot have been the one who caused God to change.

But wielding your own power also means therefore that you cannot be hurt, or attacked, or had power over, or caused, or affected, or made vulnerable, or weakened, or made sick, OR CAUSED TO DIE, without your consent, and without YOU making it happen TO yourself. If you so choose to stop attacking yourself WITH YOUR OWN POWER, nothing in the world can have any power over you. If you choose to stop hurting yourself, you cannot be hurt. If you choose to stop making yourself sick, you cannot be sick. And if you choose to stop dying, you cannot die.

You cannot be afraid of anything but your own self-attack. Nothing in the world causes you. Nothing in the world has power over you. No-one has the power to make you anything. You are not affected by anything but your own mind.

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

(urtext W281L)

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

(urtext W26L)

"It can be but myself I crucify."

(urtext W196L)

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details"

(urtext W152L1)

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

(urtext W190L5)

To summarize simply, only you can make yourself afraid, you can only be afraid of your own power, only you give yourself the symptoms and effects which you think that power would produce, and only you can stop doing that to yourself. Only you threaten yourself, only you choose to be in fear, only you make yourself a victim, and you have the power to NEVER be victimized ever again.

You have the power to live forever, and that makes you utterly invulernerable and incapable of being sick or dying. You have this power because God has shared his with you. And if it be your will, no-one and nothing has any power over you to frighten you. You cannot be afraid unless you choose to do so, any more than you can have any effects of any kind without electing to choose that they be there. You are the one who is scaring yourself, and you can stop.

"I am not weak, but strong."

"I am not helpless, but all powerful."

(urtext W91L8)

A very common-place belief is that you choose something at one moment in time, the "change" is implemented at that time, and then you stop making any changes. It then seems that the effects that you choose are on a kind of auto-pilot, just carrying over from the past, as if you are not making any decisions NOW that are resulting in the effects remaining.

So for example 20 years ago, someone attacked you and damaged your leg, and ever since then you've been walking with a limp. You THINK that the limp is there "because of" that one moment in time which changed the "direction" of your life, as though a temporary hand steered you in a different direction, but this is NOT how it works.

When anything happens, as a "one time" thing, it is not a one-time thing. If you accept it, thus believe in it, and YOU implement the effects, and you maintain the belief that it happened, you are CONSTANTLY BELIEVING that it happened. It's like you suddenly get into a groove, you STAY in the groove, and are continually now under the influence of this belief. The belief is CONSTANTLY EXPRESSING. The belief is continually RE-MANUFACTURING the effects that you chose, moment by moment.

So if we re-frame this, 20 years ago you DECIDED that you would walk with a limp. You NEVER CHANGED YOUR MIND about this. You THINK that you only decided this one-time 20 years ago, but in fact you have been deciding to walk with a limp for 20 years straight. Every single day you make the same decision, or commit to the same intention, and without changing it you KEEP MAKING the same effects. If you would realize you need not suffer, you would change your mind and set yourself free, NOW.

This works exactly like a projector, because it is a projective process. At some point in time, you put a movie reel into your projector and switched it on. It started projecting an image of a broken leg. Each moment, the projector shines light and broadcasts this image. And then the next moment it does it again. It puts that image out there again, and again, and again, and again.

Over time, the movie screen shows a broken leg, CONSTANTLY in a state of being broken. Why? Because the movie reel has not been changed. It just keeps RE-PROJECTING the same picture, based on the same programming. Putting the movie reel into the projector is not what "caused the broken leg" 20 years ago, it's the fact that the SAME movie reel (belief) is STILL in the projector! This movement INTO this state of damage has not been chosen against, in 20 years! You have no UNDONE IT.

This is how beliefs and choices really operate. Because in every single MOMENT, you have free will to CHOOSE what you will experience. And just because you seem to keep choosing the SAME experience over a prolonged period of time does NOT MEAN that you can't change that experience in an instant. Just because you have this long story of built-up belief that you were damaged 20 years ago and have had this broken leg for SO LONG that it can't possibly be healed, that's total bullshit. It is completely irrelevant. The decision to have the broken leg is happening NOW, not in the past.

Every moment, you are choosing and projecting a version of the body that you CHOOSE it be. Every moment you are broadcasting its image. Every moment you are determining its condition. Every moment you are putting out there a FRESH COPY of a picture of a body. It's not even RELATED to the one that you projected 5 seconds ago. And the one you "had" 5 seconds ago DOES NOT EXIST. Nor is the one you have now, a "carry over" from one you just had, nor has there been any transfer or maintaining of its "state" outside of your mind. The body does NOT have its own state.

The ego has been very good at creating the ILLUSION that the past carries over to the present, or that something happening 20 years ago is still affecting you in a kind of cause-effect relationship. As if the past causes the present. This is total fiction. The leg is not still broken because of the past, it's still broken because the MIND HAS NOT CHANGED.

So you have to realize this. Beliefs, when you implement them, are DECISIONS, which will CONSTANTLY EXPRESS, for as long as you keep the belief. The EFFECTS of this belief will continue to be produced - CAUSED - so long as you keep the belief. If you have this belief lodged in your mind for 20 years saying "my leg is damaged", it will constantly ensure that the leg shows up as damaged for 20 years. It's like you develop an ATTITUDE, and you keep this attitude going, and every day you have this attitude, and therefore every day PRODUCE the same EFFECTS.

Yet you are free to change your mind at ANY TIME. And the instant that you undo that belief and accept the CURE of Atonement, all of those signs and symptoms of damage will disappear. INSTANTLY. With no bearing on how long it's been there or "why" it's "more difficult" to heal it if you've had it for decades.

It's simply not true that decisions or "influences" or "causes" occur "momentarily", at one moment in time, affecting things just briefly (e.g. an accident), causing irreparable damage which just happens to then carry on "on its own". Nothing EVER carries on on its own. The mind HAS TO BE MAKING EVERYTHING HAPPEN AT ALL TIMES. "Mind makes this decision as it makes EVERY decision responsible for the condition of the body."

So you are either CONTINUING TO BELIEVE and therefore CHOOSE that the body be in a certain condition, for however long you decide to keep believing that, OR you change your mind and the body changes NOW.

It's through realizing this mechanism which is how things ACTUALLY work, that you will go on to realize this: WHEN the mind decides the body is sick, the body becomes sick. *****WHEN THE MIND DECIDES NOT TO BE SICK, IT INSTANTLY HEALS THE BODY*****. Or better, it instantly undoes the image it projected a moment ago and projects a fresh image of a body in a healed state SYMBOLIZING the beliefs of the mind. The body is not an end in itself, it only EVER is an EFFECT of the mind causing, choosing, believing.

As soon as the mind is changed and the BELIEF and NEED for the sickness are removed, do you really think the body just "carries on" being sick on its own? As if, once again, there is a cause-effect relationship through time where the PAST determines what the body's condition is NOW? It does not. If you remove the CONSTANT DECISION from the mind, as to the body suffering or being in a certain state, you are now making a NEW DECISION about the state of the body, and the body NOW MUST be projected in this "new form". This new appearance, to correlate to what your BELIEF IS NOW.

This means, there is a direct instant correlation between your state of mind and the state of the body. There is a DIRECT MIRRORING of mental health and physical health. If the mind contains an attack belief, the BODY will show up with attack in it. If the mind is HEALED, it ABSOLUTELY MUST only project a body THAT IS ALSO HEALED. Because the body is nothing but a SYMBOL OF THE MIND. The body is not a thing in its own right, with its own mind or will or continuity. There is no such thing as bodily continuity. There is only "what am I choosing to project this instant?"

You choose to switch out that movie reel, you get rid of the "broken leg" movie, take it out, the mind is clear of it, what happens? The leg STOPS SHOWING UP AS DAMAGED. Instantly. Because now there is a new projection, one which does NOT include broken legs.

I've seen this happen over and over. Typically, let's say that someone has a so-called "accident" (a choice to suffer), and in this accident they become "traumatized", and now they KEEP the trauma, and ADJUST to it, and allow it to stay. Basically that now means, they have formed BELIEFS, which are CHOICES, to go INTO a certain state of mind relating to this incident. Which means they now are carrying around with them this CONSTANT STATE OF SUFFERING, in the mind, which they have not healed. They have not UNDONE "what happened".

They have not released the pent up emotions relating to it. They have not freed themselves from ALLOWING (permitting) that incident to AFFECT them in any way. And so now they live under a dark cloud, choosing to STAY IN THE ACCIDENT MOMENT, continually, never letting it go. And therefore the symptoms and effects that are CAUSED BY THE BELIEF, continue to be regenerated and re-caused, at all times, every day. And as such every day is now suffering because they dipped down into hell and never got themselves back out of it.

When bad shit happens like that (you hurt yourself on purpose), you have to UNDO IT, otherwise you will simply carry it around with you CONSTANTLY going forward. You will not let it go. Until it is HEALED. You have to heal all such "events" and choices and beliefs relating to it, to ERASE IT FROM YOUR MIND. Then by doing so, you are no longer CHOOSING THAT IT BE HAPPENING. And therefore it does not occur, never did occur, and YOU are now re-living it every moment. When your mind STOPS believing in it, the symptoms MUST DISAPPEAR. They cannot show up WITHOUT your belief, and believing is choosing. If "life beats you down", you HAVE TO GET UP AND ATONE.

So in summary, decision making is a PERPETUAL thing, not a momentary thing. You are ALWAYS expressing from who you think you are. You are CONSTANTLY emitting and projecting based on your beliefs. And your beliefs are choices. So you don't ever make momentary decisions, you instead decide to go into or commit to a LONG-TERM state, and then you stay there in that state for years, not changing your mind. When you change your mind, it doesn't matter how long you've been in that state, your NEW STATE of mind must now project, NOW, a fresh image of a body. NOT CONNECTED TO the past "condition". The body does not have any continuity! It is not subject to causes and effects in the world. It is caused solely by your mind.

Which means, when your mind is sick, your body will show up as sick. When your mind is healthy, your body CANNOT BE SICK, NOR CAN IT DIE, because it can ONLY represent what your MIND IS CHOOSING to symbolize itself as.

"A guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being SANE, IT HEALS THE BODY."

"A damaged body is PROOF THE MIND **HAS NOT** BEEN HEALED."

"Those who are sick do not love themselves, for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves."

The more that you take responsibility for what you are experiencing, and the more you see that your whole experience is not caused by anyone or anything other than yourself, the more you will see this in others as well.

I was at the grocery store and saw this man walking with a cane and an obvious limp from some recent injury. But what struck me was how this 'looked' to me. Instead of the usual ego perception of ... oh, something must've happened to him, he's obviously been unfairly treated, he didn't choose this and he is powerless.... I saw instead, here is someone who has chosen to give themselves this temporary disability, who has done it to themselves, albeit perhaps unconsciously, and this hasn't happened to them against their will. I see the man acting as if he didn't choose this, acting as if he didn't want this, but still somehow it registered with me that he was not a victim and that this 'accident' had come from him. There are no accidents.

As Jesus says, nothing happens to us without our consent, including death. We get everything we ask for. We do not get anything we don't ask for. I don't know what had changed in my mind or how, but somehow my mind was seeing/perceiving differently and the 'meaning' of what I was seeing struck me differently. This man is responsible for what he is experiencing, he's not a victim, and nothing has happened against his will, meaning he has the POWER to recover.

If I see myself as a victim, by not taking responsibility for what I believe and feel, and if I don't recognize that what I feel is NOT caused by anything outside of me, then I also will see other people as victims. I'll have 'sympathy' for other people's unfair treatment, and enter into 'false empathy'. I also won't believe that other people chose what's happening, or that they have the power to heal. Instead I'll see them as condemned and stuck and powerless, because that's how I see myself.

But when I claim who I am and what I am experiencing, with me as its author, I will also see other people as being empowered and capable and free.

It's interesting how perception can change, how the mind can change, and how it can make the world appear different to you. I'm not talking about having certain thoughts, just the immediate way the world 'looks' to you, how it registers, what it means, what is clear and obvious and what you see in it. This somehow gets transformed when we heal and forgive, as if there are hidden changes to a hidden projector in our mind that produces a different experience, without really knowing how that change occurs. Holy Spirit of course knows how healing is accomplished.

In the ego's world, causes are victimizers, and effects are victims

This applies everywhere in the ego's world. Every single "cause" is the idea of victimization. Every single "effect" is the idea of being a victim. What possibly can there even be LEFT when this classifies EVERY phenomenal event in history?

When the wind blows leaves on a tree, the wind is now the victimizer, the tree its helpless victim whom it has power over against its will.

Also in the ego's world, causes turn into effects and back again, because really, both causes and effects in this world are THE SAME ILLUSION.

In truth, both causes and effects in this world, both victims and victimizers, are THE SAME ILLUSION, which shifts and changes based on the circumstances.

They are both EFFECTS. Neither of them are causes.

They are effects of DREAMING from an entirely separate level of causality.

If something in this world is a cause one moment, for example someone kicking a ball, where the ball is the effect, how is it possible that the ball bounces off a wall and hits the person on the head? That person is now victimized by the ball.

How is it possible for the cause to TRULY be a cause, a permanent cause, if it is actually able to be affected?

And so, in this world, causes are AFFECTED, and effects can CAUSE. Meaning, victimizers are also victims, and victims are also victimizers.

And since causes can be changed into effects, which is an attempt to prove that GOD (cause) CAN BE AFFECTED by your sin, they are not REALLY causes. Both causes and effects in this world are FAKE.

Everything in this world is equally an EFFECT OF DREAMING. An effect of the ONLY cause which is in the MIND. The mind is cause, the entire world is the effect.

The body is an effect, all sickness is an effect, all death is an effect, and resurrection is an effect. Mind has power over all matter. Mind is the ONLY CAUSE of what happens here.

This world SEEMS to have many causes in it. The wind SEEMS to blow the tree. The leaves SEEM to be "blown". This is an illusion! The wind blowing, and the leaves moving, HAPPENS TOGETHER as a SIMULTANEOUS PROJECTION from a dreaming mind.

Similarly, if an "accident" happens which hurts someone and their body becomes damaged, the accident itself AND the damage in the body were BOTH MANIFESTED AT THE SAME TIME BY THE SAME MIND. By the same cause.

Therefore it is NOT TRUE that the accident caused the body to be damaged! The accident happening and the body showing damage is a DECEPTION by the mind to make it APPEAR, in linear time, that there are causes in the world which terrorize other parts of the world, producing effects against their will.

Buying into this view of horizontal cause and effect, will make you buy into the illusion that YOU ARE A VICTIM, because you will not be able to help but believe that stuff "happens to you" by worldly external causes, and that symptoms show up "as effects" against your will. It is an ILLUSION.

If your body becomes hurt by an incident, caused by something external, YOU ARE PUTTING THE HURT IN YOUR BODY in an attempt to make it seem true that you are at the effect of the world! YOUR MIND puts your sickness in your body to CORRELATE to the heirarchy of illusions - the belief that a separate cause caused this. It's a cover-up. It's pretend. It's fake.

You as spirit, joined with God's mind, cannot be at the effect of the world, because the world is at the effect of YOU. This means the world HAS NO CAUSAL POWER of its own. ZERO! Absolutely no ability whatsoever to make anything happen. Jesus's own words:

""It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail.""

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. "

The world DOES NOTHING. It is not a cause. Everything in the world is the EFFECT of YOUR MIND.

This is why you have power over the whole world. This is why "my self is ruler of the universe". This is why whatever your mind chooses to see, it will PUT INTO THE WORLD in form, manifestationally!

"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see and all the world must change accordingly."

ie the world "out there" is what your mind PUTS THERE. Change your mind and that outward picture MUST CHANGE. The world will change, "physically"!

"The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self-fullness."

Within me there is an ego aspect which is very selfish. This aspect rears its head if I see myself as having to do something I don't want to do, being caused to do something because of someone else, or that my condition or situation is a result of something outside my control.

My mind goes into a victim mode where I see myself as being at the effect of external powers. I start to become justified in anger. I start to complain and make noise about how I'm having to do all this stuff "because of" something or someone else. How it's all their fault.

And as I listen to myself in those states I see a tremendous selfishness. Everything I say is laden with "you're doing this to me" and "if it wasn't because of you" and "its your fault" and "you're not meeting my needs" and "my needs aren't met" and so on.. all revolving around this self absorption.

It even can take on a guise of trying to be helpful or "care" in such a manner as to see myself as doing stuff for someone else for "their benefit" and me not getting any benefit from it, and then accusing them of inflicting this upon me, and that I'm suffering because of my efforts to be helpful. It's a strange twisted ego response.

This was flaring up for me recently and i was quite shocked as just how victimy and selfish I sounded as I ranted on about things I was having to do that seemed outside my control or which could not be avoided. Everything that came out of my mouth was all about me me me and my needs and my wants and my effects which seemed to have been caused by something that's not me. lol

This is what the ego is. It's this idea of selfishness. Many people think that ego means individuality, it doesn't. It means an individual WHO IS SELFISH. And that selfishness is just one mental condition of that individual, which can be healed and restored to an individual who is NOT selfish. Selfishness means attempting not to SHARE anything or give anything. Sharing is the natural condition of the sons of God who cooperate with each other perfectly fine when they're not being selfish.

The end of selfishness is not the end of your self. It's merely the end of seeing your self as a victim. It's the end of hoarding, ownership, possession, isolation, imprisonment, exclusivity and specialness. When those things go, the "selfish person" goes, but the person that you are, underneath, does not go anywhere. It becomes uncovered for the loving being that it is.

In God, who is cause, He created Christ, who is Effect. Or "Father" created "Son".

At the "separation", the Son attempted to separate from the Father, thereby introducing a separation between Cause and Effect.

Cause and Effect in Heaven are ONE, unified and completely immediately intertwined. But after separation, a "distance" or "gap" arose (illusion of course) between them, suggesting that Cause had been robbed of its ability to produce effects, and that the effects had not been caused by God.

Essentially this means two things. It means God seemed then to not create the Son, making an illusion that God’s will has been stopped (ie the Son has power over God). And then additionally, that the Son has no Father and therefore has to INVENT a false God as a substitute.

What also then happens is, now that there’s a gap between cause and effect, it *seems* as though somehow the "effects" coming from a cause are separated off from the cause. Instead of them being One, they are cut off from each other.

This sets up the entire ego thought system which believes and perceives that you can cause something WITHOUT experiencing the effects. And this further leads to the belief that an external cause (aka God, turned into an evil God) can do things to make you an effect against your will.

The more that your belief in separation between cause and effect increases, the more you become an unconscious victim, aka dead. It heightens your false perception that "causes outside of you" are producing effects inside of you. This makes you suffer and makes you a victim in every way.

If you are "heavily steeped in ego", strongly projecting sin (cause), and are believing that stuff applies to others that does not apply to you or vice versa, or that you can cause effects in others without those effects being in you and vice versa, then you have belief that Cause (Father) is separate from Effect (Son). To the degree that you believe this, you will experience an intensified sense of *separation*, denial, disassociation, war, and unconsciousness.

As we apply forgiveness, we undo the belief in separation by recognizing that what we thought applied "separately" to others but not to ourselves, is actually our attitude about ourselves. What we thought was their own separate sin, is actually our own sin. What we thought happened against our will, must have been caused by ourselves. It also means learning that you cannot be affected by anyone or anything other than yourself, or against your will, in any way!

When finally cause and effect are reunited, Father and Son are reunited, mind becomes ONE and whole, what applies within applies without, what applies to you applies to the entire Sonship, your innocence is everyone’s innocence, you will see your Self in everyone, and you will know sanity again. It is the end of war. It is peace, and the final release from all forms of self-attack which were masquerading as attack by separate causes. It is the end of death.

I think perhaps we under appreciate what being "ruler of the universe" really entails. It seems fanciful and lofty and like some kind of fake superhero idea.

"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 is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen."

What Jesus is saying is that we should, in our more natural state of mind, adopt a position of great responsibility. We should be powerful beings who cannot be affected by the world. We are free from fear, causing us to be decisive and certain. We no longer are tossed around by the world and its changes, but instead remain in a continual state of calm and strength, acting deliberately, fully conscious and purposeful.

"It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences."

It is not a state in which you are a victim, or affected by the world, or upset by anything, or caused in any way by any person. It is not a state in which you are constantly changing and adapting and reacting and cleaning up a mess. It's not a state in which you are being bossed around, intimidated, offended, attacked, persuaded or caused against your will.

Jesus is asking us to step into shoes of authority. Shoes of responsibility not only for everything we feel and see and experience, but even responsibility for causing things to happen. As he states clearly, you as ruler of the universe rule your destiny, even in this world. You DECIDE what you want to happen and it MUST happen. You decide what you do not want to happen, and it DOES NOT happen. This is not wishful thinking. This is the power of God to alter the world and affect events. This is being a miracle worker.

In our lives we are probably used to being pushed around, caused to changed, made to feel upset, affected and stressed, scared and attacked. At the same time, the very world that we give power to upset us, is also given power to do things "favorable" to us. We want to get from the world, but only the stuff we approve of, and the rest remains an enemy. But this is not an enlightened or empowered state.

To move out of victimhood into authority, we have to learn to exercise our power consciously and deliberately. We have to learn to stop giving our power away, and we have to learn to take it back from where we have disowned it.

"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."

It is only because you give your power away to the world and to people and events that you seem to allow them to DECIDE FOR YOU what you are, what you feel, what you experience and what happens. You have to learn to stop doing that. Stop enabling people, in your mind, to have possession of YOUR authority, and stop USING them to attack yourself.

The problem mainly is that by giving power to things that have no power, we keep asking them to give us what we want. We keep searching externally for salvation. We want it to do things to us. We want it to give us peace, make us happy, love us, worship us, please us, and bestow gifts upon us. And when it doesn't, or does the opposite, we instead allow it to decide for us that we will not be happy, will not be at peace, and will be upset. As Jesus says, any time that we search externally for the gifts of God, we are mentally ill.

"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others."

Being the ruler of the universe, you get to be a boss, of sorts, along with the Holy Spirit working with and through you. You use the POWER of your decision, your decisiveness, to DECIDE what will and will not happen. You make it so with the power in your mind. If you say something will be healed it will be healed. If you say something will not happen, it will not happen. You get to decide your destiny. You get to decide who will or will not do what.

"What do you think "the meek shall inherit the earth" MEANS? They will literally take it over because of their strength."

This is not the same as "control" or "manipulation", or other ego fantasies of tyranny and dictatorship. This is your true freedom and power. If you want to not be a victim, you have to step into the role of being an authority and a powerful being, of being responsible and in command, of choosing and deliberately deciding what will occur for you, and NOT assigning responsibility for it to other people or the world. You have to stop sitting on the sidelines and stand up to be counted.

You get to call the shots here, you get to direct your life, and you get to never have to tolerate or put up with any shit ever again - knowing that you only ever put up with what you did to yourself to begin with.

"I am not weak, but strong."

"I am not helpless, but all powerful."

"I am not limited, but unlimited."

"I am not doubtful, but certain."

"I am not an illusion, but a reality."

"I cannot see in darkness, but in light."

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing. Suffer, and YOU decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you GAVE the power of decision to Him Who MUST decide for God for you."

"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and the healing that is of HIM ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary. But healing itself IS consistence, because ONLY consistence is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free ARE whole."

The thoughts that arise in your mind, have a cause. They are produced BY the mind as a result of thinking. They do not show up out of nowhere. Nor are they generated without intention, because "there are no neutral thoughts."

Ego thoughts are reactions, or effects, in response to a perceived external cause. They happen in a split mind in a state of dissociation. One part of the mind sees itself as causing the other part of the mind, and this produce effects. The effects are thoughts of judgement, reaction, threat and fear. These reactions also produce all the ego emotions.

If you believe there is a cause outside of yourself with the power to do something to you, you will have a "reaction". However you are reacting to your own perception that you are being threatened or caused against your will. The belief in this cause splits off part of the mind and pits it against the rest of you. And you can't believe in being caused without also believing there are effects.

The mind generates both the sense of being causal, and the sense of being affected by that cause. ie that you are "doing this to yourself". In the split mind, ie the ego, this dissociation leads to all reactions.

So for example if you perceive there is an external threat of some kind, or a person having power to affect you, your mind will not only believe in being caused, it will also believe in being affected. Cause and effect alway exist together. Your mind will manufacture what it believes should be the "effects", results or consequences, corresponding to the severity of the threat.

This is also because there is a hierarchy of illusions. If you believe there is a very big threat, you WILL have much bigger reaction. The intensity, size, seriousness, importance or value of the perceived danger, which is a belief in YOUR mind, produce a corresponding effect.

For example there was a time when my wife had cancer, and when this was diagnosed, and through the later surgery, I was stricken with intense fear thoughts. And they would not stop erupting. They were strong and persistent and were in direct response to "how serious" I believed the situation was.

It was interesting though that because of this intensity, I got to see first hand the way the hierarchy of illusions works. The ego, in effect, insists that you SHOULD react with a given amount of severity, based on how severe the cause is. Bigger problems call forth bigger reactions. More serious problems have stronger "temptation" and inspire much larger responses.

So I at least got to see that the only reason I was having such a big fear response, with my mind flooded with terribly fearful thoughts every few seconds, was because of this supposed hierarchy. I didn't HAVE to have such a big reaction, and I shouldn't have been having it based solely on the seriousness of the supposed situation. But there it was. Big perceived threats, produce big reactionary thoughts.

You can see in the course a trend whereby it's asking us to not only transcend the hierarchy, but also to stop being affected by external causes. It's moving us towards a reintegration of the dissociated parts of mind, and to stop attacking yourself. And thereby it's bringing about "peace of mind", calmness and quietness of thought, simply as a result of removing your BELIEF IN the hierarchy of illusions.

It would be denial to say that your mind can be peaceful while still having attack thoughts, while still having ego thoughts, while still being plagued by emotional reactions, or while you're still riddled with fear. There is no peace there. Peace arises from the ABSENCE of ego thoughts, having been placed with God-like thinking, which leads to only loving, peace-inducing experiences.

A mind which does not believe the hierarchy and is not tempted by external causation, does not HAVE these reactions. This is reiterated in the secret of salvation, ie "you would not react AT ALL to figures in a dream that you knew YOU were dreaming." By remembering its a dream and its coming from us, we step out of the "reaction mode". And if you can't react, you can't have reactionary thoughts or emotions. And this leads to the mind becoming quiet and undisturbed.

So really it is your mind that makes the ego thoughts. And it makes them both in the form of attack thoughts, and in the form of reactionary thoughts. Where there is attack there is cause, and where there is cause there is effect. YOU make the thoughts that keep flooding your mind with fear, based on false perceptions. Without false perceptions, you have no basis for CAUSING negative effects because you aren't thinking in an attacking way.

So it's not so much that you have to spend time trying to watch thoughts come and go, or try to ignore them, or deny them, or control them. It's more a matter of needing to heal your beliefs and undo the split in the mind, so that you don't PRODUCE all these attacking thoughts.

What this really points to is that, your mind creates its own suffering, your mind creates all symptoms, your mind creates all reactions, your mind puts in place all bodily states, and you are responsible for healing the split so that you don't MAKE these things in the first place.

"The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship. All fear comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship."

The "authority problem" is where, in heaven, you who are an effect of God and a co-cause of creation, attempt to turn around and CAUSE GOD, while also DENYING YOU ARE HIS EFFECT. You deny his fatherhood and causation of you, you reject everything he has therefore GIVEN you, and therefore ORPHAN yourself - "separate yourself off" from sharing everything with him, collapsing your oneness and trying to "go it alone."

You then proceed to try to AUTHOR YOURSELF, which leads to you trying to reinvent yourself and make a self (ego), while simultaneously believing you have not BEEN authored, and this begins the fear that you DO NOT EXIST - which is the basis of all fear.

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

All fear is the fear of not existing - the fear of death - which is the same thing as the belief that you have not been created - that you have no source, and are therefore fundamentally UN-CAUSED, and not a co-cause, and so must be purely an effect/victim that is ceasing to exist.

AS you begin to open up to hand back to God HIS FUNCTION, in which you acknowledge that you share everything with him, what you have is what he has GIVEN you, you have nothing OTHER than what he has given you, he is your cause and creator and father, and you RECEIVE what he has given you by reclaiming your shared inheritance, you are once again acknowledging that God is the AUTHOR of you, and therefore the AUTHORITY in terms of causal power that has CREATED you. You as a creation are SECOND to him - his son, not his father.

Essentially this is a movement toward giving the role of God back to God, reinstating God as your creator, recognizing that you have BEEN created, allowing yourself to receive everything from God again, and to therefore recognize that you ARE LOVED, you are BEING given, and therefore your existence is being CAUSED BY something other than yourself. Which means that you do not establish or maintain or put in place the continuation of your existence - which you tried to do driven by the fear of death, but instead that God is the one who is causing you to exist FOREVER, and THEREFORE, you absolutely exist and will always exist. Which IS THE END OF FEAR - the reclamation of your GOD SUSTAINED immortality.

"The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has a "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself"

"The authority problem remains the ONLY source of perceived conflict, because the ego was MADE out of the wish of God's Son to father HIM."

"The authority problem IS "the root of all evil."

"We spoke before of the authority problem as involving the concept of USURPING His power. The ego believes that this is what YOU did, because it believes it IS you. It follows, then, that if you identify WITH the ego, you MUST perceive yourself as guilty."

So, every feeling you have, every reaction you have, you choose to have, on your own. And it has nothing to do with stimuli or what other people are doing or what happens.

So you're really walking around with a blank slate, happy, having absolutely no reason to be upset, and then you literally are picking something out of the environment and saying, AHA, I think I'm going to claim that I'm triggered by that, I'm going to create a reaction, I'm going to choose to be unhappy.

So then you do.

And it had nothing to do with what happened outside you.

So really, you're this kind of walking talking reacto-machine which just fires random reactions all over the place for no particular reason.

If nothing outside of you is really to blame or really has anything to do with why you are upset, and your upset is just YOUR OWN STUFF which you need to be fully responsible for, then you quite literally are manufacturing every interpretation and every reactive experience that you're experiencing, inside yourself, by yourself.

So once you start to take responsibility for this, then this is breaking the spell. It's breaking the connection between something happening and you then having a reaction and blaming the causality of it on the thing - "it caused me to have an effect" gets broken.

Once that starts to be broken and you stop CONNECTING or JOINING fake external causes/triggers with internal effects, and you realize the cause is IN YOU not out there, now you're in a different scenario. You cause all of the effects you are experiencing, AND you are causing all of what SEEM to be the effects of outside causes. You are causing your own reactions!

So now you can stop having reactions, by choosing not to. Or you can at least own up to being the one who is choosing to have it. And what begins to happen as you begin to 'stop' making the tie between external causes and internal effects, and reclaim the tie between internal causes and internal effects, is you start to realize they are not and don't need to be joined.

So that means, if you wish, on a whim, you could decide NOT to have any reaction whatsoever to something you'd normally react to. And conversely, you could decide to react on purpose to something ridiculous that would not normally call for a reaction (a bit harder to do without the unconscious element).

So as you practice this you grow stronger in the awareness that your reactions aren't actually caused by anything outside you, and that you can - at will - choose not to have them. By owning them you disconnect from the ego and automatically choose Holy Spirit. And by severing the tie between external causes and internal effects you now regain access to your inner causality.

So how about you then learn to simply choose to no longer PRETEND to be at the effect of external causes, and maybe you ADMIT that you cannot BE affected by anything external WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT (including death). And then you find yourself laughing because you realize you're being upset for absolutely no reason and because of no cause, which gives way to laughing for absolutely no reason and with no cause. Because when YOU are the cause, you are aligned with GOD the Cause, which is nothing but joyful.

God's Kingdom is the level of primary reality. We then made a SECOND world, with the power of our minds. When we made the world we also invented all the rules of the world, all of the laws of physics, all of the ways spacetime would function, and populated it with every object and body and planet and galaxy.

What this means is there are now two levels. There is the level of source, actual reality, and then there is the lower level of the world. The lower level is sometimes referred to as a lower-order reality. This lower level was made, well within the confines of what is possible for the higher order to accomplish. It was a limited mis-creation, is filled with limitations, and its rules are completely invented restrictions.

We who live within this lower order world, who take it at face value, might believe that this world is first-hand reality. And we might believe that the very strictly enforced laws of spacetime physics cannot be broken. We accept all kinds of limitations as being "normal" for this universe. There are so many things that seem impossible, so many things which proceed according to certain rules... it's "just the way thing work here".

But what we might not realize is that this world is not primary reality, its laws are not actually the most fundamental lowest-level limitations, all limits are artificial, and every single "impossibility" is an illusion. In science now the holographic theory is starting to point to this, recognizing that this world is NOT primary reality but a secondary by-product, and is therefore once removed from source.

There are a couple of good analogies. The first is that of a movie director. The director is outside of the movie at the level of what we'll think of as actual reality. The director decides to piece together a set, to populate it with characters, to assemble a scene and make it appear as though certain stories are playing out.

The director will even play a bit with the rules/laws, perhaps they will devise some illusory special effects which LOOK as if they are believable when you look through the camera and don't see all the strings being pulled and all the behind-the-scenes stuff that is going on. And the illusion depends on not seeing the secret workings of the scene in order to maintain believability. To the casual observer, the romantic tale playing out in the movie is believable and "happening". Limitations are accepted as normal and not questioned.

But the movie director could decide to do something completely outside the realm of this little illusion. They could decide to suddenly walk onto the set in front of the camera. This would blow the whole illusion of a scene set in the 1950s. They could decide to move the camera to see the set from a certain vantage point that reveals the buildings aren't real buildings. They could "break" the laws that seem to run the world.

Another analogy is that of someone who builds 3D CGI scenes in a computer. At first the scene is empty. The modeler wants to make a scene where a CGI car crashes into a lamp post. They put the car into the scene, then the lamp post. But there are no laws in place to govern any kind of collision. There is no physics. They have to tell the computer what they want to happen.

They have to invent some physics laws and implement them, so that it SEEMS that when the car touches the lamp post the post bends in a way that makes it look AS IF the car caused the damage. And perhaps the front of the car needs to be remodeled to make it appear AS IF it has been dented.

They also have to make the car move, define how fast, and configure every parameter of what happens. It's sort of similar to how a child plays with a toy car and pretends the car crashes and has to make the object it crashes into move as well to pretend it caused something to happen. In truth the car does not cause anything to happen, the lamp post is not at the effect of the car, and there is no "real damage". It's all pieced together to make an illusion. To seem as if it's believable. There is no actual cause and effect here.

It's possible for the modeller to decide to do something to the car which would "break" the normal laws of physics. They could make the car float, they could change its color, they could turn it into an apple. These would be "unbelievable" to someone who bought into the illusion of the scene, and would appear miraculous.

Which is another point. Within this world we're used to living in, we believe there is cause and effect on the horizontal level. That a brick thrown through a window causes the window to break. One thing is a cause, another thing is an effect. And sometimes the thing that caused becomes affected. We buy into this as if it's a closed system. As if the dream that we caused is causing us.

But in truth, the director has VERTICAL causality over the movie scene. The 3D modeller has VERTICAL causality over the entire contents of the what happens. And so too the MAKER of this world has entire power OVER everything that happens in this world.

Since you MADE PHYSICS, you can BREAK it. You can decide, hey, I am under no laws but God's, I am not bound WITHIN the laws of physics, I made the laws, I will transcend them and break them. I will do something OUTSIDE the laws. I will walk on water, breaking the law of gravity. I can ignore gravity because I made gravity myself. Since you are above, beyond, and outside of, the level of the laws, you have the FREEDOM to exercise your will to bend, break, and totally override the rules.

You who made the world are PRIOR to the world. You are able to pull the strings. You can do thing to the laws and the scene that the laws and the scene itself says are impossible. Things which cannot seemingly be undone or reversed, are reversible with miracles. You can control space and time. Your mind has power over matter. You can literally move a mountain. You can reverse death and sickness. There is nothing beyond your ability to rewrite the dream. You're the dreamer, YOU call the shots.

When you break the laws of the world, the effects or "what happens" is seen by the natives as "miraculous". Or "impossible". When you walk on water, breaking gravity, this seems impossible. Such a demonstration shows that because you are DOING IT, the law of gravity must be an illusion. This is why "miracles are teaching devices."

Also since miracles "do the impossible", this is often why many people do not believe in them as being capable, as if such things are just "magic", as a way to try to explain why miracles CANNOT BE supernatural. This is due to a belief that the world is real. Those to have fallen for the illusion of the lower-order scene are convinced by appearances and made-up laws and believe they cannot BE broken.

Demonstrations of your power over the world reveals that all the limitations and laws you thought you were bound by, you are NOT bound by. When a few loaves of bread and some fish are multiplied out of nowhere to feed 5000 people, this seems miraculous. But he who is operating on laws OUTSIDE the laws of this world is merely exercising their freedom. Anything goes when you are literally above the law!

When a dead body is suddenly resurrected to life and the person starts walking around as if nothing happened, this is considered a miracle by the people who anticipate that death cannot be reversed. In total defiance of all the laws of this world, the laws of decay and time and chemical decomposition, can be broken. Even bodies that have been dead for years can be resurrected. Even when the pieces are scattered and decayed and beyond help. This should not be considered "difficult". There is NO order of difficulty.

You are not bound by ANY LAW of this universe. It is all an entire level removed from the level at which you exercise your creative freedom. This world is further down the chain of causality than the starting point, and you at the starting point can therefore change your mind and change the whole world. It doesn't matter how irreversible, solid, permanent or impossible something seems to be, all of that is overridden when you operate from a higher level of causality.

"Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly."

Since you are operating from a level above the world, you are having vertical causality over the world. You even cause the causality of the word. You cause the causes, and the effects. You set up the causes and the effects to PRETEND that the causes caused the effects. You can violate the illusion of causality at any time. You are above the world. This is why the coures says:

"41. The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. The sudden shifts from horizontal to vertical perception which the miracle entails..."

Vertical perception is a state of seeing yourself as prior to the world, above the battlefield, causal over everything below, overriding all horizontal causality, under no laws but God's. Miracle working ENTAILS shifting INTO vertical perception, SO THAT you can be miraculous. What you then perform FROM vertical perception breaks the laws of the world. Miracle mindedness is vertical perception.

Since super" means above, and "natural" is of course to do with the nature of things, super-natural means "above nature". Being above the nature of the world. Beyond and above the laws of the world. This is why miracles are rightfully "supernatural". At least in terms of looking at them from below. In truth they are completely natural and should be happening all the time. Miraculousness is actually the NATURE of God's Kingdom, which has UNLIMITED POWER.

Everything that is of God is supernatural and naturally so. "God's miracles" "You are a miracle" "You are a miracle not of your own making" "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life" "The miraculous nature of the soul" "Miracles are a universal blessing from God" etc. Being miraculous is natural, being UN-miraculous is UNNATURAL.

Being BOUND by the laws of space time is UN NATURAL. And the NATURE of everything within space time is NOT NATURAL. What we affectionately call "mother nature" is OPPOSITE to the nature of God. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." And "miracles are natural and should be happening all the time. When they aren't, something has gone wong."

So being a miracle worker means being supernatural. Miracles are supernatural acts. They CAN BE spectacular. "A miracle is MISUNDERSTOOD when it is REGARDED as a spectacle". "The use of miracles to INDUCE BELIEF is a misunderstanding of their purpose. They are for and by believers." Nothing wrong with throwing a mountain into the sea. Nothing wrong with materializing objects or turning a snake into a branch. Nothing wrong with multiplying food and walking on water. Nothing wrong with reversing death or sickness and giving eyeballs to those born without them. This is *natural*.

"The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be CHANGED. This demonstrates that it was never real, and could not stem from his reality. For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

Miracles express from above and outside of the nature of this world. They are supernatural, and what they are capable of IS UNLIMITED.

"Your mind has the power to make worlds."

"There is nothing your holiness cannot do."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."

"Miracles reflect the laws of eternity, not of time."

"I am under no laws but God's."

"one point already tells you that 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 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."

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

A year or so ago, someone close to me was sick. We weren’t sure what really happened. It was very strange. It seemed to come out of nowhere overnight, had no apparent cause, and seemed impossible to diagnose.

The person seemed to turn into a bit of a monster, was confused and paranoid, suddenly dropped a whole bunch of longheld beliefs, and seemed to turn into another person. This was baffling and very upsetting.

I took it upon myself to try to "figure out" what was happening. So I started to research. I went online and was googling like a madman. Sometimes I ran across something which seemed it "might" explain what’s happening. Some things seeemd to fit.

Each time I found something, I started to exclaim "this is what it is", or "this is what is causing it!" I started driving the person nuts with my explanations and ideas of what I thought the problem was. Each time that I found something, it seeemd like the true cause. But later, it turned out to be, maybe not "it". Something about it, didn’t quite fully explain all the symptoms.

Did that stop me? Nope. I thought that this meant I should seek even harder to find the truth. That I should have the "ability" to find the truth out there somewhere. I was convinced at the time that the truth IS out there somewhere. That if I just try hard enough, I will find it. That "cause" is out there somewhere. Identifying the cause would seem to suggest what is happening, to explain it, and that this would lead to a SOLUTION.

It never happened. Each time I went seeking, I felt more desperate. Each time I searched, I came up more and more empty handed. I felt exasperated and frustrated. It became obsessive. Surely the truth was there somewhere, and dealing with this person being the way there were was intolerable. I wanted to find the truth. But I was looking for it "out there", and could not find it. The more I sought and did not find, the more upset I became, the more desperate I felt, and the more I then felt COMPELLED to search even harder.

This turned out to be a good thing after a while, because I FAILED. I totally failed to find the truth out there. I "exhausted" all efforts to search externally. So my mind gradually was using up its last vestige of a sense of "possibility", that the truth was out there. I started to notice something. The truth does not seem to be out there! Anywhere! I lost faith in the world and SAW THROUGH the illusion that the world contains the truth. Any kind of truth. Anywhere.

It was a very short hop from this perception to realizing, bringing into question, that perhaps.... THE TRUTH IS NOT ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. That it literally cannot be found. That seeking is a EGO TRAP. The more you seek for truth out there, the LESS you find it. And that’s because, in truth, the truth is INSIDE YOU. Each time I basically "left my inner truth", believing I "did not have the truth", I went searching for it in the world. I really believed strongly, the world HAD the truth in it SOMEWHERE. But it did not. I inadvertently proved it to myself.

So I failed, and that was great, because this idea suddenly popped in, that there is no truth in the world at all. NOTHING in the world is true. This was quite eye opening. It meant that, for example, the sickness which I’d been trying to diagnose and fix this whole time, ALSO wasn’t the truth. It also meant, it wasn’t being caused BY anything out there. The truth was NOT out there. There must have been another cause, an inner cause.

And so began a whole new phase for me, of withdrawing my belief from the world, learning to recognize it is COMPLETELY FALSE, that it is not true in any way, and that also sickness is entirely fake. These were important steps in the direction of forgiveness, and completely shifted the way I was looking at the sick person 180 degrees. Clearly, it wasn’t a question of "what out there is causing it". It was a matter of, "It is NOT being caused".

Gradually as I’ve been practicing this and growing stronger in the recognition that this is true, that earth is 100% false, and nothing in it is true, my miracle-working has gone up. It is my job now not to figure out, "what caused that", but to learn to NOT BELIEVE that it is caused by anything other than the mind. That there is no truth IN what I’m perceiving. People showing up with sickness, are trying to assert a lie. Sickness is recognize more and more as FALSE, an illusion, with no truth to it.

Miracle working **ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES** NOT BELIEVING THIS WORLD IS THE TRUTH. If we believe it is the truth, we will keep it, lock in its form, have no will to heal it, and be convinced by illusions. The truth is not in the world or in form. "Never was love in the world." It is not out there. It’s inside. IT comes from God. God is the only cause, not this world. Mind is the only cause of what’s out there.

What appear to be causes in this world are LIES. Fiction. Fantasy. Illusions. Dreams. Make-believe cause that suggest, yes, the world has truth in it because the world has a causal power. The world causes nothing. It is nothing but effect. Cause, therefore truth, is somewhere else. Truth is always equated with REALITY. Since there is NO truth in this world, not in false perception or in true perception, THE WORLD IS NOT REAL. And therefore it is NOT THERE, and whatever is showing up as "sickness happening" IS NOT HAPPENING.

What is not a CAUSE, is nothing but an EFFECT, and therefore has no reality of its own. Because the world is an effect, and has no truth/cause in it, IT IS NOT THERE. It is not happening. Separation never happened.

Jesus:

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

"The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition."

"The cause of healing is the only Cause of everything. 4 It has but one Effect. 5 And in that recognition, causelessness is given no effects and none is seen."

"There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect."

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

"what you made has no cause and no effects at all."

"But it also shows that, having no effects, it is not cause because the function of causation is to have effects"

"The world is but an effect, it is not a cause at all."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it."

"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less"

"The world you see does not exist."

"Nothing the world believes is true."

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

"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams."

"The world you see has nothing to do with reality."

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness."

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all."

"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home."

"There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten."

"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state."

When you believe that something outside of you is the cause of your problem or upset, your mind's perception will start to experience yourself as though part of your being has 'opened up' to the other person, has exposed itself to them, is connected to them and vulnerable to them.

It feels then as if that person is directly putting your upset feelings into you. It's as though you opened an energetic doorway and merged with the other person's ego, allowing them to enter your inner space, giving them permission and access to actually 'cause you' to change - i.e. to become an upset victim.

You may not realize you do this, each time you are upset about someone or something, but you do. You are so used to it that you think it is normal. Your experience internally, of how you feel, in relation to some attacking/wrongful person, is that your insides have opened outward like a 'wound', you feel exposed, you see the other person as 'doing stuff to you', and you literally will feel like they actually are 'accessing' you - that you're in the midst of an open-air battle.

The way you can realize this is to take back responsibility for everything you are experiencing. Own your feelings. Admit that you feel the way you feel because these are YOUR feelings that YOU have chosen to feel, for absolutely no particular reason. And you have to admit that the way you feel has NOTHING to do with the other person at all. This locating of your responsibility in and around your feelings, essentially causes you to have a perceptual shift.

You now will see yourself as NOT being caused by the other person, therefore you are not a victim, and therefore what you are feeling has NOT been caused by them. These are your own experiences. And in a way, this 'detachment' puts SPACE between you and the other person's ego or whatever the illusion is that you're faced with. This will in a way act as a protective barrier or wall, sealing you in, making you experience yourself as secure and Invulnerable, NOT exposed, and that the FEELING ITSELF that you're experiencing is not BASED ON what the other person is doing.

When your feeling is not based on some external cause, then there is no FOUNDATION for it. Without a foundation, it has no cause, and IT MUST DISAPPEAR. So... taking full responsibility for everything you feel and experience, paradoxically, FREES YOU from all upsetting and negative experiences, because there is no foundation for any kind of harm or negativity when you are BEING TRUE TO YOURSELF. When you are being the LOVE that you are, you are invulnerable. When you are not being the love that you are, you become susceptible and exposed and a victim that is sure to be hurt. You don't want that. It's much better to not be upset and vulnerable.

Perfect immortality and complete invulnerability and protection and un-assailability of the Kingdom are all your natural inheritance if you will claim ownership of it.

When you blame another person or think that something outside of you has 'caused you' to change in some unwanted way, you THINK that you are being powerful by finding them guilty.

Jesus says in ACIM that anger is an attempt to make someone guilty.

Every time you are angry at someone you are trying to claim and prove that they are wrong.

You think that this makes you more powerful, because you feel JUSTIFIED, and you see yourself as having been unfairly treated.

You did not see what you did to yourself, so you think they did it to you. SOMEONE must be responsible! When you don't see that it was you, you start looking for another cause to pin it on. SOMEONE must be guilty.

It seems to feel empowering and justifying to find out who did this to you. It seems to make you more right and more innocent and more righteous, to point out how someone else was wrong - that it wasn't you.

You couple innocence with attack and justify it by explaining what it was someone ELSE caused.

But when you do this, although it seems like an experience of power and intensity, it is in fact a state of weakness. It is a state of disempowerment. Your attempt to find another person wrong means that you are finding them guilty and weak. But since they are YOU, you are indirectly finding this about yourself.

So as you project your blame, you will also feel guilty, because what you are accusing someone of, your mind (which is one with theirs) knows that you're talking about YOU as well. What applies to them applies to you even if you are in denial of that.

So having this angry reaction doesn't make you powerful, but it makes the ego seem powerful, and you will feel extra justified and innocent when you are like this. You will think this lets you off the hook. It's a way to conveniently shift attention away from YOUR guilt, to point out the guilt of others, so that people won't notice what YOU have been doing. It's a cover-up.

Thinking you have this angry power makes you disempowered, because you're giving away your certainty, peace, and are replacing your REAL innocence with a fake innocence. You're trading the strength and integrity of responsibility, for the weakness and loss induced by believing you are NOT responsible - that it's someone else who is.

If you are not responsible, you are not yourself. If you are not responsible, you are a victim. If you are not responsible, you are vulnerable to attack. If you are not responsible, you will go into unconscious insanity.

This is why as ACIM says, "anger is never justified". It literally is always a lie and always mistaken. You simply did not see what you did to yourself, what you chose, what you asked for, and what you created. If you are blind to your OWN responsibility, you will find everyone else to be responsible instead, because it's just you trying to make sense of WHY something happened.

When stuff goes wrong, it is not anyone's fault. Responsibility isn't fault. Responsibility is faultless.

The more I learn that I am responsible for everything I experience, the clearer it becomes that anything I experience is not "because of" the world.

It used to be that everything I experienced seemed to be a reaction to the world, seemingly caused by it. I could not separate out myself from any of it, and any upsets or problems I was having were always tied into what was happening in life.

By taking responsibility and recognizing the secret of salvation, that I'm doing this all to myself, I let the world off the hook, so to speak, in that it is not really the "cause" of anything.

Yes sometimes things in the world happen which may trigger a certain response in me, but the triggering isn't because of the world, it's because I am triggerable. Which means something in me is unhealed, like a bruise or wound, which seems to be touched upon or poked at by worldly events. Up comes the old hurt, as if the world caused it, but it was already there, buried.

So over time, I see that if I am in any way upset, unhappy, angry, afraid, guilty or sinful etc... it's not really because of the world, the situation, or other people. It's because this is happening inside my mind, and it's really something to do with my own mental attitude or beliefs. There's some pain I'm healing or it's time for some emotional release or some other thing that's caused by me.

The more I "own" this, the less I try to pass it off as being the responsibility of the world. I stop blaming others for it. I stop accusing the world for it. I stop disowning it, through disassociation, and I stop projecting it away from myself onto the world in an attempt to be rid of it.

I am less in denial as I honestly admit that any and all fears and upsets are "my own stuff". If I'm angry and barking I have to admit this has nothing to do with anyone else. If I'm afraid I have to admit I'm using the world wrongly and reading meaning into it from within. Am I looking at the world through my ego or the holy spirit? It must be one or the other.

What this leaves me with, over time as I practice and reinforce this more, is a growing sense that if I am ever upset or unhappy in any way, it's because something in coming in between myself and the world. It's not because of the world. And it's nothing to do with who I really am behind it.

Let's say that behind this stuff there is a real me, which is always loving and light and shining with joy and happiness. All this self does is extend love and respond with love all the time. But overlaid on top of this self there is all this past stuff, ego baggage, lies and illusions, which comes in between me and the world.

If I look "through" this wall of lies, it changes how the world appears and I become lost in it, accusing it of sin. But if I get step back and get out of it, I become aware that this is just "my stuff" TEMPORARILY getting in the way.

If a situation arises and I become triggered and upset, and then I remember this is my own internal problem nothing to do with the situation, and I address this problem within myself through some kind of healing process, and it goes away, I'm then left looking at the situation "without" my reactions to it. And going back and forth like that shows me that, because my baggage was "additional" to the situation, it wasn't INHERENT to the situation. So it really wasn't anything to do with the situation in the first place.

This shows me that, really, the world is a forgiven "real world" of love and light, IF I can experience it without internal baggage. When I become caught up in my ego stuff, it's a state of *temporary* insanity. If I get lost in it, I need to get myself back out of it with honesty and healing and Help. And then I can return to happiness and truth again.

The more clear I become about this, discerning that if I'm not happy it's my own doing, and if I'm upset it's because of my own belief, and this is all what I'm doing to myself, I can become clearer and clearer that it really has nothing to do with the world. So then I stop looking outside myself for causes and reasons and sinners and people to blame or pin it on. I don't go into confusion as often as to "who" is doing what to whom.

If I'm cranky, having a bad day, upset, emotional, frustrated, afraid, whatever it is, I try as best I can to remember, this has NOTHING to do with the world. It has nothing to do with anyone else. This is entirely me doing my own thing to myself temporarily. And in that recognition there is also a kind of sense of security that, because it's mine, it's not really the world ganging up on me, or frightening me, or ACTUALLY attacking me.

So what we're doing here is we're learning that the world IS NOT attacking us. Bad things are not really happening. We're not being thrown around on some kind of emotional rollercoaster as a result of the world being shit. And in fact, events can still transpire with OR without me having an emotional snowball at the same time.

Which is interesting, beacuse now the Holy Spirit suggests in the midst of strife, where I think I "should" be upset "based on" what's happening externally, to "laugh". And so I force myself into a laugh and lighten up and step back. And at first it seems silly but I then I ask myself, why not? Why do I have to be upset in this situation? Do I really have to? Am I locked into that reaction? Maybe I can still go through the SAME situations, but not taking them at all seriously.

Someone's sick? Maybe I can be happy and laugh about it. Job sucks? Maybe I can rise above it. Scary things seeming to happen? Maybe I need to get out of my ego's "experience" of the world and get into a higher view.

And as I do, I find that there IS a higher way to experience what's happening. There is a happier, lighter, "does not believe the world is real" state of mind and perception and feeling, which is joyful and happy and non-serious, which I am cultivating. It's a different approach to the world, through the Holy Spirit, which is turning the course's truth into much more of an experience than a theory.

I don't HAVE to have a given amount of xysz upset as a result of a given scenario. I don't have to be immediately caused by the world to enter into a prescribed reaction. I don't have to just fall into temptation and go down with the ship. And this stepping back is such a globally applicable thing that it applies to the whole world.

So life is transitioning from... stuff happens, I am affected ... to... I'm not affected by anything external, I work on fixing up my inner experience, going within to the truth of me, and the rest is all just a matter of laughing at the world as nothing serious. I don't have to have the reactions the world says I should have. Because the world is not the cause of anything.

I am peeling myself away from its causality lies as I recognize I am the cause and it is the effect. I have power over the world, not the other way around. Isn't it quite amazing to discover that a world which used to "bully you" with its insane attacks, is finally recognized as causing NOTHING at all, is totally harmless and inert, is not a threat, does not upset you, and can bend to your holy will? :-)

As I uncover who I really am behind all of this ego attack/defense/distortion, a light is emerging which calls for greater peace and more frequent happiness. A way out of hell. I need only remove the blocks to the awareness of love's presence in me and the world will be revealed as a place of peace and love. Because without the projection of my self attack upon it, that's all that's real about it.

"If I defend myself I am attacked."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"Defense do what they would defend."

"In my defenselessness lies my safety."

It's interesting but, when we try to defend ourselves, under the belief that we are making ourselves more protected, more safe, more secure, we ACTUALLY are undermining ourselves and attacking ourselves. So now self attack masquerades as self defense.

The ego splits off the illusion of attack and defense because it splits cause and effect. It tries to make out that attacks are not defenses, and defense are not attacks. That you can cause in order to not be caused. Or you can defend in order to not be caused. But both attack and defend are forms of the same ego plot to weaken you.

A defense automatically presumes that you need defending, because there is something weakened, vulnerable and wrong with you. That you are frail and fragile and attackable. Without this belief in being attackable, you cannot have defenses, and there would be no point defending something that isn't attackable in the first place.

Therefore the defenses undermine your integrity and require you to believe that you need them, due to being attacked already, and therefore your defenses attack you. It's the same as with e.g. virus protection software. It is designed to save you, but the belief in viruses causes the eruption of enemies.

And so defenses are attempts at saving yourself from attack, but in fact are themselves attacks. So they cannot work. And all they do is paint an illusion that you are safer without in any way undoing the belief that you are weak or vulnerable. You then think you are safer because of the illusion of protection, but you have not really increased your belief in invulnerability whatsoever.

To be truly defenseless requires you to be convinced that you cannot be attacked, which requires you to recognize that you are immortal.

"You are immortal and you cannot die."

"There is no death. The Son of God is free."

When you defend yourself, you make yourself sick. Defenses are self-attack. You think you need to be defended and this attacks the body, making it sick. Sickness is a defense against the truth, or in other words, sickness is a self attack masquerading as being attacked by something else in an attempt to defend yourself. Attempting to defend yourself weakens you and makes you sick.

If you defend yourself, you undermine your immortality.

"The body is hardly worth the least defense."

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

"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.**** Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself:

"I have forgotten what I really am, For I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defence against the truth, But I am not a body. And my mind Cannot attack. So I can not be sick.""

---

"The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and ***hardly worth the least defense***, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?

Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source."

When you start getting into a mode where you're talking about how "they" are doing this or that, asking "why" they are doing this or that (as though they shouldn't be), where you're perceiving that "they" are clearly wrong and it's really obvious why, or you are generally getting wound up "by" someone that you wish would stop being that way, then you know you have gone insane.

It means you've gone into the ego and you're experiencing false perceptions, through a very warped state of mind. Yes, when you're nuts, it can seem like you are totally sane, that you're totally right, that you're totally justified, that it's totally obvious why everyone else is wrong, and you can really really believe that you're doing the right thing (that you're the innocent one) by being offended by them.

Anyone who is not at perfect peace is experiencing insanity of some kind.

That's why it can be a difficult trap to get out of, because you don't recognize, or aren't willing to admit, that just because you're really sure that it's all someone else's fault, it's actually not.

Typically, any time that you become upset with someone or you have an outburst or get angry about what they're doing, it's usually because you were already feeling upset about something beforehand. Something was becoming exposed in your mind, coming up for healing, and someone pushed the button. They seemed to trigger you.

The part where you become so confused is that when someone else provides the trigger to ignite a fire inside you, you think that the only reason the fire is there is because they caused it. That's never true. The only reason the fire is there is because it was already there, and they just pointed it out. So now you're attacking the messenger because you yourself did not notice where the fire was coming from. They maybe even needed to come along and point out (trigger) your fire, to show you that you are burning up inside, because you were not aware of this. And in this way they are helping you.

You need to become aware of your shit so that you can open up to correction and healing. And usually we hire other people to come along and point out our shit so that we will become aware of what we're trying to deny. But we're in such denial that we end up projecting and blaming the cause of the upset onto other people, thinking they had the power to create it. We don't want to admit that we chose and caused it in ourselves or that we need to heal it within ourselves. The problem is within, not without.

So, pretty much guaranteed, when you're getting wound up about something and are slipping into that 'they are wrong' mode, in which clearly and obviously it really does seem like they're wrong - like its a no brainer right?.. that means you're mind is fucked up, and you're unconscious and insane. You're thinking that the cause of your problems is not yourself, which is not true, and are hallucinating that someone else is at fault for something they are not really doing. To go blaming someone for something they aren't the cause of is insane.

So we need to come back to sanity, and the first step in doing that is recognizing that even though we believe strongly that we're not mistaken, we are mistaken. We need to open up to taking full responsibility for being the cause of everything we're experiencing - its all coming from within ourselves, and we must have chosen it. We are doing it to ourselves, and nobody else is even involved. Even if we became upset "because of someone else", it's more like THANKS to someone else we've been shown how upset we already were, and now we need to go within and do some healing with Holy Spirit to undo this self-attack.

In terms of cause and effect, God who is cause created us as his effect, yet shared his causal ability with us, making us also able to cause. We are an effect of God, but we are also a co-creator and cause of our own creations.

God is cause. We are cause. And nothing can alter what we are or make us an effect, other than God, because we are sustained by God's constant will. We are affected by nothing, having been given eternal life, maintained forever by God himself.

The idea of the separation from God, introduced the idea of a breakdown in cause and effect. That means, a breakdown in the relationship between God and his creation/son. It suggests that causes are separate from their effects.

This also produced the belief that you are not caused by God. And also that you can cause God - which is the authority problem - a denial of the causal power of authorship. And therefore that you can cause what God created, thus changing what God created. And since you were a creation of God's, it began the belief that you could change yourself and redefine yourself, plus make-up a new father.

In this process, your recognition of being a creator was denied, you disowned God as cause and thus disowned causation, and began to see yourself as not causal. You began to see yourself as an effect, or affected by, or changed by. You began to believe thigns could happen to you against God's will and against your will. As the course says...

"Sickness and death entered the mind of God's Son against His Will."

In other words, you began to see yourself as at the effect of something other than God, and other than yourself, as though that which has been created (or dreamed/mis-created) has turned around and has begun to create, cause, define and affect what you are.

This introduces level confusion, as well as the reversal of the true and the false, and the reversal of cause and effect. You now see yourself as an effect and not a cause, and you deny causing anything. This means you are trying to "be affected", and to portray yourself as something that can be affected, so that you can change yourself into what you wish to be.

This produced the body, which is a sort of outside picture of the idea of a self that can be at the effect of its environment, a self that can be an effect and not a cause, with no power to cause at all, and acted upon by the world. This body presents the "face of innocence", which hides the idea that you're trying to be a victim, ie trying to be affected, by the world.

"The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world."

So now there is this artificial you, which looks like a body, and which is "acted upon" by the world, in which the arrows or direction of causation begins out there somewhere, external and beyond the body and the self/mind, and comes in and acts upon the body/self/mind and causes it to change. Causes it to be affected. And thus the face of innocence, the surface of the body, becomes the canvas on which "effects" are painted to make it seem like you are caused by an alien will outside yourself.

Another way to put this is that, as soon as cause and effect were reversed, you introduced the idea of being "affectable" rather than immortal, that you could change and be changed. And this was the beginning of being a victim. And this is also exactly the beginning of the ego thought system.

To be a victim is to be ego. To be a victim is to be at the effect. To be a victim is to be an effect, not a cause. Victimhood is the denial and refusal to admit to being the cause. Victimhood is irresponsibility and a complete displacement of the responsibility for causing anything, portraying itself as helpless and powerless and at the mercy of anyone and anything.

And this shows up as the face of innocence - the innocent victim that seems not to ask for attack but is still attacked and can then justify anger and revenge. A self that won't take responsibility for causing anything, in an attempt to disown responsibility for sinning against God. To deny and disown all responsibility is to displace and project it onto others and the world, so that the guilty self can pretend to be exonerated.

If you are an effect, you are an ego. If you are an effect, you are a victim. If you are an effect, cause and effect have been reversed. This effectively means that if you swap cause and effect back around and claim total responsibility for being the cause of everything you experience, then you can no longer be a victim, and that also means you can no longer be an ego.

Ego is made of effects. It can only exist as a victim. It requires powerlessness and a disowning of causal power. It must see itself as deprived and lacking and less than whole. It cannot survive when you are powerful, it cannot survive when you are responsible, it cannot survive when you are the cause of everything. It depends on you remaining a powerless victim, and depends on cause and effect staying reversed. To be responsible is to own and know yourself as God created you!

Backwards peception or false perception is another name for ego and another name for being at the effect of the world. Backwards perception is the reversal of cause and effect, in which you are always affected by something seemingly against your will, while secretly choosing it. True perception is the restoration of cause and effect into their proper sequence, in which you are now the cause and the dreamer and a victim of nothing, totally invulnerable, incapable of suffering or blame.

So you can see that to put it simply, with the authority problem which is the breakdown and reversal of cause and effect, as soon as you begin to identify with/as being an effect/affected/victimized, as soon as you give away your power, as soon as you regard yourself as not the cause of what you experience, you are producing an egoic thought system and are losing your mind.

To reclaim total responsibility for the power of God and for causation and creative authorship and being absolutely incapable of being caused by anything but God, denying the power of anything not of God any power to affect or hurt you, which is the proper use of denial, you simply need to own up to being the immortal victimless powerful causer and chooser of what you experience. If nothing can happen to you, you cannot be an ego. If you are purely causal, you are the immortal son of God.

"Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its home. I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide, and all Your attributes abide in me because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable. Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in Heaven, so on earth. Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will disappear, and separate things unite in glory as the Son of God."

(If you are willing).

You [insert fucker’s name], are not the cause of me. You are not causing me. You are my equal brother and God is the cause of both of us.

You have not done anything to me against my will. I am not the victim of you that I’ve come to believe you are. I have been using you to be my victimizer so that I can be upset as a victim and use you to project my sin. I wanted to make out you are the cause of me so that I can asuage my guilt and pretend to be innocent. I am the one who needs healing.

You have never done anything to me. You have never hurt me. You have never upset me. You are not the cause of anything I am feeling or experiencing. You have not put reactions in me. You have not changed me or made me upset in any way.

Everything I am experiencing, I have chosen for myself. All of my feelings are my own. Nothing has happened that I did not want. I have done this to myself.

You did not do anything to me, you cannot do anything to me, and you never will. All we can do is share love. Because you have not done anything to me, you did not cause anything that I am experiencing, which means you must be innocent. My upset isn’t even about you. You have nothing to do with what I am experiencing whatsoever.

I have not done anything to you. I am not the cause of you. I have not attacked you, hurt you, made you upset, changed you, caused reactions in you, damaged you or affected you in any way. I have not victimized you. You are not the victim of me.

Everything you are experiencing and feeling is your own stuff that you chose for yourself. I am not the source of any of your upset, confusion, hurt or problems. I have never caused you because God is your only cause. Therefore I must be innocent because I have not done anything to you.

We are both equally innocent. Neither of us has done anything to each other. There is no causality between brothers. You are not the cause of me. I am not the cause of you. Anything I am experiencing I must have chosen myself and done to myself.

No-one else has the power to do anything to either of us against our will. The power that I thought you had over me is my own power. The power that you thought I had over you is your own power. Neither of us has power over each other. I take back my power from you and give you back your own power to choose your own experience.

I am fully responsible for everything I am experiencing. You are fully responsible for everything you are experiencing. I can choose to experience something else and there is nothing you or anyone can do to stop this. You have not willed against me and I have not willed against you. We are both in accord with God’s will that we be forever equals in love and innocence.

I am not vulnerable to your attacks. Your attacks are your attempt to attack yourself. You are not vulnerable to my attacks. My attacks are my own attempt to attack myself. I can stop attacking myself and be happy. You can stop attacking yourself and be happy. We cannot and have not attacked each other.

I am completely free from your choice and you are free from mine. I am free from your wishes and intentions. I do not grant you the power to upset me. I do not displace my own power onto you. Nothing happens to me that I do not choose. Nothing happens to you that you do not choose. Neither of us is a victim. There are no victims. We have not victimized each other. I am not a victim of you. You are not a victim of me.

We are both innocent because neither of us has done anything to each other. We are both innocent because we are both still as God created us. Neither of us has sinned. I have not sinned against you. You have not sinned against me. We have not sinned against God. There is no sin. Nothing has happened.

We are both perfectly equal in God. We are both God’s children. We are both holy and innocent and forgiven. You are my equal brother and I am your equal brother. We are identical in God. We are one in love. There is no separation between us. I share everything with you as you share everything with me. We can both be at peace together and join in love as equals.

God loves us equally. I forgive you and love you. You forgive me and love me. We love everyone as ourselves. Love is all there is.

ALL of your ego's functioning stems from a very very simple premise. Once you start to realize what this foundation is, it frames everything the ego does as just another example of this one thing.

The foundation of the ego is simply the suggestion that you are not love - the love is not in you or what you are - so you are deprived of it - so now you need to go restore the sense of lack by finding it somewhere ELSE other than in you. You go off hunting for a way to fill the emptiness, which reinforces your belief in the emptiness. And even if you find something, it won't heal the sense of LACK, and you won't accept it, because it's not really what you want. You want yourself back. You want God's love.

The separation of your identity from God's Son leads to:

Seeking outside yourself

Creating sickness

All idol worship

Creating fear

All attack

All victimhood

All loss and grief and loneliness

All sense of abandonment and rejection

Seeing yourself as separate from God and others

Having nothing to depend on ("independence")

Insanity

Not being true to yourself

Seeking for what you lost where it does not exist and not finding it

Losing even more of what you are by being compelled to replace it

A belief that you can die

All vulnerability and sense of threat

Mistrust (in yourself)

All paths efforting to 'find yourself' but remain separate

The spiritualized ego

The inability to share or join

Condemnation and judgement and blame (of yourself)

Shame and guilt for who you are

Unworthiness and unloveability

Suffering and suicide and war (with yourself)

All anger and upset and disasters and terrible events

...And on and on.

Just this one thing. This one idea of - I'm not myself - where am I - who am I - I am separate from what I am - I am not as God created me - leads to all of these other dynamics and activities and perceptions.

You can't have any of them without this one foundation - this sense of separation from yourself. And since you and God are one, it is simultaneously a sense of separation from God.

"A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct." - ACIM

And here's the clincher. Every single one of those things on that list above that you currently believe are caused by all kinds of things OTHER than the ego's foundation, are NOT caused by anything other than the ego's foundation. And so it is the sheer 'fact' of 'being' an ego - separate from the love you are - that causes every single problem you face. All hell comes from it. Being separate from God and your True Self is the ONLY problem that needs correction. All other problems are illusory problems masking the one problem so that you will not correct it.

So each time I am in the ego, in some way I must be believing that I am separate from God and myself. I must be going down some path which tells me it's going to help me RESTORE who I am and what I lost, BUT which will NOT restore it, because the entire NEED for that path comes from believing I LACK what I'm looking to restore, and until I stop beleiving that I won't ever be able to ACCEPT that I HAVE WHAT I REALLY HAVE ALREADY.

You ARE as God Created you. You ARE love already. This you need to accept, and let go of all these other ego pursuits that trick you and lead you away from it. Everyone is being deceived by the ego's suggestions of everything you need to do to 'fix' the separation, which seem to lead you to resolution but in fact lead you to an EVEN WORSE situation. Seek and do not find. Fix and do not correct. Pursue and fail. Search and lose. Try to have and do not have at all. Hold on and lose everything. This is all the ego's deceit.

One error, one correction. Holy Spirit's is the Answer from God because He Knows the solution to this problem - that the problem really IS NOT REAL. You are NOT separate from God or Your Self and the separation NEVER HAPPENED. So you are love. And that is why you need do nothing.

"Anger is never justified. Attack has no foundation."

"Perhaps it will be helpful to remember that no one can be angry at a fact. It is always an interpretation that gives rise to negative emotions, regardless of their seeming justification by what appears as facts..."

"...All of these reactions are the same. They obscure the truth, and this can never be a matter of degree. Either truth is apparent, or it is not. It cannot be partially recognized. Who is unaware of truth must look upon illusions."

---------

The justification for anger can be explained purely in metaphysical logic.

A mind which is whole is wholly aware of all there is. This awareness is an awareness of all the facts, all the truth, the entire picture. Nothing is hidden.

Since nothing is hidden, it is obvious that anything you experience is chosen by yourself, you get everything you ask for, you never get anything you do not ask for, and all prayers are answered. There are no victims in heaven.

In this awareness is also the awareness of the secret to salvation, that nothing can happen to you unless you are doing it to yourself.

When some of the truth becomes hidden, through a block to awareness, or implementation of the ego thought system, the mind goes into darkness and cannot see the whole truth.

It therefore has only partial information. It is only partially aware. This means something is hidden from its awareness.

The mind always believes that it is aware of everything there is to be aware of, and assumes it is seeing the whole picture. Even when it is severely blocked, the mind still believes it is seeing the whole picture and is being completely objective.

It's awareness of what it does see, is used as a basis for its logic, and it makes sense out of the information it has. It thinks that what it sees makes sense to it, since it believes in it. It always thinks it is aware of the whole truth and all the facts, even if it is not.

When events transpire and something happens which appears not to have been caused by ones own self, this appearance is due to not being aware of how you do things to yourself. It means the mind has lost the ability to notice its own causing and asking and praying.

So now something happens and it seems like the mind did not ask for it to happen. It now seems as though it is getting something it did not ask for. Effects are showing up which it did not cause. At least to its perception. It is unconscious of the fact it did cause it.

Making sense of this lack of facts, this reduced picture, there essentially is no real explanation for how these events transpired. But the mind did not see that it itself was the cause of them. And so... it concludes completely "rationally", naturally, that it must have been a cause outside of itself.

This actually is not only the basis for all anger it is also the basis for projection of causality and sin outside of oneself. Since we do not see that we chose or caused things, it makes it very easy to assume that there is an external cause.

So now, since it was not myself that made me be attacked, to my knowledge, it must've been someone else. And since I did not cause or ask for this attack, it was UNJUSTIFIED.

What also will be unjustified is pinning the cause for the effects onto something external, because even if you can find a scapegoat to blame it on, you will never be wholly certain that it was them, because it was not them, and so this will engender automatic fear that you are accusing the wrong person. It can only ever loosely make sense as to who caused it, and so in this projection there is always uncertainty.

If it were true, that I am attacked by a cause other than myself, it means my innocence was unfairly treated, I was willed against my will, and someone has sinned against me.

THIS, automatically gives me the logical justification to be upset and angry. In fact, it is merely the perception that cause must have been outside myself, that automatically made me PERCEIVE, that I am "at the effect of the world". So now effects are starting to show up inside myself, I am started to be changed into an effect, I'm experiencing emotional reactions which are effects (which I'm putting there), and it SEEMS like it is being done to me by someone else.

It then seems to make perfect sense that someone is attacking you without just cause and this completely justifies your own upset, your own retaliation, all sense of needing revenge, all anger, all rage, all blame and scapegoating, all projection of sin, all making someone wrong, and the supposed need to "address the imbalance" by "compensating" for the attack with a counter-attack.

Anger then simply seems to be rational, seems to make sense, seems justified, normal, natural, and completely well founded, based on the lack of awareness and limited perception.

This means anger is NEVER justified, because it is always a FALSE CONCLUSION, and a false premise. It never is founded in the whole truth. It is never founded in all the facts. It is always founded in a victim mindset from someone who has a limited perspective of themselves, who does not see that they CAN only attack themselves, and that no-one else has the ability to attack them.

The people who become angry, while not being justified in the anger, ever, nevertheless DO NOT KNOW that they are making this mistake. There is information OUTSIDE OF CONSCIOUS AWARENESS, that they do not currently have access to. There are some FACTS, which they have no knowledge of. There is key evidence, proof, which has been concealed.

And so they are simply MISTAKEN, not guilty or sinful, just mistaken, because they're trying their best to make sense of their limited experience of the whole. This is why Jesus tells us to "forgive them for they know not what they do"... because literally, they DO NOT KNOW what they are doing. They are acting erroneously, based on not enough factual information. And they don't even realize it, because of that block to awareness.

No-one in their right mind would become angry, ever, or attack anyone, for any reason. No-one in their right mind would ever justify anger on any basis. The fact is, people WILL, even MUST, become angry, or at least projecting of sin (cause), outside of themselves, when awareness is blocked. The projection of cause is AUTOMATIC as soon as awareness of the facts are blocked, because these blocks make you unaware that YOU are the cause of everything. This is the core root of all projection.

So simply, those who are angry, are not making sense, they do not know they are not making sense, and they are trying their best to make sense out of being in the dark. They are confused, lost, afraid, alone, separated, seeing themselves threatened and victimized, do not realize they have done all of this to themselves, and are not even AWARE that they are doing ALL of it to themselves.

This, if you can recognize it, is the justification for FORGIVENESS, in which FORGIVENESS IS ALWAYS JUSTIFIED. Forgiveness is always justified because no-one who attacks is EVER in their right mind, and no-one who attacks is EVER fully aware of all the facts, and no-one who attacks WOULD EVER attack if they had access to the truth.

Therefore, attack is not PERSONAL, or about you. It's always about the person attacking and their attempt to deal with the strange twisted view of reality they are experiencing, in which they are simply freaking out because they've lost a sense of proper perspective, context, and contrast to what is true. All of their reactions are COMPLETELY PREDICTABLE, based on the metaphysical state their awareness is in. No-one who has a block to awareness can escape coming to false conclusions and then feeling justified in revenge.

So if we can recognize, attackers are only attacking themselves, and they are not in their right mind, and they do not know what they are doing, and they are literally unconscious to some degree, and that if they HAD all the facts they would instantly AGREE with you (if you are in truth) that you do not deserve attack and you are not at fault, then you would be willing to RECOGNIZE your brother's innocence, and also acknowledge the impossibility of being attacked by them in the first place.

Essentially, everyone deserves forgiveness simply on the grounds that no-one ever attacks on a basis of awareness of reality, only because they are undergoing a state of sleep and their view of reality has become distorted. They are simply insane. All attack is insanity. And they cannot really be held accountable for acting on a basis of not being in their right mind.

Those who are angry simple need healing and an increase in awareness. To accept the truth and admit to their inherent invulnerability as lovable children of God.

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."

This means that your mind is CONSTANTLY CAUSING STUFF TO HAPPEN, AT ALL TIMES, WITHOUT STOPPING.

And that means, regardless of whether you think you have the power to make things happen or not, whether you are very powerful or totally powerless, YOU ARE ALWAYS CAUSING IT WHATEVER STATE YOU ARE IN.

Therefore even if you are in suffering and sickness you MUST BE MAKING IT HAPPEN.

Even if you are dying you MUST BE CHOOSING IT.

Even if you are unhappy because you think someone did something and that you're "held" in this unhappy suffering due to forces outside your control, IT IS NOT TRUE, YOU ARE CHOOSING TO SUFFER.

Your mind never stops causing. It never sleeps. It is always ON. It is always creating or projecting. YOU ARE PERMANENTLY CAUSAL.

Therefore if you can realize this, it means literally that NO MATTER what seems to be happening or what seems to have caused it, YOU CAUSED IT - this is the secret to salvation - and therefore YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND AND CAUSE SOMETHING ELSE. Therefore NOTHING happens outside of your decision, so WHATEVER you are experiencing YOU DID CHOOSE IT!

This is precisely reflected here:

"Decisions CANNOT be difficult. This is obvious if you realize that you must ALREADY have made a decision NOT to be wholly joyous if that is what you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that YOU ACTIVELY DECIDED WRONGLY, BUT CAN AS ACTIVELY DECIDE OTHERWISE."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace."

This is all about you being 100% FULLY RESPONSIBLE for having DECIDED - CHOSEN - to experience what you are experiencing. If you are afraid, unhappy, sad, grieving, sick, dying, in pain, confused, mentally ill, whatever it is, YOU HAVE CHOSEN IT. You HAVE decided to experience it, and you have ASKED FOR IT. And you have received as you have asked and it has been given you.

This is what the Song of Prayer pamphlet is talking about - that you are ALWAYS ASKING and your prayer is always being answered, and therefore whatever you are receiving YOU DID ASK FOR, and therefore if you want something else you need to "raise your prayer" to a higher happier level - a happier request.

Whenever you think that something is happening that you did not ask for, or that you have no power to stop or change something, or that you are stuck with suffering, or that there is no way to change situations, YOU ARE WRONG. You are mistaken and you are UNCONSCIOUS of the part of your mind that is CHOOSING IT. Therefore you HAVE made a wrong decision. You have to totally own it. And you have to admit that YOU decided it yourself. And then you can also start to realize that you WANT to decide something else, and that IF YOU DO, you WILL EXPERIENCE SOMETHING ELSE, because your decision making has POWER.

This means, in no uncertain terms, that you are NEVER A VICTIM. Victimhood is completely impossible. It is a lie. People who are in a victim state are STILL DOING IT TO THEMSELVES, they just are not aware of it. They are STILL CHOOSING IT AND WANTING IT. Even if it looks like they have absolutely no clue why it's happening to them against their will. They are NOT VICTIMS. They are deliberate choosers who are unconscious of their decision making and who have decided to HURT THEMSELVES.

Jesus affirms that "you cannot be hurt UNLESS YOU HURT YOURSELF" and similarly "those who are sick do not love themselves for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves." He also confirms that "no-one dies without their own consent" because you HAVE TO CHOOSE DEATH in order for it to happen.

This is THE CENTRAL TEACHING of A Course in Miracles, that you have absolute unlimited POWER, EVERYTHING that happens you have chosen, NOTHING happens without your consent, and therefore you ALWAYS are receiving what you are asking for. Therefore if you do not like what you are receiving, CHOOSE AGAIN.

"At least I can decide I do not like what I feel now. " "I want another way to look at this." "Perhaps there is another way to look at this, what can I lose by asking?"

This is Jesus's black and white, absolutely no-exceptions teaching. There is NO SUCH THING as a victim. There is NO SUCH THING as an accident. There is NO SUCH THING as dying against your will. There is NO SUCH THING as "becoming sick" without having decided to be sick. There is NO SUCH THING as unwanted suffering. And there is NO SUCH THING as losing the power of your mind to CAUSE.

"This is a course in CAUSE, not effect". That's what this means. Jesus is trying to get us to see that we ONLY CAUSE. We are NOT AT THE EFFECT OF ANYTHING WHATSOEVER! This is the secret to salvation - that you are just doing this all to yourself. There is NO OTHER WILL. There is no alien will. There are no enemies. There are no external forces. Nothing has power over you. Nothing in the world has the power to make you ill or sick or weak or afraid. Nothing can happen to you against your will.

Therefore if stuff is happening that you seem not to have chosen or do not want, it is ONLY because you DID CHOOSE IT but you are unconscious of that choice. That's why you need to remove the blocks to awareness so that you can BECOME A CONSCIOUS DECISION MAKER. Then you will NOT CHOOSE TO HURT YOURSELF! And this is why it leads to salvation, because literally there IS NO CAUSE OF YOU other than God, and you CANNOT BE CAUSED by anything or anyone else in existence. Therefore if YOU STOP CAUSING YOURSELF HARM, you will be permanently invulnerable! IMMORTAL!!!!

We are simply unconscious day-dreaming lazy choosers who have forgotten our own power and are victims of ourselves and nothing else. This is all we have to own up to and correct. To reclaim our INHERITANCE and our right to freely choose. To claim our freedom from fake stories of external un-asked for victimhood, and to erase ALL trace of believing that there is ANY POWER OVER YOU from anything other than yourself. Not even God goes against your will. Not even Jesus goes against your will.

Your power, shared with God, in holiness, is unlimited. "God is unlimited, there is nothing He cannot do." "There is nothing my holiness cannot do." "There is nothing He (holy spirit) cannot do." UNLIMITED, UNOPPOSED WILL POWER. There is NO ROOM in that for any kind of "it happened because I didn't choose it." or "it was an accident" or "didn't intend it" or "didn't ask for it."

There are no real victims. This is Jesus's message. We are only experiencing the consequences of our OWN DECISIONS. "Heaven is a choice I must make." If you so choose, nothing can go against your will. Your will is as powerful as Jesus's will. It is ALL CHOICE.

To the ego, being powerful means recognizing that there are significant powers outside of you which you have to FIGHT WITH in an attempt to dominate and "over-power" them against their free will. It sees power as a way to FORCE things to happen aggressively. This kind of power is DISEMPOWERING to all involved.

To God, and in the truth of ourselves, REAL POWER means the recognition that THERE IS NO OPPOSITION. There is no OTHER POWER. There is no enemy (thus all are innocent). There is no alien will. There is no hand of oppression or "cause of death" that can come along and choose FOR you when you will suffer and die. Death is always chosen. And so if you do not choose it, you will not die. That's the responsibility you have to own up to.

YOU HAVE THIS POWER NOW. IT IS OPERATING NOW. IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN OPERATING. IT ALWAYS WILL BE. It's just a matter of what you are USING IT to do. And if you are using it to hurt yourself, that's a mistaken decision. "Holy Spirit will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him. I choose to let Him by allowing Him to choose for (in favor of) God for me."

You are only ever afraid of yourself. You are your own worst enemy. You are your only victim. You but victimize yourself. You have no opponent. There is no cause outside of you.

You are FREE TO CHOOSE! Choose again. Only by having the POWER TO CHOOSE EVERYTHING do you have the power to choose HEAVEN!

As you take steps toward being 100% responsible for everything in your life, you're taking steps toward being AT CAUSE instead of at the effect.

This will likely make you have two reactions:

1) The ego will not understand what this really means and will interpret it from a viewpoint of 'I' and 'me' ... if *I* did this then.... if *I* caused this then.... and always its conclusion is going to be .... then I must be guilty. It uses guilt to try to prove that if you are responsible or at-cause, ALL BLAME is pinned on you for everything that 'has happened' and 'is real'. So whatever thing you take responsibility for, any measure of believing it is real or has really happened will be interpreted as "your fault", and it FEELS LIKE SHIT. This is what I am struggling with at the moment.

2) The other reaction you will gradually have is, that you'll begin to become aware that you have a CHOICE. Its a choice that you probably never even realized existed before. It was buried under all of the illusions of 'having no say' and 'having not chosen this'. It's not just that we believe we're at the effect of the world, but that we believe that we have NOT CHOSEN to be at the effect of the world - that we had NOTHING to do with this. It just 'happened to us' as victims. A state of powerlessness. As you begin taking back responsibility for being the CAUSE - and getting past the ego's roadblock of being 'the cause of real effects' - you start to reawaken the fact that you DO have a choice, you DO have input, you DO cause things. And you start to realize not only that "you did this to yourself" (the key to salvation) but that you can actually choose NOT to do something to yourself, and that this actually UNDOES and heals - removing unwanted effects from your life through CHOICE.... including the choice for death!

So on the one hand, it's very liberating because you start to see yourself as a chooser, and that everything is optional - not set in stone or unchangeable. On the other hand you feel guilty not only for all the bad choices you made before (ego remorse) but also for the idea that you had anything to do with such things or the effects that were produced (ego guilt). You have to learn to move past that ego identification, the ego wanting to still be a part of this responsibility, and recognize your INNOCENCE.

It's not that you did a bunch of stuff on purpose and it had real effects and that means you're guilty. It's like.... you are becoming responsible for BEING INNOCENT, and are overlooking/forgiving what you THOUGHT you did which you did not really do. It's not about owning up to crucifying God's son.. although it can feel like that at first, which is horrible. It's not about claiming blame or saying a) that thing is real and b) I'm the one who really did it. That's the EGO taking responsibility which leads to guilt. We need to see that what we think happened did NOT happen and we're not responsible for it HAPPENING, we're responsible for believing it happened and being under the illusion that it was producing real results.

We are responsible for being who we really are. If we can really recognize who we really are, we must recognize we are innocent and that we have NOT done anything wrong or caused anything bad to happen. It takes time to come to that I guess, and more ego deceptions to be undone as we own up to being Christ.

I'll end on an up note .... that I am excited to be discovering that I have choices where I previously saw no choices, and I have freedom where I saw only imprisonment, and I don't just `have to` go along with death and destruction - it ONLY happens if I choose it and I don't have to choose it. I can choose life and be under no other laws but Gods.

In the separation, we tried to invent a world which was completely opposite to God's Kingdom. This resulted in false perception, and also the reversal of cause and effect.

The son, who is an effect of God, who is our cause, tried to be the cause of God, to create effects in Him. This was a kind of role reversal, and is the idea of original sin or the authority problem.

In this effort to oppose God, we dreamed of a world opposite to God. Given that God is truth, this world had to be false. And in opposing knowledge we invented perception. So simultaneously in the making of the world we entered directly into false perception. This world was made to also be completely opposite to God's world.

"The world is false perception."

"Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

So all this was happening at once in the separation:

* The complete opposition to the truth producing a false world* The opposition to knowledge producing false perception* Cause and effect are reversed, making the effect (dream) seem causal

We entered a state of unconsciousness, in which we dreamed of a false world, which was opposite to Heaven, AND in which cause and effect were reversed.This reversal of causality or "backwards perception", is what made you necessarily believe that the false world you made is NOT an effect of you dreaming, but instead is a CAUSE. ie that the world seem so have a LIFE of its own, or an alien will. And it also made you believe that you are NOT the dreamer or cause of the world, but rather the EFFECT of it. So you instantly went into a victim role, which is played out in physical matter and the "laws of physics."

Forgiveness, salvation, atonement, true perception etc, is what you arrive at when you REVERSE all this. It requires that you recognize the world is false, not true. It requires that you recognize the dream is coming FROM you not TO you. It requires the re-reversal of cause and effect (which is also level confusion), so that you recognize you are the NOT AFFECTED by the world in ANY WAY. You see yourself as cause, not effect ("This is a course in cause, not effect"). And you thus position your vantage point as a reflection of heaven.

If you look at how life typically is on the level of form, you can see all the ways that we made ourselves AT THE EFFECT of the very dream that we dreamed. This includes all victimhood roles, all reactions, all ego emotions, all of the senses of the body, and every way that the world seems capable of doing something to you.

It means vulnerability, the need for defenses, perceiving oneself as unfairly treated, fear of threats and dangers, grief and loss relating to parts of the dream which you value and lose, and all manner of suffering. It also includes any and all kinds of sickness and death, because death is nothing more than the firm belief that the WORLD is entirely the CAUSE of you and you are COMPLETELY AFFECTED by it with no will or power to do anything to stop it.

Every ego emotion, is a reaction, an EFFECT, produced by your mind, in response to your mind's parallel belief that THE WORLD is the cause of you. By believing the world is real and true, you give it power over you. And then you experience effects. So some person get's killed, you feel anger and sad and lost. Someone attacks you and you feel threatened. Some war breaks out and you fear for your life. Some plague spreads around the world and you worry about your continuation. Someone seems able to hurt you and you become angry at them.

The list of victim roles and the seeming reactions that it produces is endless. All of them are ways by which you believe you are CAUSED BY the world. That the world oppresses you, hurts you, changes you, defines you, dreams you, makes you what you are, decides your fate, ends your life against your will, destroys you, does things that "you like", gives you things "you want", and generally acts as the CAUSE OF everything you are. All of that is false perception and backwards causality.

So that means that all ego emotions are fake. Some people would say its "natural" or "healthy psychology" that you would feel loss or grief when someone dies. Or that it's normal to feel sad when something doesn't work out. Or that it's sane and rational to be angry because of what someone did to you. Or that you should feel happy because of the gifts someone gave you. Or that anyone would feel depressed if they had to go through what you went through. But ALL of that is complete bullshit. It is all part of believing that you are AT THE EFFECT of a dream which, in and of itself, has NO POWER to do anything.

This carries over to the body senses. "To sense is not to know". The body's senses are ways of BEING SUSCEPTIBLE or "sensitive to" the dream. They can only operate by BEING AFFECTED by the environment. You touch something and it relays a message to you, changing you, affecting you. You smell a bad smell and recoil. You see ugly sights and are driven to anger. You hear the sounds of hell and it frightens you. The physical senses were all designed to make the world seem real, to PROVE that you are AFFECTED BY the world, to sense what is there, and to lock in false perceptions. Even pleasure, which is interpreted as "being affected positively", is a form of victimhood and powerlessness.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

Every physical sense is a form of vulnerability, susceptibility, effects, victimhood, the ability to be caused by something outside of you, and a way for you to "get" from the world. And the body was designed this way so that it would permanently be locked into a victim role and a false way of perceiving.

"These eyes made not to see will never see.""The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen.""Everything the body sees is a form of conflict.""The body sees only the forms of error.""Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

The body essentially was built on the idea of sin ("the body is the idea of sin made flesh") and on the reversal of causality. It was meant to be at the EFFECT OF the dream. It testifies to the ways in which the dream CAUSES you. And so the body is a lie.

Your function of forgiveness operates in an opposite direction to the seeming nature of the body, its senses, and to ALL beliefs and perceptions that the world can ever do anything to you.

In truth, you are immortal and you cannot die. You cannot be affected. You cannot be hurt or changed or made to suffer. Nothing can happen against your will. The dream has no power to oppress you or make you ill or sad or weak or frail. Nothing in the world can force you to be sick, or make you dead. Nothing can happen without you choosing it to. You cannot die without electing to. You cannot facilitate sickness without backwards perceptions. And literally you are beyond the reach of every illusion.

To recognize this is to completely reverse cause and effect in the dream, which means completely opposing and breaking all the laws of spacetime. All the laws of physics are completely backwards because they are designed to make the dream function AS IF the world is the CAUSE OF events. As if the world is first-hand reality. But the world is an EFFECT.

"Perception is a RESULT, not a cause." "The world IS perception."It is by COMPLETELY recognizing that the world CAUSES NOTHING and cannot do ANYTHING to you, that you return to a state of invulnerability, producing in the interim the INCORRUPTIBILITY OF THE BODY, in which the body becomes a symbol of eternal life and is devoid of all signs and symptoms of "being affected by the world." This includes the healing and prevention of any attack by anyone or anything. A demonstration of immortality and power over death.

Resurrection, which is the "surmounting of death", is the state of being THE CAUSE, and not the effect of the world. It is awareness of dreaming. And as the Course says, "For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming." This is the secret of salvation. The fact that the world IS NEVER the cause of ANYTHING. And the fact that YOU are the cause of everything, because YOU are the one dreaming it. And if someone seems to play a role in your dream of victimizing, or of being a victim, the truth is that NOTHING can affect you unless you make it do so.

Once you recognize that you are CAUSING the dream, and that the world CANNOT produce effects in you, ALL the ego emotional reactions must cease forever. You can no longer have reason to justify anger, to be sad or upset, to be unhappy, to have loss or grief, or even to be happy as a "result of" what the world "does to you". Not even through special relationships or idols you worship or valued objects or career success or any kind of INPUT coming from the world to CAUSE you to feel a certain way.

The only TRUE feelings are those which come OUT of you CAUSALLY, and extend through you. This includes love and joy and peace and happiness. You GIVE these through causation and sharing. They come out of you and extend. They are not the RESULT or EFFECT of anything in the world. The world cannot give you happiness OR unhappiness. They are not there because of what someone does for you or what you GET from the world. Positive or negative. Victim or reward.

"It takes great learning to both recognize and accept that the world has nothing to give.""This world holds nothing that I want""Teachers of God are willing to give up all the pleasures of the world."

This is why we have to learn that we are ONLY extenders of God's spirit, we are only GIVERS of life and love and happiness and joy, and we are CAUSAL. We are co-creators with God. We are not to need, require, depend on, want, desire, be attached to, or react to, ANYTHING in the world. ANYTHING AT ALL! Why would you need to when a) you are immortal and have everything and b) have inherited everything you need from God and c) can only be happy and at peace when you GIVE what you want to receive?

You cannot GET happiness from the world. You cannot GET freedom from the world. The world cannot give you life or immortality or invulnerability or protection or safety or love or peace or joy. It has no ABILITY to give, because the world has absolutely ZERO causality. It is NOT a cause. The world is ONLY an effect. It is your dream, that you are putting there."It is not a cause, but an EFFECT."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

This is the essence of A Course in Miracles. BE THE CAUSE. BE THE POWER. Do not give power to a dream which is nothing but an effect of you. Do not believe in being affected BY anything or anyone in the world. God is the only cause of you and your brothers. Your brothers are NEVER the cause of each other, and you have never caused or been caused by them. Nothing real can be changed or threatened or made different by the world and its contents.

You are to reach a point of resurrection in which you CANNOT BE AFFECTED by the world. Where even the body CANNOT be sick OR die. Where your mind is so certain of its strength and power that there is NOTHING your holiness cannot DO (cause). Where you are so fully EXPRESSING love that you are miraculous all the time. Where you extend and inherit the power and love of God every second of every day. Where so much light and joy is flooding OUT of you through giving and thus receiving, that nothing from the OUTSIDE is able to come IN to you. Making you completely safe and invulnerable.

You are to cease believing that anything or anyone in the ENTIRE world, in the whole universe of spacetime, EVER has a power or causation over you, making you change, making you suffer, making you die, making you happy OR unhappy. You are to be BEYOND this dream and beyond this world. You are PRIOR to the dream. You are beyond sickness and death. You are immortal spirit and NOTHING can change that. All it requires is your total acceptance of this truth, the reclaiming of your immortal rights, and your willingness to express and know your true self. It is nothing short of reclaiming eternal life.

When we project our sin onto other people, we position ourselves as wanting to be affected by them or by the world. We want them to be the cause of us, and to experience effects against our will.

This literally is an attempt to sacrifice ourselves. It is attempted suicide.

We seem to be willing somehow to trade our life in order for someone else to suffer for our sin.

We want them to be the sinner, so that we can be not the sinner, and will make ourselves their victim in order to prove that we are not the one who sinned.

And in so doing, will willingly sacrifice ourselves, make ourselves victimized, attack ourselves through them, and eventually render ourselves as "unwillingly dead", in order to prove the point.

At least, we reason, we'll go down as innocence and not the guilty one, and the guilty ones will get all the blame for seeming to cause this tragedy. And in death we will seem to be exalted and a hero, worshipped for the persona of goodness that we fooled the whole world into believing, when all we did was succeed at putting all blame onto everything but ourselves.

Projection is an attempt to get away with murder. To accuse and find someone else guilty of wrongdoing, in contrast to our own innocence, in order to prove that we were not the one who sinned against God. The problem is, when we attempt to do this, we murder ourselves, by attacking ourselves indirectly through other people and through our belief in being at the effect of external causes.

So when you want someone else to take the hit for you, rest assured, you will receive the effects. Jesus is explicit about this in the course. Do not think that the effects you prepared for your brother will be received by them and not you, because you can be assured that you will be the one to receive them.

Try to destroy another, and you will destroy yourself.

And as you try to destroy another, to make out that the world causes you to suffer and die, you might well come across as the least likely, least causative, least choosing, least wanting person in the world, as though there was nothing you could do to prevent this attack. And secretly, unconsciously, you will have orchestrated the entire farce to paint this rosy picture of yourself, in order to condemn the entire world and accuse all your brothers of sinning against you.

Everyone who dies goes down in flames and everyone who looks upon them considers it a tragedy and an unwanted victimization. Poor them. Well... they fucking chose every single part of it, and they did so in order to victimize everyone else in the world. No-one who dies does so without some degree of belief that the world has accused them and condemned them and has done this to them, and that therefore they are justified in being dead in order to accuse the world in return and find it to be the cause of them.

There is nothing glorious about dying. It is not a sign of dignity or respectfulness or accomplishment or unfairness. It is a mistaken choice to present the son of God as attackable and to use the body to attack the entire world. There is nothing justified about dying. It is total failure, the completion of the lie of sin, an absolute reversal of God's will, a complete opposition to sanity, and total denial. It is a movement into unconsciousness and suppression of will, a complete disownership of power and a giving up on God.

No-one dies without their own consent. Death is failure to live. Every person who seems to die has succeeded in fooling the entire world into believing that the son of God is bound to a body and is confused with what seems to by destroyable, and is therefore destroyed. It is a crucifixion of the Son of God.

The funeral which sorrowfully "honors" the person fails to mention that they told the biggest lie in the world, that they attempted to attack the entire world with their death, that they have demonstrated the profound belief that God has caused death not life, and that they have completely failed to awaken from their insanity. It is hardly something to celebrate.

There is no death. The son of God is free. He who believes this will demonstrate it by never again choosing to create the circumstances of death, which is firmly rooted in victimhood and self attack. No ascended master would ever demonstrate that they can be destroyed. All sickness is attempt to prove you can be hurt. And every form of suffering is an accusation that the world has caused this to happen and not yourself.

There is no such thing as a responsible sick person. There is no such thing as an innocent person who died. There is no such thing as a justified victim. And there is no such thing as someone dying in order to leave the dream.

All is choice.

"This in no way contradicts the changelessness of mind as GOD created it. But YOU think that you HAVE changed it, as long as you learn through the ego. This DOES place you in a position of needing to learn a lesson which SEEMS contradictory: you must learn to change your mind ABOUT your mind. Only by this can you learn that it IS changeless."

As God created you, you are actually changeless. You are permanent. You are maintained in God's mind with his thought forever. He wills that you be the same forever.

This means, you cannot change, because you are an effect of God. You are what God wants you to be always. He does not change his mind because he is not uncertain.

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky."

Therefore you are permanently as God wants you to be, you are absolute and fixed and unchangeable. You are the everlasting will of God. And it is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for any change to ever happen to you.

This means that you cannot change yourself, God does not change you, and nothing else can change you. You literally will continue to be exactly as you were created all the time.

You are still as God created you, now, and now, and now, and now, and now, and now, and still now. You are endlessly as God created you. Every seeming moment you are unchanged.

Being unchanged and unchangeable means you are immortal. This is your fundamental nature. Nothing can threaten you, nothing can hurt you, nothing can attack you, nothing can sin against you, nothing can make you sick or dead, nothing can make you afraid or guilty. You cannot be changed.

In our lives, since we entered into the belief in separateness, we came to believe that change was possible. It was the idea that what was permanent could be made impermanent, that everlasting life could come to an end, and the extension of creation could be stopped.

With the idea of an end, or death, we introduced the idea that you are changeable, you can be changed, you have changed yourself, and therefore you can redefine what you are. This has led to an enormous journey in which you attempt to transform yourself, grow, turn into something, become something, learn and progress.

"First, the assumption is implicit that what God has Created can be changed by the mind of Man.

Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect (or wanting) is intruded.

Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of God (including himself) has arisen, and is tolerated.

Fourth, that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him."

Having entered into a belief in change, we now have to use change for a higher purpose, to change your mind ... toward the recognition ... that there is no change. To change your mind about believing you have changed, or that change is possible, and returning to an awareness that change is impossible and everything is still perfect in God.

This is using change against itself to undo change and reverse change and "change change" so that change is cancelled out. You are not supposed to be on an endless journey of changing yourself, trying to make yourself better, trying to turn into something more, to get more or gain more, or learn stuff. You are actually trying to un-learn all the stuff you've told yourself by mistake.

So in truth we actually are not changeable beings. We are fixed absolute beings. We are more permanent than the rocks and mountains. We are more constant than the stars. We are continual and permanent and endless. Unlimited in our perpetual existence. Nothing can ever bring an end to us.

This is why, in this world, in the world of change, we are supposed to use our minds to change our minds about our minds. To change our minds about whether or not we have been changed. When you believe something has changed you, you must be mistaken. When you believe someone has done something to affect you, you must be mistaken.

Being immortal, you cannot be attacked or hurt, offended or upset, caused to be threatened or afraid, damaged or broken. Nothing in the entire world can have any power over you to do anything at all to alter what God created. What you really are cannot be changed by anyone or anything.

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

So when it comes to forgiveness, trying to apply forgiveness, you should remember that you are immortal. If you are immortal, how can you have been changed? How can someone have done something to you? How can someone have power over you? How can anything in the world cause you? How can you be hurt or damaged by anyone or anything? How can anyone have upset you?

When you believe that something has changed you, in any way, you yourself are actually undermining your invulnerability. You are believing that you can BE changed, and are then trying to find someone to pin the blame on for causing the change. But it really boils down to whether or not you believe you are being caused by God, or caused by the world. Is God your father, or is the world your father? Who is causing you? Are you an effect of God only, or are you an effect of the world?

If you are immortal then it's not possible to find anyone guilty of doing anything to you. If you are immortal then it can't be true that a given person has upset you or hurt you. If you are immortal then the world can't be to blame for you being upset or angry or annoyed or in grief or loss or pain is misery. If you are immortal, your body cannot be doing something against your will.

When you recognize your permanent fixed nature, you are being very strong. You are asserting your invulnerability. If you are continually the same, then nothing in the world of change can throw you off balance or upset your applecart or disturb your peace, because you are rock solid. You are consistently and constantly the same. Change is the enemy. The belief in change is a mistake. And recognizing your changeless is your doorway to eternal life.

"The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within."

"In the holy instant, nothing happens that has not always been. Only the veil, that has been drawn ACROSS reality, is lifted. Nothing has changed. But the AWARENESS of changelessness comes swiftly, as the veil of time is pushed aside."

"Different realities ARE meaningless, for reality MUST be one. It CANNOT change with time, or mood, or chance. Its changelessness is WHAT MAKES IT REAL."

"But truth is humble in acknowledging its mightiness, its changelessness and its eternal wholeness, all-encompassing, God's perfect gift to His beloved Son."

"In perfect sureness of Its changelessness and of Its rest in Its eternal home, the Thought God holds of you has never left the Mind of Its Creator, Whom It knows as Its Creator knows that It is there."

"What is in him is changeless, and YOUR changelessness is recognized in its acknowledgment."

"The Christ revealed to you NOW has no past, for He is changeless. AND IN HIS CHANGELESSNESS LIES YOUR RELEASE. For if He is as He was created, there IS no guilt in Him. No cloud of guilt has risen to obscure Him, and He stands revealed in everyone you meet, because you see Him through HIMSELF."

"It is impossible that God lose His identity, for if He did, YOU WOULD LOSE YOURS. And BEING yours, He cannot change Himself, for your identity IS changeless. The miracle ACKNOWLEDGES His changelessness, by seeing His Son as he always was, and NOT as he would make himself."

There are healings happening on planet Earth which defy the ego and undermine everything the ego world-view believes in.

There are healers who have performed miracles and who are performing them as we speak.

There are churches where healing miracles occur through the Holy Spirit on a daily basis.

There are also churches where hundreds of people are completely healed of all sickness in a single event.

There are people on the streets who perform miraculous healings through the power of Jesus.

There are villages in Africa where the people perform miracles including multiple instances of raising the dead.

There are Christian Scientists who perform supernatural healings.

There are spontaneous healings produced by God as the result of prayers and petitions.

There are healings caused by Angels who come with divine blessings to help and save and support us.

And then there are A Course in Miracles students who are eagerly learning to become true miracle workers under Jesus's tutelage.

This is not a world of just everything fucking up and going to hell. There is a way out of hell and it goes way beyond what the ego would accept as 'natural'.

Healing is not unnatural. It is supernatural.

The body is a symbol. It teaches either healing and life, or it teaches attack and death.

The body symbolizes and represents the attitude of the MIND that is using the body. The body is a SYMBOLIC MESSAGE.

When the mind is loving, its message is love and healing. The body TAKES ON THE FORM of this, by showing up as healed, whole, unharmed, free from attack or pain, devoid of all suffering, functioning perfectly, flawless and immaculate, free from all forms of sickness.

When the mind is not loving, its message is attack and death. The body TAKES ON THE FORM of this, by showing up as damaged, broken, attacked, defective, malfunctioning, hurt, diseased, infectious, half-dead and eventually fully dead.

Whatever comes THROUGH your body FROM your mind, CHANGES your body's form. Your body, as a FORM, takes on a form that represents the message. Healed minds automatically result in bodies showing up in a healed configuration. Attacking minds see themselves as vulnerable victims, project this onto the body, attack the body, and thus make it sick.

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body."

It's not possible to USE the body for a purpose beyond the body, WITHOUT having an attitude about the body ITSELF. If your attitude toward your brother is love, through the body, the body ITSELF will be loved. And being loved it will be healed. If your attitude toward your brother is attack, through the body, the body ITSELF will also be attacked, and it will show up as sick and damaged.

Bodies do not choose their own condition. The condition of the body is NOT determined OR caused by ANTHING in the world.

"The mind makes this decision as it makes ALL decisions responsible for the condition of the body."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

Nothing in the world can injure you. Nothing in the world can CAUSE death. Nothing in the world can make the body sick. Nothing in the world has ANY POWER OVER your body because YOUR MIND has total power OVER your body.

"That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind proves the mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

Your mind's decision and attitude is the SOLE CAUSAL POWER determining the health or sickness of your body. When your mind is loving, your body becomes lovely and healed. When your mind is attacking, your body becomes sick and dead. This is LAW. There are no exceptions.

The reason it is law is simple. It's all based on cause and effect. When you are CAUSAL, you simply do not regard yourself as "effect", so you don't PERCEIVE yourself BEING affected or "at the effect of" anything else. Not seeing yourself as a weak vulnerable attacked victim, you simply do not radiate this through the body, and the body is HEALED by your forgiving attitude.

"Now is the body healed by miracles."

"Being sane, the mind heals the body because it has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything."

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

When your mind sees itself as EFFECT, not cause, its entire attitude and approach to itself and others and to the body changes. It now sees itself as CAUSED from the OUTSIDE IN. This is experienced as being attacked, as being WILLED AGAINST, and as being CHANGED against your will by others.

This automatically sets up a situation where you now perceive that all your brothers are SINNING against you, CAUSING you, HURTING you, affecting you against your will. This is really your own mind at war with itself and split in its ambitions. But you PROJECT SIN onto your brother BY HURTING YOUR BODY, so that you have a way to SHOW HIM that he has affected you.

What happens here is simple. Your mind, manufactures attack, projects it onto your body, MAKES YOUR BODY SICK, by believing it is AT THE EFFECT of your brother, who is simultaneously ACCUSED BY THE BODY, of making you AFFECTED. Seeing cause in him rather than in yourself, your mind INVENTS EFFECTS that come FROM his causality, and holds them in place, as judgement upon your brother, so that HE IS RESPONSIBLE for your health.

You either can believe and experience that YOU are responsible for the body's health, OR that OTHERS are responsible for YOUR body's health. These are your only options. If you choose to believe your body is NOT caused by you, you MUST believe it is caused by someone ELSE. And THEY now stand ACCUSED, responsible, sinful, for causing your body's condition "against your will." And in this belief your body WILL be sick because YOU are attacking.

Sickness in the body now becomes PROOF OF SIN. It forms what Jesus calls "a picture of crucifixion." You HOLD this picture in front of your brother's physical eyes so that he deliberately SEES IT, SO THAT he stands accused. By the mere fact that your body HAS a physical malfunction, damaged, harm, disease etc, IT IS ACCUSING HIM.

It does not matter what you THINK your mental state is. It does not matter how much you claim to be at peace. It does not matter how much you think you have forgiven him. The ONLY WAY your body BECOMES sick, the only way it STAYS sick, and the only way its sickness is NOT OVERRIDDEN by another cause, is by YOUR MIND NOT BEING HEALED.

This is why "damaged bodies REMAIN ACCUSERS."

Doesn't matter who you are or how advanced you think you are in the course. IF the physical body still shows up as damaged, somewhree in your MIND there is an UNFORGIVENESS. And there is STILL A DEFENSE against the truth. Because sickness is ALWAYS held in place by DEFENSES against God and therefore against love. Loving minds do not have sick bodies.

"If they loved themselves they would heal themselves."

"To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but ***retain the proof he is not REALLY innocent.*** ***The sick remain accusers.*** They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes. And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own. Forgiveness CANNOT be for one, and not the other. Who forgives IS healed. And in his healing lies the PROOF that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing.

***Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself*** (this includes BOTH YOUR BODIES!). 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."

Realize this. Jesus here is literally saying that if you RETAIN THE PROOF OF SIN in the physical body, if the body is still damaged and sick, IT IS STILL accusing your brother, and YOU HAVE NOT made forgiveness real. You are not done with forgiveness if the physical body has any TRACE of attack in it. And when it DOES NOT have a trace of attack in it, it now serves a higher purpose.

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

Jesus actually is stating here that your PHYSICAL BODY has something to do with whether or not you are accusing your brother or sin or whether you are finding him innocent. That's because PROJECTION makes your body sick as part of the accusation process! You must PHYSICALLY FORGIVE HIM and PHYSICALLY RESURRECT and PHYSICALLY HEAL, otherwise your psychological condition CANNOT be one of healing and love.

"Only the mind AND body need atonement."

"Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that ***every scar is healed*** (that's PHYSICAL HEALING!), and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there (with physical eyes), and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you (symbolized in the body). 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."

In order for his madness to have had NO EFFECTS of any kind, and if his madness was stabbing your body 50 times with a knife, it is your responsibility through forgiveness to REMOVE ALL THE KNIFE WOUNDS, otherwise there is still proof of sin and accusation. He MUST be able to look at a HEALED BODY, in order to TRULY BELIEVE that he no longer stands accused. If the EVIDENCE remains, he is STILL BEING ACCUSED. His sin is PROVEN by it.

Just the mere FACT that there is STILL DAMAGE TO BE SEEN, that you can point a finger at, PROVES THAT SIN HAPPENED. You cannot CLAIM to have forgiven him WHILE STILL showing him a picture of PROOF that HE DID IT. If the body PROVES, SHOWS, DEMONSTRATES FOR ALL TO SEE, that "there was an attack", forgiveness is NOT complete and your mind IS NOT HEALED.

"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.""

The body's HEALTH AND LOVELINESS will EXONERATE your brother and PHYSICALLY PROVE he is not a sinner.

While we have bodies, this is what we have to do. WE can't just pretend it does not matter. HERE, among others who look upon our body image, IT matters, because our body is a teaching device, and it IS THE MESSAGE. It takes on the form symbolizing the message. Messages of attack show up as sick bodies. Messages of healing and love show up as PHYSICAL HEALTH.

"Sick bodies remain accusers".

Healed bodies remain HEALERS.

YOUR PHYSICAL HEALTH has an effect on your brother's MENTAL HEALTH.

"Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. ***YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health.*** BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

"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."

You must show him through your physical healing that HE DID NOT ATTACK YOU. You must undo the wounds.

"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."

Your mental AND physical healing SAVES HIM PAIN.

"Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And ***in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him.*** A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing 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."

This is important. A POWER greater than a thousand tongues. The body, showing your brother HIS innocence, by way of ITS healed condition. A POWERFUL TEACHING DEVICE! He is convinced of his innocence when he sees YOUR INNOCENT BODY, because this MUST MEAN he has never attacked you, and so he is HEALED BY this recognition of your PHYSICAL HEALTH. He is healed ALONG WITH YOU.

Whatever you're upset about, it's not about anyone else, NO MATTER how much it seems to be someone else's fault.

Where is the upset located? Is your upset inside someone else's body? No, it's inside your body.

All of your feelings are inside your own body. All of your thoughts are inside of yourself as well. All of your beliefs and judgements and opinions and viewpoints are all inside of you.

Ideas leave not their source.

The way you feel, these are your feelings. They're not someone else's feelings.

Part of your upset entails an energetic link between you and another person in which you experience your upset feelings as though they are 'connected to' the other person. Or in other words, your belief that your are upset "because of them" links your emotional reactions to the other person as though the two of you are joined together by it.

But if you can remember and own your own feelings - these feelings you're having are YOUR feelings, nobody else's. This is how YOU feel. You are the one having these feelings. These aren't anyone else's feelings. You are the one who is feeling upset. This is isn't outside your body and it's not in another person.

If you can get to that point and say that with any amount of conviction, you might be surprised that suddenly the seeming energetic 'link' or 'vulnerability' that you felt in relation to the other person, suddenly disappears. Much of the feeling that you had wrapped up in the perception of 'this is what they did to me', disappears also. You detach.

Your detachment allows you to come back to yourself. And then you can admit to yourself, and own for yourself, that how you are feeling, how you are reacting, what you are experiencing, is all YOURS. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with anyone else. There are NO CAUSES outside of you that have created this feeling or reaction or upset. That person didn't put it there. That person didn't make you feel this way.

YOU CHOSE to feel this way. These are your feelings, not theirs. These are your reactions, not theirs. These feelings are inside your own self and are a part of your own experience. That means they are under your 'control'. Or at the very least, under your ownership. They sure do not belong to anyone else. And if nobody else has created them in you, and you are detached from the other person knowing they did not cause these feelings, then you have to realize that you quite literally decided to have these feelings.

You chose to experience these feelings. You decided to have this reaction. You decided to create this energetic emotional response within yourself, when you thought you were stimulated by that other person. They didn't cause the reaction, they just acted as a neutral reflection. And in that reflection you saw something that brought up some feelings inside yourself that had NOTHING to do with the other person. They didn't make you feel this way, YOU decided to feel this way ABOUT what they appeared to do. So you chose your reaction and your experience and everything you feel.

You will find quite often that if you will claim ownership and responsibility for all of your own experience, in this way, is not only drops and disarms the ego perception of your experience being 'caused by' someone outside of you, it also correctly identifies that YOU are in a position of responsibility, meaning you are NOT A VICTIM, and therefore you are FREE of a sense of victimhood and all perceptions relating to it. This sets you free as well. And you will find if you do this - take back your power and reclaim ownership of responsibility for EVERYTHING you are experiencing - you will often find these feelings suddenly transmute all by themselves and just dissolve and deflate and disappear into nothing. And in their place, is often a tremendous laughter.

Being unlocked from seeing yourself as victimized or caused by others is the key here. If you take full responsibility for everything then nobody can have allegedly been responsible FOR something happening to you. And when you believe others are responsible for stuff happening to you, for or against you, you basically are being irresponsible for your own life and are CLAIMING that someone else is responsible FOR YOUR LIFE, for you.

Nobody else is responsible for your life. Nobody else is responsible for owning your true identity. Nobody else is responsible for the feelings, reactions, emotions and expressions that you are experiencing. Nobody. There is nobody to shovel your 'Self' off onto. Nobody to claim they are supposed to be living your life FOR you, or waking you up FOR you, or changing to what you prefer FOR you. This is YOUR life, not theirs, that you are living. YOU are meant to be fully and completely and squarely in the clear awareness and ownership of WHO YOU ARE, in full responsibility and identification with and operating out of your True Self.

You are invulnerable when you stop believing in victimhood.

The ego thought system is a system within the mind. It is not physical. The ego has used its distortion of the law of PROJECTION in order to try to place this content OUTSIDE the mind, which has resulted in what we call the physical world. The purpose of doing this is to deny that the insanity is in the mind, hide it from the mind, block awareness of it being in the mind, dissociate from it, and therefore "believe" that it is no longer inside but outside. This "projects" the insanity and this takes the form of the physical universe/world. An inner belief in sin becomes "the world of bodies is the world of sin".

This physical world then is APPEARS to stand alone, as the only reality. And then we look WITHIN it to try to learn what is causing things to happen. We look at horizontal or linear cause and effect. We look at the properties of materials. We look at the seeming needs of one thing, such as food, supplied by another thing. And we look to medicines and magic to supply health when there seems to be a sickness caused by this very same world.

But all of these "laws" are utterly bullshit and made up, attempting to explain why things in the physical world exist, why and how they function, and how to "live with it". The truth however is that this world is not an end in itself, it does not CONTAIN the very cause that PUTS the world there in the first place, and it is in fact only a SYMBOL OF something removed from it, which preceded it.

The "laws" which project onto the world are the egoic laws or beliefs that projected the world in the first place. It is the MIND that is governing the world, causing what happens, deciding whether sickness and death occur, and choosing what events may arise. And the whole world was made to hide this fact. The cause of all the worlds problems is in the mind that made it.

"You maintain the world IN YOUR MIND, WITH YOUR THOUGHTS." We are not therefore really bound by any of the "within the system" laws that we think run the world. Not one single law of physics is true. Nor of biology or chemistry. Not one aspect of quantum physics or anything to do with matter or energy or space or time. None of these things are what runs the world. None of these things are the laws by which it is governed.

These are just effects in a world projected by an ego mind, disguised to make it seem like the world runs itself. As if the world is a closed system. As if the world is first-hand reality. And to look to this projected world for the cause of anything is insane, given that the entire thing is being caused by the mind. We can set ourselves free from all of these meaningless "laws" - laws of health and diet and abundance and safety and preservation and gravity and medicine and whatever.

We are to therefore first of all purge our mind of all the contents of the ego thought system, all the guilty baggage and fear, and all the level confusion which says the physical world causes anything. So that we stop projecting hallucinations of external causation onto what is, effectively, an inert effect. And then we can project "the real world", recognizing that we are under NO LAWS but God's. Eventually this recognition that ONLY God's laws of mind are real laws, will allow us to go beyond the real world to our natural environment in heaven.

"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws which you have set up to save you. You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs. You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off death. You really think you are alone unless another body is with you.

It is insanity that thinks these things. You call them laws, and put them under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose. You think you must obey the "laws" of medicine, of economics, and of health. Protect the body and you will be saved. These are not laws, but madness."

Nothing has gone wrong.

There is nothing wrong with you.

You have not sinned.

You are immortal.

You cannot be hurt or suffer or be sick or die.

God created you eternal and holy forever.

You are sustained by the love of God at all times.

You have never sinned.

There is no real sin or guilt in you.

Any consequences of sin are utterly make-believe.

You are perfectly pure and forever innocent.

There is nothing you have ever done or can ever do which can make God decide to turn you away or judge or condemn you.

Your innocence is incapable of being defiled.

You are immortal and all forms of suffering and sickness and death are fiction.

No-one has ever died and no-one has ever really suffered.

You cannot die and you already have eternal life.

You are already in Heaven with God right now, right here, and always have been.

You are not lacking anything and there is no loss in you.

You have no needs whatsoever, and you are already complete and whole.

There is nothing that you want beyond what God has given and your only desire is to extend and share joyfully in the creation of more love.

You cannot be in error and you cannot be lost.

It is impossible for you to be separate from God in any way or to make Him unaware of you.

There is nowhere to hide and you have no secrets.

God is aware of everything about you.

God knows everything about you and always has.

He knows you are eternally guiltless and sinless and could not sin if you tried.

God did not create beings capable of sin or separation.

You have not malfunctioned or gone off the rails or hurt anyone or hurt yourself.

You are not too far gone, you have not gone anywhere.

There is nothing you can do in reality or truth besides extend love and create happiness.

You are always happy.

You are always perfect.

There is nothing being held against you and there is nothing you could ever do to turn God's love away.

God has not changed His mind about you at all and still regards you as perfect because He still creates you as perfect forever.

You have never caused anyone to suffer and no-one has ever caused you to suffer.

You are incapable of being damaged or threatened in any way.

You are real and exist forever in Heaven with God right now.

There is light everywhere within you because you are made of light and shine forever with a radiance of love.

You have not rejected God and God has not rejected you.

Your spirit is immortal and nothing can happen to it.

Who you are, your identity, has not changed and cannot change.

You are permanently real and permanently as God intended.

You have not wavered and nothing has altered the divine perfection that you are.

Nothing can be added to you and nothing has been taken away.

You share the absolute infinite abundance of all creation and could not possibly lack or need anything beyond what has been supplied fully.

You have no sickness and have never been sick and can never be sick.

It is impossible for you to be evil or sinful or dead.

You are an immortal soul, supremely perfected by the Perfect Creator and you are everlastingly immaculate.

Not one single note has been lost in Heaven's song and not one single note has been lost in Heaven's Son.

All is well and there is nothing to fear.

There is only love and only love is real.

There is no real reason to worry about anything.

Everything is absolutely perfect and always has been.

There is no fictional world and only Heaven is real.

Heaven holds everything your heart could ever desire and you want nothing else, nor have you ever traded it for anything else.

Heaven is your natural inheritance and you are worthy of it now.

You know deep inside that God loves you unconditionally at all times and there is absolutely no reduction in His measure of love for you, nor will there ever be.

You are eternally worthy of unconditional love at all times and it is impossible for you to offend God or to make Him angry at you.

He is incapable of hurt or attack or anger or fear or revenge, as are you.

You are like God in every way and always will be.

You are immortal and invulnerable and invincible and immune and innocent and fully identified with the whole of yourself.

You have never become something you are not, nor are you capable of being someone you are not.

You have never dreamed a real dream and you have never entered into a real separation.

God's love is the only love you ever will need and you have it fully.

You are absolutely complete and already completely yourself, needing no spiritual path and no seeking and nothing has been denied you.

You are incapable of real denial and it is impossible for you to reject God.

You are 100% the same as you have always been in every way, and need do absolutely nothing because there is only cause for celebration and gratitude.

You have been created perfect, and there is nothing you can do to change this.

You are worthy of all of the love of God, endlessly and forever, and you are receiving this love right now.

God loves you, and the truth of Heaven is your permanent Home.

The entire ego thought system is an attempt to deny and get rid of God, ourselves, and truth. It is an attempt to displace responsibility for who and what we are, what we are experiencing, and how these experiences were chosen, onto someone other than ourselves.

The culmination of this behavior if death, in which we seem to successfully displace/project/disassociate ALL responsibility for living onto some external power, which decides FOR us what our fate will be.

Death is the ultimate statement and attempt to get rid of all will to live, all responsibility for choice, all power, all blame, and all sin. Turning the tables and having something external "cause you to die" can only happen by completely refusing to make a choice, to create an illusion of having no choice, and to then play along with that lie by "letting" something destroy you "against your will."

All victimhood speaks of the disownership and denial of self, the projection of sin onto others, the unwillingness to choose or to admit to anything, and the deliberate placing of all POWER into the hands of anyone other than ourselves. This has been our ego agenda since the beginning of the separation from God, which was an attempt to deny all power, to deny what we are, and to destroy what God has created.

The only tool the ego has, since it cannot change reality or make it truly be destroyed, is to "cover it up" with illusions of denial. This denial attempts to displace away from the present, away from Self, away from God, everything that is HERE to make it be "not here". This is simply an act of DISOWNING RESPONSIBILITY.

The antidote to this, and everything that comes from it, is to TAKE BACK YOUR POWER by taking responsibility for everything that you are experiencing. This requires that you learn that NOTHING can happen to you against your will, EVERYTHING you are experiencing is what you have ASKED FOR, and you HAVE received exactly what you wanted. This also means that you MUST have chosen whatever it is you are experiencing.

This ties in directly to the secret to salvation, which is the realizing that you are DOING THIS TO YOURSELF, which means that you cannot ever be a victim, no-one is EVER the cause of anything you are experiencing or feeling, no-one can attack you, you are invulnerable, and therefore you are SAFE.

It also ties into Jesus saying that "no-one dies without their own consent". This literally means that if you will take full responsibility, you literally CANNOT experience death unless you choose to. And this also means, that literally, nothing outside of you has ANY ability or power to CAUSE you to die, against your will. This is nothing short of immortality.

The benefits to you and your mind by taking full responsibility for everything is profound. It takes some practice, especially since in most ego dramas there is some perception that SOMEONE ELSE is responsible for what you are experiencing. It can seem that your body is sick because of something that happened against your will, or someone called you some names, or they attacked you, or there is something wrong with them etc. These are LIES.

These are ways that you will GIVE POWER to other people, which means DISOWNING that power, which means you will then *experience* a sense of POWERLESSNESS. In that powerlessness you will see yourself as weak, vulnerable and attackable, and justified in being constantly afraid because now you perceive that "a great power" is outside of you, able to do something to you against your will. A power so strong that, in comparison, the "lack of power" you see yourself as having is no match for it.

Being a victim is a deliberate act of giving your power away. It also reveals in *every case* that you MUST have chosen incorrectly, must have asked for what you have experienced, and therefore have done it to yourself. There is no wiggle room here. We're not able to maintain a belief in "justified victimhood" or "being unfairly treated" at the same time as being empowered. Believing in these reasons why anyone is justified in being a victim or projecting blame for it, is nothing less than a continued CHOICE to disown our power.

We may not realize how much power we have attempted to GIVE AWAY, especially if we are in a very afraid state of victimization. We have been so used to being POWERLESS that we think this is normal and natural. However, as you start to take back responsibility for *everything* you are experiencing, taking back all blame and all belief in an external cause, you will be pleasantly surprised as how EMPOWERED you feel, how much it boosts your confidence and certainty, and how much LESS AFRAID you are.

Essentially, by giving away responsibility, we are attempting to make our life the responsibility of someone else. Then we will seek for them to DO TO US how we want them to treat us - which is specialness. If they do not treat us right, and given we believe what we experience is THEIR responsibility, we will then blame them for failing to live up to our expectation. You can see this in almost all parent-child relationships not to mention all other special relationships.

Also, in this act of placing blame for sin onto SOMETHING SEPARATE AND EXTERNAL, we actually attempting to separate *GOD* off, make him be other than one with our identity, to make out that He is the sinner, that He is now an "external, separate cause", that His Will is now acting AGAINST our will, and therefore we are justified in being angry at God. And then when it SEEMS as though an "external cause" is the reason for why we die, against our will, we are literally acting out this accusation that we are dying because IT IS GOD's WILL. Having made our will be against God's we now see Him as acting against us and trying to kill us. This is what happens when we try to kill God.

The truth is, God is NOT separate from us, His Will is NOT opposed to ours (ours is opposed to His), and He is NOT a separate cause out there doing stuff to us against our will. It is OUR authority problem which makes God out to be an attacker. Every death is a statement that we should die because it is God's will, which is a completely unfounded claim against God, trying to make God out to be a sinner and us His innocent victim.

Now, when we are in our ego and we're getting all caught up in some argument or drama with someone else, what happens is our mind forms "connections" to the other person. These are ego connections. They are psychological distortions resulting from false perception, which perceives that what you are experiencing is "caused by" something outside of yourself.

Seeing cause outside of you will ensure you see "effects" inside of you being directly "tied to" that external cause. So long as you keep visualizing that there is an enemy out there, you will not be able to let go of this sense that you "haven't let go" of this. The person will keeping popping up in your mind and you'll keep having FEAR about what they are doing to you. This is because you believe THEY are responsible for what you are experiencing.

This can become quite heightened, because the ego attacks itself and through conflict it attempts to "join" separate pieces together. The more you are being irresponsible by projecting others as the "cause of you", the more you will not be at peace because you can't LET GO of the perceived situation. Your perception needs healing.

Have you experienced how when you are concerned about what someone is doing, you just can't stop thinking about it? It keeps coming back into your mind. This is because you have become ATTACHED to this enemy, which keeps haunting you. Attachment means the ego is holding on tightly to its vision of an external cause. To let go of that attachment requires one thing .... TAKING FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT YOU ARE EXPERIENCING.

Since all ego dramas and fights and wars and conflict involve this "attaching" process of making YOUR wellbeing dependent on something external, the antidote is to SEVER THE TIES OF CAUSALITY with that other person. This means, making statements or at least having a willingness to admit, that they are NOT THE CAUSE of what you are experiencing, they are NOT responsible for what you are experiencing, the power you see IN them is NOT THEIRS it is your own which you attempted to GIVE to them, and to TAKE BACK YOUR POWER.

Here is an example.

Pick some person who you think of as being an enemy, against you, threatening you, accusing you, attacking you, blaming you, judging you, or in any way somehow acting against your will.

Recognize now what the content of your perception is. Somewhere in your perception you have DISPLACED a sense of power onto the person. You see them as HAVING POWER OVER YOU. And in that same perception, you see yourself as having LOST power to them.

Recognize also that you feel that THEY are responsible for how you feel, what you are experiencing, and what's happening to you. It's their fault. They are the one doing it. Cause is outside of you, and you therefore are being turned into an EFFECT. Note that all emotional reactions from the ego are the result of seeing yourself as AT THE EFFECT of the world. Perceiving a cause outside of you automatically means that YOU have to adjust to "become the effects" that this cause is projecting. These "effects" show up as emotional disturbance and reactions of hurt, fear, anger, etc.

Recognize also that you are attached to this person, they seem to have a way to ACCESS YOU, they are connected to you in some energetic way, and you can't seem to be at peace about them. You feel threatened by them, unsafe, unable to muster enough power or courage to stand up to them, and you feel like you are being victimized.

Now. Here is the good part. SEPARATE YOURSELF FROM THEIR CAUSALITY. Say some things which confirm the truth, that there is NO TIE OF CAUSALITY between that person and you. I am now going to demonstrate an example and if you follow along using a person in your life, you WILL NOTICE how this changes your mind and your feelings.....

I am not being affected by that person. That person is not being affected by me.

I am not being caused by that person. That person is not being caused by me.

Nothing I am experiencing is coming from that person. These experiences are my own. I am choosing all of these experiences. Everything I am feeling I am choosing to feel. They are my own feelings and I put them there. This other person did not put them there.

Nothing the other person is experiencing is coming from me. Whatever they are experiencing is their own choice. They are choosing all of their experiences. Everything they are feeling they are choosing to feel. Those are their own feelings, not mine, and I did not put them there.

My feelings of hurt any upset are not being caused by them. Their feelings of hurt and upset are not being caused by me.

I am not responsible for anything that person is experiencing. They are not responsible for anything I am experiencing.

They have done nothing to me. I have done nothing to them.

I am not at the effect of that person. That person is not at the effect of me.

That person hasn't done anything to me against my will. I have not done anything to that person against their will.

I completely forgive that person because they have not done anything to me at all. That person completely forgives me because I have not done anything to them at all.

Everything I am experiencing is my own choice. I have put these reactions and feelings into my own body. I am the one who did this to myself. They did not do this to me. I must have chosen it.

(this ties directly into..) "I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace. I MADE THE DECISION MYSELF,

but I can also decide otherwise. I want to decide otherwise,

because I want to be at peace."

You can go on and on like this for as long as you feel you need to, SEPARATING CAUSALITY from seeming like it is coming from someone other than yourself. Or rather, deprogramming your false perception of an external enemy, and TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT so that you realize you are only doing this to yourself.

This puts all POWER back into your own hands. You will REGAIN POWER, you will feel stronger, you will feel less afraid, you will feel like you have LET GO of the other person, you will stop having obsessive thoughts about them, you will not FEAR being victimized by them or what they are going to "do to you", and you will gain a lot more confidence.

Essentially, this is a process of forgiveness, whereby you are admitting the truth and owning up to NOT being a victim, to having simply made a mistaken choice, and that you no longer want to see someone else as attacking you. Blaming anyone else for attack is a lie. All attack is self attack.

It is YOU who needs to stop attacking yourself, not other people. Putting the blame for attack onto others SHIELDS YOU from admitting that you are doing it to yourself, because projection comes from DENIAL. Admitting the truth, taking responsibility, and owning up to WHO YOU ARE, gives you back YOURSELF, and empowers you greatly.

What Jesus is teaching us in the Course is simply that all attack is self attack, we have accused ourselves of sin, and we need to admit that this isn't true. The things we do after accusing ourselves of sin, to deny and project it on others, isn't even the main problem. It's part of a cover up. We need to learn to STOP DISOWNING OURSELVES. Stop giving YOUR power away to external causes that don't exist.

When you take back all of YOUR power, which you share with God, you will not be able to see yourself as powerless, or needing to be afraid, or a victim. Stuff won't bother you. People won't be able to attack you. You will gain STRENGTH in the truth. True innocence is STRONG, not weak and vulnerable. You are truly innocent when you take responsibility for everything because it simply means there is no blame or guilt, just a mistaken choice, which can be undone.

As you take back this responsibility, you will find AT FIRST that it seems to your ego that you are taking "the blame" for everything. This is a hurdle, because you still believe that you really did do something wrong. Not blaming it on someone else simply blames you. This has to be undone through forgiveness. If I say, "I am responsible for this", my ego will take it to mean, "I really am a sinner". This is its defense against the truth. We must go past this to realize that it is possible to BE RESPONSIBLE without being guilty.

Jesus talks about this in the urtext, not sure if FIP etc, but He mentions how as you start to take responsibility, your ego will at first perceive it to "imply" that you are the one who is truly a sinner. And this can feel painful. But gradually, the MORE you take responsibility, the more you take back your POWER, the more you will NOT believe in real sin and will more easily stay in your strength. Your strength will shine a stronger light and will help you to SEE that you are simply taking steps to BE YOURSELF.

Taking 100% responsibility for everything you experience is the key to salvation. It can take you all the way to the atonement. It will give you back so much power you will be surprised how invulnerable you feel, how much less afraid you are, how easily you approach people and are not put off by doubts or anxieties.

Taking full responsibility ultimately also means, YOU CANNOT DIE unless you make it happen to yourself. No-one dies without their own consent. It also means NOTHING CAN HURT YOU against your will. It also means YOU CANNOT BE SICK, and neither can your body, because sickness of the body is all an attempt to BE IRRESPONSIBLE by projecting sin onto others. Sickness accuses your brother of being a sinner. That's not responsibility. Taking responsibility will HEAL YOU AND YOUR BODY.

You could say, if you like you think of miracles as shifts in perception, say that taking responsibility will SHIFT your perception miraculously towards the truth. This isn't the full story of what miracles are (expressions of love, able to do anything) etc... but your holiness CAN do anything if you will OWN UP TO IT. It's kind of like an act of COMING OUT AS CHRIST, admitting that YOU ARE THE SON OF GOD, revealing yourself, stopping hiding, stoping distracting away from whey you are, BECOMING VISIBLE, and therefor becoming INVISIBLE to the ego. The ego cannot attack you when you are responsible and empowered.

The power you will gain and share with God by reclaiming your right to it (miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first), will astound you. You literally are plugging yourself back into the Power of God. And there is nothing you cannot do.

YOU NEED TO FIX OTHERS BECAUSE YOU ARE BROKEN

This has been a major eye opener for me.

If you have a belief in your mind that you have sinned, then you'll believe that you are responsible for some kind of attack. And because you attacked, you will feel guilty. This means that your mind is now sick because it believes something untrue about itself. And your mind now needs healing.

But chances are that you'll deny this in order to try to resolve it the ego way, and this will then project onto someone else. You'll see someone else as in need of healing. You'll see that there is something dire and wrong with them. That they are seriously suffering or in trouble. It can turn into what appears to be a nightmare where you are constantly upset that there seems to be no way to solve the problem.

The problem is that you feel you are responsible for causing the guilt, the brokenness, the unhealed-nature, that you're seeing in someone else. You'll believe you caused them to suffer, to be sick, to be upset, etc. You'll seem to feel guilty for this as though your own sin has led to someone else suffering. And this puts you into a bind.

Since you now feel guilty, and you think you're guilty for making someone else suffer, you'll become compelled to want to fix them. You'll develop a strong need to change them, control them, manage them, coerce there, or get them to do something, or to make something happen, in order to make the suffering go away. You'll even feel upset that they are suffering and that you want it to end any way possible.

You then find yourself in a position where you believe you are responsible for causing someone to suffer, they need to change in order to not suffer, you need to force them to change, and you'll try anything you can to "fix it". But a problem arises, because they will now start to resist your efforts to control and dominate them. They'll see your attempts to fix and help as actual attempts to attack them. Because now you are not accepting them or allowing them freedom.

This is all driven by a need that you have developed. By seeing yourself as sinful and guilty you have entered into a needy state where you lack love and health. So you now see that if you can get the person you projected it onto to be restored to health and happiness, this will "solve" your need for healing.

But this is a big dependency and it comes with a major pitfall. If the other person does not comply, if they do not want your help, if they resist your constant attempts to fix them, and if they refuse to play along, you will not be able to get your artificial needs met. And being left in a situation where you see yourself as needing something but are denied it, the ego now goes into its dark hateful vengeful angry mode because it has no other options.

You will then start to turn to anger and force and more aggressive control in an effort to push the person into doing what you think you need them to do, in order for you to be relieved of suffering. You'll also start to believe that the reason you are now suffering is because of them. Their suffering, and their seeming inability to be healed, and their seeming unwillingness to make choices towards healing, is taken like a slap in the face.

You can't find peace because you are making peace depend entirely on whether or not the other person is free from suffering. All their suffering ties into yours and it now seems their suffering is causing you to suffer. And if only you could get them to stop suffering, you'll supposedly be happy and overjoyed.

As you make efforts or suggestions for what they must do, need to do, its very serious to do that, must comply, etc demanding they follow along, and as they fail to comply, you will just become more and more lost and exasperated and upset and stressed.

Because no matter what you try, it seems you keep hitting a dead end and nothing is working, it seems hopeless and, according to you, if these resolutions are not adopted, the person is going to be in far worse condition. You develop a progressively stronger need to fix them the more you believe they are the one with the problem. This is disassociation.

What's happening here isn't really so much to do with the other person, what their condition is, their willingness, or anything to do with whether or not they are actually in need of fixing. The real problem is that you've entered into a dynamic of believing in your own guilt, you feel responsible for causing the suffering, this is exacerbated every time they seem to refuse your efforts, and how dare they not be healed the way you need them to be healed. Why do you even need them to be healed in the first place? What's it to you?

What this means is you're trying to resolve a sense of "something is wrong", by trying to address it outside of yourself where you THINK it is, in another person, as if that's where the problem is. Not realizing you are even projecting anything at all. In fact the more you focus on the problems of the other person the more you will go into denial and unconsciousness as to it being you who needs healing. It will seem as if they are the one who clearly has all the problems, all the suffering, and not you, and all you're doing is trying to "help", trying to offer suggestions, trying to make their life better. But this really all has nothing to do with them.

This is really not much different from when you are just generally scapegoating someone due to them seeming to attack you. You blaming people for doing stuff to you. You finding them to be guilty. You judging them. The need to fix is based on the exact same dynamic except that it doesn't seem like scapegoating, because it seems like whole whole intention and desire is for the person to actually get BETTER and improve and be healed and happy.

It seems you want the best for them, but this is an illusion of healing and still a major ego trap, based in denial of your own guilt, that promises salvation in an external form rather than where it's needed. It's an illusion of a desire to truly heal, and is really an attack in disguise. You think all you're doing is wanting the person to heal, but all you're doing is seeing them as more and more in need, which means the ego is seeing more and more distance between the problem and the solution. The more you deny your own sickness the more you want to heal the supposed sickness of others.

The real issue is that you yourself feel guilty, and in an effort to get away from this guilt, you are instead seeing brokenness in another person instead of fixing yourself. The "need" to fix is still there because you believe you need fixing, but the approach to resolving it isn't working. Trying to get another person to heal in order for you to be healed, is not going to work. Trying to get another person to follow the rules or play along with the prescription or do the steps you come up with for how they must behave and act, is not going to make even a dent in how or why you feel so guilty about their condition.

It all goes back to causality, and the sense that you actually believe, deep down, that you cause other people to suffer. And this is based on the belief that you caused sin to happen. You think you actually are making someone sick. You think it's your fault that other people have issues, or are unhappy, or are sick and suffering. That because they are not loving themselves, and therefore are not loving you, there must be something wrong with you. And your wrongfulness must be the reason for their upset. This kind of stuff even goes back into childhood beliefs and wrongful conclusions.

What you really need, is a clear and definite sense of what the real cause of the situation is. And this means forgiveness clearly needs to be applied, to dismantle all sense of artificial cause and effect on the horizontal level. All sense that you are the cause of their suffering, or that their suffering is the cause of you. Because this really has nothing to do with the other person at all.

You have your own belief that you are sinful and guilty. Before the other person even becomes involved. You think you are lacking and unworthy of love. And this in turn is a state of need or lack. And this neediness will now project onto someone else as though they are the one who is lacking and in need. The more in need they seem to be the more likely they are to "map onto" your projection and be a perfect fit for you to target. You'll then be able to use them to try to fulfill your ego ambition, which is to fix something, so long as its not the real problem or where the problem really is.

Within your own mind there is a problem. It's a belief in sin and guilt. And this is based on a skewed sense of causality. Somehow you believe you are the cause of suffering in others, because you think you succeeded in sinning against God. You also believe you have caused yourself to suffer. Unresolved guilt you have about the false illusion that you caused the sickness or suffering of someone else (which does go back to the separation idea) can easily project onto another target. That you even seem to EXIST on a physical level "suggests" that you are part of sin, because the world of bodies is the world of sin.

You have to learn to become clear about the fact that you are not causing other people to suffer. The only reason you get so caught up and lost in trying to "help them" and "fix them" and "save them" is so that you won't keep feeling guilty. If you COULD save them, you think you'll be delighted. That all you want for them is to be happy. All you want for them is to be healthy and well and living life. But is this all you really want? Because behind this desire for their highest good there is really a NEED, a desire to elevate them SO THAT you can keep your guilt and continue to hide from it, because you think you are guilty for what THEY are experiencing.

If they do indeed become saved somehow, healed, healthier, holier, happier, that's all well and good and will seem to lift the burden of the sense that you need them to be this way. You might feel temporarily, fictionally better about yourself, as if you achieved something. As if they are now better "because of you", and you get to be the hero.

When they go along with your wishes, as if going along with your agenda, you'll feel your ego float in pride and success as if you won a victory and managed to coerce someone into doing what you wanted. Your ego becomes a tyrant in this, incessantly demanding conformity and compliance. So if they comply, suddenly the ego is all happy and elated. But it's fake. It's a facade of gloating and being pleased with yourself that you seemed to "cause" someone else to be in a better position, even against their will. How dare they not be happy when you need them to not be sad. How dare they be sad when you need to be made happy.

The egoic dependency on another always ends up this way. Terribly unhappy when they aren't complying, unnaturally inflated when they are finally doing what you want. But never simply at peace or calmly happy. Or detached. You have to let go of the person and honor their free will. But you'll only do that when you can realize that you've been using them to try to resolve your own issues. Otherwise if you keep intending to use them to meet your own fake needs, you won't allow them to be free of your tyrannical rule.

Recognizing you did not cause the suffering of another, gives you freedom. It's what you really need to realize. YOU DID NOT SIN. You did not cause suffering. If in particular you can pinpoint what the cause of their suffering is, and realize it is not you, that can help as well, even if on a superficial level of fake cause and effect. But mainly you need to get to the point where you admit that you are the one who needs healing and realize that this is all to do with your attempt to at "self healing" which you're trying to accomplish outside of yourself instead of within.

You have guilt in you, which shouldn't be there. It's based on beliefs that are false. Guilt is always a lie. It's based on some sense of sin - something you did or did not do, which was not what should or should not have been done. Sin is always a lie because there is no sin in reality. But there is something you have accused yourself of. Something you think you are responsible for. Something you think you caused but didn't. This is where you need forgiveness. And that's what your entire "need to fix" is coming from.

If you are not sinful or guilty, and did not cause your brother to experience anything at all, then you are not in need. You are not lacking love for yourself. And so you do not project the guilt onto another person. And so you do not see them as lacking. And so you do not see a need to fix "what's wrong". And so you do not start trying to control them. And so you do not become upset at their lack of willingness or the inability to heal the terrible problems that have now turned into a nightmare in your perception of the situation. Stuff that, if it doesn't get fixed, you think will lead to death.

Thinking you are responsible for not only making someone suffer but for also reversing the suffering, is a terribly slippery slope. This doesn't mean you can't offer miracles or that the Holy Spirit cannot heal the person and their body. But you have to get yourself healed of this distorted form of healing first. This attempt at healing is not true healing. It's the ego's form of healing. And just like "forgiveness to destroy", it is "healing to destroy."

Your ambition is not really to heal, in this condition, it's to create an illusion of healing in another person so that your own sickness remains hidden in your mind and thought to have nothing to do with you. If they get fixed, you reason that this will fix your life. But it won't. Because you yourself need healing as well and don't realize it.

The need to fix another becomes a trap and a prison, because the only way out is the way you came in, within yourself. Free yourself of the insane belief that you are the cause of suffering, an attacker, a sinner, guilty, ashamed, unworthy, or any other false belief. This will lift away from the other person all of your projected suffering and neediness, which will be a relief to both of you. Especially given that your attempt to heal them is probably hurting them more, and inducing even more guilt.

And now in your perception that you are not really sick, because you are not really sinful, you become the light of the world, in a position to now work ACTUAL miracles, TRUE healing, to be truly helpful, and to offer the kind of support that actually works. Now the person is more likely to respond, because everyone responds to love. Love can be trusted. Love is worth cooperating with. And love heals.

Now you are a miracle worker, alleviated from your own insane belief that you are deeply in need of healing, which you no longer see in others. Now you can recognize their illusions of sickness only for what they are, and offer genuine healing to cure and reverse their suffering. You're now in a position to allow the Power of God to work through you, to shine a light into their mind from your healed mind. And now you are capable of giving the miracles you have received.

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

"The ego's plan for forgiveness is far more widely used than God's. This is because it is undertaken by unhealed healers, and IS therefore of the ego. "

"By definition, he is trying to GIVE what he has NOT received."

"I give the miracles I have received."

A Course in Miracles would say no. You always get what you ask for. You only get what you ask for. You never get anything you do not ask for.

There are no victims. There are no accidents. Nothing happens unless it is deliberate. There is no randomness or chaos. Someone somewhere is making decisions all the time.

A leaf does not blow in the wind without someone choosing to make the leaf blow in the wind. The leaf doesn't even appear to exist without someone's mind making it appear to exist.

Where is there any room in this for "might not work" or "not sure if" or "got lost in translation" or "God doesn't always answer" ?

The "Song of Prayer" will tell you that you are always praying and you are always getting precisely what you actually did ask for.

If stuff is happening that you believe was not supposed to happen, or you got results that you seemed to not ask for, or stuff happens that you didn't seem to want.... you need to think again. You DID ask for it, you just didn't realize how you asked for it. You MUST have asked for it otherwise it could not have appeared.

This is the level of certainty that Jesus enjoys. This is how it possible to be completely certain that you are not at the effect of anything. This is the end of victim consciousness.

There is absolutely no room for an idea of being victimized if it is true that you always get what you ask for. The entire fiction of being unfairly treated is absolutely 100% a lie.

You are treating yourself exactly how you wish be treated. You are, right now, experiencing exactly, and ONLY, what you actually did ask to experience. There is nothing happening outside of the script you have written or continue to write.

Nothing happens without your say so. This is how it is true that nobody dies without their own consent. This is how is it true that ALL death is suicide. This is how it is POSSIBLE that if you do not choose death, you will not die, and therefore it is POSSIBLE to be immortal.

Nothing is happening to you that you did not want. So if you do not like it, you need to change your decision. i.e. change your mind and heart.

If you got something you did not want, then you did not realize that you asked for it. It's not a matter of you having not asked for it, it's a matter of you being not AWARE that you asked for it.

Learning to discern HOW the asking happens, is the key to salvation. Recognizing that you ONLY do things to yourself, and nobody else EVER does anything against your will, gives you the key to salvation. Salvation - being saved from all suffering - is possible, because of this.

Every single story about how something happened to someone, some disaster struck out of nowhere, something suddenly went wrong, something occurred that nobody liked, the world went down the toilet, war broke out, there were "acts of nature", "it must be God's will", or any other bullshit, is absolutely a total fictional lie by the ego mind.

Absolutely everything in front of your face right now, you put there. And you wanted it. And not a single thing in your day or your month or your life has ever happened against your will. You have never been victimized.

Nobody has ever died against their will. They were choosing it, wanted it, made it happen, and put every single event in place to cause it to occur, even if those events or causes *appeared* to be coming from something over which they had absolutely no control. They DID choose it. It's just not obvious that they chose it, because of the ILLUSION that they did not, which was part of their cover-up story and part of their way of making it happen.

There has not ever been a victim. There has never been anything happening by accident or out of order or against anyone's will. Nobody has ever suffered a single bit without asking to suffer. No-one has ever been afflicted with sickness without having first put that sickness in place themselves.

Nothing has ever even happened in this world AT ALL, without someone choosing it and making it happen, pulling all the strings and animating all the objects and orchestrating all events. If it were not for minds making such decisions, this world would not even appear to exist at all. It is only here doing its thing because someone somewhere is MAKING IT.

Not one single feeling that you have is caused by anyone other than yourself. They are not caused by events or people or situations or stimuli or any other causes that seem to be separate from your own mind. Any feeling you ever have, you CHOOSE to have. You put it in place.

Not one single physical symptom in your body has ever been caused by any person or object or environmental condition or events seeming to happen against your say-so. Not one single "effect" showing up in your body or your emotional reactions has ever really been put there by anyone or anything other than YOU. You even put in place all of the illusory effects which external causes *allegedly* put in place against your will.

When someone kicks you in the leg, which is you kicking yourself in the leg, YOU put the bruise in the leg. The bruise in the leg is not put there by the person who kicked you, or their physical foot, or anything that happened. You instead conveniently orchestrated and used the situation to attack yourself and make it SEEM as though you have a bruise showing up because of someone else, so that you can project blame for your sin onto them, finding them guilty.

No-one outside of you is guilty of ever doing anything to you ever. Not one single person in this world has ever attacked you or created symptoms or effects in you. There has never been side-effects, symptoms, damage, hurt, pain or suffering occurring in your experience that your own mind didn't put there itself.

When events transpire, by your secret design, to seem to cause something to happen to you, you not only orchestrated the events but you also manifested the causes and the effects all at once, putting them into place in the illusion using your thought.

Nobody ever gets sick. People choose to be sick. Nobody is ever hurt by someone else. They hurt themselves. Nobody ever falls victim to abuse. People abuse themselves. Nobody ever dies of some cause they could not prevent.

People create the illusion that they have no say in the cause, in order to paint this very convincing picture that they are not the one making any choice whatsoever. The denial and displacement of your own mind's decision making, making it look like it has nothing to do with it at all, is an act of irresponsibility and disownership of power.

Nobody is ever weak or suffering or lacking or diminished or limited or disabled or afraid or sick or in poverty or at a loss without having chosen to be so, on purpose, so that it can appear as though they are victims, so that they have a tremendous basis for a huge story about how they do not have any power whatsoever, so that they can fake their own death and blame it on everyone other than themselves.

Death is a choice and death is someone choosing to die. Death is the ultimate cover-up story, all death is fake, there is no real death, every death is a massive illusion orchestrated by the mind to make it look like all power, responsibility, ability to choose and all will to Live have been taken away by someone other than yourself. Not even in death has this been made true.

There is nothing happening in this world, as in, stuff that is just occurring on its own. There are not just events that tick over automatically. There are no forces of nature which just do their own thing like they have their own will. There is no wind that blows on its own or life that grows on its own or cycles of weather that just "happen". Someone somewhere is making it happen.

There is no realm of things which are within control and another realm of things which are outside control. There is only deliberate creation. Either you are making up shit or you are not. Either you are inventing lies or you are being the truth. There is no middle ground where things just occur because of external causes, or alien wills, or fate, or bad luck, or good luck, or any kind of unchosen reason.

You have the power to choose again. You are NOT a victim of the world you see. NOTHING is happening on its own. And nothing CAN happen without you making it happen, wanting it to happen, using it for a purpose, having a fictional need for it, and making it occur in illusions. This whole world is your dream, coming from your mind, coming from your decision making. It is not dreaming itself!

Be free to choose again. Make a better decision. No-one can stop you. You are the immortal unlimited Extension of God, in whom nothing happens without His Will. This is the realm of miracles, where whatever you will, is so.

Whatever you will, will be so. It must. This is your power.

The only therapy anyone really needs is a therapy focused around what they are doing to themselves.

They don't need therapy about what other people are doing to them, or what they are afraid of, or why stuff is happening to them.

The only truth is that they are doing everything to themselves, and everyone else is only ever doing anything to themselves.

Only real love is shared, all other illusions are a private fantasy. All attack is self attack. All disempowerment is self-disempowerment. All sickness is self inflicted. All guilt is because of one's own belief in sinfulness.

Really the only "problem" is entirely within your own control, which is good, because it means you can choose again and be free of your own self attack. If it is in any way caused by anyone or anything else, you are reliant on them to set you free, and thus you are stuck and cannot heal.

If the therapy can purely focus on becoming aware of what you're doing to yourself, owning up to that, taking back that power, realizing what you're doing to yourself, seeing past all of the illusions and coping mechanisms of denial and projection etc, you will find the key to salvation.

You don't need therapy about your neighbors or relationships or your work or your boss or people in the past or things you fear or stuff happening in the world. None of it. Your entire insanity is happening inside yourself in your private world. You are your only enemy.

"The secret to salvation is but this... that you are doing this to yourself." - ACIM

When you are afraid, you might think your primary problem is fear - or the causes of it, and that you need to get rid of the fear.

But the fear isn't the real problem.

The real problem is that under the fear is a NEED, and a DESIRE to be afraid. You WANT to be afraid. That's the real problem. Because that's where all your fear is really coming from. You keep choosing it.

So you become distracted by the fear and think it was caused by someone or something else, which keeps you from really looking at the source of the fear. You don't want to look at it. Underneath all fear there is a NEED to be afraid - some kind of choosing that you want, on purpose. Why?

You need to be afraid because of what is BEHIND the need to be afraid - which is the guilt that you're hiding. Fear seems to protect you from guilt. Or more specifically, making up a story about why you need to be afraid helps you cover up guilt and deny it and hide it. Hiding from the decision to be afraid, hides your guilt.

So don't even think that the need to be afraid is the source of your problems, because behind this need there is guilt.

But the guilt isn't the real problem either.

If you look into it, you think the guilt is caused by something outside of you, or that someone (e.g. God) has found you guilty, other than yourself. But really, behind your guilt there is a NEED, and a DESIRE to be guilty. You WANT to be guilty.

Why would you want to be guilty? You want to be in the guilt because by suffering it head-on it allows you to deny and avoid owning up to any kind of choosing of the guilt, any reason why you might be creating it, and hides the fact that you want it. Experiencing guilt as something unwanted, covers up the fact that you DO want it. You don't want to admit that you want it because that would be admitting that you're doing it to yourself.

Generally you don't want to admit that you are the cause of any of this, because your main intention is to hide from God, to repress your identity, to cover up responsibility for choosing, to make believe that stuff can happen on its own that cannot happen, and to succeed in creating an alternative identity that God didn't create.

Yet even behind the fact that you NEED and WANT to be guilty, there is something else. You need guilt because it covers up your sense of sin. If you didn't tell yourself you want guilt, you'd have to face the sin head-on. The need to be guilty is a made-up story that covers the sin, denies it, seems to protect you from it, and puts more distance between you and the fact you are the one choosing.

So if you were to come face to face with sin, you'd probably be horrified about what you believe you have really done, since sin is the idea that you really did separate from God through attack. But even this seemingly horrifying ordeal is yet another layer of cover-up, because underneath the seeming undesirability of sin, is indeed yet another NEED to be sinful, DESIRE to be sinful, and WANTING to be sinful.

You will explain that you have become sinful because God has been affected and therefore you did indeed do something to God and therefore God has deemed you sinful, but this is just another cover-up. It's another story, to try to disown the choice YOU made to pretend to be sinful. You wanted to be sinful, and you made sin, because once again it allowed you to deny who you are, pretend you are not with God, and put more distance between you and reality.

So sin is not even as much of a problem as what came before it, and that is, the need and desire to be sinful. You are making the sin and causing it, not anyone else. But even behind THIS, there is yet another layer - which is the experience of 'pure separation', the idea that you are separate from God. This might seem to have been the first starting point of this whole charade, but it's not. Because behind the idea of separation there is a NEED, and a DESIRE to be separate.

You WANT to be separate. You want to be separate because you're trying to pretend to be not what you are, and you can't do that while you admit to or own up to the immense freedom you have in God. You want to pretend that God cast you out of Heaven but He didn't. You did, or at least, you pretended to. So it was your desire to be separate, that seemed to make you separate.

Always behind what you are currently experiencing, there is some other truth, some other responsibility, some other fact that you are covering up and don't want to admit to. And the whole reason you don't want to admit to any of these layers, is because of your overall, big-picture ambition, of attempting to be separate from God in every way possible. It's your dream, your goal, your ultimate desire, to be so completely devoid of God that you become an individual with your own identity and your own realm to rule over, without God. That was the entire point of your make-believing that such a thing is possible.

Every step of the way, we shift the blame and put the responsibility for choosing onto anyone and anything not ourselves, but since there is nothing not ourselves, we have to pretend that other parts of our own self are against us. That someone 'else' chose this. And that means having a split identity - a split mind. Which is the ego.All along the way we WANT and DESIRE and CHOOSE every single experience of separation, sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death. All of it. None of it is happening to us whatsoever.

Owning up to everything we're doing to ourselves is the way Home.

In this world, "forgiveness is an earthly form of love". What that means is that REAL love is of Heaven, and on earth the best we can do is a REFLECTION of love projected into the mirror of the world. This reflection is heaven-LIKE, but is not heaven itself.

"Earth can reflect heaven or hell" means that the mirror of the world can reflect an IMAGE of heaven or hell in it. Images are not the real thing, but they REPRESENT the real thing and point to it. They act as symbols, and ALL images are symbolic.

Forgiveness itself is therefore an 'image' or reflection of heaven, and therefore is SYMBOLIC OF HEAVEN. It is a representation of heaven within this world, and POINTS TO the real heaven that it symbolizes.

We can then say that, the state of forgiveness, atonement, true-perception, salvation, right-mindedness, miracle-mindedness, sanity, the face of christ, the real world etc..... this is all one SYMBOL of heaven. And being a symbol, it must be heaven LIKE.

To be heaven like is to be SIMILAR to how you are in heaven. Holy Relationships reflect our real relationships in heaven, in which you are in unconditional love with EVERY member of the sonship. Miracles reflect your interpersonal relations, in which you are united with your brother. And forgiveness corresponds to a harmless attitude, devoid of sin and attack.

So what we can simply say is, you are supposed to be heaven-like, while on the earth. So if being heaven like is to be IMMORTAL, then you are to be immortal-like while on the earth. In your real immortality you are invulnerable to suffering, nothing can affect you against your will, you cannot be hurt or made to be sick or dead, and you have permanent life. You must therefore REFLECT this symbolically on earth by demonstrating that you are invulnerable to the world.

This is why in "forgiveness" we try to take an approach that "I am not at the effect of the world" and "no one is doing this to me, I'm doing it to myself" and "I can be hurt by nothing" and "nothing in the world can bring oppression or make me sick" and all these other various forms of being CAUSE, NOT EFFECT.

The whole reason we're trying not to accuse others of sinning against us, is because in truth we cannot BE sinned against, because we are immortal. Other's can't be to blame for hurting you, because you cannot BE hurt. The world cannot be sinful or the cause of your suffering, because you CANNOT really suffer. No-one else can have power over you, because you are ALL POWERFUL. And not even sickness or death can "happen to you" because YOU ARE IMMORTAL.

So it's not just that we're trying not to accuse others, it's that in truth we have absolutely no grounds for believing that we can even BE attacked or be caused against our will. We are immortal beings, and when we're getting into "something's wrong with me" or "you did this to me" we're lying to ourselves and pretending to be MORTAL. Only those who are mortal can be vulnerable, suffer, be attacked, be weakened, be made sick, or be caused to die.

Forgiveness therefore is a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY and is a state in which you are as close to your actual immortality as possible. It's a state of invulnerability, where even the body can no longer be sick or die, and where you are completely free from all attack. You do not attack yourself, and you have no belief in sin. You see sinlessness in yourself and in the world and in everyone, because immortal beings HAVE to be sinless. And immortality is innocence.

You can't BE hurt. You can't really suffer. You can't really BE sick. And the Son of God certainly can NEVER die. So what's the point with all this fake suffering and fake sickness and fake death? "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt" .... but you CAN'T be hurt. Even when you seem to hurt yourself it does NOTHING to your soul. You have NEVER BEEN HURT and you CANNOT BE HURT. Adopting that attitude is in alignment with your immortal soul.

"But the Face of Christ is 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.

It is a symbol, too, but as the symbol of His Will alone it cannot be divided. And so the Unity that it reflects becomes His Will. It is the only thing still in the world in part, and yet the bridge to 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."

"But a RISEN Christ becomes the symbol of the Son of God's forgiveness upon HIMSELF; the sign he looks upon himself as healed and whole."

"The "spiritual eye" is symbolic, and therefore NOT a device for knowing. It IS, however, a means of right perception, which brings it into the proper domain of the miracle, but NOT of revelation."

"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them, 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. God is no image, and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely REFLECT the truth, for THEY ARE truth."

"But eternity ITSELF is beyond ALL time. 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."

Ego projections boil down to a very, very simple dynamic.

1) I decide what I want to see in someone.

2) I interact with what I now see in them as if I did not put it there.

The way I interact with what I see in others, is quite bizarre. It's really insane. I'm trying to accomplish two opposite goals at once.

1) I want other people to be what I say they are, by projecting my sin and guilt onto them, "convinced" that they really are that way.

2) I then demand that they stop being what I am seeing them being, and that they be the opposite, and that they are the one who has to choose differently. This is "forgiveness to destroy".

So right off the bat, this is a state of conflict. It's me who is seeing other people are doing "something wrong", and then it is me who is insisting that they change their behavior. So now I'm holding it against them when they don't change "for me". And they won't.

I'm literally demanding two separate outcomes simultaneously. I want people to be what I decide they are, and then I want them to not be what I've decided they are, simply because I'm in denial of being the one who has laid down the ground rules to begin with.

So I'm going around basically projecting shit onto people, deciding ok, you are doing this and that wrong and should be doing this and that instead. And then the rest of my "play" is to react to that accusation. It tends to go one of two ways.

1) They are wrong and they shouldn't be doing what they're doing so they are the ones who need to change, not me, and if they don't, I will victimize them. I will hold it against them.

2) They are wrong and they shouldn't be doing what they're doing, but in a hero savior role I will now swoop in and save them from "themselves", those sorry bastards, since they refuse to change themselves and seem 'helpless' and needy.

Each time I react to something being incorrect or unacceptable in another, who exactly is it who has made that person out to be wrong in this way? Are they inherently wrong in this way or have I actually decided to see them this way, and therefore it's my judgement of them? And now that I am responsible for what I'm seeing, having put it there to see, it's now my responsibility to admit that I'm interacting with my own projection.

As Jesus says in the course, generally speaking we will project our own sin outward and try to disown it (disassociate) and then we will attack what we've projected, accusing it of being sinful and bad, in order to create a sense of separation between it and ourselves, so that we can keep it away from our identity.

We will attack our own sin, thinking that we're attacking it in another person, believing that to do so causes them to receive the punishment and not us. Except it doesn't work because the sin never leaves our own mind (ideas leave not their source), it just seems external because we are in denial of it.

So it really all boils down to this. Whatever interaction I seem to be having with "the world", if I don't like it, it's because I'm the one who is deciding on what I am seeing "in" it, and am reacting to it as though it's really out there. And regardless of whether I am liking to do that or am feeling frustrated or upset or whatever about "what they are doing", I am the one who is making them out to be doing that to me. Because I want to. Because it gives me an opportunity to disown some sin.

ie, I love to suffer. I choose suffering on purpose and position myself as a victim on purpose, so that I can seem to be at the effect of the world, so that I can then explain that the world has caused me and therefore the world is the sinner, not me. I might suffer and be sick or afraid or upset as "effects" of what they supposedly did to me (even though I invented those effects in myself, by myself), but I secretly am getting away with murder by "using" the person as an outlet for projecting my own sin. Now they are the sinner and not me, and I'm suffering... poor me, but at least I am not the sinner any more.

So the ego's mantra is, I wish to suffer in order not to suffer. Or rather, I will see the world as attacking me and attack myself with it so that it seems that I'm not attacking myself with it.

We are to demonstrate that we cannot be hurt, or made sick, or caused to die, as a result of this world. And whenever these things seem to be happening, you can be assured that you've positioned yourself as a deliberate victim, in order to pretend that the world is responsible for what you are experiencing. You may be suffering, you may be sick, you may even end up dead, and it will conveniently seem as if the world made this happen against your will, but nothing could be further from the truth.

No-one dies without their own consent. And anyone who dies has secretly arranged to make it appears as if they did not choose it at all. Death is an attempt not to choose, by pretending that you have no choice, by pretending that others have taken all your power away from you, making you an "unwilling" victim, in a state of unwillingness, such that it appears death happens to you against your will. How convenient. It's a total lie.

Death is unwillingness to admit that you are pretending to die and are blaming everything on anyone other than yourself. This is why death is failure, and death is failing to wake up from the dream. Death is impossible for anyone but self-imposed victims. Death is not life. It is not success or graduation. It is the total opposite of life. It cannot happen without being severely against yourself and against the will of God. Therefore it cannot happen "peacefully" nor can it happen AT ALL unless you attack yourself.

It is not natural to feel sad, unhappy, depressed, angry, alone, lost, grieving, frustrated, offended, victimized, weak, afraid, guilty, sinful, hurt, broken or annoyed. These are NOT natural. They are NOT the signs of a person being "emotionally mature" or "in touch with their feelings" or "psychologically healthy". It is NOT natural to feel upset about anything for any reason.

"Anger is never justified."

"Depression is blasphemous."

They are all ego reactions to a belief that there is an external CAUSE in the world capable of FORCING you to have a certain negative reaction. They are illusions of consequences made up from an evil mindset. They are not real, or valid feelings. All of them are based in victimhood and attack and vulnerability and defensiveness. Even feeling happy "because of" something that happened to you is fake and driven by "positive victimhood." Especially feelings of love and happiness "caused by" a SPECIAL love interest.

The only real emotions are those which extend out of you from God, such as love and joy and happiness and peace and gratitude and holiness. Those are natural. They are signs of true sharing and connection and sanity. Those should be happening all the time and when they are not, something has gone wrong. No-one is supposed to be suffering in any way.

"God does not will that you suffer."

"God gives you only happiness."

"God's will for me is perfect happiness."

Just because the world is riddled with despair and loneliness and depression and rage and hatred and all manner of suffering, does not mean it is natural. Just because people TEND to have certain feeling reactions to terrible "real" things happening, does not mean it is natural. It is understandable, given their insanity, but it is NOT supposed to be happening.

It is utterly unnatural, against the nature of God, to ever be anything short of completely happy all the time.

"Happiness is a constant state."

If someone seems to be in a body and the person dies, it may seem natural, even supposedly unavoidable, that you would feel a terrible sense of loss and grief. Aloneness, anger, resentment, abandonment, and all manner of hell. But these responses are NOT natural. They are happening because the person believes that death is real, that bodies are people, and that things really happen in the world. This is deception, insanity, mental illness, and a failure to recognize the truth. Which results in suffering.

ALL of the ego emotions can be completely overcome and avoided through forgiveness and the recognition of what really is true. The recognition that the world is a DREAM and that nothing real can be threatened, is enough, if fully experienced, to completely obliterate the foundation for ANY sense of suffering. Emotional or physical. All forms of physical sickness are also symptoms of improper responses, reactions of un-love, to perceived external attacks.

"All forms of sickness even unto death are physical expressions of the fear of awakening."

Every single form of suffering, every emotional upset, all nightmares and hellish situations, every unhappiness, all sense of loss and lack and despair and hopelessness, are all SIDE EFFECTS of an improper perspective on life. They are all symptoms which show up as effects, "caused by" external seeming happenings, which really is a person's mind attacking itself.

A person who believes the world "does things to them" is victimized and thrown around by it senselessly. The world then dictates whether you are happy or sad, what you are able to receive, what you can get, how you should feel, how you should react, how severe something is, how important it is, what its value is, how you should react to it, and what it means to you. It practically shoves meaning down your throat and demands that you suffer, changing you against your will.

Anyone who believes the world is real and a cause of anything will fall into this trap and all manner of hellish experiences will result. Because it is completely unnatural, completely false and a total deception. Falling for the temptation to believe that you are AFFECTED, in any way, by the world, is deception and delusion. It is based in the confusion of not recognizing what really is true or real. Of not knowing yourself. Of being out of touch with the IMMORTAL CHRIST in you.

"Nothing real can be threatened."

You cannot be affected or made happy or unhappy by the world. Nothing in the world can "bring you joy". Nothing in the world is supposed to "make you happy" or "cause you to" feel anything. If it does, you have reacted to a dream as if were not a dream. And that begins the slippery slope into hell. The world is not there to CAUSE YOU to be enlightened, or happy, or spiritual, or holy. It cannot heal you. It cannot give anything to you. It is meaningless and is nothing.

Everything you can have, must come from God. All that you can experience, must be rooted in him. All real feelings must be shared with Him. Any states of happiness or joy must come from WITHIN. All love has to be EXPRESSED and given, from the inside out. You have to light up the world in order to see it as lovable or meaningful or filled with joy. You have to GIVE it that. You can't GET it from the world. The world is a piece of shit drizzled on a turd wrapped in a horseshite. It has NO value and NO power over you.

This is the one lesson to learn. The one lesson the holy spirit teaches over and other. That nothing that happens, no matter the seeming cause, no matter the suffering, it all has ONE CAUSE, that cause is in YOUR MIND, and you are doing it to yourself.

"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.""

It's a matter of responsibility. Is death of the body caused solely by your mind and is your mind solely responsible for whether or not it happens? Do you actually have the freedom NOT TO DIE if you so choose? Can you prevent death, and cause the body not to die? Can you reverse death and restore life?

Or, does death only happen through external causes, things outside of you, the environment or other people, weapons and wars, poisoned food and toxic water? Are we at the effect of an alien will and alien power not our own, such that we do not ask for death and do not cause it to happen, seeing it as happening solely against our will?

And if death does seem to happen through causes NOT in our own mind or power or choice, will we simply "write it off" by relegating it to an illusion, describing it as unreal, dismissing it as meaningless and not important, as a way to continue the belief that death - if it happens at all, even in a dream - happens BECAUSE OF the dream happening to us?

Are there actually accidents? Do people fall off cliffs through a mis-step? Do planes crash through some mistaken fault that seems random? Do planets collide just through sheer force of the laws of physics? Are we all fated to be swallowed up in a supernova someday when the sun explodes, with no choice or power to prevent it? Are we powerless beings?

Some people like to relegate all things of this world to a bucket of illusions, slap a label of unreality on it, and toss it under the rug. But we can't be dismissing this and writing it off. Yes only the soul/spirit is real and has eternal life and nothing real can be threatened. Yes bodies are illusions and don't even really exist.

But let's look at it another way, right now you have a body, and it has an illusion of existence. There are billions of them. People's minds inhabit them and walk around in them. And for the most part, most of these bodies are sick and have issues. Some much worse than others. And all of these issues are forms of death - as the course says, sickness is but a little death. So most people have a little death going on, "a form of vengeance not yet total", which later becomes total.

If the body seems to "become sick", is that because something happened OTHER THAN your mind and its power? Because if that is the case, then death does in fact have power over the mind. If mind cannot choose away from it, cannot undo it, and did not cause it to begin with, then mind has NO WAY that it can see itself as not at the effect of the dream.

If death just "happens to you", you are a victim. If there can be causes which are beyond the mind, beyond your power, beyond your control, you are a victim. It doesn't matter that the world is just a dream and real things can't be threatened. At the body level, mind is supposed to have power over everything. Might I remind you that your self is ruler of the universe, and nothing is supposed to happen other than what you decide.

There is NO POWER in the view that we do not have power over death. There is NO POWER in the view that death doesn't matter because bodies aren't real. There is NO POWER in the view that we can have bodies becoming sick "on their own" or staying sick "on their own" WITHOUT our consent. There is NO POWER in having bodies die "against our will". And there is NO POWER in pretending that this is all okay to happen "because it's an illusion."

The only place where there is any power, is where your mind has power OVER these things, is RESPONSIBLE FOR these things, CAUSES these things, and therefore HAS THE POWER to choose otherwise. A Course in Miracles is a course in cause and not effect, it is a course is reclaiming your POWER. And might I remind you that Jesus says that our minds are extremely powerful, capable of creating worlds, of moving mountains, and that we are supposed to reach a state of resurrection which means "the surmounting of death."

There is no surmounting of death by just writing it off as an illusion. If your mind does not have the POWER to prevent it from occurring, and does not have the power to raise the dead as Jesus did, then the mind has not reached a state of resurrection. A Course in Miracles' curriculum ends in the resurrection, in which death is OVERCOME FOREVER. Which means, no more sickness, no more death, and no more reincarnation.

It is NOT ENOUGH to accuse the world of causing sickness and death to happen. It is NOT ENOUGH to shift responsibility for the body's condition onto a dream. It is NOT ENOUGH to claim that someone else caused your body to be sick. It is NOT ENOUGH to suggest that death can continue to happen to the body against your will. It is NOT ENOUGH to take a position of continued POWERLESSNESS over death, in which death remains victor at the end of the day, as it proves again and again that a separate alien will is stronger than your own power of decision.

I will remind you that A Course in Miracles makes this unequivocal statement:

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

DO you see where it says that no-one dies without his own consent? That means that if you DO NOT give consent, through your mind's power and responsibility, death WILL NOT happen. That means having power OVER death, not merely sidestepping it or jumping onto a theological high-horse trying to be holier than thou. This is real responsibility. It is BECAUSE nothing happens without your consent that you HAVE the possibility of salvation.

If sickness or death can ever happen or be maintained or continue in a any way, through any cause or responsibility OTHER THAN your mind and its power and choice, YOU DO NOT have any hope whatsoever of salvation. It means there is a power that has power over you which can keep you in hell and suffering for as long as it wants. It means you cannot return to heaven and can be locked into a hellish experience forever. It means endless reincarnation and never waking up. It means death has power over God.

Jesus is teaching us to be powerful responsible creative beings. To reclaim the power of God, which is not only unlimited, there is nothing it cannot do. It can have power over all forms of sickness be they mental or physical. It can have power over all matter and energy and every force in spacetime. ONLY IF we have consented to and thus chose AND CAUSED sickness and death to occur, are we ever in a position to CHOOSE AGAIN, and choose otherwise, choosing NOT to die.

"Swear not to die, thou holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One."

You are responsible for whether or not sickness happens. You are responsible for whether or not death happens. You are ruler of the universe. Nothing happens against your will.

"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 is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

EVEN IN THIS WORLD ..... even in the illusion/dream of Earth, you RULE your destiny. You have power to choose what happens, and what does not happen. If sickness happens, YOU CHOSE IT. If death happens, YOU CHOSE IT. YOU MUST CHOOSE NOT TO CAUSE SICKNESS AND DEATH, and it is within your power to do so, because you are 100% responsible for everything that happens.

If you in any way assign responsibility for death to ANYTHING anywhere other than your own mind, you have a victim consciousness and cannot be healed. A mind that believes in BEING AT THE EFFECT OF THE WORLD, is not an awakened mind.

Mind in its natural state, experiences a sense of safety. This safety is based on the fact that the mind doesn't see itself as at the effect of anything external. It does not believe in being caused against its will. It does not have backwards/false perception. It also does not position itself as a victim or at the effect of the world.

This produces a kind of internally supported strength, in which the mind is not undermining itself and it recognizes it has nothing to fear. It feels "self contained", whole, and undivided. This internal unity is experienced as protection and as immortality. The mind doesn't see itself as vulnerable to anything because it recognizes it cannot be attacked or threatened.

Reality cannot be attacked because reality is permanent truth. It is inherently immortal and exists forever. Anything real, which includes you and your mind, has eternal life. Permanence is your natural condition. And the mind in its sane state is in touch with this permanence, and so recognizes it can never be altered by anything, rendering it invulnerable.

If the mind decides to move into ego, it is moving into positioning itself as a victim. It begins to see itself as at the effect of external forces, and made to suffer against its will. Perception reverses because cause is seen as coming from the world towards the self rather than the other way around. And this brings with it all manner of threat and danger, based on the idea that causes outside of you can do something to you against your will.

This then results in a change in the internal experience of the sense of safety and invulnerability. It's as though the mind "breaks open" its shell of protection, and develops a "wound". The wound seems open and bleeding, psychologically. This wounded part of the mind feels exposed, raw, accessible, attackable and threatened.

When this happens you feel like you are vulnerable. It's as though you open up a doorway and take off your protective armor, and now it seems possible that the things of the world can come into you, past your boundaries, and directly attack the core of your being. This is because your sense of identity has shifted from immortal spirit to the mortal body.

Your sense of self sees itself as self conscious and descended onto the battlefield, identified with a body, viewing itself as frail and weak and limited and incapable, and it now seems as if others have power over you. This produces a feeling like your insides are opening up, have become brittle and thin. And you'll feel like people have direct access to who and what you are as an attackable thing.

This feeling of being vulnerable to attack, living in fear, feels like being very exposed and unsafe. It's as though you, who are supposed to be walking around inside a perfect suit of protection, have lost your armor and are now a weak helpless thing that anyone can attack at will. This makes you afraid and threatened and there is a constant feeling of dread and stress. And the ego is in this state all the time.

You may also find that you then conflict with someone or they try to attack you. Because of your identification with that which can be attacked, as a victim, your mind actually believes in horizontal cause and effect. Out of the exposed vulnerable wound in the mind, you form a kind of psychological artificial "bridge" to the other person. Or maybe better described as a "bond" or "cords of fear." It's as if by believing that the other person is the cause of you, you are "tied to" their will power, causally and psychologically.

By believing that someone else has power to attack and affect you, your mind sees itself as being controlled by, caused by, influenced by, some external power. And that produces a sense that you are being tossed around on the waves. You'll try to forget about the encounter but you won't be able to drop it, because you haven't forgiven it. And fear thoughts about it will keep being generated by your mind in response to the perceptual belief that you are being attacked by them.

These fear cords will feel like areas of exposure within yourself, as though you have opened up a direct line to the person and they can cross that bridge and attack your insides directly. By hanging onto the belief in their ability to cause you, you maintain this bridge across which flows attack and keeps you in a constant state of fear.

These bridges of fear are dismantled through a correction process of forgiveness, in which you recognize and affirm that you are NOT at the effect of that person. They are not causing you, cannot attack you, have no power over you, and are not guilty of anything. This actually psychologically dismantles these horizontal cause-effect fear cords and you can feel them disappearing or "closing off".

The removal of this psychological "funnel of attack" seems to "close off" your mind to this idea of external causes. It's like sealing up a wound or fixing a mental leak. And as the sense of exposure and threat is closed up, the closing up feels like the formation of a barrier of protection. And then you feel safer because you are no longer "bleeding mind", and no longer believe that something external has direct access to your innermost self.

Through forgiveness then, the undoing of false beliefs in being caused by things outside of you, you gradually "close up" the exposed wounds, and the mind stops "bulging out" and returns to a "deflated" state, where you feel much safer and more protected. Fear diminishes and you feel like external things can no longer come into you. They can't access you because you are not on the battlefield, you are not an illusion or a body or an attackable thing.

Eventually with practice this should result in a "sealing up" of those psychological woulds, breaking down of those bridges of horizontal causation, and a growing sense of being surrounded by naturally protective walls of truth. Invulnerability increases and you feel more like you are "out of reach" of illusory attacks. You no longer believe the world CAN do anything to you, not even death or sickness.

You sort of, reabsorb into heaven, into God's womb, into a deeply immersive sense of safety, protection, harmlessness, integration, wholeness, peace and fearlessness. Because in spirit identification, in truth, you are actually unattackable and immortal. You resume your sense of being invulnerable because you see yourself as innocent and harmless. And the more you can feel this sense of innocence and safety, the less you feel like the world can even get anywhere near to what you are. And where there is perfect safety there is perfect peace.

"As long as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by ANY doubts in your minds, His perfect Accomplishment is NOT apparent to you. This is why you MUST be vigilant ON GOD'S BEHALF."

"It is only your awareness that NEEDS protection, because your BEING cannot be assailed. But a real sense of being CANNOT be yours while you are doubtful of what you ARE. THIS IS WHY VIGILANCE IS ESSENTIAL. Doubts ABOUT being MUST not enter your mind, or you CANNOT know what you are with certainty."

"The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen"

"Now are the lilies of his innocence untouched by guilt, and perfectly protected from the cold chill of fear and withering blight of sin alike."

"You always choose between your weakness and the strength of Christ in you."

"The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions."

"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. Do not be confused about what must be healed, but tell yourself: "I have forgotten what I really am, For I mistook my body for myself. Sickness is a defence against the truth, But I am not a body. And my mind Cannot attack. So I can not be sick."

Sickness is an attack on BOTH you AND your brother. It seeks to come BETWEEN you. It is a double-edged sword. Both are attacked and separated off. This is why you cannot be sick in isolation or without attacking another. All sickness is an attempt to be contagious. "Sick bodies are accusers."

Your sick body does not stand in isolation separate from others. It makes a statement that BOTH of you are sick. It accuses your brother of sin and renders him PROVEN to be not innocent, for what he appears to have caused in you.

Therefore do not think that you can get away with KEEPING your body sick when you are awake, nor that you can get away with DYING when you are awake. To do so must mean you ARE coming between you and your brother still, are placing an attack in between you and are still accusing your brother of sin.

This is why sickness and death are not God's will, are not part of God's program, are not part of Jesus's teaching as to what you should do, and are opposing God's will. No-one can demonstrate sickness and death and live.

People think that what happens to their own body has nothing to do with another person. That's what the body was MADE to make you believe - that you are separated off. It is not true. The body is a separation device that BREAKS YOU APART from your brother. You are supposed to be joined. Any time the body is sick it is an assault on BOTH of you.

For there to be true healing therefore, your mind has to no longer believe in that which comes BETWEEN you and your brother, which means it MUST HEAL THE BODY, otherwise it is still accusing your brother of sin. And in your sickness is HIS sin proven. And yet in YOUR HEALING, is HIS INNOCENCE proven also.

If a person is sick, God is a murderer.

If the sickness exists, if it has reality, it has been created, then it must have been created by God.

Only what God creates is real, or exists, or has been created.

There is nothing that exists other than what God has created.

There is no reality other than what is a part of God.

Only what God wills really exists or happens.

If a person is sick, God must have willed it to happen.

If a person is sick, God must have created the sickness.

If a person is sick, God has produces a real sickness, has given it to the person, and is making them sick.

But if God were to have to created a real sickness, then God has given sickness to the person on purpose, by his will.

If God wills that people be sick, then God is a vicious murderous bastard.

Only a cruel, unloving and unkind God could give a sickness to someone. To make them sick on purpose, to guarantee their suffering.

Such a God would have to be sick himself, hateful, vengeful, murderous, torturous, evil, twisted, malicious and an attacker.

God himself must have attacked the person cruelly and inflicted a curse of hell upon them, if they are really sick.

So the fact is, if that sickness is real, if it has been created, if it is God’s will, and if it really exists, then God is a cruel vicious hateful creator. A condemner and a killer.

The situation then is, you have to decide, whether or not God is like this. Whether God could create real sickness and give it to people.

Is God the kind of God that could create and will and curse someone with suffering?

Does God want them dead?

Is God punishing them?

Is God really cruel, vicious, hateful, and an attacker?

Has got personally inflicted suffering on someone and given them a sickness that he believes they deserve?

If God hasn’t, and if God is loving, and if God is not an attacker, and if God does not will that someone have a sickness, then God is NOT the cause of the sickness.

If God did not cause the sickness, then the sickness has not been created.

If it is not created, it is not a part of God’s creation, and nothing but God’s creations exist.

If the sickness is not created by God, it cannot exist. Nor can it cause or create anything.

If the sickness is not a part of God’s will, then it has not been willed at all.

If the sickness is not given to the person by God, the person has not inherited it from God, and they do not have it. No-one has anything other than what they have inherited from God.

If the sickness does not share God’s reality, then the sickness does not have any reality.

If the sickness has no reality, it does not really exist at all. It cannot be there, it has no life, it has no will, it has no power.

Either, God is loving and does not will that there be sickness, or God is hateful and has caused all the sickness everywhere.

But if God is loving, then not only has God not created any sickness, God actively WILLS that you NOT be sick.

“God does not will that you suffer.”

“God’s will for you is perfect happiness.”

A loving God wills that you be healed, and whole, and healthy, and happy.

A loving God wants you to have no sickness at all.

A loving God would take your sickness away in a heartbeat, knowing it is not there.

A loving God can only love you, sustain you, create you to live forever, and never attack you.

In fact a loving God can only protect you, keep you safe, maintain your perfection, and give you immortality.

If God is loving, you cannot be sick.

If God is loving, that sickness cannot exist, and must be a lie.

“God did not create that sickness, and therefore it does not exist.”

Whatever that sickness appears to be, it cannot be a real sickness.

Whatever that sickness appears to be, it does not really exist at all.

That sickness has not been created.

That sickness has not been caused.

That sickness is not there.

There is no sickness.

There never was a sickness.

That person was never sick. They never can be sick. And they never will be sick.

The sickness must be a lie, it must be false, and it cannot be real.

The sickness is not true.

The sickness must not be anything. The sickness is nothing.

Either the sickness is real and exists and is the will of God, or there is no sickness and the person is not sick and God wills their immortality.

That person is not sick now and never was.

Whatever the sickness appears to be, it is not a part of that person, or a part of anything real.

The sickness is a gone.

There is no real sickness and there never will be, otherwise God would have to be sick and share his sickness.

God is not sick.

Therefore, that person cannot be sick.

That sickness is not there. There is no sickness. There is no death.

That person must be whole, they must still be as God created them, they cannot suffer, and they cannot ever be sick. Otherwise God would be death.

There never was a real sickness.

God never created real sickness.

Real sickness does not exist.

You are not sick. I am not sick. God is not sick.

God does not will that you be sick.

God wills that you be healed and whole and healthy.

Sickness is impossible.

It is impossible for you to be sick or to die.

God wills that you live forever.

God has already willed that you live forever.

God’s will cannot be undone. God’s will is done already. So you must be healed already.

You are already permanently whole and perfect.

There is no sickness in you.

God knows you are already whole and healed and holy.

Only love is real. Only health is real. Only wholeness is real.

We are the whole of healthy holiness together.

God has guaranteed your health and your permanence.

You will never die. There is only life. You will live forever.

There are two things that you can receive from the world when you are being a victim:

1) It does bad stuff to me

2) It does good stuff to me

Both of these are really the same. They both rely on you being a victim.

This means, you have to perceive that something outside of you has power over you, and can affect and change you.

When you have what we call emotional reactions to things, these so-called reactions are actually the 'effects' that are brought about in you to 'match' the causes that you see outside of you. They are like a mirror reflection or an expected, standard response to that external cause. Because you believe and perceive there to be a cause 'out there', that same belief manifests 'changes' in you to match that perception of yourself, and so you literally redefine and re-mold yourself - your experience - and it feels like hurt emotions.

Perceiving there is an external cause with power to do something to you, regardless of whether the reaction you have is good or bad or happy or sad, is a state of victimhood.

The ego will tell you that only the bad stuff that happens to you is part of your victimhood, and that you should decrease those things.

The ego will also tell you that only the good stuff that happens to you are things that you want, and are not part of your victimhood at all. It tells you that you should in fact try to increase and focus on those things as much as possible.

What that actually means though, being a trap, is that so long as you are focused on and dependent on being 'positively affected' by outside causes, you STILL are firmly and squarely inside a perceptual structure, in which you play the role of victim.

Victim means, perceiving that something separate from you, something outside of you, something you have no connection to, has the power to do something to you, which changes you in some way. Usually we focus on this being 'bad stuff' or 'enemies' or 'unwanted events' or 'things which scare us', but that is only half the story.

So the ego is very clever here to deceive you by saying, if you will focus on decreasing the bad stuff that happens to you, and focus on increasing the good stuff that happens to you, this means you are succeeding and improving and gaining a better life. It is an absolute farce. A total trap. 100% lie. The persona part of the ego is saying, keep the good stuff, but reject the bad stuff, which reinforces the sense of separation between the judgements of good and bad, which intensifies the bad stuff, and diminishes the good stuff. So eventually in your effort to increase good stuff that happens to you, you will in fact increase bad stuff happening to you. Focusing on receiving exclusive 'goodness' automatically generates more badness. Go figure. The trap has been set and many of us constantly fall for it.

As you then become dependent on trying to get good stuff to happen to you, so that you can indirectly be 'caused' to be happy, you don't realize it but you're sealing your own fate. In order to get good stuff to happen to you, and to want good stuff to happen to you more, you must buy into the perception and belief that you are at the effect of the world more. You want to experience even more good stuff affecting you and the only way to do that is to position yourself as even more vulnerable and disempowered. The ultimate good thing that can then happen to you is some kind of sacrificial death or 'going out on a high' or escapism. Or like, being sexually pleasured to the point where you practically die from overstimulation.

You don't want this.

There is another happiness. There is a permanent happiness that you can attain, that has nothing to do with what happens to you. It's a happiness in which you are completely invulnerable and at peace and cannot take anything in the world seriously, because you do not position yourself as at the 'effect' of the world. It means surrendering your attachment to getting good things or making good stuff 'happen to you'. Instead it requires you to honestly realize that that's a victim mentality, and that you need to stop seeing yourself as a victim otherwise eventually you will just be attacked. There is no invulnerability in 'good stuff happening'. There is no peace or protection or security there. It's an ego gamble, that maybe you'll temporarily feel happier and then inevitably lose it.

Permanent happiness comes from relinquishing all NEED for having good things happen to you. Letting go of all DEPENDENCE on the world being 'good' to you. Letting go of all aspects of the victim role, which is a role of the reversal of cause and effect. You don't want to be affected positively by the world. You want to realize YOU are the world, you are the cause, and you cannot be affected.

As ACIM says, pleasure and pain are the same thing. Perhaps now you can see why. Pleasure means you are being affected by causes outside of you, made to feel things, caused to have experiences that you can't control. And this relies on you being a vulnerable victim. And so it's the same thing as pain, it is actually hurting you just as much, but it's in a different form to pain, because that's part of how the ego disguises the illusion of it. Pleasure is really an attack disguised as something you want, while pain is an attack disguised as something you don't want. Neither of them are your natural way to be. And you do not need either of them.

Happiness given by God is given permanently and relies on nothing and no other sources for it to exist. It just is. It is there, permanently, underneath all these other deceptions that say it isn't, which are the very same deceptions that lead you away from true happiness seeking for artificial sources of happiness outside of you. Trying to get something separate from you to make you happy is irresponsible and indirect. You can experience direct happiness from God. It is also a far more magnificent happiness than anything, ANYTHING, that you can experience coming at you from outside of you, as an effect of an external cause.

This is where the Course says, "this world holds nothing that I want". Not even the 'good stuff'.

"Miracles are teaching devices." And "to teach is to demonstrate". And "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this."

There can't be demonstration, unless something VISIBLE happens. A body gets cured, a lump disappears, a wound is healed, damage is corrected, etc. These are demonstrations. And miracles can produce these demonstrations. And they do almost all the time. Which is why it says miracles may not always have observable effects - which really means, almost always they do. OBSERVABLE - something changing which people can SEE with their eyes.

Similarly "You cannot see the holy spirit but you can see his manifestations" - he "manifests" as things changing at a physical level, which you can SEE, such as the body shaking or going through a change in appearance of form. And it is by these VISIBLE demonstrations that you can learn that HE DOES EXIST. I experience these manifestations EVERY DAY and I have shown it live on camera in my videos. The Holy Spirit can do stuff to the body.

The people who think you should never be trying to heal the body or move objects in the world with the mind etc (moving mountains) are level confused. They want to be in the world, with suffering, while pretending to be on a higher level where there is no world. Here, in this world, miracles are used to heal minds AND bodies. And unless the body is healed, forgiveness is not complete. "Forgiveness is not complete unless it brings healing to both yourself and your brother." "A miracle of healing proves separation is without effect."

So long as there are symptoms, signs, damages, breaks, hurts, bruises, wounds, growths, distortions, malfunctions, showing in the body, these act as PROOF that there has BEEN ATTACK. In other words, they act as proof of sin. AND they testify and assert that because these are *effects*, something external must have caused them, ie your brother. And so "sick bodies are accusers". The only way not to accuse, project, or blame your brother of sin, is to not show him a picture of crucifixion, ie an image of a broken body. Which means the body must be restored to health in order to teach "with a power greater than a thousand tongues" that he is exonerated. In the world. With the body. "The miracle would leave NO proof of guilt to bring you witness to what never WAS."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.

***Show THIS (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 (physical) 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."

and

"To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but ***retain the proof*** (bodily damage he caused) he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. ***He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes.*** And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own. Forgiveness CANNOT be for one, and not the other. Who forgives IS healed. And in his healing lies the PROOF that he has truly pardoned, and ***retains no trace of condemnation*** (physically) that he still would hold against himself or any living thing.

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."

When Jesus performed demonstrations, such as raising the dead, or calming a storm, or converting a tree into a snake and back, or multiplying food etc, these demonstrations were teaching devices. If you see (witness) this occurring, your whole view of what you think constitutes "a tree" or "a snake" is seriously brought into question, if you can see them being as Jesus says "so easily changed". The mind is intensely educated by such a demonstration because everything it ever experienced before as "limitation" and "solid matter" and "things that are impossible" (orders of difficulty) are blown out the window, making you question your whole reality. This is the power of demonstration. Miracles show that BECAUSE physical objects etc can be CHANGED, they MUST be illusions, and this weakens the mind's belief in them.

And no this is not a spectacle. The statement actually says that if you THINK that a miracle IS a spectacle, YOU ARE MISTAKEN. And that trying to USE miracles to INDUCE belief, is a misunderstanding of their purpose, because they are for believers by believers.

It's surprising how many course students either don't see this teaching, have not recognized it's even saying this, or don't want to accept it. "Miracles break all the laws of this world." "The mind, being sane, heals the body".

If mind becomes split, there are now two causes.

The 2nd cause will seem to will against the first.

The conflict and self-attack will manifest as sickness AS the body.

If mind reclaims the fact that it is fighting its own self, and stops doing so, the split disappears.

When the split disappears, the body MUST stop showing up as sick. All symptoms of attack must disappear.

Sick mind, sick body.

Healthy mind, healthy body.

NEVER is it healthy mind, sick body. EVER.

NEVER is it healthy mind, dead body. EVER.

The only cause of sickness is the belief that you are separate from YOURSELF, are in two minds, and are willing against yourself. Therefore you willing against yourself is SELF ATTACK. And all self attack produces SYMPTOMS OF ATTACK, ie sickness in the body.

Symptoms in the body are not caused at one moment in time and thereafter "linger" with nothing willing them to be there,as though existing on their own, or sustained by time or ego laws. They only appear to linger if the mind is CONTINUOUSLY IN A STATE OF SELF ATTACK.

The same goes for short-term illness and chronic illness. Chronic illness is a long-term belief in being divided against yourself.

There is no belief the mind cannot undo. There is no sense of separation that cannot be reversed. Therefore there is no MANIFESTATION of that belief which cannot be UNDONE COMPLETELY in all its forms and expressions at EVERY LEVEL including the physical.

Physical sickness is you being in two wills willing against yourself as if you have an enemy that is not you, but is you. Stop doing that, be whole, be one mind in love, and THERE CAN BE NO SICKNESS OR DEATH.

Salvation is EXTREMELY simple.

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

In this one sentence is the whole course. Just stop hurting yourself!

Let's try to make this extremely clear.

You are an immortal being which cannot be affected by anything. Nothing real can be threatened. You cannot be hurt or attacked or damaged. Nothing can happen against your will. You are absolutely invulnerable.

No-one else can do anything to you. No-one else can cause you to feel anything, experience anything, think anything, have a reaction, or make you do anything at all. There is no power, force, causality, mind, will, agent, or any kind of manipulative source in the world capable of making ANYTHING happen to you. Nothing can change you in any way, to any degree. You are absolutely permanent.

SO...... the ONLY THING that seems to be able to happen, is that *YOU*, and only you, can decide to begin to hurt yourself. All attack is self attack. And this attack MUST be an illusion that YOU made up, because you CANNOT BE HURT in reality.

YOU, can decide, to accuse yourself of sin, to have an attack thought, to deny your reality, to suppress your love, or whatever form it takes. But let's be 100% clear. It is COMING FROM YOU. You are the one choosing it and are always doing it to yourself. No-one else is to blame. No-one else is involved. No-one else has caused ANY of it, not even a tiny bit.

If you would just stop attacking yourself you would stop suffering forever.

If you would just stop denying what you are you'd be yourself.

If you would just stop hurting yourself, or believing that you have, or that you even can, you would never have to suffer ever again.

So what can't we get this? It's so incredibly simple. There's only you hurting yourself. So if you are upset, you are doing that to yourself. If you are unhappy, you are choosing that. If you are suffering and sick, you are making it happen. If you are dead, you consented to it and chose it and wanted it.

The PROBLEM IS.... we are UNCLEAR, CONFUSED, about WHO is responsible for making life miserable. WHO IS THE CAUSE. Who has the power. Where is the cause. Who is the one to blame. We are CONFUSED about this. And we are mistaken about it very often - if not most of the time or even all the time.

This confusion, alone, is the reason why we think that there is something more complicated about being at peace, or saved, or happy, or healthy. In any scenario, wherever we are or with whom or whatever it involves or what form it takes, IT DOES NOT MATTER. If we think THEY are doing it, THAT is causing it, THIS is doing it to me, THAT's the reason I'm upset, etc... we're wrong. Very mistaken. We are never upset for the reason we think. And it is NEVER EVER EVER because of anyone other than ourselves.

This is so extremely true, that you can practically accept that if you are anything less than totally joyous and peaceful and healthy, it has NOTHING to do with this entire universe. Nothing to do with other people, or places, or events, or happenings, or body states, or reactions. It's not coming from anywhere else other than YOUR SELF.

Your brother is not the cause of you. God is the only cause of you. All people on the planet and beyond are NOT the cause of ANYTHING you experience. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Not one single attack, hurt, damage, upset, accusation, nothing. None of what you experience has anything to do with anyone but yourself.

You are invulnerable. Either you accept this invulnerability OR you pretend that you are vulnerable. You pretend by disowning your invulnerability, which requires you to DISPLACE it onto something else. You have to GIVE IT TO someone. You give away your power. You give away causality. You give away responsibility. You give away strength. You give away your self. And you put it into the hands of a seemingly SEPARATE something, anything, so long as you think it's not yourself. This is the ENTIRE problem that CLOUDS your judgements and confuses you into believing YOU AREN'T THE CAUSE.

We probably spend 90%+ of our time in this state of delusion. Perceptual distortions derived from false beliefs, attempting to assert "I'm being caused by something not myself." "There's an alien will". "That person made me" "I'm upset about". etc. This is always not true. Sifting through the massive stockpile of LIES that this produces, is 99% of the effort entailed in purification and correction, trying to get to a state of forgiveness. Trying to dig yourself out, to dig real causality out, from underneath this huge pile of confusing rubble.

This is what it always comes back to. What am *I* doing. Why am *I* doing this. Why did *I* choose this. If I am upset, why am I choosing to be upset? If I am unhappy, why did I make myself unhappy? Why am I choosing to have attack thoughts? Why am I believing I'm sinful and then disowning it and projecting it onto someone else?

"You but accuse your brother of your own sin" tells you that your brother HAS NOT SINNED EVER. It's you that thinks YOU have sinned, and now you're lost in scapegoating someone for something you think you did, and subsequently positioning yourself as their victim SO THAT you can maintain the DENIAL that this is ABOUT YOU, BY YOU, and has nothing to do with them at all.

If we could just become clear on this. If we could just sort out, who is really doing what to whom. Who is causing all this. Where is it coming from really. Am I responsible. In every case, you are. 100% full responsibility for everything you experience. Which means 0% of what you experience is "because of" this entire universe or anything in it.

We have to peel ourselves away from this immersion, entanglement, confusion, binding, with other people, in which we lose sight of who is really doing this to us. We have to realize, any time I am upset and thinking it's because of ANYTHING to do with another person, I MUST be mistaken in believing this, because I've now lost sight of salvation's fact - that right now *I'm* doing something TO MYSELF, and what *I* am doing is the SOLE CAUSE of what I am experiencing. If I do not like what I am experiencing, I must choose again. And whatever I choose must be my experience.

"At least I can decide I do not LIKE what I feel now."

"And so I HOPE I have been wrong."

"I WANT another way to look at this."

"Perhaps there IS another way to look at this. What can I LOSE by asking?"

Get a clear picture here.

1. I am not affected by anything beyond myself.

2. No external causes EVER cause me.

3. I cannot be hurt or upset by anyone or because of anyone's situation.

4. Whatever I am experiencing, I WANTED to and CHOSE to.

5. I am free of ALL causes of sickness and death. The ONLY cause of sickness and death is my choice to be sick and dead.

6. No-one has EVER done anything to me. I have NEVER done anything to anyone.

7. I am not at the effect of ANYTHING in the world.

8. If I think anything but myself caused WHATEVER, I'm mistaken.

9. If it's all about my own FREE WILL CHOICE, which not even God can oppose, no one can stop me from choosing whatever I want to experience.

10. Heaven is a choice I must make, and when I choose it, nothing in all the world can stop me.

This would seem to be EXTREMELY SELFISH. To the ego. To emphasize that YOU AND ONLY YOU has ever had any effect on you, and all those effects were imaginary. And that by focusing on the love of yourself, and accepting atonement for yourself, you become the most UNSELFISH towards others. And then will proceed to treat them as you treat yourself, with miraculous expressions of love.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father. By doing this, the mind awakens from its sleep, and the Soul remembers its Creator. All sense of Separation disappears, and level confusion vanishes."

"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 is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

"Nothing except your thoughts can attack you. Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

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

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." "

If you are fully and completely responsible for yourself, for everything you feel, everything you experience, and every causality, then

1) You will not have any reactions because reactions require you to see yourself as a victim

2) You will not see yourself as victimized or caused by anyone or anything else

3) You will be free and invulnerable and immortal

You will know that you and what you experience are kind of .... enclosed... insulated.... invulnerable to.... detached from... shielded from.... protected from.... everything that is 'out there'. It will be like you're walking around completely invulnerable to everything, unaffected by anyone.

"Be passerby"

So if you see that this is kind of the 'goal' of total responsibility and acceptance of yourself and unconditionally being the love you are, then you can see what happens when you DON'T do this.

Without this responsibility you disown, you victimize, you see yourself threatened and vulnerable, you become imprisoned, you develop reactions, you go unconscious, you disown your feelings, you accuse everyone else of being the "reason why" your life now sucks, and you disassociate from your Self, trying to get others to live your life for you. And then instead of being yourself, you will try to be THEM, because now you are reflecting outward what is within - if you are not yourself, and you're expecting others to be you for you, you will start to become other people and lose yourself.

So no matter the situation, no matter what's happening, no matter who is doing what to whom, we need to get to this place of true responsibility where nothing outside of us is seen as the cause of anything we experience, other than God. We need to disengage. Detach from the drama that involves others.

All of the 'involvement' with others in an ego way creases an ego dependency relationship where it feels like you are joined to the other person and are exposed to them and that they can do stuff to you directly. That's the opposite of invulnerability. And that's doing stuff to yourself through them.

Believing that you sinned, is an attack against YOU, not an attack on whom or whatever you think you sinned against. The sin is against yourself, directed inward. It has no power over God.

Believing you are guilty for that sin is an attack on YOU, not a guilt imposed by whoever you thought you sinned against or how they would judge you, but by your own self against yourself. God does not find you guilty.

Believing in fear because of your guilt is also an attack on YOU, by yourself, not a fear induced by who you sinned against, or because they will retaliate, but a fear that you will deserve your own punishment because of the guilt that you believe you deserve. God is not making you afraid.

Believing in punishment because of your fear is once again an attack on YOU, by yourself, and not an attack coming at you from anyone else for any reason. It is your way to pretend to use others as ways to punish yourself, all the while pretending that you are not the one doing any of it. You are afraid of YOU and your self punishment. God has no desire to punish you and you're doing such a good job of doing it to yourself that He doesn't need to.

You sin against you. You make yourself guilty. You are afraid of yourself. You punish yourself. That's how it goes.

Nowhere in this equation is anyone else involved in any direct causal way without your consent whatsoever. Nobody. Because there is only you, doing this to yourself.

Why are you doing this to yourself?

Hmm?

Are you done with self attack yet, or the fake story that it's everyone else who is against you? The only one against you is you, as your own enemy.

What if you were to stop attacking yourself? What if you decided you are forgiven? What if you realized and recognized that you DID NOT SIN? That your sin did nothing to anyone but yourself? That nobody else separate from you was sinned against, caused guilt, induced fear, or dealt out punishment. What if there is only you and your war with yourself?

The war with yourself cannot be 'won', because then you lose.

Is it time for peace?

The secret to salvation is this... that you are but doing this to yourself!

"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." - Jesus

"If the mind can heal the body but the body can't heal the mind then the mind must be stronger than the body."

"The mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail." (or a body).

-------------------------

If the mind is stronger than the body then the body must be caused by the mind. And as Jesus said about his resurrection, He materialized another body with HIS MIND, in order to demonstrate that the mind that MADE a body ("the body of jesus") can make another, since form is an illusion. That means ALL BODIES are made by the mind, not by the world.

What we can controversially conclude here, is this:

God is your only Creator, not anything in the world.

Your earth parent's bodies did not create your body.

Your body was not the result of sperm and egg.

Your body as a baby did not manifest as a result of biological laws, it manifested as a result of the MIND.

The mother's womb is a symbol not a cause.

Bodies cannot make bodies. They have no causal power at all. How can effect make an effect?

The mind that made the body, also made the world, and therefore the world did not make the body.

Your body was NEVER made by the world or anything in the world, because there are NO CAUSES in the world.

"It (the world) is incapable of change because it is merely an effect."

Effects are not causes. On the level of this world, causes and effect seem horizontal/linear and this is 100% an illusion. The only true cause is vertical, as demonstrated in the vertical perception which brings about miracles, through the proper order of the LEVELS, which means the higher level of MIND causes the lower level of FORM.

"Mind over matter" is ALWAYS the case for any form that shows up. The mind is the ONLY CAUSE of stuff (bodies, world, objects etc) being made.

So even if it SEEMS like your body is a thing ("as no time does the body exist AT ALL"), or has a history, or is ruled by biological laws, or is the effect of the world, or caused by parents, or put there by SOMEONE ELSE, you're basically claiming that you are automatically at the effect of the world you see and are a victim. Being born BY or FROM the dream, as a body that the dream MAKES "for you", is victimhood. It is a lie.

This is because the ego set up the body-making ILLUSION, the illusory causes of bodies coming about, to make it SEEM as though the world creates the body. This is 100% the reversal of true cause which is that body comes from within not without, and the world has NO CAUSAL POWER at all. To suggest part of the world itself can "create life" is the most opposing illusion, opposing the fact that only God/souls create life, and there is NO LIFE OUTSIDE OF HEAVEN. The ego deliberately has made this ILLUSION of "being born to parents" in order to cover up the causality of the mind or the true source of the body, which is the dreaming mind.

YOUR MIND MAKES THE BODY AT ALL TIMES, from "inception" to death.

When you acknowledge that your mind or some kind of mind is making your body, you will also realize that the body is not something you "attach to" or "identify with" or "put on as a costume" or "incarnate into" like it's something that exists ON ITS OWN independently from you. Like it's some kind of thing in its own right, which happened to .. .just show up magically with no-one being the cause of it?

Instead, recognize that when your mind believes YOU are made of ego illusions, ego illusions will SHOW UP, i.e. materialize, as an image seeming like a solid body in the mind. When your mind has no illusions or ego in it, it will cease to materialize a body, because it does not identify itself AS being made of ego stuff. Therefore the body disappears and you become "invisible" to this world. A clear mind produces invisibility i.e. no form.

Unless we are willing to take FULL RESPONSIBILITY for making the body be what it is, for making it show up, for MAKING IT period, we will see it as a separate "thing" and that WILL keep us stuck in this ego illusion. It cannot be let go by disassociating from it or separating from it.

That means you're actually performing an unworthy form of denial, by trying to keep the body and detach yourself from it. That's an act of premature death. The mind that is making the body, if it attempts to then pretend it is not making it, is simply in denial. The only way to leave the dream is by DISAPPEARING IT, by no longer identifying AS ego. And your mind will then make it vanish.

"You are not a body" does not mean, make a body and pretend you didn't make it.

I'm kind of blown away right now, with this rapidly growing recognition that ALL suffering has ONE cause. That there is really only ONE lesson to learn.

The lesson simply is that,.... if you believe the world is REAL, YOU WILL SUFFER.

And so I look back at all the times I have suffered, all the upsets, all events, and I see that at the time I always thought they were DIFFERENT. And each form of suffering was caused by something specific. Maybe it was the situation, or the person, or the circumstances, or what happened, or the consequences, or the aftermath. Whatever it was, it always seemed specific.

But the truth is, that ALL suffering is caused by ONE problem, with one solution. If you make the world real, you take it seriously, you immediately enter into fear, and now you are suffering. And whatever then seems to happen in the unrecognized dream will be the form the suffering takes. And the ONLY thing that will stop you from suffering, is the RECOGNITION THAT IT IS NOT REAL.

And so either you are in the battlefield, lost and confused in amongst the many many FORMS of suffering, the many deceptions of suffering, OR you rise up out of the battlefield to the light in which you can see the truth, above it, the truth that IT IS JUST A DREAM.

Rising up above into the truth, it does not MATTER what the forms are, it does not matter who is doing what, it does not matter the situation or circumstance, this story, the details. They all become irrelevant. Because EVERYTHING in the world is recognized as EQUALLY UNREAL.

As soon as you change the PREMISE of the ENTIRE thing, which is the atonement, by recognizing ONLY God's truth is true, and only the false is false, it RE-FRAMES the entire world and everything in it. And now no matter what form or appearance the dream has, it does not matter. Because either you are immersed in a REAL dream, or an UNREAL dream. The question of its reality is the ONLY problem.

If the world is real, everything that "really is happening" is CAUSE for suffering. Just the mere suggestion that you see something that is not, hear something that isn't happening, or can sense something that isn't OF GOD, is enough to frighten you. And now you are suffering just by merely making the world real, ie believing that the world IS God. The ONLY solution is to make the world UNREAL, and recognize it is an illusion. There is no other way out, and this recognition of the SANITY of what is really true, IS forgiveness (overlooking illusions) and is atonement (acceptance of the one truth).

So now I look and I see.... a dream world, filled with obstacles, seeming problems, hassles, tortures, suffering, situations, dramas, threats, pain and sickness, and I remind myself... this whole world is not real, it's just a dream. And on this new premise I can base a true perception, that NONE OF IT EXISTS. And ONLY in that truth - "nothing unreal exists", can you be at peace.

And now suddenly I'm feeling not only peace and happiness and joy that there is no world, I'm feeling relieved that I don't HAVE TO be immersed and lost in suffering, in the battlefield, because the only reason I would enter into it is by FORGETTING that it is my own dream. And THIS is the secret of salvation.... the recognition that the dream IS a dream, and NOT a reality.

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

"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.""

"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 are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. 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."

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God."

Do you know who you really are? What you really are is an immortal, eternal, changeless, endless, permanent, absolute being. As an immortal being, you can never change, never become anything, never turn into anything and never die. Nothing can ever happen to change you, and you cannot change yourself.

In order to KNOW who you are, you will have to be willing to fully embrace and acknowledge that you are an immortal being. If you are immortal, it is impossible that anyone has attacked you, has power over you, has hurt you, offended or upset you, or that the world has the power to do anything to you.

When you suggest that the world or its inhabitants have caused you in some way, causing you to change in some way, you are insinuating that you DO NOT know yourself. If you knew you were immortal you could not believe these things. If you enter into believing these things, you are losing touch with who you are and no longer know who you are.

It cannot be that you know yourself while someone else has the power to modify what you are. If someone can change you in ANY way, influence you in ANY way, you are unknown and are lost and confused about who and what you are. If you are absolutely certain of who and what you are, nothing and no-one can in ANY way change you or define you or modify you or cause you or hurt you or influence you. You must be unmoved and undisturbed by the world.

This means that anyone who believes in any way that they are affected by the world, does not know who they are. Anyone who believes they can suffer, be sick, die, be unhappy, be upset or offended, caused to change against their will in any way, does NOT know who they are.

You cannot remain in the knowledge that you are immortal while believing that you are vulnerable and susceptible. That you can be affected and attacked. You cannot maintain that you are invulnerable and permanently alive if you are asserting that you have been assailed by someone, damaged by something, destroyed in some way.

These are beliefs in mortality, which is a belief that you are dead and not alive. You can't know yourself to be immortal if you are confused about whether you have eternal life or not. Any suggestion we have that someone has done something to us is an attack upon our own immortality. Just as in "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability" and "I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts" and "nothing in the world can bring oppression."

The question of forgiveness then, as to whether I am forgiving or not, or how much, boils down to the degree to which I am CERTAIN about WHO I AM. If I KNOW myself with perfect certainty, then I am automatically forgiving. I will not accuse anyone of doing anything to me, because this is literally an attempt to assert that I am mortal. I will not produce a sickness because this also is an attempt to prove I can be hurt.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

By acknowledging your immortality you are automatically going to detach yourself from all the supposed causes in the world, you will take back all your power that you've given away, you'll see yourself as an immovable object in the river, and completely DOMINANT of everything you see. This is how you have power over death and power to overcome the world. NOTHING can prevail against a son of God who knows who he is, and his power is unlimited and absolute and unopposed.

"But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you seem to have to deal with fear or guilt, upsets of any kind, any kind of stress or suffering, any sense of shame or unworthiness, any apparent sickness or loss or malfunction, or even death, you MUST have forgotten who you really are. You must be out of touch with knowing that you are immortal, and you are trying to prove that you are susceptible, vulnerable, damageable, hurtable, attackable, weakened, capable of being destroyed and able to be CHANGED by something.

The immortal can never be changed by anything or anyone. If I claim that such and such a person upset me, I am literally claiming that I am changeable, malleable, affect-able, underminable, weak, victimizable, and destructible. It is a belief in mortality. When I am being unforgiving, I am asserting and choosing death. When I am suffering in any way, I am forgetting that I am still as God created me. When I am blaming people for stuff, I am doing myself a disservice.

Your task then is to remember who you are, be certain of who you are, be extremely in touch with who you are, be absolutely clear about the fact that you are an immortal permanent being that can never be changed by anyone or anything, and KNOW your self. To know yourself you have to remember your SOUL, the you that God created to live forever. And through this knowing you are in perfect forgiveness, because nothing can happen to those who have eternal life.

"That is why blame must be UNDONE, NOT re-allocated. Lay it to yourself, and you cannot KNOW yourself, for ONLY THE EGO BLAMES AT ALL. Self-blame is therefore ego identification, and as strong an ego defense as blaming others. YOU CANNOT ENTER GOD's PRESENCE IF YOU ATTACK HIS SON."

"You can know yourself only as God knows His Son, for KNOWLEDGE is shared WITH God."

"Separation is only the decision NOT to know yourself. Its whole thought-system is a carefully-contrived learning experience, designed to lead AWAY from truth, and into fantasy."

"To be alive and not to know yourself is to believe that you are really dead"

"This is a course in how to KNOW yourself. You have TAUGHT what you are, but have NOT let what you are, teach YOU."

"Accept as true only what your brother IS, if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is NOT, and you CANNOT know what you are, BECAUSE you see HIM falsely. "

"Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA?"

"Blasphemy, then, is SELF-destructive, not God destructive. It means that you are willing NOT to know yourself, IN ORDER to be sick."

"Identity and function are the same, and BY your function do you know yourself. "

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

Fear has but one cause, not many. It is not caused by what you think it’s caused by. Every single fear in the world has one cause.

When you tried to sin, you may have believed you succeeded in creating real effects. Real irreversible damage. But you had an option. Either proceed forward to guilt, or go backwards to the reversal of sin. Guilt or forgiveness was the choice. Either sin is real and you are guilty, or sin is not real and you’re innocent.

Choosing not to forgive yourself, and choosing to keep your belief in sin, the only option is to condemn yourself to death. Go towards forgiveness and you’ll choose life, accepting that you deserve to be forgiven. Go towards guilt and you’ll choose death, accepting that you deserve to be punished for what you did.

This is where the core root of all fear comes in. You actually ACCEPT and AGREE that you SHOULD be punished, because you’re guilty. The punishment seems completely justified. Your own belief that you deserve punishment for being guilty then creates fear of that punishment. But it’s not a fear of being punished by others. Here’s the secret cause of all fear:

You are afraid of what you are going to do to yourself.

This fear arises solely because you, yourself, believe you deserve to be punished, in total agreement that you are guilty, and having accepted that "it is true" that you really sinned and are therefore guilty. It is your own belief about yourself. You actually "agree" that it not only makes sense, but is completely justified, and acceptable, that you be punished for this.

This is a big problem, because it is the continued development a death wish. It means you want to hurt yourself and you believe you should be hurt.

This is not only the source of all fear in the world, it is also the source of all victimhood. Because at this point, you actually welcome punishment. You actually position yourself so that you can be attacked. You actually make yourself powerless, and allow yourself to be abused. You actually hire people to come along and hurt you. And you actually make plans for being attacked justifiably.

Ultimately then you become afraid of the fact that YOU have it in for yourself. That YOU want you to be punished and to "atone" for your sin. And ultimately the only punishment you believe is justified and worthy of you, is death.

This is not anything to do with anyone else. It has nothing to do with what other people are going to do to you. It’s not even anything to do with the fear of HOW the punishment will come or of WHO will be the one to inflict it.

Typically however you will make your own death wish unconscious and project it and then obsess over this general anxiety about what "someone else" is going to "do to you" against your will. But while you are busy in conscious awareness making plans to avoid your attackers, unconsciously you are asking to be attacked.

If someone were to seem to then attack you would claim it was completely unjustified, because you have made your self-attack and death wish unconscious. You actually think you don’t want to suffer or be punished, nor deserve it. That’s what the facade of fake innocence is for - it covers up you guilty secret. Then you get to pretend you are justified in being angry when someone hurts you, as if you didn’t want it. But you did ask for it, and you did it yourself.

On the surface, consciously, you will experience this as being a victim, as if you are not asking for and do not want any kind of punishment at all. You’ll even run away from it and try to make yourself safe and avoid people and create an illusion of innocence and security, presenting yourself as harmless and that no-one should suspect you of guilt. But it’s only to cover up the underlying belief that you deserve to suffer and die because you believe you are guilty.

It’s pretty grim isn’t it. This is what every ego plans for its host.

But the fact is, you cannot be free of such suffering until you can admit that it is YOU who is trying to do something to yourself. So long as it *seems* as if someone else is the one punishing you, or its your job, or its the weather, or food you ate, or something environmental, or a group of people, whatever, these projections are designed to KEEP your unconscious self hatred hidden. The more you can disown it and project it and see it coming "from" anyone other than yourself, the more you can play the victim role and pretend you don’t want it.

Make no mistake. NO-ONE dies without their own consent. All attack is self attack. You are 100% responsible for what you are trying to do to yourself. You cannot suffer AT ALL if you do not choose to believe you are guilty or sinful. All of your projected causes of fear, which make it look like you’re afraid of what is going to "happen to you" without your will, it is a DECOY for what you secretly are planning to do to yourself.

You have to get to where you are willing to admit to this, if you want to be free of it. It’s you who believes you deserve to die, not the world, and not anyone else. YOU, need to forgive YOURSELF, for what you have not really done. YOU, need to let go of your belief that you really are guilty and deserve punishment, so that you will stop planning for your own suffering while building fake defenses against it.

No-one is attacking you against your will. The world is not causing you. Death cannot happen to you against your will. Remember that all attack is self attack and it is only your attempt to be at war with yourself that needs to be corrected. A belief in deserving punishment, or of being truly sinful or guilty, IS a belief in death and being deserving of death. It is, literally, a suicidal belief. All death is suicide.

Forgiveness is needed, of yourself, to recognize your innocence and to opt to NOT believe you sinned. You do NOT deserve to die, and you do NOT need to be punishing yourself. You DO deserve the love of God and you ARE innocent. All the rest is a mistaken ego belief.

All fear is the fear of yourself.

Here is how Jesus puts your self attack:

"Lay down your arms, and come without defense into the quiet place where Heaven's peace holds all things still at last. Lay down all thoughts of danger and of fear. Let no attack enter with you. Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness."

The only reason you blame or judge or project or scapegoat or see yourself as a victim or experience effects from others, is because you do not see how you did this to yourself.

If you could see how you ONLY do things to yourself, it would be so obvious you are the cause that you would have absolutely no NEED to even begin to go looking for its source. You wouldn't even need to find out who else is responsible for this. And so you wouldn't even start to step onto the slippery slope of blaming other people for it.

It's solely because you do not SEE, that you did this to yourself, or you chose it, and therefore your vision is obscured, and so you quite literally are now INCAPABLE of seeing who really is responsible.

But you will try TRY to find out who is responsible, you'll search around the room angrily trying to point fingers of accusation and judgement. "Was it you? or You?!"... And beyond even asking if it was someone, which you strongly believe it MUST be because you didn't see yourself do it, you pretty much have found others guilty automatically.

Then you think that if you FIND or have found someone guilty, and can blame them, that you're simply being justified. You're simply pointing out what the cause is. You're just honestly and innocently identifying who is responsible. You think you're just doing the normal honest sane rational thing of finding out who caused you to be upset, and that you're just pointing it out. You don't realize you're totally barking up the wrong tree because the cause isn't out there.

So projection, blame, anger, judgement, scapegoating, it's all simply an effort to continue to recognize who is responsible, but at the same time as being irresponsible yourself. By not being responsible for who you are, you entered into darkness, could not see what you were doing, and now are attempting to find another person to pin it on. And you will be wrong.

You will ALWAYS be mistaken if you EVER decide that it's someone else's fault. Because it is ALWAYS YOU that is doing it to yourself. You don't need to find someone to pin it on. You need to wake the fuck up and SEE CLEARLY, so you can recognize that you only do stuff to yourself.

You could sum everything up as simply .... stop being a victim.

The question is, how far do you have to take this? The answer is, ALL THE WAY. The question then is, is it possible to not be a victim AT ALL? And the answer, is YES!

That means taking it EXTREMELY all the way. No exceptions.

In NO WAY can you be attacked, affected, influenced, coerced, hurt, damaged, made to feel something, caused - by anything in this entire world.

You must become literally IMMORTAL. Otherwise you can be affected, attacked, destroyed, which WOULD make you a victim.

Either you can be immortal, or you HAVE TO be a victim. Either one or the other has to be true, they can't both be true. Which will you accept? Eternal victimhood or eternal life?

But ACIM is calling for the END OF ALL SUFFERING FOREVER. And this requires you to completely give up EVERY illusion of victimization, EVERY belief in external causes, and even the belief that you can be changed at all.

You CANNOT change. You are permanent. You CANNOT be a victim. You are all powerful. That is the message. Identify with that which is immortal and unchangeable and you are safe and at home in God, forever out of reach of suffering and death.

"You will identify with what you think will make you safe. Whatever it may be, you will believe that it is one with you. Your safety lies in truth and not in lies. Love is your safety. Fear does not exist. Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self."

"I am not the victim of the world I see."

"Today we are continuing to develop the theme of cause and effect. You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up. You will see it or not see it, as you wish. While you want it you will see it; when you no longer want it, it will not be there for you to see."

"How can I be the victim of a world which can be completely undone if I so choose? My chains are loosened. I can drop them off merely by desiring to do so. The prison door is open. I can leave it simply by walking out. Nothing holds me in this world. Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner. I would give up insane wishes, and walk into the sunlight at last."

The truth can seem quite bizarre in comparison to what you've been used to. Your whole life you've spent having experiences of suffering, being affected, upset, threatened, afraid, guilty, ashamed, having various sicknesses, changes in emotion and mood, all kinds of stresses etc.

What the truth says it that YOU CANNOT BE CHANGED. Hmm.... if this is true, then what's with all these seeming attempts to BE CHANGED by the world? How can any of these forms of suffering be relevant is you are unchangeable?

"You were NOT born to die. You CANNOT change, because your Function HAS been fixed by God." UrT29G4

It's a simple idea at first but it has very deep and far reaching consequences. If you cannot change you cannot be caused by the world in any way, you cannot be made to feel something in particular, you cannot have your self modified, your identity can't change, you can't even be hurt or become sick or have a change in mood.

If you are the unchangeable eternal permanent being that God created, which you are, then ALL of the seeming influences in the world are null and void. Not one single thing in the world has any power over you whatsoever. Not one influence, not one force, not one person, not one place, nothing. It does nothing to you, in the most extreme way.

So what's with this farce, this lie, this total world full of deceptions and untruths, things that claim to be happening to you, changing you, modifying you, defining you, creating and causing you, when in truth they are doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. A dream of nothing, causing nothing, doing nothing, with no effect.

"What does this recognition "cost"? It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind. For with this recognition is responsibility placed where it belongs; not with the world, but on him who looks on the world and sees it as it is not. He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did." UrM6C3

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are." UrW190L5

Whatever the extent of your conscious awareness is right now, if it is not technically an awareness of God or the whole of your True Self, then somewhere in you there is unconsciousness.

In spite of that fact, you will still believe that the full scope of your current conscious awareness is the "whole" of who you are, the "whole" of the truth, and the sum total of all information that's present.

The problem is, if you have unconsciousness to any degree, there is some information you are not aware of. You will then attempt to come to conclusions based on all the information available to you at the moment. It will seem then to make sense to you.

This for example is why people become justified in being angry. They are unconscious of the way they have projected sin onto others, unaware of the full dynamics of the situation. It then *seems* (an illusion) that, because of a block to awareness, it is perfectly logical and sensible to conclude, based on what you are *aware of*, that the other person is the one who caused your upset. Then you will be justified in being angry or blaming them. But this is because you do not see the whole picture.

Anyone in a body who has an ego, has some unconsciousness. That also means, their sense of identity is limited, and therefore there is some kind of illusion of a self which is *blocking* awareness. This illusion of self is a mask or facade or persona. Typically this persona presents itself as "innocent". Everyone thinks they are innocent. That's because this innocence HIDES, and makes unconscious, their guilt.

You have to realize then that you have a facade of fake innocence which has blinded you. You have to also realize that, even if you THINK you are fully aware right now, are fully yourself, or are fully in the truth, you probably are not (unless you really are with God). You will not BE AWARE that you have an unconscious mind. You ego persona will deny it and cover it up. But it is there.

This means you have to be willing to question your facade of fake innocence and whether there might be DENIAL happening, which is hiding truth from you. When truth is hidden you cannot see correctly and WILL come to false conclusions. This confusion then is responsible for ALL UPSET, resulting from mis-perceiving what is happening. You NEED more information in order to properly evaluate what is happening. You need a bigger picture. Without it, you are blinded and will react to illusions.

It used to seem as though fear was automatic. We were taught it was a natural response, part of how the primitive brain works, understandable given certain threats, and so on.

But gradually I'm seeing more and more the secret to salvation, "you are doing this to yourself", that we in fact have a choice in whether to be afraid or not.

Not only that, but we in fact are the cause of our own fear. The mistaken things that we do with our mind and perception bring about fearful perceptions. They seem as if caused by something outside of us over which we have no control. But the secret is, we in fact are having everything to do with creating this fear.

We do get to choose whether to perceive things in such a way that it produces fear, or not. It hinges entirely around whether it seems true that there is an external cause, power, mind, or will ... a threat, which we ourselves believe is really there, which seems to them loom over us with a magical ability to make us be at its effect without being able to stop it.

The entire basis for all fear lies in this reversal of cause and effect. We are all meant to naturally be the cause of everything, and any effects we produce we recognize as coming from us. But the instant that this is reversed and it *seems* as though the effect out there has some ability to cause, and therefore we are no longer a cause but an effect, this immediately produces fear.

Who would not be afraid if they perceived that there is a separate will, an alien will, which has the power to do something to you, and being separate from your own causal power, can in fact produce effects in you that you do not want?

This is the entire foundation for being "able to die" without your apparent consent, where it seems that a separate will chooses for you the effects you will experience. As if the world, or time, or bodies, or events, or foods, or whatever, have the power to make you dead if they so choose. Yet no-one dies without their own consent, and this is entirely a fear-based belief system, not based in truth or reality.

Just the simple belief that this external power exists *at all* forms the basis of fear. If there IS a separate will, then that automatically means there is something it can do to you which you do not choose yourself. Fear is absolutely guaranteed in that scenario, because now there is a possibility of something happening to you, making you a victim.

The mere perception of this belief system, that causes are outside of you, will make you afraid. And the entire time that you are mis-perceiving this way, you will be in fear.

There will be no escape from this fear no matter what you do, until your perceptual error is fixed. So long as you keep choosing to see yourself as a victim, as being threatened, attacked, caused, affected, by *anything*, you will live in fear.

And this fear will seem completely justified, and will even make sense to you, and seem to have a totally valid basis. You'll agree, that you *should* be afraid, because of what that external cause has the power to do to you. Even if it's not actively doing anything to you at all, your mere belief in its power is a state of fear.

What actually then is it that you are afraid of, is not the things which seem to have the power, it's the mere belief that they have the power at all. And the fact is, it's not even the power belonging to anyone else, or anything in the world. The power only *seems* to be out there, separate from you, because in your own mind you have a split mind - a belief in separation - which has sectioned off YOUR OWN POWER and makes it seem like it is separate from you.

So now the threat you think is outside of you, or the causality, the will, the power, to make stuff happen... its YOUR OWN WILL! It's part of you. Having a split mind splits your will and pits your will against itself. This is what the separation is all about, being at war with yourself. Inner conflict. And all inner conflict produces guaranteed fear.

Fear then, is the experience of what it feels like, to believe in separation. It IS the separation. The entire dream of separation is a dream of fear, and it's also the same thing as death. If there is separation in your mind, your will will be separated from itself, and will seem to act against itself, threatening itself, and thereby threating you. The separation is a belief in self condemnation, that you sinned, and threatening yourself with this sin is what makes you afraid.

You then will experience the "cause" as separate from you, because this split off part of your will has been disassociated from your sense of identity - you think it's not even part of your own mind or self. And then you'll overlay it on top of other people and external circumstances and think that those things are causing the fear. And if they are, if they are truly separate, then there is nothing you can do about it. If the causality belongs to other people or events, it's outside of your ability to do anything about it at all. This produces the classic justified victimhood perception - victim consciousness.

But there is everything you can do about it. All of this stuff is not happening outside of your mind. The threat - the "external will", is not outside of your mind. Ideas leave not their source. You have to recognize the threat is YOU threatening yourself. What you think is a separate cause out there scaring you, is part of yourself. It's your own disowned causal power. You've given your power away. You've separated yourself from your power and will. And now you think it is acting against you.

So the secret to salvation is this, you absolutely are doing ALL of this to yourself. And that means, absolutely every cause of fear is resulting from something YOU are choosing. And the choice you are making is to believe in separation, within your mind, which makes your mind experience itself as split, and produces fear. If you therefore stop choosing to believe separation is real, and stop being divided against yourself, and take back all of your own power recognizing it AS your own and not the possession of someone you tried to make responsible for it, you will have finally absolutely NO basis for being afraid ever again.

There is no cause of fear other than yourself. Therefore you can be free of it.

All sickness and all death are the symptoms of a belief in fear. Fear is the opposite to love. Death is also therefore the opposite to love/life and therefore death is a symptom of fear. And since you made all fear, you can abolish it by healing the separation in your own mind - the separation from yourself.

And as Jesus say, "you made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both". This is literally true. You made the basis for all sickness and death - the dream of fear - the belief in separation - and there is NO OTHER CAUSE. Therefore if you take back that power and re-identify wholly with wholeness and spirit (Holy Spirit), you MUST be free not only of fear, but also of all symptoms of sickness, and also death.

Forever.

Let's talk about sickness purely as a matter of cause and effect. Your mind is causal, and when sane has no confusion about this fact. It does not mistake its own effects for causes, and especially does not believe its effects are causing it.

When the mind is sick, it uses denial to block out of awareness its own causal power. This is a denial of creative power or authorship. The mind REVERSES cause and effect. It believes it is not the cause of the effects, and it believes the effects are the cause of it.

The mind now perceives itself is "at the effect of" an external, separate cause. There are two very important things happening here:

1) The mind now sees itself as being an effect, and begins to distort the body in order to represent those effects. The mind believes it is caused by, and under attack by, an external cause, and that this cause defines the self. And the mind, under this perception, now subconsciously PRODUCES SYMPTOMS in the body. These symptoms are the expected effects that the mind believes "should" be the result or causal consequence of the external cause (which is secretly the mind itself).

2) In order TO believe that the mind is at the effect of the world or another person, the mind HAS to assign causality TO the world or person. And that means, that person is believed to be RESPONSIBLE FOR CAUSING the effects in your body. By being "the causer", they are effectively "the sinner". And so the mind sees "their will" as causing the effects that it, itself, is putting into the body based on this belief. By seeing itself as under attack, the mind thus ACCUSES its brothers of sin SO THAT it can pin the blame for the effects on your brother.

This results in an unfortunate scenario because now the presence of "effects" in the body, put there BY YOUR MIND, are acting as the "consequences" or cause-effect RESULT, of what SOMEONE ELSE DID TO YOU. This belief is inescapable because it's founded on the reversal of cause and effect. You can't see yourself as victimized and "at the effect" WITHOUT a scapegoat to pin the causality on. And that leads to this simple fact.

"Sick bodies are accusers."

The presence of sickness in your body is part of a dynamic of believing that your brother is the cause of you. And there is another way to put that. Your mind is ATTACKING YOUR BROTHER, by believing that he is the cause of you. Your mind ATTACKS HIM through the body, by assigning to him a causal power OVER you, which he does not have. And because causality is closely tied to sin, the idea of "who did it" .... this is nothing short of accusing your brother of SIN.

And we know WHY a person would accuse a brother of sin. "You but accuse your brother of your OWN sins." Which means that as soon as the mind is going into an attack mode, it believes in its own sinfulness and then PROJECTS this onto your brother THROUGH the reversal of cause and effect. The cause effect reversal is an absolutely essential part of the dynamic and it produces a perception that HE DID THIS TO YOU, and now YOU have the effects to show for it, which act as PROOF that he DID SIN. And this leads to a simple fact.

If your body is showing up as sick and damaged, IT IS accusing your brother of sinning against you, and it's doing so because YOUR MIND is accusing him of causing you. In every case. Without exception. The body's state is part of the mind's accusatory condition. If the mind believes your brother is the cause of your experience, your mind WILL MAKE YOUR BODY SICK TO PROVE IT. And you are now WILLING to suffer and tolerate sickness in the body in order to be able to get away with accusing your brother of sin. And in fact, we will even go so far as to KILL the body through "death" in order to ACCUSE the world or a brother of sin, "suggesting" that we "died innocently" against our will.

"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries (that means PHYSICAL!) he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture (body=picture) YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion (that's physical too!) do they seek to kill."

So sickness, all physical sickness, all symptoms, goes HAND IN HAND, with a psychological sickness, which is a condition of believing that cause and effect are reversed. And all such level confusion is EGO. Anyone with an ego is going to attack their own body in an effort to portray themselves as VICTIMIZED, so that OTHERS will stand accused, and thus YOU will appear to be innocent and exonerated. In sickness and damage we then are able to claim, "I DID NOT DO IT, YOU DID". And this is described be Jesus as this attitude:

"Brother, at your hand I die". Ie, because my brother is believed to be the CAUSE of me, and because I have secretly manifested EFFECTS in my body to PROVE it, I now die BECAUSE of my brother. And there IS NO death that isn't "caused" by this precise mechanism. It happens because of the MIND choosing to USE the body for attack against others, which results in sickness and death. This is explicitly stated by Jesus:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies."

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an ***easy price***, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die."

So we're talking here about the assumption that you HAVE a body. I'm not talking about whether the body is real or not. *IF* you have a body, HOW YOU USE IT is vital. If you use it for attack, ie belief in sin, thus denial and projection, thus reversal of causality, you are using it to attack THROUGH towards your brother. And he now is seen as the CAUSE OF your sickenss. Or at least, he is now the scapegoat onto whom you BLAME for causing your sickness. And your BODY is forced to be sick BY YOU, and accuses him right along with your mind.

Now the question becomes, what happens if you DO NOT DO THIS?

What happens if you stop using the body for attack? What if you stop reversing cause and effect? What if you stop seeing yourself (mind) as "at the effect" of the very things you are causing? What if you recognize:

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

Nothing in the world has POWER OVER YOU. Which means nothing in the world CAUSES you. Which means nothing in the world SINS against you. Which means, if you accept this and SEE this way, if your mind is SANE in recognizing IT is the cause of everything ("my self is ruler of the universe"), then it WILL NOT enter into the above described dynamic of USING the body for attack.

This means the mind will now NOT see your brother as causing you. It will NOT see itself as being "at the effect" of the world. It will NOT BELIEVE IN EXTERNAL CAUSES OF SICKNESS. It will not attribute to the world ANY power to cause it to be in any state. It will not see itself as "affected". And what are the CONSEQUENCES of this?

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

In other words, because YOUR MIND was the ACTUAL cause of THE EFFECTS in your body, as a result of ITS misperception of your brother, and as part of USING the body for attack (to accuse him physically), the removal of this attacking attitude HEALS the body. It takes AWAY from it all the signs of attack and sickness. It stops seeing itself AS "effect". It stops believing in effects. And it stops making itself suffer. This CAUSES love to flow through the body to others. This joins minds. This then RESULTS IN the disappearance of the SYMPTOMS, as PROOF and CONVICTION, that the mind no longer wishes to attack, and therefore **REFUSES** to display signs of attack in the body.

You have to at this point let go of the belief, which is wrong, that the body is CAUSED to be sick BY anyone other than YOU. You also have to let go of the belief that the body can become sick as a result of some cause or power IN THE WORLD. NOTHING in the world has that power to make you weak or frail. Death does NOT OCCUR by accident, NOR does it occur "because of" ANYTHING in the world. Death occurs ONLY by a mind using the body for attack, sending attack through the body, making the body DEPICT ATTACK, and thus destroying it for the sake of some scapegoating.

If there is any shred left in your mind of a belief that sickness is caused by ANYTHING other than your mind's mis-use of the body, you will NOT be able to accept the next step. Which is to realize that when the mind USES the body FOR HEALING, to bring the Word of God to others, to shine light through it, to extend the mind PAST the body, the body actually GETS HEALED. Not only does it get healed, it CANNOT AVOID IT, has no will to choose not to, and MUST heal in order to NOT scapegoat. It cannot be retaining proof of sickness and CLAIM to be coming used by a healed mind.

Once again, explicitly stated by Jesus here:

"Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. ***Block this, and you have blocked health*** because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

So when you withdraw from your brother in attack, when you see separation in him, when you ACCUSE HIM OF SIN, when you scapegoat him, and when you try to make YOUR body sick so that HE is the accused sinner, you arrest the extension of the mind. The mind begins to fixate on the body and sees itself as the body. The body now is attacked and becomes SICK. Illness is the result, and this illness is a part of the mechanism of accusing OTHERS of sin as part of the scapegoating mechanism.

ALL SCAPEGOATING MAKES YOUR BODY SICK.

ALL FORGIVENESS HEALS YOUR BODY'S SICKNESS.

When the causality is corrected, the mind now USES the body for extension of love, this de-emphasizes the body, it lifts away from the body all PHYSICAL PROOF of attack and pain, and the body now is restored to literal physical heath.

"The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ***ALL signs*** of accusation and of blamefulness." What are the signs? PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS OF SICKNESS. The holy spirit REMOVES the sickness from the body, so that it can ONLY depict health. It now becomes a SYMBOL of eternal life, in the world, which ONLY TEACHES that your brother is INNOCENT. Which means, a HEALTHY body, DEMONSTRATES, PROVES, that the MIND occupying that body IS HEALED, that mind IS NOT STILL attacking, and so the symptoms and signs of attack are gone. If the signs remain, the mind HAS ABSOLUTELY NOT been healed, because the signs ONLY show up when the mind is sick.

The Holy Spirit LITERALLY wants you to SHOW YOUR BROTHER a HEALTHY BODY. A healthy body is a symbol of innocence and forgiveness in this world! This again is EXPLICITLY stated by Jesus:

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, ***the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still***, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

Let's repeat it.

"the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still" ... "THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all."

That literally means that the Holy Spirit will heal all physical sickness so that your body can ONLY SHOW symbolic innocence and total lack of harm or attack to your brother. Add by doing so, the body now becomes a teaching device, which PHYSICALLY relays a message of healing to your brother.

"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*** (no physical sickness). And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

THIS is the ONLY appropriate state of the body for a HEALED MIND. God's teachers, God's miracle workers, WILL always have a healed body. If they don't, their mind is not healed.

"Show THIS 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. (all physical effects are GONE, miraculously!) 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."

This is what A Course in Miracles teaches. A sick mind WILL attack the body and make it sick and dead, ALWAYS in an effort to ACCUSE others of sin. Sickness is scapegoating! And when the mind STOPS doing this, it sends healing and health through the body which REVERSES the effects and straightens out the cause-effect relationship, thus TAKING AWAY the sickness which the mind put there in the first place.

"They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes (strain and sickness), and can abolish both."

Your mind CAN MAKE SICKNESS.

Your mind CAN REMOVE SICKNESS.

If your body is sick, your mind IS STILL using it for attack. Which is why "a broken body shows the mind has not been healed."

If your MIND is healed, it MUST AND WILL ALWAYS heal the body. Because "a sick body makes no sense."

The mind WILL NEVER keep the body sick on purpose unless it is attacking. The body cannot stay sick on its own. There are NO causes of sickness beyond your mind. Nothing in the world MAINTAINS body sickness. The body is not an end in itself, or a thing, or a living entity. It is a SYMBOL.

"The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

"Regarding the body as an end, it has no real use for it at all, because it is not an end."

The body only EVER SYMBOLIZES what the MIND is doing. It does not have its own STATE or continuity. The mind is AT ALL TIMES determining the health of the body. And the only way to have the body be constantly sick is to be constantly attacking with it. As soon as you stop attacking yourself, the sickness MUST DISAPPEAR to SYMBOLIZE forgiveness. "Sickness is a defense against the truth" - no defense, no sickness!!! If you want TRUTH, you will NOT have defenses, and thus NO SICKNESS.

There are no exceptions.

Healthy mind, healthy body.

Sick mind, sick body.

This is the central lesson.

Each time, and in each way, that we perceive that someone else is meant to change, that there is something wrong with them, that they have caused us to be upset or changed in any way whatsoever, or that anything outside of us can do something to us, we are being irresponsible for our lives.

This means we are not owning up to the full responsibility we have to be the causal power of everything that we experience. It means we're shoveling off our sense of Self and responsibility for our life onto someone else. We're wanting them to change in order to INDIRECTLY cause us to be happy or in a preferred state, and if they don't comply we get upset.

It is not anyone else's responsibility to live our life for us, to wake up for us, to change to suit us, to match our opinion, to be corrected on our behalf, or to be any way 'for us' in order for us to get what we want.

If you look you'll notice yourself being 'riddled' with this situation, where in small ways and in various relationships, you truly believe that someone else (or reality, or the world) is not meant to be the way it is. This is irresponsibility. It means you are not being responsible for what you are, and so you see everything outside of you reflecting that - that it too should not be what it is.

So when there is irresponsibility in your mind and perception, where you are not squarely owning and being centered in the acceptance of what you actually are, you are going to experience that outside of you in everything you look at. Other people and places and events are going to start to show up to you as being 'wrong' for being what they, that they should be something else, that they SHOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE for being what they are.

This is why the acceptance of ourselves is an act of responsibility, and is then reflected outside us as the world appearing to be accepted for what it is, also. You can't accept the world if you can't accept yourself.

Usually when we're feeling guilty, it has an element of "because someone else decided I am".

Guilty because I did something to someone. Guilty because I made a wrong move. Guilty because I'm not good enough for someone. Guilty because I did the wrong thing according to someone else's rules. Guilty because I did the course (which someone else wrote) wrong. Guilty because I separed from God (ie God has deemed me guilty).

We keep saying our guilt is caused and put there and required by someone OTHER than ourselves.

How does a perfectly innocent Son of God, of which there is only ONE, ever have the ability to sin in the first place, and to then experience that an 'other' has found them guilty?

As soon as there is separation, you are separting from God and yourself, and now you've split off part of your OWN SELF and projected it as some other person - or a separate God. And now they - that separate identity/will - finds you guilty. There's guilt between you and them *because you are separate.

Maybe we need to own the fact that nobody else makes us guilty. We choose it. Every time. The guilt is coming from a sense of separation from others, which has MADE `others`. Keeping others as others isn't going to allow me to return to innocence. I can only recognize my innocence if there ARE NO OTHERS, because then all separate identities are recognized as THE ONE SELF (shared).

In sharing there is innocence. In separation there is guilt. So when we're in guilt we always think someone else has deemed us guilty. But it's just us, pretending not to be whole, and pretending that the 'other' is not ourselves. Its not that we need to get rid of the guilt so that we can see 'others' and ourselves as innocent, it's that we need to get rid of the guilt so that 'other' and 'separate self' are reunited as a whole.

I own up to choosing guilt by choosing sin by choosing separation. And in that owning up I then let go of that separation and recognize/remember we are ONE. I claim innocence for BOTH of us so that we return to unity together.

Believing that what is impossible, untrue and unreal...

... is actually possible, true and real.

When someone believes it is possible to separate from God by attacking Him, that's completely impossible, and it's insane to believe it.

When someone believes that they really have separated from God, and thus sin is real, given that it really is not, that's another level of insanity.

When someone then believes that they're really guilty because of this sin, that's yet more insanity because guilt isn't real.

When someone splits their mind in half trying to get away from that guilt, using denial and suppression to block awarenses of that guilt, and then proceeds to try to shove that guilt into a state of unconsciousness, that's also yet more insanity.

When someone then believes that the split off part of their own mind is not part of themselves, that's more insanity.

And when someone then proceeds to try to disown and blame that unconscious guilt, part of themselves, onto other people, that is yet more insanity.

And when they then perceive that other people are the place where guilt lives, that the guilt in others is attacking them, and that they are now having reactions caused by the other person, that's yet more insanity on top of it all.

All of this is insanity.

Look at the human race. Look at who is doing this. Every day. Day in day out. Look at how insane the human race is.

Look at how it seems "normal and acceptable" for people to blame and scapegoat, as even this final layer of insanity, reacting to each other as though someone else is doing something to them, and how this forms common "society", that's just totally nuts. Few people realize or recognize it AS insanity, so believe that this is natural and normal. Like a normal way of functioning.

And then there is death, the ultimate insanity, in which people commit suicide on purpose because they believe death is life and sacrifice is salvation and what is true is false and what is unreal is reality. Death is complete insanity.

As though blame and disassociation and mental illness and separation and sin and guilt and fear and attack are denial and hatred and suffering are all NORMAL somehow. Like, how nuts is that?

Mental illness is not reserved for those who more obviously seem to have lost their mind. Almost everyone has lost their mind.

Fortunately there is a correction of forgiveness which can UNDO insanity and restore reality to the mind, which ultimately cannot REALLY be insane.

So to even believe that there REALLY is an insane human race, is once again more insanity. Hah.

The only reason you can feel afraid is because, being guilty, the guilt implies that you must be punished. You're afraid that the punishment is going to come.

Punishment is perceived as anything that happens to you, like someone saying something, judgements, perceived attack, physical attack, sickness, loss, whatever.

So certain is that that you will feel afraid if you first feel guilty, that you absolutely MUST experience fear if you believe that your guilt is real. Sooner or later fear is going to come from it.

If you're then in fear and struggling to try to battle the fear or do something about the fear, you're not going to get anywhere unless you can realize WHY you are really afraid.

You are not really afraid because of the potential that punishment is going to come (or has come). You are afraid because you are guilty. That's all. Period.

Guilt is the cause of fear. All the things you think fear is caused by are just the "sources of punishment" which you perceive as being the WAY by which punishment is going to happen. You are seemingly afraid that xyz will happen to you, i.e. that you'll be punished BY these things, and that therefore that's why you are afraid.

That's not WHY you are afraid, it's WHAT you are afraid of. You're only afraid because you're guilty and that therefore you deserve punishment.

What if you admit that you felt guilty first, and then undid that guilt, and then ask yourself where the basis for fear is? How can you be afraid if you don't believe you are guilty?

If you are guiltless, you have nothing to worry about. You're innocent.

The root of fear is guilt. And the root of guilt is sin. And the root of sin is separation. You have to look at the level that came before it, which has been made unconscious.

If you're predominantly experiencing fear, you have probably made your guilt unconscious, which is why you don't suspect that that's why you are afraid. You then think the cause of the fear is something else.

You must make the guilt conscious by realizing why you felt guilty. Really the reason you felt guilty ultimately is because you believed you really sinned, because you perceived a separation.

Always trace it back to its roots. Each level of experience is the EFFECT of a cause the happened on the level before it.

Fear is the EFFECT of believing in guilt. Guilt causes fear.

Guilt is the EFFECT of believing in sin. Sin causes guilt.

Sin is the EFFECT of believing in separation. Separation causes sin.

Death is the EFFECT of believing in punishment. Punishment causes death.

"I am never upset for the reason I think" - ACIM

The idea is simple. There is only one lesson. This one lesson sets you free from every form of suffering. It's simply this:

Take full responsibility for everything that you are experiencing.

What is this based on? It's based on the fact that you are an immortal being that cannot be changed by anything, because you are the will of God.

This means that nothing in this entire "universe" of spacetime, nothing in the world, can do even the slightest thing to CAUSE you in any way.

You have never changed, you have not changed yourself, God has never changed you, and you will never change. You are always the same and always perfect.

Because of this, it's not POSSIBLE for anyone or anything to do anything to you. This is the basis of forgiveness. Recognizing that sin cannot happen, guilt is impossible, and everything is perfect still.

If you are immortal then the ONLY way by which something can SEEM to happen to you, is YOU using your own mind and free will to put in place what seem to be illusions of suffering.

Because the truth is that you cannot suffer at all. Not even slightly. You yourself have to literally warp your own mind and dream your own dream and invent your own suffering, which is even fake suffering, in order to experience what seems like suffering at all.

It cannot be put in place by anyone else because no-one else has power over your infinite will. It cannot be caused by the world or anyone in it. Nothing that seems to happen can be the reason why you are experiencing what you are experiencing.

So it goes back to the secret of salvation, no matter how it looks, no matter who seems to be the cause, no matter what anyone appears be trying to do to you, no matter what reactions you seemed to have that you thought they caused, it is NEVER true that anyone BUT YOU is the cause of your suffering.

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

"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."

This means you can never pin blame on anyone or anything other than yourself. You can never truly believe that anyone or anything is the cause of you, other than God. God is the ONLY cause of you in all existence. There is NO OTHER POWER that can cause anything at all. Whatever happens is what you desire.

"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 is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

This is all tied together. You are ruler of the universe because anything that happens is by your will alone. Forgiveness is based on your immortality and the fact nothing can happen against your will. The secret of salvation reminds you that you can be saved only by admitting that YOU are the one willing it. And only by identifying with Christ can you fully claim responsibility for what you really are.

If in any way you are believing that what you are experiencing now, right now, is the result of, something other than yourself in any way, you are mistaken. You are deceived. If you think any person did this to you you are wrong. If you think the world or the body or the emotions or thoughts are doing it to you, you are wrong.

ONLY YOU can make yourself suffer.

"It means that you cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. Show him that he CANNOT hurt you, and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself."

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

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"Father, Your Son can not be hurt. And if we think we suffer, we but fail to know our one Identity we share with You."

"Truth will correct all errors in my mind. I am mistaken when I think I can Be hurt in any way. I am God's Son, Whose Self rests safely in the Mind of God."

"Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?"

"For once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear."

"The Son of God could NEVER sin, but he CAN wish for what would hurt him. And he HAS the power to think he CAN BE hurt. What could this be EXCEPT a misperception of himself?"

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

"If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or BE hurt, but that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves."

"The Self Which God created cannot sin, and therefore cannot suffer."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today."

"Your Name replaces every thought of sin, and who is sinless cannot suffer pain."

"How can he fear or doubt or fail to know he cannot suffer, be endangered, or experience unhappiness, when he belongs to You, beloved and loving, in the safety of Your Fatherly embrace?"

"Herein lies my claim to all good and only good. I am blessed as a Son of God. All good things are mine because God intended them for me. I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed."

"Love CANNOT suffer, because it cannot attack."

"Joy is the inevitable result of gentleness. Gentleness means that fear is now impossible, and what could come to interfere with joy? The open hands of gentleness are always filled. The gentle have no pain. They cannot suffer."

"I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

"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."

There was a situation in which something went wrong, but there wasn't any evidence whatsoever that the person involved caused it to happen. It seemed like there was no way they could've caused it. I noticed that as a result, I did not and could not project guilt onto that person. If I could find no grounds for believing that they were guilty somehow, I couldn't turn them into a scapegoat. I did not get angry at them at all.

I found that interesting, because it's not just that we automatically scapegoat someone when we perceive that they are the cause of a problem, we also DON'T scapegoat them when the "proof of sin" is missing.

Our ego reactions to stuff and whether or not we USE it for projection of guilt, seems to depend very much on what we perceive as happening and the fact that we BELIEVE what we see.

If there is evidence, externally, in terms of form, or bodies, or objects, or anything tangible that we can put our finger on, the ego can and will jump in and USE it for projection. It's almost like a trigger. The presence of this "sinful thing" in the environment is picked up on by the senses and the ego and it automatically reacts to it with an attack. BUT, if the stimuli is not there, it DOESN'T tend to do this.

This reveals just how much we can be so totally dependent upon what we're perceiving as "existing" or "happening" in the world. How much we're allowing the world and its states to DICTATE whether or not we are AFFECTED. That we can only seem to HAVE certain reactions when the world PRODUCES certain scenarios. And when it doesn't we don't seem to have these reactions.

Isn't it weird then that we not only get triggered and pushed into ego reactions when the external world SAYS WE SHOULD, we also fail to have any reaction at all when the world SAYS WE SHOULDN'T.

Solely because I could find no evidence "in the world" as to a certain person being the cause of sin, and was DEPENDING ON the world and LISTENING TO IT, therefore, I could not seem to get myself to be angry at them. There was nothing to latch onto. There was nothing to use. This doesn't mean, however, that I don't have an ego, or that my ego wouldn't scapegoat at the next opportunity. It's just that we seem to WAIT FOR the world to fuck up before we have a reaction to it, instead of being proactive.

This reveals how much we're at the EFFECT of the world, allowing it to tell us WHEN we should be upset, and WHEN we should be happy. It presents lulls in the storm and breaks in the conflict, during which we seem to NOT have reactions. Why don't we have reactions all the time? Why don't we constantly launch into massive fear responses? Because the hierarchy of illusions tells us it's NOT A BAD SITUATION. Just as much as the same hierarchy then goes on to tell us that such-and-such a situation IS worth being upset about and is very serious.

If for example a situation arises where something in the world seems terrible wrong, I WILL much more likely have a reaction. It may even induce a panic. And this reaction will be in proportion to the sense of severity or seriousness or importance or value of the problem. Bigger problems elicit a LOT more fear. Smaller problems elicit a lot LESS. The seeming LACK of problems produces an illusion of peace, in which I seem to think everything is going well. Until the next calamity, which the world certainly has in store in endless supply.

How do we get off this rollercoaster ride of always having reactions to the ups and downs of the world? Why CAN'T I scapegoat when there is no reason to, just as much as when there's a juicy opportunity to pounce on? Why when someone has clearly done nothing at all is it so hard to project guilt? And why when they seem to have done something awful is it so easy? Why do we RELY ON the world to INFORM US of what is true?

Recently quite a "serious thing" happened and I had a strong visceral reaction. In fact I pretty much went into an anxiety attack. This came out of nowhere, but it was in relation to "how serious" I thought the situation was. I bought into the hierarchy of illusions and had the appropriate amount of drama about it. Right on cue, just as the world says I should, and entirely reflective of what I believed to be the importance of the situation. It seemed unavoidable. It seemed AUTOMATIC and mindless. And there seemed to be nothing I could do to stop it once I'd bought into it.

But somehow there has to be a way to live that isn't DRIVEN by the world and its images, BASED ON its illusions and its forms, its happenings and its dangers. It has to be possible somehow to NOT BUY INTO the heirarchy and to not USE the world as a FORM OF TRUSTED PROOF about anything. Just because the world or the ego or the body says "this is really serious you should be very concerned", we have to find a way to NOT be "appropriately concerned". To not GET our truth FROM the world.

How about laughing at it instead? How about laughing in the face of death, or laughing when someone is hurt, or laughing when people are crying their eyes out? Like... how can we disconnect from the automatic chain-reaction of "world says you should feel this now"? Or rather, that my belief about what it MEANS and my judgement of what it IS, BASED ON ITS FORM, dictates what I believe is true and the consequences that will come from it.

It's me who has apparently decided what everything means, including good stuff, and including bad stuff. And all of these meanings should apparently be WRONG, ie a mistake. Because if there is really NO order of difficulty in miracles and the hierarchy of illusions is actually FLAT AND EQUAL, then it should make NO difference whatsoever what happens, it should not have ANY effect to change who I am or what I experience. Unless I am TRUSTING MY SENSES and basing my TRUTH on the world's current STATE.

That's where the real challenge comes in. Because now we're talking about practically IGNORING how situations look, IGNORING appearances, IGNORING meanings that I make up, IGNORING what the world would say is a very good or bad situation, IGNORING the body, IGNORING sickness, IGNORING terrible difficult tragic threatening dangers, and somehow transcending them so that peace and happiness become a CONSTANT. And getting my truth from ANOTHER WORLD.

How to get off the rollercoaster of death, that's the big question. How to not be affected by the world. How to not USE OR ALLOW the world or any events or happenings to influence me in ANY WAY, and to operate solely in a proactively DELIBERATE manner. How to be free of suffering forever, and how to never forget to laugh at the illusion of hell ever again. Nor GIVE MY POWER AWAY TO IT or allow it to have the power to TELL ME what I should be feeling.

"The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace."

"The illusion of orders of difficulty is an obstacle the teacher of God must learn to pass by and leave behind."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true. And each establishes this FOR HIMSELF, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values."

"All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

THIS WORLD DOES NOT CAUSE ANYTHING

The world we seem to live in, which includes planet Earth, does not cause anything to happen. It has no causes in it. And since cause=truth, it has no truth in it. And since truth=reality, it has no reality in it. It however has many many illusions of causes, pretending to be causes.

The world causes nothing. It is nothing but an effect. In order for this to make any sense you'll need to realize that *everything* in this world is being caused from SOMEWHERE ELSE.

In a pantomime, puppets are dangled from strings and made to seem to interact with each other. One can be made to seem to do something, and then it is necessary for the other to be made to do something else, in order to create the illusion that it was affected. There is no causality between them. All of the causality comes from ABOVE, causing what is BELOW.

As it is with miracles. Miracles are expressions from a mind which is ABOVE this world which has CAUSED this world. The world is its effect. That higher mind (the Sonship) has projected this entire universe including the Earth.

Everything that seems to "happen" in it, is not happening because of one thing causing something else. Instead, both the things which seem to cause, and the things which seem to be affected, are simultaneously projected in parallel from another place entirely.

The wind does not blow the trees. The wind blowing and the trees moving are BOTH accomplished at the same time by the same ONE CAUSE, the mind of the dreamer.

Gravity does not cause a ball to roll down a hill.

Eating food does not cause you to make poop.

Throwing a rock at a window does not cause the window to break, unless the higher mind says "ok, I will now break the window", and the breaking of the window is implemented BY THE MIND, not by the rock.

Nothing in this world causes anything at all. We are not made sick by things in the environment. We are not hurt by other people. We are not upset because of things we see. Nothing happens to us, not even death.

Nothing can happen to you, a Son of God, without your say so. Nothing can happen, without your consent. "No-one dies without their own consent". Mind, from a higher level, has to PUT IN PLACE both the apparent causes and apparent effects of EVERYTHING that takes place on planet Earth. EVERYTHING!

The world does not spin because of inertia or gravitational forces or attraction to the sun. It spins because the MIND SPINS IT.

Rain does not fall from a cloud on its own as part of an accumulation of water particles. Rain does not fall unless the mind makes it do so.

This is a world of ANIMATION, it is an animation, like a movie, being projected out and played by a mind that is causing everything in the scene to occur. Everything.

You wouldn't imagine for a second that someone could be sat at the movie theater watching the movie on the screen, and that they could CHANGE the content of the movie by doing something with the screen. If you want the movie to change, you have to get in touch with the folk who MADE the movie, and the mechanism of projecting it, so that the movie appears differently.

Similarly the world can easily be changed by someone who has access to the miraculous mind of the Son of God, who is a miracle worker. This mind has the power to ERASE the world. This mind has the power to CHANGE the world. This mind has the power to do ANYTHING. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do."

The world itself does not DO anything at all. Nothing happens to anything anywhere against any will. Nothing can happen AT ALL unless it is part of the one who is DREAMING IT. Only the dreamer can determine what shows up in the dream. Only the dreamer can make objects appear to interact. Only the dreamer has access to the level of freedom and capability to make the dream appear to do stuff that DEFIES the illusion of linear causality.

If the dreamer decides, hey, when this forest fire rages, which I made rage, I will ensure no harm will come to that house. And so the house will not suffer the fire. And if the dreamer decides, when that rock is thrown at that window, there shall be no damage, so be it.... there will not be a broken window. And if the dreamer decides, this body will have no sickness and show no signs of damage and it will be impossible to destroy it... so be it. The body will be invulnerable.

Miracles appear to defy the LINEAR causality of this world. They prove and demonstrate that the ILLUSION of cause and effect here is FALSE, is fictional, and that it can easily be modified and defied. The mind could easily suppress the effects of an explosion. It could easily levitate a mountain. It could easily cause someone to walk on water. It could easily show that gravity has no effect on the body.

There is an analogy to this freedom and flexibility of writing the rules of what's going to happen in a fictional world, in this world. It's in the area of creating digital worlds. Movies, games, visualizations, 3d objects and so on. In this arena, we get to make entire environments out of nowhere. We can populate them with characters and make stuff happen. But guess what, there are no laws.

Nothing is impossible there. If you want to make a huge ball representing the sun suddenly turn into ice-cream, that's easy enough. And objects in a virtual world have no inherent laws of physics. If you want to make them repel each other or bump into each other and rebound off each other, you have to ADD a whole bunch of extra rules and conditions. But the fact is, YOU add them. And without them, objects would pass right through each other.

This world, this universe, is an illusion. It causes nothing at all and it has no causes inside of it. All causes here are illusions of causes. This is why as a miracle worker you can demonstrate this fact by making something occur which, according to the linear laws, is impossible. It should be impossible to reverse death, it should be impossible to levitate a mountain, it should be impossible to walk on water, and it should be impossible to heal all sickness, but it's not true. There is nothing a holy Son of God cannot do.

Open your mind. Question what you're looking at. Planet Earth isn't a "thing" in its own right functioning according to universal laws. It's nothing but a simultaneous parallel projection from a place UNSEEN. And as a projection, it has no will and no life and no mind of its own. It has no identity. That is why it does not really exist. There is no world. It's imagined.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way."

"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you."

"There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less."

"A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect."

"Time lasted but an instant in your mind, with no effect upon eternity."

"The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion, it is what you wish."

"I will exist forever" is the antidote to fear.

If you question the fact that you have eternal life, and start to believe that you might come to an "end", that will induce fear. It's always the fear that your existence is under threat somehow.

All fears that seem to be caused by the world, such as someone threatening, or bad weather, or people driving badly, or threats of wars or whatever, it's all just more forms of the same idea. The idea that you might not be immortal and might not always exist, and that these things might have the power to end your life.

At first it might seem like fear is the effect or result of a belief that there is a power or cause outside of yourself threatening you. But actually it's a bit more subtle. It's not just a matter of them threatening you, because that could go one of two ways - you could go into fear or into laughter depending on whether you buy into it.

So it's not the fact that there are "threats" or "dangers" or whatever, it's a question of whether you yourself believe that you CAN BE in danger or BE threatened. And that always comes down to your personal responsibility of choosing whether to undermine your invulnerability or not.

The fact is that God gave you eternal life in your creation and you will never ever stop existing. This is a simple fact. It brings with it a sense of continuation, of extension. And that extension is love. And this is why love is the opposite of fear, and why love makes you feel safe.

If you will extend (love) forever then you are obviously safe because your extension has no end. If you withhold love you are holding back on your extension, thus holding back on the extension of your existence, which brings into question whether you will keep existing or not, which induces a feeling of fear or the believe that love is coming to an end.

Essentially this means that if you do not love, you will feel afraid, because you will feel like you're going to stop existing. And when you love, you will feel like you are invulnerable and will live forever. That's how it works. Extend love and you live forever. Stop extending love and you end your life, in fear, producing sickness and death.

Your never-ending existence is experienced as the extension of love. Ideas of endings are experienced as fear and death.

"Nothing real can be threatened."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"You are immortal and you cannot die".

"The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed."

If someone else is having a problem, and you feel concerned, there is something mistaken going on in your mind.

There is actually an ego reaction, based on the hierarchy of illusions, which says that based on the perceived severity of the situation, you should be having a certain amount of reaction.

Just even perceiving that someone ELSE is having a problem, seems to be enough of a belief in a "cause" happening outside of you, even if it not perceived as happening TO you, to produce a sense of "effects" showing up in your mind.

If it's you believing that someone else's body is under attack, this would seem not to be about you at all. But it is, because your mind is having the belief in attack. And even if it's someone "not me" seeming to be attacked, just the acceptance that it is occurring is enough to cause your mind to generate fear thoughts.

So then the question arises, is it possible when presented with situations in which other people are suffering, to be completely unmoved by it. Is it possible to not have a reaction, to not go into fear, or into diagnosis mode, or attempting to react to what seems very real.

And then this further leads to, is it OKAY to not react? Is it okay to remain calm and peaceful and seemingly "disconnected" from what is supposed to be a "normal reaction"? Is it okay to be happy when someone is upset, calm when someone is stressing out, peaceful when someone is in pain, etc. That basically, your inner state and emotion and mental condition becomes NOT DEPENDENT ON the external world.

Somehow this means transcending the hierarchy of illusions, orders of severity/difficulty, belief in seriousness, problems seeming to be real, other people's problems seeming to be real, and sinking into a kind of detached "insulation" or self-contained independently chosen state of being, that isn't always the EFFECT OF or a REACTION TO what's happening in the world. The idea of being in a state which the WORLD did not cause, is quite radically new.

Can I become not involved. Can I remain untangled from the illusions. In the face of dramas, can I not buy into them. Can I remain happy and peaceful at all times, which seems very very alien to the state of being constantly tossed around on the ocean waves like a rollercoaster of stressful reactions. Can I become independent of the world's causalities, immune to them, invulnerable to them, such that I am literally no longer AFFECTED by anything. And such that whatever state I experience *I* have chosen, and the world has not caused to happen in me.

"I am not at the effect of the world I see."

"Anger is never justified." - ACIM

Anger is not natural. It is very common, but not natural or healthy. Anger isn't really a valid feeling. It's actually a device for projecting something. Usually we use it to project guilt or some other hurt. It's a way of hurling stuff out of the mind and trying to pin it on someone or something else. It's a form of irresponsibility.

Anger is also caused by something other than itself, so it's not like some kind of core feeling or inherent central nature. It's a reaction to something else, twice removed from the problem, and only comes about when denial is also being used.

If you have a pain or hurt or guilt or whatever and you try to deny it, you're trying to dissociate yourself from it, disown it, and want to get it out of your awareness/mind. You do that by projecting it and trying to associate it with someone or something else. And the main skapegoating device used to accomplish this is anger.

Behind anger there is always something else going on. Deeper than the anger there is some kind of hurt or pain or fear. It's very easy for fears and hurts and guilts to transform into what appears to be anger, but this ins't their true form. Anger is always a way of hiding something else.

Not because you actually have anger, but because denying deeper feelings leads to an attempt to project those pains or put them out of your mind, which hurls them outward in a kind of broadcast. If you deny being afraid, you will feel angry instead. If you deny feeling guilty you'll become angry. If you deny that you feel hurt or at a loss or deprived in some way it can turn into anger. But the anger always comes after a perceived attack.

The anger is not a primary core feeling, it's a secondary layer on top of it designed to cover feelings up. You first see yourself as hurt or attacked, you then justify that because you didn't seem to ask for it (weren't aware of how you chose it) you are justified in being angry, and then you use that justification to hurl the blame outward.

Ego likes to use anger because it splits the mind and increases separation and insanity. While you are in denial and projecting pain outwardly your mind is dissociating and splitting and trying to pretend that the pain is not inside itself. But ideas do not leave the mind that conceive of them, so it stays in the mind in a disguised form, hidden behind a layer of denial.

Essentially anger doesn't work. It's an attempt to get rid of something deeper while keeping it. It doesn't make the pain go away. It doesn't heal anything. All it does is disguise and hide and make it seem like it doesn't belong to you. It's just a projected form of denial that says "this is not mine."

Anger is always unjustified because it's always based on a lie. But while the lie is kept in place, it seems as though the only problem solving solution is to project the pain. This won't work, but the mind will believe it's working, but that it needs to intensify the projection in order to get more pain out.

By becoming even more angry your mind reasons that it will be saved, or that by pinning the blame for the wound on something else you can be alleviated of the pain. This leads to a closed kind of scenario in which it seems all you can do is rage more to try to induce more relief, and the more you rage the better off you'll be. But this doesn't actually work because the mind is just splitting and becoming more and more insane. Ans besides, rage is not peace and attack will never induce healing.

Anger never ever works. It is a faulty coping mechanism. It's an attempt not to solve the real problem and to keep it hidden. Behind the anger if you look you'll always find something deeper like some kind of feeling of hurt or loss or guilt or fear. Something that came before it. And all you're doing is using the anger to try to make it go away. Anger is like an absence of feeling, ultimately an absence of love.

Feelings of hurt and attack and pain are always based on faulty perceptions that something outside of you has done something against your will, and that you are suffering as a result. This can NEVER be true because you are an immortal being that is permanently perfect and can never be attacked. Nothing real can be threatened.

So it always starts off with your mind going into a self attack, insinuating that you are not invulnerable, disowning the power of decision and pretending you are not the one causing your own experience, projecting out that responsibility onto others and the world, accusing them of sin, resulting in a perception that they're attacking you and you didn't ask for it, leading to hurt and pain which your mind itself puts into you to correspond to the projection, which pictures you as a victim, which justifies being angry, so then you project out anger in retaliation against the feedback loop of your own projected belief. It's pretty convoluted and crazy and a bottomless pit of hell.

You have to get further into your mind and find out the real deeper causes of things, the root issue behind all problems. It's never to do with what the world has done to you and always to do with your choice to perceive yourself unfairly treated, hurt, attacked, vulnerable etc... some kind of victim role that isn't true of your immortal nature. In that sense you are always and only the one who attacks yourself, undermining yourself first and then blaming it on the world. "Only the self-accused condemn."

This is why anger is totally unfounded and completely irrelevant in all scenarios and situations. You simply have no reason to be upset if you are immortal being that can never be hurt, made guilty, caused to be afraid or hurt for any reason. If you are not happy or at peace you have made a wrong decision and have chosen to see yourself as deprived. And no amount of blaming that on anyone or anything will make it go away. But you can always choose again.

If you are upset for some reason, there is something in you already which is not at peace. Some part of your mind is identified with ego, having an emotional reaction, or perhaps something is coming up for release.

If you are then exposed to a person whose behavior seems to be in some way provocative, a potential attack, or something that your ego does not like, you are much more likely to experience that person as causing you to be upset.

Or rather, because you're not on a firm footing of certainty and peace, and your mind is unhappy, you are much more susceptible to your pre-existing upset coming up in your face.

When you are upset your ego sees itself as vulnerable, a victim, under threat, and being caused from outside. It is then very easy to slip into that kind of perceiving where you think the other person is doing something to you.

And since you're already upset, it will cause your pre-existing upset to come up even stronger. You'll think they are pushing your buttons. They sort of are, but the result of pushing the button is that YOUR stuff comes up inside you, not stuff that THEY put there.

When you are upset already, other people will seem upsetting, and you will react to them. When you are not upset already, you will be much more detached and it is far harder to be provoked.

Every time that I am already upset for some reason, if someone does or says something *potentially* upsetting, I am much more likely to have reactions of victimhood, where I'll start to quickly project my shit onto them, treat them poorly, and react to them like they're doing something to me.

But later, if I'm honest, I'll recognize that I wasn't really upset with that person... I was ALREADY upset. My upset wasn't their fault. I reacted poorly. I was not clear about the truth. I had slipped from a firm footing onto a slippery slope, and had become confused about who was doing what to whom.

I notice this again and again. If I am upset already, I seem to be more upsettable, and I'll think it's someone else that's wrong. Yet if I'm not upset, the person can do or say the same things and it has no effect.

It is the hurt ego which reacts. It's the hurt ego that sees itself as vulnerable. It's the hurt ego - the pain - that responds with attack, perceiving attack where there really is none.

If I had no upset whatsoever and were perfectly at peace, nothing would be ABLE to upset me, because I would have nothing that is already upset to react WITH. That is invulnerability.

With regards to your ego and the ego of your brother, everything about it is self inflicted and separate. What is in your ego is not in your brother's ego. They are two separate, private worlds. They do not connect or join or communicate or share.

Everything happening within your own ego is not happening because of or in connection with or caused by what's happening in someone else's ego. It's all happening entirely independently.

Therefore, where the ego is concerned, you need to be completely responsible for the self-contained world that your ego lives in, which is a closed world, closed to your brother. Everything about it, all of the ego experiences, feelings, reactions, perceptions, are all entirely within yourself and are yours. Own them.

You need to disconnect your ego from the egos of other people. You need to realize that two egos do not communicate. You need to realize that what another person's ego is doing (anything unloving) is not in any way shape or form a cause of anything happening in your own ego. And vice versa. You are not doing anything to their ego and their ego is not doing anything to you. Egos are separate. Egos are individuals.

However, there is something that you do share with your brother. The only thing you can share with your brother, is sharing itself. Sharing means love, joining, communication, openness, equality, freedom, truth. These things, you DO share with your brother. These things, happen to both of you at the same time. These things are mutual, shared interests. These things connect you to your brother and join you together.

So be clear about this. The parts of your experience that are ego, you need to become very clear that these are SEPARATE from your brother and have nothing to do with him. They are your own private hallucinatory world. Nothing goes outside of this world. Ideas leave not their source. Your brother's ego ideas do not leave your brother either. Neither of you causes anything in each other through the ego. Your egos are completely separate and disconnected. All they can do is make noises and postulate before each other, but it is up to each person to decide whether to use their ego or Holy Spirit in perceiving the activities of another.

If it's ego, its yours. If it's love, it's shared. Never do egos really communicate and never do egos really cause things to happen to each other. The idea of attack is entirely an illusion because attack is withdrawal into a private world. Nothing any ego says is ever about you. Nothing your ego says is ever about anyone else.

Only in the holy relationship is there any real sharing or real communication or real relationship because it is a relationship based in reality. Ego relationships are not relationships at all.

Sometimes what "the secret of salvation" reveals is not pretty. It very simply means you do everything to yourself. On purpose. Deliberately.

That reveals some sometimes shocking and hard to accept truths.

Such as that, if I am not at peace *I* must have chosen not to be at peace. If I am sick, I must have made myself sick. If I am unhappy, I have deliberately chosen to be unhappy. If I am experiencing something that I don’t think I want to experience, it’s because I CHOSE TO and WANT TO.

These are hard to admit to when you’re in the thick of denial. You’d rather keep believing there is a reason outside your control that caused your suffering.

What Jesus is trying to get us to see, and this is very simple, is that as the dreamer of the dream, and as the ruler of the universe, we MUST be the one who makes everything happen. We PUT IT THERE. We decide what will and will not happen.

This calls for extremely responsibility. It is the total end of all victimhood. And it also means, total freedom. This is why it leads to salvation.

You can be free from ALL suffering, including all states of sickness and death, by simply CHOOSING not to create those states. You can reverse all situations and heal all problems. "The power of decision is my own."

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No-one dies without their own consent." "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

This is the ONE LESSON that the Holy Spirit teaches. When you have learned this one thing and live it fully, you are done.

There is no room in this for being a victim, OR being victimized against your will. It is YOUR DREAM, so if victimization happens, YOU MUST HAVE MADE IT HAPPEN.

Unless this is true, there is no way out of hell. Unless this is true, someone or something else has the power to end your peace and prevent your awakening. You do not want to ever undermine this truth, or you are giving away the only way to return to God.

Always remind yourself in any situation, I must be doing this myself. I must be choosing this. I must want this. No-one else is doing this to me. If I am not happy, I chose not to be. If I am hurt, I hurt myself. This applies NO MATTER THE FORM of the attack or who seems to be the attacker. Even if it doesn’t look like you did it, you did. And this of course is very radical.

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

*I* MUST have made a WRONG DECISION because I am not at peace.

*I* MADE THE DECISION MYSELF.

Nothing happens without your consent, not even death. You are either choosing life or death. All death is suicide.

This will be a touchy and controversial subject. But we need to be more honest about death and what exactly is going on when spiritual people keep getting sick.

When someone's body dies, and when people have believed that the body IS the person through body-identification, there is a sense of loss. And this makes sense.

Something "real" seems to have been destroyed. If this were true, it SHOULD induce grief. If a real being has ended, it is definitely grounds for grief. This perceived "real death" can induce horrifyingly intense feelings of loss, massive waves of grieving and anger and hurt and loneliness etc.

All of those experiences and feelings can be extremely difficult to go through. Pangs of grief that come out of nowhere. Constant floods of emotions causing huge amounts of crying. A sense of missing and longing, an unfairness, and a justified anger. All of this accompanies the belief that something real has died.

Because of this, it then becomes very difficult to say ANYTHING about death, about what the person chose, about how the sickness came about, or to QUESTION in any way whether the person themselves had something to do with it. To even suggest that someone wanted to die, caused it to happen, chose it, or used it on purpose, seems like a horrible slander against the central character in the dying.

Indeed, when some body person dies, the dying, as the ego interprets it, appears to be the loss of an innocent victim. Ego beliefs tell you that they did not ask for this, they could not stop it, they did not want it, it could not be avoided, it happened unfairly, it victimized them, the person suffered greatly, it was horrible to watch, it was so sad and such a loss, etc. All of this appears to be true when a person is regarded as a body.

In light of this, when we are framing a person as the face of innocence, an innocent helpless victim of death "happening to them" or of diseases being "acquired" from the world, or the environment hurting someone etc, we make it look like the person is "untouchable" in their innocence. We start talking about them as if they were an angel. We go into a total denial of anything they seemed to do wrong. And no-one then dares to say a single word which might imply the person was anything OTHER than absolutely pure and perfect.

As a result of this behavior and this "falling for" the APPEARANCE that the person died against their will, death itself becomes protected. It becomes shielded by a facade of innocence and victimhood, helplessness and powerlessness. As if the person couldn't lift a single finger to influence anything that happened, and as a result was completely unfairly ripped away by forces beyond their control.

Death itself benefits from this view. By framing "dyers" as innocent victims, it puts up a powerful shield of denial, which seems impenetrable. And because it is framed as innocence, everyone suddenly is watchful of anyone even remotely suggesting that the person was "not innocent" in any way. There is a protectiveness that suddenly comes over people, which then justifies immense anger and projection, if anyone should dare to even HINT at the idea that the death was not how it appeared to be. As if death is an innocent baby that no-one can touch with a bargepole.

To even then question death at all, to suggest a person might've chosen it, that they caused it, or wanted it, or made it happen, or used it to try to kill the Son of God, would be considered a kind of blasphemy. And anyone who speaks out against death then is considered some kind of horrible insensitive accuser, victimizer and attacker, who has come to trample on the very carefully laid picture-frame of death-encrusted jewels that surrounds the tomb. To question death then seems completely off-topic, inappropriate, un-asked for, unwanted, and an act of war. How dare you suggest death is a lie or that all death is suicide?

By doing do, we never really get to question death itself. We keep hiding it behind this shield of illusions. We keep framing people as innocent victims who never wanted what happened. We keep denying that anyone ever chose any of it. And all that revolves around false perceptions, perceptions of a person AS a body, and AS a victim of the world.

It is a fact, however, that A Course in Miracles takes a radically OPPOSITE view of death than this. A view which would actually reveal a lot of activities taking place by the egos of not only those who die, but by those who mourn for them also. Those who are in grief and loss, as horrible as those experiences may be, are revealed to nevertheless be mistaken. Jesus even goes so far as to quite blatantly point out that those who attend funerals and who grieve over dead bodies, are completely going against God's will. He basically calls them death-worshippers.

"But what of those whose dedication it is NOT to live? The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death."

"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, ***Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it.*** And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, ***damned by its maker***, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself."

So the way Jesus describes this is that, those who die, AND those who react to the death on the basis of body-identification and ego loss and "something real died", which is a mistaken perception, are death worshippers. They are people who are themselves dead. The walking psychologically dead, who are actually worshippers of death and sickness, who make bodies real, who react to body deaths in horror, but whose egos are secretly celebrating the proof that yet another Son of God has been slain.

These truths are underneath the grief and the loss and the horrible aftershocks of "someone dying", and as such remain buried in the minds of most people. These truths are so opposite to "how terrible it is that someone died" attitudes that it would embarrass and likely induce guilt in someone to whom it were revealed. And that's because people who are circling around death like vultures are trying to perpetuate death and keep it going.

Jesus is very clear in A Course in Miracles that this is a course in life, in living, in resurrection, and in the surmounting of death. We are being asked to "swear not to die", and to be so committed to the goal of LIFE, that we completely blot out and make death IMPOSSIBLE. Even that our bodies should enter a state of completely healthy functioning, not merely devoid of sickness but actually INCAPABLE of becoming sick or dead. Where they are locked into health because the mind is healed.

Jesus once told me personally, that the entire purpose of this life, is "to eradicate death in all its forms."

Such a teaching is obviously completely diametrically opposed to death, to sickness, to suffering, and to any kind of pity party about someone's body seeming to come to an end. We're even told that the Holy Spirit will produce a "picture of you" (a body) which has never been hurt or suffered pain in any way, and therefore symbolizes eternal life and immortality, teaching your brothers who look upon it that they are sinless.

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

There is even an entire radical teaching in ACIM about the fact that when you project sin or use the body for attack in any way, the body itself becomes sick. And the body is thus used as a messenger to try to communicate to those who look upon it that they are the CAUSE of its sickness. Thus, a body which is sick, broken, damaged, diseased, or in any way defective, in fact physically ACCUSES others of being sinful. It is what the course calls "a picture of crucifixion", which you show to your brothers in order to condemn them and be contagious in negatively affecting them.

"This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

As a result, Jesus is EXTREMELY clear that any amount of sickness in the physical body at all IS PROOF that the mind HAS NOT been healed. That if there is still physical sickness, there has NOT been a forgiveness. The forgiveness is not REAL, unless it has brought a healing to your body and to the body of your brother. That if the body remains broken, it CONTINUES to accuse your brother of sin, and teaches by double messages. That no-one can learn from this contradictory demonstration because a) mind is claiming to be healed and b) body is proving otherwise. No-one will listen to such a hypocritical assertion.

So basically Jesus is saying that we need to put our money where our mouth is, and we need to become genuinely healed in the mind, SO THAT the body is FORCED to be healthy. And by doing so, we make all physical sickness and death IMPOSSIBLE. So much so, that the body can no longer become sick, be made to be sick, be caused to die against your will, or in any way decay. That it cannot even age and grow old, or become decrepit over time, or malfunction as a result of "natural processes."

Jesus wants us to learn that we are NOT at the effect of death. That we have power OVER death. And in fact that we MUST gain power over death if we are to reach atonement and resurrection. If there is any way, any loophole, any exception, in which the body could potentially still be made to be sick WITHOUT your consent, there is still a power in the separation that can KEEP the son of God in hell forever. The notion that there is a force in the world that can MAKE you die, against your will, is nothing more than a fantasy belief in death and an attempt to GIVE it power over you.

"No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent."

Whether you are an ACIM person or not, if the body is sick, it is simply because the MIND is sick. And if the mind is sick, it projects its sickness onto the body. And therefore the mind has to be healed. And when the main is healed, the mind DOES ALWAYS heal the body. And the body cannot resist this, it cannot maintain its own sickness, it cannot keep dying on its own, and it cannot stop the mind from forcing it to be well. A guiltless mind HEALS the body and makes sickness and death impossible.

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication."

THIS ..,. is what everyone is supposed to be achieving...

"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.""

If you do not reach this state, then you have not reached the resurrection, and you have not finished the curriculum of ACIM. The curriculum of ACIM ends in resurrection, NOT death, and resurrection means LIFE, which is the opposite of death. Anyone who produces sickness in the body HAS in truth CAUSED it to be sick on purpose, for the purpose of hatred and attack and murder, in an attempt to prove that the son of God is guilty and deserves to die. Anyone who HAS died as a seeming "effect" of physical sicknesses such as cancer, HAS NOT HEALED THEIR MIND fully.

So to put it simply, people keep dying because they have not reached resurrection. They keep dying because they keep identifying with the body. They keep dying because they have not fully healed their minds. They keep dying because they are not done with the curriculum. A person can become closer to not dying, for sure, and can still cause death while being mostly healed. But until a person is fully healed the body will be attacked. Only in TOTAL RESURRECTION does a person reach a state in which they can be said to be "fully awake" and able to leave the dream permanently. "A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

In such a state, the body is INCAPABLE of being sick or becoming sick. It cannot rot or decay. It cannot contain cancers or any other malfunctions. In fact, the only way to remove it then is to make it disappear. And this is precisely what Jesus did in his resurrection, causing his body to DISAPPEAR because he recognized it was NOTHING. This happened because recognized that the body IS an illusion of death (separation) and that it was not true. He erased the body and erased the separation in his mind, attaining total resurrection.

We need to drop the idol worship, we need to stop thinking that death is natural and inevitable, we need to stop buying into body identification which is guaranteed to induce grief and loss, we need to stop thinking that death is God's will, we need to stop believing that you OR your body can die as a result of causes outside of your control, we need to question death and recognize it as a lie, and we need to STOP CHOOSING IT. You do NOT have to die!!!

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"To witness sin, and yet forgive it, is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof (a sick body) he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well."

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

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

"Here the curriculum ends."

"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."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing 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."

Jesus "My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. 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. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

Here is an ACIM teaching which many will find controversial or unacceptable. This is often overlooked or disbelieved. Surely it can't be claiming what it's claiming? Let's find out.

Basically, Jesus says that your body must be healed, so that it can teach life and resurrection and innocence to your brothers, in the dream. When it is not healed, it presents a "picture of crucifixion" to him, whose symptoms of sickness or damage actually accuse him of sin. Jesus also states that it is by healing your body, that you PROVE to him that he must be innocent, and therefore your health heals him. This is not figurative or metaphoric.

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

Healing by the way typically means the actual transformation of the mind AND body from a state of sickness to a state of health and wholeness.

"YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real."

How will you attest this? How will you demonstrate, visually, that your brother's sin did not affect you in any way? Only by healing the body of any damage or consequences of sin/attack is this possible.

"How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt?"

So if your brother attacks you, sins against you, seeming to damage your body, and if you maintain the symptoms of attack, these symptoms testify that your brother DID SIN. They prove it, and you hold this proof before him to demonstrate to him, he IS a sinner. Only by forgiving AND REMOVING the signs of attack do you prevent him from having grounds for guilt. He cannot be guilty if his attack DID NOT WORK.

"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."

As the effects of sin/attack are undone, in your mind and body, overlooked by forgiveness, healed, reversed, you prove that sin IS REVERSIBLE. This occurs through a miracle of healing. The undoing of the symptoms proves that he did not sin, he was just mistaken, and there is no evidence to back up his claims.

"LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself."

So you heal your mind, which also heals your body, which OFFERS salvation to your brother, by showing him that because YOU are saved from the effects of sin, SO IS HE. Your healed body testifies to his innocence and TEACHES him that he is NOT a sinner.

Now, you might be skeptical and are wondering, maybe this applies only at a mental level of perception, that you must heal your mind only. But Jesus clarifies, this is not so...

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

He's clearly been talking about the BODY being healed by a miracle, all along. And so yes, he does mean, that the physical body must be healed by a miracle, in order to NOT accuse your brother of sin. You are either accusing your brother of sin or accusing him of innocence, by the depiction of your body, which is a teaching device. You either teach him "I am hurt, therefore you are sinful" or "I am healed, therefore you are innocent."

Jesus goes much further into this teaching by talking about how the body, in a state of sickness, accuses your brother of sinning against you.

"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief."

You send the picture of your human body to your brother, by showing it to him. This bleak picture attempts to suggest, "look what you've done to me." Because you have damage, he must have caused you. Because you are at the effect, he is the sinner. Your symptoms attempt to convince him of his sinfulness.

"And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved."

He elaborates further:

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS."

The human body is a witness. It testifies. It represents something. It symbolizes, either eternal life, or death. What you use it to symbolize, teaches that to your brother. It is a communication device which takes on the form of its message. And so as your body is sick, it is holding sin against your brother.

"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape."

Don't think that sickness is in isolation. It is never "just you" that is sick. It is not "just your body" sitting there sick. There is cause and effect at work. If your body shows effects of sickness, your mind MUST be believing that an EXTERNAL cause put the effects there. This external cause is your sinful brother. By making your body sick, you accuse him of sin. Your body now witnesses to this and attempts to find him guilty. If he looks upon this and believes it, he stands condemned.

"This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him."

What this means is that you deliberately make your own body sick, in order to be ABLE to accuse your brother of sin. You are willing to ACCEPT this broken image, in order to reap the side effect benefits, which is that it assuages YOUR guilt and projects it onto him. You allow some amount of physical suffering SO THAT the "cause" of the sickness can be displaced onto your brother. In your physical sickness, you believe you are now innocent. That your death is caused by the world. You would even go so far as to KILL the body, in order to be able to displace ALL your sin onto another. You believe the payoff is worth it.

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

Jesus is not holding anything back here. He's literally saying that we make our bodies sick in an effort to be contagious. Sickness is an attack, not just on ourselves, but on our brother also. It attempts to come between brothers and prove them different. To separate them. "Arrest the extension of the mind and you foster separation and induce illness." Your physical sickness then becomes a witness to HIS guilt, and the death of your body prove HIS sinfulness. Your death is thus a huge accusation that everyone BUT you is a sinner. That THEY caused you to die, and not you. And all the while YOU put the death in place to accomplish this lie.

In another passage, Jesus says much the same thing.

"Is healing (of the body) frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers."

When the body is damaged, it DOES ACCUSE, beacuse the damage is an EFFECT of external causes. So long as the effects are showing up, physically, they testify that there WAS a cause, and this accuses your brother of sin.

"They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still?"

By the body being sick, it claims that you cannot trust your brother, nor can you be at peace. It gives justification to NOT LOVING your brother. A sick body is a finger you are pointing at others, condemning them to death.

"He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him."

Here Jesus says that you are justified in revenge, because your damaged body shows that you need protection from HIM. And by the way, this is true EVEN IF he did not seem to have ANYTHING to do with your body becoming sick. Your brother is FALSELY accused regardless of his participation.

"To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned."

Here Jesus is basically saying that you might pardon your brother or pity him, on the basis that you think "he did it", but by keeping the sin real, and keeping the effects to prove it, your pardoning of him will induce MORE guilt because he'll feel you are forgiving him for something he DID do, and so he won't be able to believe in his innocence. Your pardoning is a guilt trip.

And here, Jesus gets explicit again that you must remove the sickness.

"The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the CONSEQUENCES of the guilt they overlook."

The consequences are the physical effects, the symptoms and signs, which PROVE "sin happened." So long as the symptoms remain, pardon is UNFAIR and unjustified.

"Yet no-one CAN forgive a sin which he believes is real. And what has consequences MUST be real, because what it has DONE is there to see."

If you can SEE the EFFECTS of sin, symptoms, sickness, damage, then you cannot forgive this. Thus you cannot forgive your brother. Thus he cannot forgive himself.

"Forgiveness is NOT pity, which but seeks to pardon what it knows to be the truth. Good cannot BE returned for evil, for forgiveness does not first ESTABLISH sin, and THEN forgive it. Who can say and MEAN, "My brother, you have injured me, and yet, because I am the BETTER of the two, I pardon you my hurt." HIS pardon and YOUR hurt can NOT exist together. One DENIES the other, and MUST make it false."

If your hurt remains, mentally, emotionally, or physically, your brother is still accused.

"To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof he is not REALLY innocent."

If you retain the proof, ie the body is STILL sick, this MUST imply, that your brother is NOT really innocent. The appearance of "seemingly real sickness" proves, if believed, that he is a sinner.

Jesus now instructs us to REMOVE THE SICKNESS. Get rid of the proof. Cancel the evidence. Demonstrate physically that there is no damage, therefore THERE IS NO SIN.

"The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes. And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own."

"Forgiveness CANNOT be for one, and not the other. Who forgives IS healed. And in his healing (mind and body) lies the PROOF that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing."

Pretty dam literal here. If you hold a picture of crucifixion (crucified, attacked, damaged, sick body) in front of your brother's eyes, you apparently are STILL CONDEMNING HIM. Your mind MUST still be using the body to attack and accuse him. Your mind CANNOT BE HEALED, because it if WERE, it would have healed the body and STOPPED PRODUCING effects, accusations, sickness or death. "The mind, being sane, heals the body."

Not one single trace of condemnation must remain in the body. Sickness is condemnation. And here Jesus is suggesting to you, something very powerful.

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

You PUT the condemnation there, which made the body sick. You can REMOVE IT.

But this goes on to indicate something even more profound. You absolutely MUST remove it if you are to NOT BE CONDEMNING. If your mind is healed, it WILL heal the body. No one in their right mind would CONTINUE making the body sick, if they are teaching and demonstrating harmlessness. And the Holy Spirit CAN ONLY use the body to teach healing by SHOWING that the body is healed. "Thus is the body healed by miracles." The Holy Spirit intends to HEAL THE BODY, so that you can use it to SYMBOLIZE your brother's innocence to him, which teaches him his own belief in sin is mistaken, and heals his mind.

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured."

The holy spirit heals the body and presents a picture (body image) of you, representing your innocence.

"But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

And there it is. He heals your body SO THAT it is a picture of health, a demonstration of having NEVER been hurt, a PROOF that BECAUSE it has no damage, suffering or pain (no symptoms of sickness), it CANNOT be attacked. That YOU have never been attacked, YOU believe in healing, YOU CAN PROVE IT, and you are giving an EXAMPLE for all to see.

"Show THIS 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."

You see, your healed body now becomes a teaching device, for your brothers. HE looks on it, and because of its LACK of damage, he sees only harmlessness and innocence in it. He sees no PROOF of sin. Especially if HE was the one who seemed to attack your body, to put the effects there, the effects are GONE, reversed, undone by the power of the Holy Spirit through miracles. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this." And so this says to him, YOU DID NOT SIN. He sees His forgiveness in YOUR healing, shown to him physically.

"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."

This is powerful, because your healing, your body being healed along with your mind, COMFORTS HIM, and MAKES HIM HEALTHY. It denies HIS belief that he sinned, proves he is mistaken, and proves he MUST be innocent. Your body thus teaches him, "brother, at your hand I live." ie, "you have caused me to be innocent, you have forgiven me, you have healed me, so you too must be innocent, healed, and forgiven."

We can USE the body to TEACH INNOCENCE in this world, by reversing sickness and demonstrating ONLY healing and health. To SYMBOLIZE eternal life, rather than to symbolize death.

"The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ALL signs of accusation and of blamefulness."

"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."

By the body's HEALTH and loveliness, it relays the message of holiness it RECEIVED from the mind, and PROCLAIMS that holiness by REPRESENTING it symbolically.

"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."

Here is why the body is powerful as a testament to eternal life, WHEN used by the Holy Spirit to DEMONSTRATE immortality.

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing 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****."

This is the proper USE of the body to EXTEND HEALING to your brother. This cannot be done while the body maintains sickness. Because if the sickness remains, the mind HAS NOT been healed. There SHOULD NOT BE SICKNESS IN THE BODY.

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. (sickness, death, disease, attack, damage) 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."

You give the miracle you receive. You AND your brother are healed through your healing.

"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."

"Your health is a result of your desire to see your brother with no blood upon his hands, nor guilt upon his heart made heavy with the proof of sin. And what you wish is GIVEN you to see."

Love your brother that YOU AND HIM may be healed together, and both your bodies may testify to the whole world that forgiveness is complete, there is no sin or sickness or death, and nothing can happen against your will.

Resurrections means life. This is a course in returning to the LIVING. The reversal of death in all its forms. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.

A total CURE.

Affirming what is NOT true, and what IS true, can induce miracles.

With regards to sickness for example, you must "cancel" every single perception or belief that suggests the sickness even EXISTS, or any other surrounding beliefs based on that.

e.g. "there is no sickness" "this sickness is an illusion" "I am not sick" "I am not being affected by my body" "my body is not the cause of me" "these symptoms are not real" "this sickness isn’t happening" "I am not caused by pain" "this sickness has no power over me" "Nothing unreal exists" etc

Then, you can switch it around to the affirmative, to emphasize the truth, which should focus squarely on who you are IN TRUTH - your immortal, holy, divine, eternally alive, incapable-of-suffering self, made of love.

e.g. "This sickness has alread gone" "I am free of this" "I cannot be sick because I am immortal" "sickness cannot happen to a son of God" "I must have chosen this myself" "I am responsible for making this sickness" "I choose to be alive" "I am the life of God" "I cannot be attacked" "Nothing real can be threatened" "I am free from this" "I need not suffer" "I am already perfect" "I am as God created me" etc

The important thing here is to always equate anything even slightly short of total immortality with "ego" which is FALSE and NOT true. And to always equate the HIGHEST TRUTH about you with the truth.

Either you are absolutely permanently innocent, safe, healthy, happy and loved, OR anything short of that IS A TOTAL LIE. All you are doing is becoming CLEAR about which is which. Put the true stuff in the TRUTH box, put the bullshit in the FALSE box.

This WILL challenge your beliefs, in order to be EXTREMELY black and white about it. Symptoms, feelings, upsets, suffering of any kind, bad thoughts, mental experiences, whatever... must be categorized strictly. It’s either true, or its false. Nothing in between.

This will challenge you because it means anything short of IMMORTALITY is a lie. Sickness is a lie. Suffering is a lie. Guilt is a lie. Fear is a lie. Sin is a lie. Death is a lie. Symptoms are not real. Suffering is fake. There is NO TRUTH IN IT.

If you want healing and happiness and wholeness, you MUST stretch your mind to CHANGE its beliefs, if it keeps trying to believe that ANY form of suffering is real or true. That means questioning deeply held beliefs about the body, about life and death, about sickness, and about what is real. If you want to go ALL the way to Atonement and Resurrection, every illusion must be RECOGNIZED as false, and the truth must be RECOGNIZED as true.

"Only the truth is true." The truth about you is extremely lofty. You have to be willing to let that be true of you. YOU ARE PURE LOVE. YOU ARE IMMORTAL SPIRIT. YOU ARE NOT A BODY. YOU CANNOT DIE. Embrace it and live forever in happiness and peace.

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.

This is the law of cause and effect. Where there is cause there must be effects. Where there are effects there must be a cause. There cannot be effects without an ONGOING cause. As soon as cause is taken away, effects must vanish. If something is continuing, so is the causing. When the flashlight switches off, there is no light. Wen the flashlight switches on, there is light. It is entirely fiction that causes are moments in time which trigger something and produce a chain of effects which are completely divorced from the original cause. There are no effects unless the original cause is STILL THERE.

Everything is deliberate. Everything is chosen. This is because you always have free will. This can never be violated. If anything is to occur, you must consent to it. Anything you do not choose simply does not happen. Your mind causes all events and effects. Nothing in the world can change you or affect you or decide for you. The body has no ability to choose anything. It is entirely an effect of your mind.

"Your mind makes this decision as it makes EVERY decision responsible for the condition of the body."

"No-one dies without their own consent."

""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 is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

If you are unhappy, you chose to be. If you are sick, you chose to be. If you are dead, you chose to be. If you are healing, you chose to be. If you resurrect, you chose to be. If you are not at peace, you chose to be.

"I must have made a wrong decision because I am not at peace. I made the decision myself."

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

"No one comes to the atonement except willingly."

Just as you choose and cause everything that happens, so too you can choose the opposite.

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo." ... Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees NO differences where none exist, and He will teach you how each one is CAUSED. None has a DIFFERENT cause from all the rest, and ALL of them are easily undone by but a SINGLE lesson truly learned."

"There are no accidents in salvation."

"It is you who has the power to dominate everything you see, merely by recognizing who you are."

The world does not turn without a mind making it turn. Plants do not grow without someone willing it. Bodies do not become sick without a mind using them for attack. Death does not occur without a deliberate intention of suicide. Suffering cannot happen unless you attack yourself.

Literally nothing anywhere eon any level can EVER happen without someone choosing it. Recognize this, take back your power, stop destroying yourself and wake up to freedom.

Consider for a moment, a definition of yourself, in which YOU CANNOT CHANGE. You are absolutely changeless. You exist always the same, fixed, absolute, certain, permanent. Something that never alters, adjusts, transforms. Something incapable of becoming anything, losing anything, having anything taken away from it, or added. Just the same, always and forever, always existing, always being, always you. Same old you since you were created.

Then with this is idea it being IMPOSSIBLE to experience change, consider the contrast this produces to all the forms of suffering in the world. Someone doing something to you, being affected, upset, made to feel this way or that, moved by the wind, affected by the environment, threatened by the politicians and the warmongers, altered by sickness, pushed around by health concerns etc. All of it... all forms of CHANGE. All things which say "I can change you and you will change whether you like it or not."

What are you and where do you stand and how are you able to play any of these games if YOU CAN NEVER CHANGE? If you cannot be changed by anything, you are invulnerable, immortal, eternal. Always perfect, always strong, always beyond the reach of every kind of influence, every force, every attack, every threat to your nature. You cannot change, you have never changed. You remain as God created you and always will be the same. So can you believe you have been changed, caused, forced, yet again, to become something you can never be?

"You were NOT born to die. You CANNOT change, because your Function HAS been fixed by God." UrT29G4

"Can YOU see guilt where God KNOWS there is perfect innocence? You can DENY His knowledge, but you CANNOT change it." UrT13C8

"You cannot be ANYWHERE that God did not put you, and God created you as part of HIM. That is both WHERE you are and WHAT you are. This is COMPLETELY unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change this now or ever. It is forever true. It is NOT a belief, but a fact." UrT6C6

"In the longer practice period, we will think about your reality and its wholly unchanged and unchangeable nature." UrW67L2

"Now He can remind the world of sinlessness, the one unchanged, unchangeable condition of all that God created." UrM19A2

"Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable forever and forever." UrW190L6

"As God created you, you must remain unchangeable with transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind, in all awareness and in all response." UrW152L5

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there. No instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure." UrT30D8

"Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable. What YOU have made can always be changed, because when you do not think LIKE God, you have not really thought at all. Delusional ideas are NOT thought, but you CAN think that you believe in them." UrT5G11

Another word for forgiveness is "honesty". It's to do with admitting to the truth and being clear about what the truth is. This entails surrendering of the ego's motivations and lies and owning up to responsibility and authenticity. But it's also an honesty that goes beyond appearances, physical events, what it looks like happened or who seemed to be the cause. Because, in all honesty, such "truth" is not the truth.

If you are in the middle of some ego tangle, upset emotions flying all over the place, believing that it's caused by someone or something other than yourself, then you're not really being honest. To be honest you'll have to really take a good look at what you're doing any why, and if you can discern and see what it is you're doing, you will have to admit to yourself that you've been deceiving yourself.

A big part of the problem of how to forgive, is that when you're in the middle of a dramatic story you're really quite lost. You've lost track of clarity. You've lost sight of what the truth is. You're deluded and distracted by something big and ominous which *seems* to be the problem but really isn't.

You've pinned the blame or cause for this story onto something that isn't the cause of it. You generally aren't seeing clearly. There's so much going on and so many things which seem to mean something, that it's just all very confusing. This confusion essentially is dishonesty because you've lost touch with the truth and are defending evidence of that which is false.

So really, if you have no other practice, it would be useful to remind yourself from time to time, that you need to get HONEST as quickly as you can. And this honesty involves questioning what you've been doing, how you've been perceiving, what you've been believing, and all the "truth" that you made up that hasn't come from God.

Honesty shines a light to help you see clearly and puts everything into its proper place. It's admitting to what's really happening, admitting to how you feel, admitting to what you're experiencing and admitting to what's really causing it.

When you're upset and its because someone else did something or didn't do something correctly, it's because you've disowned responsibility and are projecting guilt, which is a dishonest act. It's not the other person's guilt or sin. You're passing your sin off onto them and believing they're the cause of it. This is dishonest. It's deceptive.

The person who stands to gain from your honesty is yourself. Owning up to the truth sets you free, aligns your mind to the truth, clarifies what is happening in the situation and helps you to see correctly. When you can see correctly and clearly you get back in touch with the experience that, in truth, you are perfectly happy and at peace and free of all ego suffering.

Honesty is not good for the ego. It's not good for the part of you that wants to keep a story going. It's not good for the part that wants to control and blame and manipulate. It's not good for maintaining a cover or keeping up appearances or putting on a face/persona. It's means revealing what is real, and that means there can be no cover-up.

Where are you being dishonest with yourself, what do you need to own up to and admit to, and are you willing to surrender your support for maintaining lies that are only bringing you suffering?

One time, I was exploring my relationship to the holy spirit and it occurred to me that perhaps I was misunderstanding by presuming he was "separate from me", since I always heard him as a separate voice. And this idea came to me that maybe he was not separate and that this separation between us wasn't there. This seemed harmless enough but this opened me up to the idea that I was now "exposed" to the holy spirit without any defenses or blocks or separations or walls, and my ego did not like that one bit.

The ego in me, which was playing with this idea but not really dropping the deeper walls, interpreted this to mean that the holy spirit had "access" to me (to my ego-identified self) and that this meant he could do anything to me and I would have no defense or way to stop it. I wasn't ready to accept this level of openness without the trust that's needed. I felt that if there was nothing to stop him, the fact he proves there is no ego would dissolve me and was therefore *perceived as* an attack or threat. Of course the holy spirit wasn't doing anything of the sort but that's how I interpreted it.

Instantly, within a split second, and without thinking of it at all, my mind attempted to push him away, or rather, to recoil. To distance myself from him by trying to increase the "gap" between us, trying to hide deeper in the body, and to try to go into denial/resistance/blockage to shut him out. The only defense really was the attempt to block my AWARENESS of him. This happened really quickly and I could really feel this recoil in fear. It's not something I "figured out" it's just something I did automatically. I saw the need for a defense to keep me (my ego self) "safe" from this threat of unity. I actually felt scared of what the holy spirit was going to do to me.

Within an hour, my head became congested, my ears started ringing, they became quite blocked, I was starting to get sinus drainage etc. This came on really quickly. Of course, I did not recognize that I had induced this myself, or chosen it. I was doing what is described here in "sickness is a defense against the truth":

"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.

Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done."

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick that truth may go away, and threaten your establishments no more."

So by the time the hour was up, my BODY was sick. I was not aware I'd caused it or the cause-effect relationship of the event with holy spirit versus what the body was doing. I just thought I was getting sick out of the blue. I started looking ELSEWHERE for causes, wondering if it was something I ate, something I contracted, some emotions coming up, whatever. I then proceeded to suffer with blocked ears, trouble hearing, ringing in the ears, headaches, sinus congestion, for the next couple of days. And you can bet not one single idea of what caused it was related to that event. In effect, the defense is put in place to shut OUT awareness and this blockage causes you to not be AWARE that you CHOSE the defense for this exact purpose to try to make the threat go away.

After a couple days of suffering - and my hearing issues were basically a symbolic representation of "I don't want to hear this truth", I started trying to figure out when it started. I realized that it started right around when I was having that interaction with the holy spirit. And then fortunately I remembered that it had frightened me. And so then I was able to put two and two together and realized that, or at least was open to the possibility, that maybe I had chosen this as a reaction to him. I also was not on "speaking terms" with the holy spirit at this point because I was feeling afraid and did not feel safe or trusting of him, so he hadn't been saying anything.

I started to tentatively realize that I needed to get past this fear. I needed somehow to find a way to re-approach the holy spirit again, without being afraid, having some kind of TRUST, and to find a way to relate to him in terms of that openness to him without it MEANING that I was threatened or under attack. I needed a different way of looking at it so that I wouldn't misperceive our "unity" as a dangerous thing. So I became willing, and I started to try to deliberately trust and to take baby steps towards communicating with him again. And as I did, I was willing to put aside the fear that had been induced.

When I did this, I saw clearly that I had created this defense as a way to try to protect myself and out of fear. And since I could now be willing to more carefully trust the holy spirit and not fear him, it became obvious that I had NO MORE NEED for this protection. Like, it was okay to let down my guard.

Within an hour, all the symptoms vanished completely.

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. "

"There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey."

"Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. "

"No-one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. When this is seen, healing is automatic. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

If someone tries to attack you, they have a problem. They are not sane. They are attacking themselves, but they're doing it in such a way that they think they are attacking someone else. Whatever they accuse you of, they are accusing themselves of.

Anyone who attacks is not in their right mind. No one in their right mind would attack, because they'd recognize that part of themself is in the other, and to attack them is to attack themselves. This is the law of God, the Golden Rule. Also the right minded are not split minded, and do not act against themselves or other.

If someone is attacking you, or it seems like they are, they are not really attacking who you are, they are attacking an image in their mind of what they think you are. And this image is really an image of what they think they are.

They target your body because they are being unforgiving toward themselves, and in this unforgiveness they can't help but focus on the form of objects. This mean they are not really seeing you, your spirit, or your real identity. The target of their attack is themselves, driven by guilt.

It can look like the attack is upon you, because in their dissociated state they separate off the part of their mind that attacks itself and see it as "outside themselves". They attack "it", to try to maintain the split minded state. And in dissociating from it, they tend to associate it with someone other than themselves. And that may seem to be you.

Even if they call your name, even if they speak of you and what you've done to them, even if they hurl abuse at "you", it is really nothing to do with you. Not even remotely.

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

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

So in no way has this attack got anything to do with you at all. It might seem to play out that way, or it might even seem that they physically attack your body as if that really is an attack upon you, but it is still themselves they are trying to attack.

"Let them be as vicious and hateful as they may. They could have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is your dream."When you yourself are not in your right mind, you will attack yourself. You'll accuse yourself of sin and judge yourself harshly. This means you believe it's true that you are guilty.

When this is happening, and if it is happening at the same time as another insane person fighting with their own shadows, you will fail to recognize that their attack is entirely a self attack. You will fail to realize they are calling out for love, and you will think that their hallucinated "attack on you", which is really on themselves, is actually about you.

Since what they accuse you of taps into what you have accused yourself of, you won't be able to discern between the two. This will create a kind of blind-spot in your mind. A block to awareness. And because of the block, you will be deceived. And being deceived you'll "read into" what they're doing, failing to see all of what they are doing to themselves. And due to this lack of recognition, you'll think that some of what they are doing, they are doing to you, and that it's really about you.

Because of your own self attack, you see yourself as vulnerable and affect-able. And you'll see yourself as being able to be accessed by the cause-effect relationships that seem to play out physically. And you will have confused yourself with your body, and now it may seem that because it can be attacked, you can be attacked. And so you're going to take their attempted attack personally as a threat to your identity and existence.

That means you're failing to remember it's your dream, and have entered into dreaming, or a state of greater unconsciousness. And in this state you'll think that someone else "is attacking you" and is "having an effect on you". It's really you having an effect on you, but you confuse it for them being the cause. So you blame them for it.

It can seem as if, what they do triggers pain in you. And its really your own pain that you put there, being raised to awareness. Because it resonates with what they are expressing and agrees with it. And then you'll think they caused the pain in you because it arose when they attacked, but its really your own self inflicted wound that is unhealed, resurfacing in resonance with their insane behavior.

You then are in the position of having to apply forgiveness processes to sort out "what is yours" and "what is theirs". And ultimately this has to lead to the undoing of the self attack, otherwise you won't be able to recognize that the other person was not the cause of your upset. And their innocence can only be recognized if you can see how they are solely attacking themselves.

The blinds spots and blocks to awareness in your own mind have to be removed, otherwise you cannot see the full picture. And without the full picture you can't tell whether what someone is doing is really about you or not. You can't tell your sin apart from theirs. You have to find your own innocence in order to recognize the innocence of others.

Once you do, what seemed like a call for attack, or seemed like an obvious selfish attack upon you, is now recognized as a call for love. It's calling for love because the person is solely interacting with themselves, within their mind, in a private world. And they are attacking themselves, believing it is not coming from them. And they seem to falsely accuse you of it, which you must not buy into, for your sake and theirs.

In recognizing the secret of salvation that people can only attack themselves, and no one ever really attacks anyone else, you take responsibility for your own choices and give them back responsibility for theirs.

Everything they are experiencing they are doing to themselves. Everything you are experiencing you are doing to yourself. And never the two shall meet. People are asking for love, in an attacking way, because they are denying their own love. The only thing that can truly be shared or communicated between you, is love.

Love is joining in peace and recognition. It facilitates sharing and communication and transfer. Without love, the breakdown of communication and separation of mind and relationship ensures that all attack is self contained. Just as trying to will against God disables all will and is an attempt to will nothing, trying to attack places you in a prison in your mind and stops any transfer to others. Attack is always separation between others and self. This happens because God does not will that attack between beings be possible.

No-one is ever affected by anyone else. No-one else is the cause of you. You have not caused anyone else, other than your own creations. And God is the only cause of you and your equal siblings. There has never been an attack on you, by anyone but yourself. And anyone who believes otherwise is not in their right mind.

Imagine you are sitting in a room by yourself. There is no-one else in the room. If you happen to be in a room by yourself right now, all the better.

Now realize, that nothing and no-one outside of the walls of this room has anything to do with what you feel or perceive or think or experience.

There isn't a single thing you are experiencing now or have ever experienced that's got anything to do with anyone outside of the room.

If you are upset about someone, upset by someone, afraid about someone, angry with someone, or whatever... it's not true. You are not upset because of them. You are never upset for the reason you think. There can be no connections or bridges or joins or ways of concluding that what's going on in you or in your room is coming from outside of it.

Now, let's shrink the room down to the size of your body. Your body is a room. You are inside the room. You are the only one inside your room. The walls of the room are the body itself.

Nothing outside of the body itself is causing you to experience anything whatsoever. You are not caused by other people, things in the environment, objects, events, circumstances or anything else. Even the body itself, as the walls of the room, is not the cause of anything you are experiencing.

The body is not the cause of your upset, the body is not the reason you are sick, the body is not making you afraid, the body is not to blame for anything, and the body has never done and never will do anything to you.

Nothing outside of you, and the body IS outside of you, is the cause of anything inside of you. Whatever you are experiencing, it's happening because something inside of you is choosing poorly or is mistaken about something. You must be in a state of attacking your own self from within if you are upset in any way.

Any reactions you are having, about your body or the room or the world or other people, cannot be the truth. Reactions are beliefs that something outside of you is causing you and producing effects in you, thus changing you against your will. Any reaction to anything anyone else is experiencing or doing is an illusion, covering up what you are doing to yourself.

The secret to salvation is that you are but doing this to yourself, whatever it is. It can never be the fault or blame or another person or of your own body. It's you. You need to forgive yourself for what you have not really done. You did not really sin, and God still loves you.

Freedom of Choice > Responsibility > Power > Causation > Effects.

To simplify, think of cause and effect. You are either the cause, or the effect. If you see yourself as the cause, you cannot be an effect. Your casual outpouring is so strong nothing can come at you. If you see yourself as not the cause, you MUST see yourself as being highly affected and therefore ARE an effect of something.

When you project responsibility outside yourself, onto another or the world, you are disowning and giving away your power. You are giving power TO them. You are framing them in your mind as having the power to CAUSE YOU, and to make you have effects. And it will seem these effects are against your will - something you did not choose.

But you are choosing it, because you are using your power to PRETEND to disown your power, you are still using your power to frame someone as having power over you, and the power that you see IN them acting against you IS YOUR POWER. You just are seeing it as though it belongs to someone else and is not a part of you.

You've separated yourself from your power and now your power is seeming to turn around 180 degrees and come back at you in the form of "an alien will", causing you, changing you, defining you, altering you without your choosing. Or so it seems. Because you ARE choosing this. You are choosing to see your power as against yourself, doing things to you. Even if it seems to be being done "through" others vicariously.

This means you're in a position which is rather strange, where you are FIGHTING YOURSELF. Like literally you are taking your power, moving it away from you, turning it around, and then launching it at yourself in an attack mode, causing you to have effects.

Your mind believes the power is out there against you. Your mind ALSO must believe therefore that since you are NOT having the power, you are NOT the cause, you are NOT responsible, you MUST BE AN EFFECT. The belief in being not the cause and being affected go hand in hand.

This means that your mind is putting in place both the framing of something external as "attacking you", AND it is putting in place the SYMPTOMS, physically mentally or emotionally, that you would expect to occur IF that power were acting upon you. Your mind ITSELF, makes up effects, that correspond to the perceived cause.

This literally means your mind makes symptoms in the body, makes up sickness and disease and even death, makes up wounds and heartache, makes up emotional reactions and loss and sadness and anger and hurt, to correspond to the perceived external cause. Not just imagining it, but actually MAKING IT, producing it, putting it into your experience, changing your feelings, changing your body.

This especially happens when you project guilt, in which you are basically projecting responsibility, which is cause. You are saying, I am not the cause of this, you are, and are pointing a finger and hurling guilt at another to try to make it stick to them. But moreso what you are doing is you are trying to give them power and responsibility and will and freedom and choice and causation to have these things INSTEAD of you.

It's rather bizarre then that we literally give power to people, to frame them as capable of attacking us, threatening us, making us afraid, upsetting us, doing things to us. We effectively WANT THEM TO. Even if on the surface we are claiming to be innocent, even if we are feeling that feeling of "I didn't choose this, I don't want this, I didn't ask for it."

You see, that victim perspective in which you feel like you are being unfairly treated, that's the feeling you get when you are becoming "an effect". It's the recognition that you have indeed projected power, cause, responsibility etc, and so see yourself as NOT responsible, NOT the cause, NOT the one using power to make something happen.

In victimhood (ego) you perceive that you are not the cause of what's happening, and you are in denial of this, and having denied it you are projecting it. So now you see cause as outside of you, in someone else, acting upon you, at the same time as NOT seeing that you are causing anything yourself. The denial acts as a barrier blocking awareness of what YOU are doing, that YOU are using power, that YOU are responsible, that YOU are causing this.

It's understandable then that as the victimhood role strengthens, the denial and disownership of power, causation and responsibility increases. You believe less and less that "it's your fault" (guilt-related). You believe less and less that you chose it, wanted it, made it happen, or had anything to do with it. Almost as if you were just minding your own business doing nothing at all and someone came out of the blue and attacked you for no good reason. As if you were just completely innocent (the face of innocence).

And that's simply because the power has been projected. The power has been given away, disowned, you don't want it, and you WANT the other to have it. So you simultaneously have this experience of "I didn't ask for this, how could you do this to me", and "that person is having power over me and is the cause of me." You can't have one part without the other. Just as you can't have a belief in an external cause WITHOUT a belief in having effects as well. "I want you to have my power, please use it against me, and I will pretend I don't want you to."

So we quite literally use the power of our mind to dissociate from our power, we hand it over to all kinds of things out there that HAVE NO POWER, other than us giving it to it in our minds. And then having given it to them, they seem to loom over us and we now fear them and feel powerless and weak and feeble. Unable to go up against such a power, as though we have no power at all. And now we are tempted to see ourselves as unfairly treated.

What we have to recognize of course is the secret of salvation - that we are doing this to ourselves. We have to recognize and own the power and responsibility. We have to take back the power of decision and use it to choose otherwise with the Holy Spirit. We have to stop believing that ANYTHING outside of us HAS OUR POWER, and indeed need to recognize that the power we THOUGHT was theirs is in fact our own. It only seemed like theirs because we disowned it and didn't want it.

So we take our power back. We claim responsibility for causing everything we are experiencing. We acknowledge, I have caused this thing, I have done this to myself, it is not being done by this other person or something in the body or the world, I am not a victim of this, I am not being affected by them, they have no power over me. I own and take back and reclaim my own power which I gave away, and take full responsibility for it. Which means that I must be CHOOSING what happens, I must be CAUSING what happens, and I MUST have caused all of my own suffering.

All my symptoms I put in place myself. All my upset emotions I put in place myself. All my despair and loss and shame and guilt I did to myself. All sense that I'd been attacked or mistreated or shamed or attacked by anyone else was MY MISTAKE in perceiving this wrongly. I did not recognize that I was using my power to pretend to disown my power, and using it to set up others to attack me for me. I didn't realize I was fighting against myself with a divided will. I have been using my power to try to destroy myself, attacking myself, using others to do my bidding, and then blaming them for it.

Ultimately you need to resume your role and position as ruler of the universe. You are the CAUSE of everything you see and feel and think and experience. You are the co-creator with God with unlimited power. What you say happens, what you do not want does not happen. You articulate reality. You CREATE. You cause what happens and you WANT what happens because you chose it. Everything that happens YOU MUST BE CHOOSING. And by the power of your decision you choose NOT TO SUFFER AND TO STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF LIKE THIS.

Indeed, when you realize that nothing at all has been attacking you OTHER THAN YOURSELF, through your mis-use of your power and will, you can find relief in knowing that if you would just stop hurting your own self, stop giving away your power so that you can be indirectly attacked by yourself, stop disowning responsibility for CAUSING, for CHOOSING, you would stop suffering entirely, and forever. Because NO ONE HAS POWER OVER YOU OTHER THAN YOURSELF! And no-one and nothing can ever cause you to suffer, to be sick, or to die without your consent.

"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."

I notice in particular that pretty much anything medical, anything scientific, or anything involving proof in the world, always entails this belief that something external causes something to happen.

It also accompanies the belief that, because the external causes stuff to happen, you can 'fix' the problems you have by carefully selecting which external causes you expose yourself to.

This seems to be a clever ego trick. On the one hand, it says "you are at the effect of external causes and they will destroy you", and then it swoops in with its salvation, saying, "choose an external cause that you prefer, and you will be saved."

Well... its the belief in external causes that's the problem, not whether you're getting the ones you like or the ones you don't like.

Pretty much all medical solutions rely on an external cause, producing effects internally. Really this is a form of attack because it sees the person as a victim. So to the ego, "help" is actually "hurt", and this is why it always has side effects.

I saw a science report just yesterday, on one of the science news websites I sometimes look at, which said, that scientists uncovered the secret to happiness... that happiness is always changing and its never constant so you should be more realistic rather than hoping to be happy all the time. I was like...well... that's depressing.

The course holds out a promise of permanent, constant, unwavering happiness that never changes. But to the ego (ego-based science) that's absolutely an alien and impossible idea.

Happiness comes from within from extending God and being free of all forms of ego suffering, which ALL come about when causality is separated from your self and seen as outside of you attacking you or causing you or affecting you either positively or negatively.

Externally-caused "desirable influences" or magic or medicines or therapies or whatever else, are no different in their psychological damage to external attacks, enemies, victimizers and threats.

This is why there is no such thing as a perfect diet. All dependency on external food, water, air, etc is set up by the ego to be a lose-lose situation no matter what. All foods, if they affect you at all, victimize you, and they all have side effects. And none of them cause health.

I am not at the effect of the world I see.

I am not a victim of the world I see.

It is the world I see that is impossible.

The world holds no causes, being but an effect.

There is nothing the world can do to hurt you or make up ill or weak or upset or afraid.

You are a cause, not an effect.

We need simply to learn how to stop being affected by illusions of causality, and return to a state of being only the cause of everything.

In the course, we know that Jesus tells us how we project stuff out and then perceive it. Okay, makes sense. But for the most part, it makes sense at the level of you as an individual perceiving "the world out there" in a certain way, that you've got stuff "inside your mind, inside your body", which you're putting onto the world.

And then we think that the course is also telling us to "change our mind about the world", meaning, the world stays as it is, and we need to "see it differently." This is because we apply it at the level of an individual, assuming the world got there through some other means.

BUT HOW ABOUT THIS.......*roll up your sleeves*

The Son of God is dreaming the entire physical universe. He is PROJECTING IT. He is doing so using the power of his mind, which has within it the power to perform miracles.

HE projects and makes the world appear. HE then perceives what he has projected. Therefore, if HE changes HIS MIND, about what he has projected, the projected world WILL LITERALLY CHANGE FORM, PHYSICALLY!

Not your "view of the world". THE WORLD ITSELF WILL CHANGE. A direct power of the mind over matter, a power to make anything appear AT WILL. Not you shifting your little private perspective to "see it differently".... but your mind, actually CAUSING THE WORLD TO CHANGE, by projecting A DIFFERENT WORLD! AT THE PHYSICAL LEVEL!

With this viewpoint in mind, consider, that maybe when you read statements about perception, projection, what you see, the world you see, and what changes or shifts when you change your perception, MAYBE... you read it in a certain context thinking it was about your view OF the world, and didn't realize it was talking about YOU MAKING THE WORLD LITERALLY CHANGE WITH YOUR MIND. And what if we revisit those statements and consider them from this new perspective?

Here we go...

"Projection makes perception. The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you."

---- How about this.... "the world you see" means the physical earth and NOT your interpretation of it.

---- "what you have put there to see" is because YOUR MIND has literally projected PHYSICAL OBJECTS, in order to see them.

"The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition."

--- How about this... "witness to your state of mind, and outward picture of your inward condition", literally means, THE PHYSICAL FORMS THAT ARE SHOWING UP, are being put there by your mind! They reflect what's going on inside of you. This relates to YOUR BODY, as well as to objects in the physical environment. Your body shows up as a representation of how your mind is expressing (love or attack), and SO DOES THE ENVIRONMENT. The environment is being projected this way BY THE SON OF GOD who is responsible for putting all of the content into the world, all objects, all forms. You are PROJECTING THE WORLD LITERALLY, not just as a metaphor, nor anything to do with you having a "separate" perception of what is out there.

--- How about.. projection makes perception, actually means, you FIRST PUT OBJECTS INTO THE WORLD, then you perceive them! NOT... that you project mental interpretations ONTO the objects and perceive the interpretations! What if, changing your mind, literally will show up as a DIFFERENT WORLD OF FORM? What if you will project a different earth?!

"As you think so do you perceive. So do not seek to change the world but choose to change your mind about the world's reality. What you perceive is a result, not a cause."

--- How about this... "what you perceive is a result, not a cause", tells us that what we see, in any form of seeing, is not causality, because THERE IS NO CAUSE IN THE WORLD. What we see out there, objects, cars, people, houses, trees, is the RESULT of what we WANT TO BE OUT THERE.

--- How about, our minds are so powerful and strong, and creative, they are capable of, and ARE ALWAYS, projecting images of bodies and trees and houses and other stuff, literally MATERIALIZING MATTER, based on the inner content of our mind!

--- How about, when Jesus tells us to not to seek to change the world, he is ACTUALLY telling us, that there's no point changing the RESULT of what we project, we MIGHT AS WELL JUST PROJECT SOMETHING ELSE. Since we have the ability to PUT objects out there, which we then perceive, we might as well just change our mind about what to PUT THERE, and therefore change the content of the world! Changing your mind "about the world" therefore means to shift what you WANT TO SEE, and so be it, IT WILL APPEAR!

"That is why no miracle is harder than another."

--- How about this... miracles demonstrate that nothing in this world is caused by anything but your mind, and they are only effects, projections, from YOU, and nothing would even be showing up OUT THERE if YOU weren't putting stuff there with your mind right now, as you have been all along. Your body, your world, your environment, are all coming from the miracle-minded son of God. Therefore, just as miracles can EASILY CHANGE what is out there, so too do you have the ability to CHANGE THE WORLD by USING A MIRACLE, and there is no limit to what you can do.

Perhaps then, Jesus isn't so much teaching us here, in this context, about changing "how we view" the world or what ways we're misinterpreting it and so on. How about, if he is actually telling us that what's showing up out there, is COMING FROM US AT ALL TIMES, and we are supposed to be in a position of having this kind of mastery, where we can CHOOSE, whatever it is that is going to show up, BECAUSE we are miraculous and our mind has POWER OVER ALL MATTER?!

We are supernatural. We are not bystanders in a world that someone else made.

Jesus goes onto say similar things in other quotes, which COULD also lend themselves to an entirely new interpretation of how we project the world, rather than talking about how you "interpret" what's there.

For example:

"The world you see is an illusion of a world." (literally the world itself, not HOW you see it)

"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up." (literally you invented the physical objects themselves, not HOW you see them)

"Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see. It is with your thoughts then, that we must work, if your perception of the world is to be changed." (literally your thought MAKES THE WORLD, the PHYSICAL PLANET, and therefore you need to change your mind in order to SEE something else!)

"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see and all the world must change accordingly. Ideas leave not their source. " (the physical planet IS NOT THERE UNLESS YOU WISH IT TO BE. Change your mind about WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE, and the world - planet earth - physical matter, WILL CHANGE ACCORDINGLY!)

"The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that." (you literally see only the world that YOU PUT THERE IN FORM, nothing to do with "how you interpret what's there" at all)

"The world you see does not exist." (the world you see means the physical EARTH, and it does not exist. This has NOTHING to do with YOUR INTERPETATIVE PERCEPTION *OF* it)

"Perception selects, and makes the world you see." (you choose what you want to see and project the forms! then you see them)

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt" (because people made mad with guilt have PROJECTED FORMS which symbolize and represent madness, making a dysfunctional planet!)

If we interpret all these kind of statements from a perspective of YOU CAUSING EVERYTHING, and not from a perspective of "the world is out there objectively on its own and I need to change how I interpret it)... it lends an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT meaning to the MIRACLE WORKING which Jesus is trying to teach us to perform!

What if all along, Jesus has been trying to get us to change our mind, SO THAT we project a different world? A happy dream? So that we "cause" a state of peace on earth temporarily? Literally, in manifestation? What if we were never supposed to think of our perceptual changes as "reinterpretations of whats out there" but simply as, undoing our self attack so that we PROJECT a different world?

Is this not what Jesus is teaching when he tells us, that how you use the body, it will become to you? That if you use it for attack, it will SHOW UP WITH SICKNESS? That if you use it for love, IT WILL SHOW UP AS INVULNERABLE? That are we supposed to be DEMONSTRATING IN THE FLESH that we cannot be hurt, because the MATTER that we project can be made incapable of being caused by the world? Because it's coming from our mind? THAT WE LITERALLY, DIRECTLY, ARE DREAMING IT ALL?!

Sometimes things go terribly, terribly wrong. And this wrongness compels you to seek and try to find answers as to why it went wrong. And if the thing is really, really wrong, you will not be able to find answers. And you'll keep looking and looking and completely FAIL to come up with a wholly satisfying truth.

And eventually with enough failure, not for want or trying, you will perhaps start to realize that you are not finding truth because THERE IS NO TRUTH in this illusory problem, and this problem is not REAL.

Failure therefore can lead you to awakening, and can be a blessing, because it shows you very very clearly how utterly ridiculous the ego is, how obviously un-God like the world is, how completely opposite to God this experience is, and that therefore this CANNOT be what God wills.

This then gives you a powerful contrast, in which on the one hand you have a sucky life filled with disaster which seems to beg you to die, and on the other hand, there is God, who is pure love, who could not possibly have wanted this for you.

One of them must be true. They cannot both be true. So which is it going to be? Is your world of failure and loss and tragedy and despair and wrongfulness the truth, meaning that love is false? Or is love the truth? And if love is the truth, what does that say about all of this failure and fault? Either bad stuff means there is no God or that God doesn't give a shit, OR, it means it CANNOT BE REAL *because* God is loving.

So when shit happens and things go wrong it can be a very painful experience BUT it can also lead you so much failure and impossibility that it starts to become clear to you that it CAN'T be really happening.

When horrible things happen and people say "I can't believe this is happening"... indeed... it is a dream, and it is not happening. But then people quickly forget just how UNREAL the problem is and start to take it seriously, as though this "reality" of the problem overtakes their initial KNOWING that this cannot be reality. We need to keep in touch with that.

This world is not real and everything that happens here is driven by the ego. It is not made by God. And it is not really happening.

The answer isn't to the question "why is this happening" or "what caused this".... to which there is no satisfying answer (similarly, why did the tiny mad idea happen - no answer).... but simply that the REAL ANSWER is the UNDOING of the question, which is the Holy Spirit, which is God's answer to the ILLUSION that anything has gone wrong at all.

Nothing has gone wrong because God is the truth. And this truth is the source of miracles.

Here's something that is very radical to many people. And this will sound crazy and ridiculous. But here is a fact.

Anything that seems to happen in this world is taking place in a dream, has NO REAL CONSEQUENCES, and does not cause anything to really happen. Ever!

Mind... "It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen (ANYTHING YOU DO) never has occurred, the changes wrought (sins you commit) are substance-less, and all events (every consequence you seem to cause, ANYTHING that occurs) are nowhere."

Sin occurs in this world, through the body. "The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

And this means, any SIN that you committed here, through your body, anything you DID TO SOMEONE, anything that you "hurt", any damage you inflicted, anything you CAUSED here, any mistakes you made, any names you called people, any arguments you had, any attacks you perpetrated, anything murderous you committed, any crime, any hateful relationship, any accusation, ALL OF IT... HAS NOT HAPPENED IN REALITY.

This leads to a simple fact, relating to your HEALING. A REQUIREMENT for healing, remembering that only the ATONEMENT can be said to truly CURE you of this sense of "I sinned"....

YOU WILL NOT be able to LET GO of WHAT YOU DID IN SPACETIME, UNTIL you are able to recognize, believe, and accept, that you DID NOT DO what you think you did.

This truth flies in the face of everything that your senses are telling you. It flies in the face of all evidence, all proof, all consequences. It flies in the face of the ramifications, fallout, consequences, chain reactions, effects, and all outcomes that seemed to be set in motion "because of what you did".

It literally means that you MUST DENY, WITH TRUTH, that you DID what you think you did. You MUST DENY all of the consequences and all "proof". This is where it becomes radical and seemingly ridiculously crazy, because in order to accept the ATONEMENT truth that THERE IS NO SIN, or that NOTHING HAPPENED, you HAVE to IGNORE all of this so-called "evidence".

In fact, you have to get your mind to the point where you recognize that "what you did" (sin) in space and time, in the past, or what you are doing now, IS NOT HAPPENING and DID NOT HAPPEN IN REALITY. Because this world IS NOT REALITY. This world has to BE not reality, IN ORDER FOR the atonement to be true. Because you can't be accepting that what bodies do is REAL and expect to escape from sin. It's impossible!

You MUST not believe in anything that has happened in this world otherwise EVERYTHING that "has happened" is the literal unquestionable, irreversible sinful truth. If bodies and what bodies DO is real or has any truth in it, it CANNOT be undone. If bodily activities have REAL consequences, real effects, the body is CAUSAL. Which makes sin real. Anything the body does is effectively sin, even breathing. It must be recognized as NOT REAL otherwise sin becomes real.

The body and its sins were the entire device by which we TRIED TO MAKE SIN REAL. We made bodies in order to have something to attack WITH. Bodies attacking bodies, sinning against bodies. We made bodies in order to try to prove that SINS HAPPEN. That sins produce PROOF and EVIDENCE that "something happened". Something you can look at with the body, and point to with the body's finger, and label as "THAT EVIDENCE PROVES THERE WAS A SIN". The world's entire "legal" system is based on this lie.

So it's very radical but until you can get to the point where you recognize and correctly frame your DEEDS as "DID NOT OCCUR IN REALITY"... that NOTHING REAL was threatened, that reality has not been hurt or damaged or caused BY you, you will find that you CANNOT LET GO. You won't be able to let go of a feeling of guilt, inferiority, unworthiness, shame, fear etc. In fact, until this is accepted fully and completely we cannot let go of death.

The atonement CURES. FULLY! It literally ERASES all trace of sin and death and makes them IMPOSSIBLE. And "only atonement can be said to cure." It is a REAL CURE, because it uproots the ENTIRE "event" that you think happened. It recognized, AS FORGIVENESS, that what you think you did YOU DID NOT DO, IT DID NOT HAPPEN, IT WAS NOT REAL, IT DID NOT TAKE PLACE IN REALITY, YOU DID NOT SIN AND THERE ARE NO CONSEQUENCES. And therefore, you MUST STILL BE INNOCENT.

This leads to the recognition, and acceptance, and allowance, that GOD STILL FINDS YOU INNOCENT, and therefore that God still loves you! That you ACCEPT GOD'S TRUTH. You will ONLY be able accept the love of God by accepting that you have NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG. Any belief that you sinned, you will hold as PROOF that you CANNOT BE LOVED because you find yourself unworthy of love, because you are not innocent enough. You will reason that God DOES NOT, SHOULD NOT, AND CANNOT love you, because you "really did sin". And "real sin" IS a belief in unforgiveness. Not merely the belief that you DID something, but also the belief that IT CANNOT BE UNDONE.

**MIRACLES** are the movement towards forgiveness, as atonement, which UNDOES what the world of sin testifies can never be undone. This DIRECTLY ties into the fact that you MUST DEMONSTRATE THE ABSENCE OF PROOF OF SIN in order to TRULY believe and live the truth that you did not cause sinful effects. TRUE forgiveness heals the mind, AND ERASES THE EVIDENCE. Proof that "it happened" cannot remain. In the acceptance that you DID NOT DO what you think you did, you are setting in motion the UNDOING of the consequences. The Holy Spirit HAS the power to undo ALL the consequences of your sinful decisions if you will let him.

To set yourself free from GUILT, you MUST accept the CURE of the atonement. You must accept that you DID NOT SIN. Not that you "did something but it wasn't sinful". But rather that you WERE MISTAKEN TO BELIEVE THAT YOU DID IT AT ALL! Yes, this means you must accept that it did not really OCCUR. That any "occurrence" was A DREAM. It was an ILLUSION of a sin "happening". It did NOT HAPPEN in reality and so did not really happen at all. What your BODY told you HAPPENED was a LIE! This requires you to QUESTION even your OWN EVIDENCE, even your MEMORY, even lingering "physical proof", that seems to "tell you" that you really DID do something that you can't deny.

YOU MUST DENY THAT SIN HAPPENED. Sin is impossible! You must deny that you ever DID anything here at all. We are ONLY dreaming of a made up fantasy world in which MADE UP FANTASY STUFF seems to happen. NONE of it is really happening. NO ONE IS GUILTY. NO ONE HAS **EVER** SINNED. All sin is an illusion and a lie. EVERYONE IS PERMANENTLY INNOCENT. Accepting that is the ONLY way to become WILLING TO LET THE SIN GO, because only by recognizing it WAS NOT REALLY SIN will you ALLOW yourself to forgive yourself.

Accepting your innocence is your goal and it will HEAL YOU and set you FREE FROM ALL SUFFERING. This is why accepting atonement is your number one responsibility. It is the only act that FINALLY WORKS. ONLY accepting atonement can truly CURE YOU! It has the power to undo sin and death and restore your IMMORTALITY.

YOU ARE INNOCENT AND HOLY FOREVER. GOD CREATED YOU INNOCENT AND HOLY FOREVER. Accepting that this is TRUE, CURES the separation.

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone (anything you DID!). 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 ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. 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."

"***Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred*** (HAS NOT OCCURRED!!!). It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees ***there was no sin*** (YOU DID NOT DO ANYTHING EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU DID!!!) And in this view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God."

"I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.

I do not feel guilty, because ***the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him***.

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

"Forgiveness is the only gift I give because it is the only gift I want, and everything I give I give myself. This is salvation s simple formula."

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF."

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins."

As I learn that any upset I feel is entirely self created and internal and nothing to do with anything else, I begin to experience a strangely unexpected disconnection between what seems to happen and how I react.

I can see that things happen externally, and perhaps they trigger internal reactions initially, but if I work on those reactions or realize they are just some old unhealed junk surfacing in my awareness, and I heal it, I am then restored to a more peaceful happy state even in spite of the fact that the external situation may still be the same.

And so this shows me that there are kind of two things running simultaneously. There's the external story, the world, showing pictures of things happening. And then there's this internal story or dialog, this inner reactive ego response, which runs alongside it. The ways that I am attacking myself, and then USING the world as a scapegoat.

As I practice ownership of my inner experience and see myself responsible for choosing and causing it, rather than making a false ego causal connection between "what I feel" and "what is happening outside", the two previously merged stories are peeling away from each other. Whereas before I thought that my upset goes hand in hand with a given situation, it is suddenly evidence that the two are not connected.

They no longer completely coincide and I now see myself sometimes moving outward to join with the external story but then flowing back inward again to pull away from it. If I identify with the "what's happening out there" story, I lose myself and react to it. But if I recall that I'm doing this all to myself internally, and ideas leave not their source, and any reaction in me I have chosen to reinvent myself, the whole sense of being "caused by" the world diminishes.

Where there used to be simply a total confusion and distraction and immersion and absorption into the hierarchy of illusions, all of the effects the ego dream would suggest I have, and its entire script for what I "should" be experiencing as a result, there is now an intermittent but increasingly wide divide between "what the dream is doing" and "what I am doing to myself."

If I am being triggered a lot by some situation that is ongoing, but then I recognize the triggered reaction is a re-emergence of a prior condition of self attack in my mind, my own accusation of myself as sinful, and I work on that and undo it, and it goes away, and the external situation just continues in its normal form but without triggering me, I see that there is a definite difference between me and "it".

It's as if, we don't just become body identified, we become world identified. We believe that *everything* external to the mind, which includes the body, has become the storage place and cause of all the stuff we are experiencing. We bind with it, just as we bind with the body in pain. We fail to separate out what is the dream and who is doing the dreaming. It's like an attempt to be one with the dream, to merge with it, and to fail to recognize it is not dreaming you.

If I think the world is dreaming me and causing me, I'm going to go out of my mind and connect my sense of who and what I am to whatever the world suggests I should be, based on that causality. If I let the dream dictate everything I experience, I am now in a constant victim role. As I continue to believe that I'm at the effect of the world, I cannot separate out what is happening within me versus what is really causing it. Because the world is not really the cause at all, and I'm doing this all to myself from within, to within.

I have to learn to recognize that whatever is going on inside me, whatever feelings or upsets or experiences or beliefs I'm having, not one single one of them is the result of the external dream world. There is not a single cause in the world with the power to do anything to me, as an invulnerable, immortal being. And that means learning to stop having this symbiotic merging of identity with the world, where I plug myself into the external illusion and allow it to trample all over me under the belief that it CAN and IS doing so.

I have to learn that nothing I experience is caused by anything but my innermost self. And if I am upset, I must address what I am doing to myself. And if someone *seems* to trigger me, I have to not accuse them of causing what comes up because they did not put it there, I did. And I would then thank them for bringing it to my attention. And so I must then recognize, if it weren't for me hurting myself, accusing myself, upsetting myself, I would NEVER be hurt, accused, or upset. An in fact as Jesus says, "you cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

It actually isn't really so much a matter of what the world has been doing TO ME. It's more in fact a matter of what I have been doing TO THE WORLD. I have been putting MY self-accused sins ONTO the world and have been attacking it and using it as a scapegoat to blame for causing the very things *I* have been doing to myself! The world has not been guilty at all, it's been innocent the whole time. And it's my own inner conflict that has been playing out projected and disassociated externally, to make it SEEM as if it's not part of me or in my mind or anything to do with me. I then get away with blaming the world for everything I do not like about myself.

MY task now is to step back, out of the drama I am causing, out of the rollercoaster of reactions and suffering that I'm producing based on what I've done to myself and tried to accuse others of, and constantly correct the "spilling over" of my inner wounds onto the world. Indeed I am to take off of the world all of the shite that I have been dumping onto it through my egoic projections of self attack.

All the guilt, sin, fear, unworthiness, shame, whatever.... if I address it as an internal scenario that I am doing to myself, NOT caused by anything or anyone else, and it is addressed honestly and correctly within my mind, then gradually I'm lifting off of the world all of this inner baggage that I was associating or attaching to it. And that means the world itself, the dream, is going to be recognized more as not really the cause of anything.

In this way, gradually the world becomes forgiven, in the sense that it is seen WITHOUT my inner content projections. As I stop seeing inner junk "out there", what was behind the junk - the illusory world onto which I projected more illusions - the illusory world is "revealed" more for simply what it is and not what I was making of it. Without my sins being projected, and without having any sins, I cannot see sin IN it.

The guilty meanings I was projecting onto it, the causality I was accusing it of, the sense of vulnerability and stress and suffering that I thought IT was responsible for causing but which I was doing to myself backwards, are no longer seen as "coming from" the world or from anyone else, but myself. It's all an inside job. And it's really me that needs the forgiveness, having accused myself of things that are untrue of my perfect divine holiness.

If I am wounded, by my self attack, I will project my wounds all over the place, bleeding out onto the world a blackness of self hatred. This will cloud my perception of the world and render it dark. As I heal the inner wounds, within, where the problem really is, in my mind, I can no longer have anything TO leak out onto the world. The world simply becomes automatically "forgiven", not because it did anything, but through simply being able to SEE what is there as the world, through self-forgiven eyes, rather than seeing THROUGH the old lens of sin and guilt.

As such, the world becomes uncovered, released, "saved" from me, from my projected self attack. And without a log in my own eye, I no longer HAVE sin in my mind TO attempt to displace onto external figures. And without this sin blocking my vision, I become more able to simply see the world for what it is, without all of the sin guilt and fear dumped onto it or filtering it. And without this angry dark content, perhaps the world is filled with light.

We're told that as we progress with this, the "real world" will become more visible to us. That is, the world we made, but without judgement, projection, disassociation, displacement, or all the other forms of disowned self attack masking it. Without this content, its forms seem less inherently meaningful. Without putting these dark meanings onto the world, the world IS meaningless. It is also neutral, and in a way pure, because it is nothing.

The world, in its "reality", or rather, seen "as is", is just a picture, without sin or guilt or fear or death projected onto it. It just stands like a thin veil before the face of Christ. It has no meaning of its own, because God only creates meaningful worlds and He did not create this. It is not dark. Or alive. Or dead. Or holy. Or sinful. In fact it can become more seemingly beautiful, as the inner beauty begins to look upon itself and shine outwards, illuminating the picture rather than attacking it. And as such the "real world", the forgiven world, begins to show up in awareness as a reflection of your OWN holiness projected onto a NEUTRAL canvas.

While the world in its physicality and form is "false perception", in which the forms are only focused on as part of seeing falsely and dwelling on separations, guilt and death, as perception rises toward the light within, looking first within and then looking outward, the forms are overlooked. They don't define anything quite so strongly as before. They don't separate off with harsh boundaries and walls. They become less solid, less heavy, less dark. They loom with less weight and seem to have less substance or meaning. As if they are not there, because they aren't, being just illusions.

The world becomes lighter, within, and seen without, as the dream seems to turn to a happier dream, where the unhappiness that was in you is no longer added to it. Where happiness returns to the mind and the world is seen as not containing any real sin or guilt - because the mind has none to project onto it. You can only look upon yourself. If you are love you see love in everything because the world is not real or evil. If you are guilty, you see guilt in everything and the world seems like hell. By forgiving yourself and restoring heaven to your mind, the world can be but a reflection of heaven to you.

The world without your guilt is the forgiven world, shining and sparkly and new. Still an illusion, yes. Still neutral and meaningless, yes. It is still nothing at all. But now the meaningfulness of love - God's will - is projected and seen within it, rather than darkness. This makes the world seem "lovable". Not because it is love or made of love, but because you can see only the love BEYOND it and can do nothing else. And God does love the world we made. This love, seen in it, is its only reality, and in the intensity of this love, all of the forms melt and disappear. Because the love is deeper than the forms and lives between the lines.

When eternity finally shines away the world, all its forms have vanished, everything has fused into oneness, love has erased death and the nothingness of the world of bodies ceases to exist. Without separation there are no forms. In light, there is no darkness. And in love there is no fear. All that remains beyond this disappearing world is heaven. Love looks upon itself. Christ looks upon Himself. And then God is known in completion.

"When you think you are projecting what you do NOT want, it is still because you DO want it. This leads directly to dissociation"

"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. YOU CAN DECIDE TO SEE IT RIGHT. What you made of it is NOT its reality, for its reality is only what you GAVE it. You cannot really give anything but love to anyone or anything, nor can you really receive anything else from them. If you think you have received anything else, it is because you have looked within, and thought you saw the power to give something else WITHIN YOURSELF. It was only this decision that determined what you found, for it was the decision of what you SOUGHT."

"You are afraid of me because you looked within, and are afraid of what you saw. But you could not have seen reality, for the reality of your mind is the loveliest of God's Creations. Coming only from God, its power and grandeur could only bring you peace, IF YOU REALLY LOOKED UPON IT. If you are afraid, it is because you saw something THAT IS NOT THERE. Yet in this same place you could have looked upon me and all your brothers, in the perfect safety of the Mind that created us. For we are there in the peace of the Father, Who wills to project His peace through YOU."

"When you have accepted your mission to PROJECT peace, you will FIND it. For by MAKING IT MANIFEST you will SEE it. Its holy witnesses will surround you, because you CALLED upon them, and they will come to you. I have heard your call, and I have answered it, but you will not look upon me, nor hear the answer which you sought. But that is only because you do not yet want ONLY that. Yet as I become more real to you, you will learn that you DO want only that. And you will see me as you look within, and 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."

"As you decide, so will you see. And all that you see but witnesses to your decision. When you look within and see me, it will be because you have decided to manifest truth. And as you manifest it, you will see it both without AND within, for you will see it without BECAUSE you saw it first within. Everything you behold without is a judgment of what you beheld within. If it is YOUR judgment, it will be wrong, for judgment is not your function. If it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit, it will be right, for judgment IS His function. You share His function only by judging as HE does, reserving no judgment at all unto yourselves. For you will judge AGAINST yourselves, but He will judge FOR you."

Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy, and have condemned yourself to death. The death penalty is the ego's ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving of life. The death penalty never leaves the ego's mind, for that is what it always reserves for you in the end. Wanting to kill you, as the final expression of its feeling for you, it lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the only one with which it will be satisfied."

The "secret of salvation" is simply the recognition that, if you are suffering in any way, you must have done it to yourself. No-one else could have done it to you, because you are immortal and invulnerable.

Paired with this realization is the recognition that, therefore, the world and its inhabitants cannot have been the cause of anything you are experiencing. So if you are upset, you must've done it yourself. But let's go even deeper with this. The real truth behind the secret of salvation, is that you are a permanently immortal being that can never change. You have been created to last forever and to never waver or be different. It is impossible for anything to happen to you in truth, whether seemingly caused by another person or the world or even yourself.

If you are truly immortal, no-one and nothing can affect you. There are no causes that can have power over you. There are no forces or wills that can oppose you or act upon you. There is nothing anywhere that can change you even slightly. Nothing can redefine you or manipulate you or force you into a different state. Nothing can upset you or disturb you or make you sick or dead.

The secret of salvation suggests that if you are seeming to suffer in any way, it can't be that anyone or anything ELSE other than yourself is to blame. YOU must have done this to yourself. But it is also true that in reality, even you do not really have the power to destroy yourself in any way. You cannot change what God created you to be. But you can BELIEVE that you have.

So if you are suffering, you must have entered into a mistaken BELIEF, that you have stopped being as God created you, you have forgotten who you really are, you have lost touch with your immortality, and are now suggesting that you are MORTAL. And in this mindset of mortality, you are now having FANTASIES about causes of distorted mental states in which you seem to suffer. You inflict suffering upon yourself and your body while pretending it is caused by something else.

The purpose of the secret of salvation therefore isn't just to point out that all suffering is self inflicted, but to point you BEYOND the suffering to the fact that you are an immortal being. The ultimate "secret" behind the secret of salvation, is that you HAVE NOT changed, you ARE NOT suffering, you ARE NOT sick, and you CANNOT die.

Any states in which you seem to suffer must be an illusion. Any forms of sickness must be a fantasy in the mind. Any bodily ailments or states must be fictional. Any unhappiness or disturbed peace or stress or nightmares must be of your own making. But even these, even all forms of suffering and destruction cannot ACTUALLY affect who you really are. They must be dreams and fantasies of mortality and of impossibilities.

What God has put together, no man can put asunder. In other words, since God has GIVEN you eternal life in your creation, you are endlessly perfect and cannot be "put asunder" ie destroyed. Not even you can destroy yourself, although you can believe that you are by CONFUSING yourself with something that is NOT yourself and trying make it look destroyed.

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

Recognize clearly that this says you ARE NOT sick. If you seem to be sick, the sickness cannot be true, and it cannot exist. It only appears to exist because you believe in it and are maintaining it with your mind, doing it to "yourself". And your identification with the body makes it appear to be YOU who is sick. But you are immortal and can NEVER be sick. Even underneath the sickness you are unharmed.

So we are to not only recognize "you are doing it to yourself", we are to STOP doing it to ourselves and move into KNOWING ourselves. Moving out of "I am mortal and I can suffer" into "I am immortal and I cannot suffer." Our whole problem is that we keep trying to be mortal, we keep trying to die, we keep trying to be sick, we keep trying to attack ourselves and play at being victims.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."

Jesus is literally saying that we as immortal beings are playing a game of death. Pretending to die, pretending to suffer, to be weak, to be unhappy, to be lost and attacked, to be hurt, to be temporary and destructible, to be offended and upset, to be vulnerable and threatenable, and to be anything less than permanently invulnerable. We are pretending to be mortal beings. And all of our blame of people and the world is just a cover-up for our suicidal ambitions.

We must choose eternal life again in order to stop pretending to be something that can suffer and die. To fully live is to live without suffering, sickness, fear or death. To live completely is to life forever. And to do this we must reclaim our immortality and stop pretending to be mortals.

"Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."

"Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

This is our only issue. We are immortal beings pretending to be mortal. We need to identify clearly the many forms that "mortality" takes. The belief in death is also "I am upset by that person", and "they did this to me", and "I am sick", and "i am unhappy", and "there is reason to be afraid", and "my body is damaged", and "I cannot forgive them", and so on. Everything in the world is a form of death and the belief in death. And we need to learn to stop playing these games, stop participating in these activities, stop believing in these roles, and stop using them to try to prove that we are destructible.

If you want to not die, to never suffer pain, to never be sick, to never be unhappy, to never have your peace disturbed, to never be afraid or threatened, to never lose or grieve or feel guilty, then you need to enter into FORGIVENESS, which is the acknowledgement that you are still as God created you, there is no sin, there is no attack, nothing real can be threatened, and you are still eternal.

"What could you want forgiveness cannot give? Do you want peace? Forgiveness offers it. Do you want happiness, a quiet mind, a certainty of purpose, and a sense of worth and beauty that transcends the world? Do you want care and safety, and the warmth of sure protection always? Do you want a quietness that cannot be disturbed, a gentleness that never can be hurt, a deep, abiding comfort, and a rest so perfect it can never be upset?

All this forgiveness offers you, and more. It sparkles in your eyes as you awake, and gives you joy with which to meet the day. It soothes your forehead while you sleep, and rests upon your eyelids so you see no dreams of fear and evil, malice and attack. And when you wake again, it offers you another day of happiness and peace. All this forgiveness offers you, and more."

Most of the time, most of us are trying to perfect our persona-self, the self-image. This is part of the ego. This involves spiritualizing the world in some way, sectioning off the 'good bits' from the 'bad bits' and trying to only keep the good bits.

You try to build up this sort of spiritualized ego persona, which ultimately is the ego trying to attain some kind of 'image' of enlightened God-like status. But to do this, it has to keep only the special, valued, accepted, allowed, preferred parts and reject the rest.

So the main mode of functioning of this ego persona isn't so much to 'acquire' the good stuff, but to simultaneously weed out and get rid of as much of the bad stuff as possible. In other words, it is a function of denial and rejection, based on condemnation and judgement.

So once again the ego is contradictory, in that it *appears* to be seeking to include only the stuff it likes or wants, which it has selected from the big soup of life, but actually accomplishes it by rejecting and condemning and relegating the parts it doesn't want to some kind of waste basket. Fact is you can't select and section-off some part of your self or life without simultaneously rejecting and condemning some other part.

This waste basket lives in the ego as the rejected, suppressed, hidden, repressed, denied, shut-out, blocked out 'stuff', which is nevertheless still there and still functioning. This generally 'dark stuff', or at least, surrounded with beliefs and judgements of darkness, will seem to do the opposite of what the persona wants, and indeed attacks it from time to time.

When the shadow attacks (ie the pain body) you generally will want to get rid of it, of course. Just like any 'pain', even physical pain, it's generally the sensation of something you want to get rid of. But that's a major problem. Because how will you get rid of pain? You'll use the persona. The persona will then be selective and attempt to relegate, reject and condemn the pain, to make it go away. The persona doesn't want to accept the pain or integrate it so that the persona and shadow cancel each other out. The persona wants to maintain a separation.

So it seems I think, that most of us are traditionally fixated on loving the persona, building up the persona, reinforcing the persona, choosing to use the persona to manipulate and get what you want, using the persona to paint a picture of 'everything is great' when it's not, or generally repressing your real Self. And you would not SUSPECT that this alone is the entire problem with the ego, because it then directly produces a large body of repressed pain in the shadow.

The ego persona wants you to think of the persona as all sweetness and nice, so that you would not suspect IT is the big problem, yet alone suspect that it is the CAUSE of everything that is dark and unwanted. Instead it deflects all appearance of the dark icky stuff onto the shadow so that the shadow gets to look like IT is the bad guy, IT is the thing to get rid of, IT is the thing to weed out and destroy.

So on the one hand you have this picture of 'innocence' in the persona (like the innocent victim), which you would not suspect is causing any problems at all, and then you have the apparently 'guilty' shadow which looks like it is the sole location of all the pain and misery and guilt and sin. Are you fooled? Most of us are. I know I am. I am fooled all the time by this. I keep believing the persona and seeking out that innocent, denying self, and trying to get rid of all the nasty icky stuff that I think the shadow represents.

So now all the bad shit in the world seems to be blamed on the shadow, and all the 'good stuff' is credited to the persona. When in fact, all the bad stuff is CAUSED by the persona. We choose the persona first (or simultaneously), and then by choosing it, ie choosing to focus on including only a PART of what is, or a PART of ourselves, we automatically simultaneously are adding more stuff to the shadow part of ourselves. That shadow part, generally seeming to be that which we repress and deny and hate or don't want to feel etc, seemed to be generally held at bay in a sort of 'unconscious' state for the most part, until it rears up into awareness and seems to attack the persona.

But let's look at this. Does the pain body/shadow actually attack the persona? Or does it just seem to behave in the terms of what the persona has given it? If the persona chose 'i want cake not dog shit', and the shadow became 'you are dogshit', then the 'you are dogshit' comes up seeking... healing, and exposes itself to the persona, which generally reacts with its usual relegation and denial and hate and 'get rid of it' attitude, which makes it an UPSETTING experience for the persona, disrupting its facade of pretend specialness and fake innocence. But what if the persona weren't so resistant to the shadow, and instead the SELF (real self) stepped back from the persona and was simply AWARE of what's going on, observes it, and allows both the persona and the pain to basically... be seen to be the same thing, to cancel each other out, then perhaps there can then be HEALING and RELEASE.

Anyway. My main point is this. And you may have heard it before. Choosing to use the persona is a trap, which absolutely guarantees that you will experience pain and suffering, because the persona will create the perception that something is unwanted, painful, and in need of being denied/separated from. This happens the INSTANT that you put the persona mask on, because you can't wear the mask without condemning everything that the mask does not contain. ie the shadow is the 'negative space' of the persona - everything else - which the persona is made to reject. The persona can only 'focus' on what it wants to include by excluding everything else that exists, and that simply becomes the shadow rather than 'extra stuff that never has anything to do with me'.

Morale of the story then is.... you believe you have the ability to choose what you WANT, WITHOUT in any way being affected by or involved with what you DON'T want, but this is a complete 100% ego lie. When you partially included, you partially exclude. Basic fact of a dualistic mindset. Every time you partially include something you have to reject something else and that rejected stuff is. ... ultimately, what is ... which includes the whole you. So as you wear that mask, you are attacking your whole self, suggesting that only some portion of it is acceptable, and that the other portion is unacceptable.

That is like... simultaneous self-eggrandizement and self-attack. Simultaneous ego inflation and a diminishing of Self. It splits the mind in two, shows one half to the world and hides the other, and as it does so, the shown part seems to amplify into 'goodness' while the dark hidden part amplifies into 'darkness'. You cannot escape the presence of this darkness. Just because it is hidden, does not mean it's not there. And some day it's going to manifest as sickness and death. Each time you believe in good and bad, or right and wrong, or any other dualities other than true and false, you are making BOTH a persona and a shadow, and must accept the consequences of both. The persona is your special love, the shadow is your special hate. Both of them are special.

Use the ego persona, get attacked. Use the ego persona, suffer the consequences. Use the ego persona, to make yourself look good, to win, to get, to be successful, to appear to be innocent, to have this fake facade of a person that you aren't even really that, ... be prepared to die. And who will have caused you to die? Yourself. Your own choice did it to you. So it's a good idea not to play with 'fire'... don't play the ego's game, don't live a life where you are constantly trying to 'gain' in manipulative, ego-persona ways. Just be what you are. You're perfect already.

Let's take a moment to remember our immortality. Forgiveness is based on immortality and symbolises it. If you are immortal nothing can change you in any way, nothing can happen to you, nothing can attack you or hurt you. If that's true, no-one is doing anything to you, nothing has ever been done to you, and sin is impossible.

If we claim ownership of our true nature - to know thyself as immortal spirit - then we are fully centered and holding the reins of our power. But this power and freedom requires total responsibility and ownership of our true identity as Christ.

When we slip and fall and start to displace our responsibility outside of ourselves, through dissociation (separation, split mind), we dis-associate from the immortality and the invulnerability it brings. We start to perceive that power and causation are outside of ourselves, that our own power has done a 180 and is now staring us in the face, doing things to us.

Except now we have disowned ourselves, we have disowned our power, and we have associated it with other people, external things, places and environments, so-called causes of suffering and death. We start believing we can be attacked, we can be caused to change, we can be made to feel one way or another, tossed around on the sea.

Before long this dis-ownership of responsibility has us believing that we are victims of the world, caused by other people, attacked and threatened, made to experience certain feelings against our will, upset "because of" this and that outside of us, things which we seem to have no control or power over.

This all entails a belief in being guilty, because immortality in its harmlessness is also innocence. If we move away from innocence we move into guilt, and you can't believe you are a mortal victim without it. This guilt arises from the self attack upon your own invulnerability, via your own self-attack thoughts. And then before you know it you're projecting it onto other people.

When you are guilty you will become lost and tangled up in what seems to be causes coming from other people. Whatever they do will seem to be about you in some way, causing you, influencing you, commenting on your nature, defining you, condemning you to some fate. A guilty person sees signs and proof of their guilt everywhere.

And this will appear to be actually about you because, in your guilt you become self conscious, with a sense of constant vulnerability. A sense of persecution and being judged, or being constantly under attack and safe nowhere. If someone says something inflammatory about you, you secretly believe it and agree with it. You already decided you're guilty so someone else pointing it out just triggers off your own self-hate. Except now you mistakenly think they're the ones who put the guilt in you.

Then it starts to seem as though what other people are doing is affecting you, that their attacks are really about you personally, that their projections of their own guilt is justified, and that you can be hurt by them. But all they're really doing is triggering off a pre-existing guilt that you put there on your own.

Failing to claim total responsibility for everything you experience, and seeing yourself as disempowered, you'll see others as having power over you to change you. And that means you see them as responsible for you. And that also means you do not recognize that they are responsible for themselves. Anything they choose or experience is their own doing, but in your attempt to disown yourself you also don't recognize they're attacking themselves.

Their self attack seems to bleed over into an attack on you, and vice versa, and before you know it you're all tangled up in a special relationship of mutual victimisation. They're doing stuff to you, you're doing stuff to them, and now it seems like no-one is responsible for anything.

What is needed is a relief from the inner guilt produced by your mistaken decision to try to be mortal. The denial and rejection of God has led to your attempt to make yourself his opposite, to suffer instead of be at peace, to be upset instead of happy, to be vulnerable and weak instead of immortal and powerful. Without the guilt you would not become confused about who is attacking who.

Ultimately we have to take back all of the power that we keep giving away, which requires a total ownership of who and what we are. We can't be playing the role of victim or victimiser - which are the same thing - if we are to be invulnerable. We can't be believing we're doing something to anyone, or that anyone is doing something to us. And that means we have to own up to being immortal, and no longer can claim to be guilty sinners.

In this recognition of your own innocence, you automatically cease to see yourself as a target for punishment. Having not targeted yourself, you are no longer self-conscious or self-absorbed. Having owned yourself and your God-given power, you can no longer see yourself as overpowered by anything in the world.

This recognition leads also to the recognition that other people are not attacking you, they are not talking about you in their attacks, they are not accusing you of anything, and are not doing anything to you at all. Instead, it is a recognition that - just as you were doing this all to yourself (the secret of salvation), they are doing it all to themselves. And this allows you to see that what they're doing is hurting themselves - as a call for love - rather than as hurting you.

This entails a positive "stepping back" or "separating" from the illusion that there is any kind of causation between you and other people, or you and the body, or you and the world. People and bodies and the world do nothing to you ever. What you are cannot be changed by anything or anyone. And your brother is not the cause of you - God is.

Ultimately, accepting that God is your creator, that you are his holy child, and that you are still permanently sustained by his mind and power as an innocent immortal being, is the key to salvation from all suffering. Owning it is total freedom and total responsibility.

Owning it makes suffering and guilt and murderous attack impossible. It is the end of the confusion that anything in the world is responsible for anything you experience. And it indeed marks the end of this world as well, because a world which has no causal power is not alive.

God created you to live forever, and you will never die.

"But the Face of Christ is 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."

"You are God's Son. In immortality you live forever. Would you not return your mind to this?"

"And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS, for by accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless."

"There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not."

"Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF."

"Immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or will be, because it implies NO CHANGE AT ALL. It is not a continuum, and it is NOT understood by comparing it with any opposite."

"The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed."

"Yet, for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole IDEA of sin, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. For the wages of sin IS death, and how can the immortal die?"

"You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now."

"What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect."

In the physical world, the ego has cleverly set things up so that cause and effect seem separate.

It is even a "law" of physics that each action has an equal and opposite reaction. Or that if you put some energy in, some energy comes out. Or that if you cause some object to move, it will have to move.

This whole world is set up to show you a picture of causes having effects.

Object A moves and hits object B and therefore object B now gains some energy and moves.

And to your perception, this looks as though some parts of the world are causes and some parts of the world are effects.

And this is pretty malleable because in any given situation something which was causing an effect on something else can, itself, become the effect of something else.

So this world, in how it appears, as physical matter that moves through time and space, is MEANT to show you a picture of cause and effect being separate.

And that means, if cause is separate from effect, YOU can be caused by this world and affected by it.

It also seems to mean that you can do stuff to this world which does not affect you. This is how you get away with murder.

The illusion that something "made something happen" here, shows your mind a very convincing picture which seems to train it to believe e.g. the body is sick because it was attacked by the wrong food, or the body is sick because the weather changed, or the body is sick because someone just cut your leg off.

Well, that's a pretty darn convincing illusion right there, portraying and "proving" that your leg is powerless over a chainsaw and it is now laying on the floor in a bloody mess.

Except that..... ... you, as immortal spirit, and not a body, and not a part of this world, DO have the power to overcome even this convincing illusion.

You could, if you so chose, manifest an entirely new body. You could undo all of the effects of the dismembered leg.

You could make the illusion appear as though nothing happened.

You could even in fact become so invulnerable "in" your body that it is impossible even for your body to be moved or hurt or damaged in any way at all, even if someone lets off a nuclear bomb in your vicinity!

What God creates is permanent. Therefore it is invulnerable. And therefore it cannot be hurt. And therefore it is immortal. And that is what you are. So ....

All of this world with its ILLUSION that there are causes and powers and wills outside of you that can do something to you or make accidents happen or harm you in any way, IT IS NOT REAL and IT CAN BE OVERCOME.

And when you overcome it, this will be thought of as miraculous. Because it is, in a certain context. But miracles are natural. They are everyone's birthright. And when they're not happening something has gone wrong.

You cannot be hurt by a dream that isn't really there.

If you perceive that someone out there is your enemy, opposition, separate from you or wrong in some way, you absolutely MUST and WILL simultaneously see yourself as under attack and victimized by them.

It doesn't even matter if they actually are doing anything to you or not. Just the mere perception of them as your enemy is enough to force your mind to see ITSELF as THEIR enemy, and therefore a victim of whatever they are doing.

This happens instantaneously as soon as you are tempted to see someone else as being separate, different, worse, more guilty or more at fault than yourself.

So what this means is, by choosing to see someone as an enemy, you automatically make yourself an enemy.

Enemies experience threat and danger. Enemies fear attack. Enemies see themselves as victims. Enemies are driven to become victimizers to then try to defend themselves against that perceived attack.

But who is it that chose to see the other person as an enemy in the first place? You.

So not only did you set yourself to be the opponent of this person or group of people, by choosing to see them as your enemy, but you also set yourself up in a victim role.

Being in a victim role you MUST experience fear, anger, upset, and all manner of negative feelings and perceptions.

You might then think that these feelings are being 'caused by' the enemy. In a way they are, in that IF that person is an enemy and IF you believe they are, it would seem that you think they can and are doing something to you. But, the truth is, that it was YOUR choice to see them as your enemy that simultaneously set you up in a split-mind perception, where you are also their enemy, and therefore you are under attack.

This leads to the ultimate truth.... that you have in fact attacked yourself by attacking the other person. There is no escaping this. Either you are both innocent, or you are both enemies. Either you are both on the same side, or you are opposed to each other. It works both ways. And quite literally, everything you perceive them as capable of doing TO you, YOU are doing to yourself. It's you that is choosing to be in opposition to them, and to yourself, and it's you who has now perceived yourself in the role of victim in relation to the distorted figure you see in them.

So you can be upset about other people if you want to. But it is a *GUARANTEE* that you will victimize yourself. And that also means, if you choose not to see other people as enemies, you will set yourself AND them free.

Those who have no enemies have no fear, no anger, no hate, no danger, and no need to react. Ultimately because you are choosing to be a victim in EVERY victim situation, you are your ONLY victimizer. Once you realize this and stop victimizing yourself, recognizign the total futility of 'doing this to yourself', you will be set free. Free from your own tyrrany.

Before the physical world of matter was produced, there was already an insane ego mindset of sin, guilt and fear. This is referred to as the "original error" below. The tiny mad idea took hold and we were now in an insane thought system.

Mind is not able to create "nothing", but it can create a sort of "empty shell" with seems to lack. And this emptiness is like a void, which is meaningless. The lack of meaning makes it act like a "screen", onto which you can PROJECT stuff.

Once the ego thought system was established, we PROJECTED that mindset onto the void of meaninglessness, forming the physical world as a kind of image on the screen, made from the idea of sin turned into flesh and matter.

So there's sort of a layer of egoic thought and mind, outside of heaven and believing in sin and separation, which then projects onto the empty screen forming "a physical world" as a symbol of the separation.

The ORIGINAL error seemed to cast us out of heaven into a 'empty void'. The ego mindset was present, and then projected its ideas of sin and separation, turning them into what we call physical matter.

"You have expressed surprise at hearing how VERY different is reality from what YOU see. You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error. It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge. What else COULD come of it? Its fragmented ASPECTS are fearful enough, as you begin to LOOK at them. But nothing you have ever seen BEGINS to show you the enormity of the ORIGINAL error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and TO FORCE YOU TO FURTHER SUBSTITUTIONS.

That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth. For truth extends INWARD, where the idea of loss is meaningless, and only INCREASE is conceivable. Do you REALLY think it strange that a world in which EVERYTHING is backward and upside down, arose from this? IT WAS INEVITABLE. For truth brought to THIS could only remain within in quiet, and take no part in all the mad projection by which this world was made." UrT18B2

also

"If a mind creates without love, it can create an empty shell. This CAN be possessed by evil." URT1B28C

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection." UrT2A3

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life." UrT20G11

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?" W250W41

also the secret dream behind the physical, in between you and reality. "The gap between reality and dreams lies not between the dreaming of the world and what you dream in secret. THEY are one. The dreaming of the world is but a part of your own dream you gave away, and saw as if it were its start and ending, both. Yet was it started by your SECRET dream, which you do NOT perceive, although it CAUSED the part you see and do not doubt is real." UrT27H11

This all points to a somewhat 'hidden' state of mind, the ego thought system of separation and sin, of which a portion "materialises" as physical matter. If you like, a mind-dream of separation, followed by a projecting from that mindset to form physicality. A sort of "ego content" followed by "ego form." Two layers covering up God's Kingdom.

The world is the denial of God. The body is the denial of God. If you side with the world and body you give them power to affect you. It's a way of saying that your own dream is dreaming you. You give your power away to them to establish them as having power over you, then cower from the self-induced threat. You have to take your power back from the world.

You should use denial to deny that the world and body exist."The world you see must be denied"

This doesn't mean PRETENDING that you don't have a body, when you still believe that you do. Nor does it mean pretending that the world doesn't exist while you're still believing in it. That would be an IMPROPER use of denial beacuse it DOUBLES the denial. The proper use of denial means RECOGNIZING that in truth, the world and the body ARE themselves a state of denial, then truly denying that they REALLY ARE that.

"this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him"

Since the world is made OF denial, it DENIES. Its inherent nature is to deny everything, even itself. Your task is to deny the denial of the truth.

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

By recognizing that the world IS denial, and that it denies God, the remedy is to DENY THE DENIAL, by asserting God. The assertion of God is the assertion of life, which is resurrection, and opposes the world of death.

If you could just remember this one thing, that you should always deny anything NOT OF GOD any POWER, and not GIVE it any power, then you would assert that you are immortal and cannot die. That you cannot be affected, upset, caused by, offended by, threatened by or in any way changed by the world.

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

You must deny that the world or the body, which is NOT of God, and does not exist in heaven, has ANY POWER AT ALL. It has no power over you, no power to affect or change you, and is not responsible for anything you experience.

This means that even if the world seems to be doing something most would consider "a threat" to you, you should stand firm in your strength and truth and NOT be threatened. Because ultimately it is NOT the world that threatens you, it is YOUR BELIEF about it and USE of it to threaten you, that threatens you.

As per the secret of salvation, ONLY YOUR MIND causes itself to suffer. "It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain." "It can be but myself I crucify." You should deny that anything in the world is even CAPABLE of causing you in any way. No matter what it "does", you should actually remain calm, peaceful, undisturbed, and completely powerful. It should not ruffle your feathers, induce fear, or cause you to be alarmed.

Knowing yourself, being true to yourself, ACCEPTING what is OF GOD, and denying what IS NOT, is a very powerful protective device. Not merely something you MIGHT use, but something you eventually HAVE to use all the time. Because only by asserting your God-given perfection and DENYING anything of spacetime, can you live in a mental state of complete invulnerability.

This is the PROPER use of denial." ... "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."

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.

The main reason why you automatically assume that other people do stuff to you, and that it affects you, is because you assume that you are currently aware of the entire content of your own mind.

Your little 'conscious self' believes that everything about you, everything that is in you, you must be conscious of right now. If you're not conscious of it, you believe it does not exist and is not a part of you, except that maybe you accept you have 'memories' stored somewhere. But you don't generally accept that you have 'reactions' stored somewhere, or 'wounds', or 'emotional content'.

This is how most of us perceive and engage and live our lives, as little conscious selves that believe we are fully aware of every part of ourselves, as though any and all previous trauma or upset simply does not exist in you anymore.

So then what happens is, someone comes along and offers to be a victimizer and does something 'to you'. You refer to your vast catalog of immediate personal awarewness and you do not have awareness of anything `in you` that even remotely resembles upsets, guilts, fears, sins, hurts, pains, unhappiness, grief, etc. All you're currently aware of is your present mood and a handful of thoughts and that's about it.

So this person does something and all of a sudden, inside you there appears a big giant elephant made of guilt and fear. It feels terrible. It came out of NOWHERE! And because it was not there before, you're pretty sure that must mean the victimizer PUT IT THERE or caused it to be there. You don't even think it is YOUR upset. Everything about it is their fault because, if this whole scenario is the truth, and if this content was not in you previously, then obviously it MUST be their fault.

So this is our default ego reaction mode. Stuff just pops into our experience internally that we're convinced was not there before, and it doesn't feel good, so we blame its 'creation' on someone else - they are the cause.

So when you look at it, this all stems from the fact that you have a stinking heap of shit LURKING in your mind, OUTSIDE your awareness, unconsciously lingering in the background. Out of sight, out of mind. Its hidden behind denial and repression and suppression. It's covered over with layer upon layer of rejection and avoidance. And each layer of it conceals and hides even more deeper layers that you don't even realize are `in there`.

If it weren't for this unconsciousness, and if you were fully aware right now of the ENTIRE content of your mind, and if someone came along and 'did something to you', you would immediately know that NOTHING CHANGED. Your content was already there. All your guilts and hurts and fears were already there in your awareness and you were already experiencing them fully. The person did not add anything, so that means.... you know they are innocent.

Long story short.... you blame everyone and everything for your own experience of life because they keep causing your own stuff to come into your awareness and you FORGOT it was there, because you buried it and hoped it would go away. Other people come along to RE-MIND you - to get you to look at your shit and become aware of the stuff you DO NOT WANT, so that you will actually take productive steps to really heal it and undo your belief in it being true.

So everyone is just trying to help you. Everything is for your benefit. And for that you can be grateful.

Someday when you are done purifying your mind, releasing old pain, healing wounds and undoing all trace that anything even seemed to happen at all, you WILL be walking around in FULL awareness of all of yourself, because you will be awake. And you WILL know that everyone is innocent, and you will know that nobody can add to or take away from what is already in you.

It suddenly occurred to me last night why this is true.

In truth, whatever the illusion is, it has no truth to it and does not really exist. Because it's an illusion, it isn't real. It is really actually nothing. It is ALREADY not there.

It is only when we believe in it, have bought into it, see truth in it, think it is real and are now fighting with it, that we are no longer recognizing that nothing is happening. We think something is now happening, that something is true about it.

To believe an illusion is to fail to RECOGNIZE that it is an illusion, but instead we are recognizing it as a reality or truth which it is not. We're not seeing correctly, so have blocks in our perception.

When you can RECOGNIZE that an illusion is just an illusion, that means that you realize what you thought it was wasn't true, it is completely false, AND it is not REAL.

There is a significant power in discerning the difference between an illusion and reality. Only when you can see and acknowledge that something is a completely false illusion which really is not there and has no reality to it at all - that in truth it does not exist whatsoever, then you are recognizing that it HAS disappeared because it was never really happening to begin with.

Once recognized, ie seen clearly and correctly, the illusion is no longer believed in, it is accepted as being not there, is gone already, never happened and never really existed. This is UNDOING. Whatever that illusion was it must then disappear because you recognize and believe it no longer is true and so are no longer willing to MAKE it or sustain it. This translates even to the extent of physical healing if the physical "issue" is fully recognized as completely illusory and not a real sickness.

I saw this because yesterday I got a surprise sunburn and decided to use it with Holy Spirit to learn more about healing and forgiveness. As I worked with it, I eventually came to see that I didn't even have a "real" sunburn, I had an ILLUSION of a sunburn, and was then able to withdraw my belief in it.

I eventually was prompted by Holy Spirit to realize it is "already gone", which reminds me of a Greg Braden video where he's in a hospital in China where they affirm "already gone" as a way to undo sickness in a short space of time.

When we are sick in some way, we are tempted to believe it is REAL, to believe it's happening and exists and having an effect on us. That we're being caused by it, it has power, it's got truth in it. We're tempted to then fight with "it" but really we're fighting with the illusion of a FAKE sickness that we believe is a real one. ALL sickness is fake. There is no truth in suffering. Recognizing the ILLUSION of sickness as an illusion deflates and disempowers it.

Today my sunburn is a lot better already. I can't scientifically say, hey presto, this change in attitude produced X amount of healing, but I did learn more about the undoing of sickness and how to better recognize an illusion when it is one.

There is no such thing as real sickness, all sickness is an illusion of separation seeming to be real.

If you have cancer, you don't have "real cancer". There is no such thing as real cancer. There is only an ILLUSION of cancer. If you have a broken leg, you don't really have a broken leg, you have an ILLUSION of a broken leg. If you have brain damage, you don't have real brain damage, you have an ILLUSION of brain damage. It's a fiction. Like a pretend image which you're holding in place. Something you made up, literally.

This is why dead and sickness can be abolished because you MADE THEM. They are not true or real at all.

CAN YOU CHANGE YOUR PERCEPTION?

While it may seem in many ways that ACIM is telling you to change your perceptions, you can't actually do this by changing your perception.

"Projection makes perception" tells you that perception is caused by projection. This statement confirms it.

"Perception is a RESULT, not a cause."

Which means that perception is an EFFECT. And you cannot change effects without changing their causes. The cause of perception is projection. Which tells you that you need to change WHAT you project, in order to change what you perceive.

"The world IS perception" and "The world is effect" tells you the same thing. You project a world as an EFFECT, not as something causal, and changing your perception does not cause anything.

However, in the question of what you project, projection ITSELF is merely a "medium" through which the "what" is projected. Jesus in fact tells us that your mind cannot exist without projecting, and it either projects ego or projects the Holy Spirit/truth.

So it's not really a question of whether you project or not, but more to do with "who with" or "what" you project. And that means that your perception isn't a matter of whether or not you are projecting, but what is coming out. And where does that something come from?

Well in fact he also tells us that the mechanisms for seeing begins by looking WITHIN first, at the content of your BELIEF, which you then project outward. So this tells you that in order to end up changing your perceptions you have to change your beliefs, so that you project a different belief, resulting in a changed perception.

But this too is not the end of the story. Because he in fact says that you believe IN what you VALUE, and so belief is something applied to what you value to try to give it value. And belief is also tied to what you WANT, because it then becomes what you want to SEE, resulting in you projecting it in order to end up perceiving it.

So in fact what you value or "hold true" or "make real" is what begins the whole process. What you value or hold true is what you want, which is what you then believe in, which is what you project, which is what you end up perceiving. This is the mechanism.

So while ACIM is seeming to tell you to shift your perceptions, or seems to be all about changing perceptions of things, it really isn't. That's an end result. It's main focus is that you find the cause in the mind, the root, the starting point of what ends up being projected and perceived. And that involves changing what you value and believe. And to do that you have to have a little willingness. Mainly because it all hinges around what you WANT, which is to do with your free will.

Ultimately then it's really an act of WILL, as to whether or not you will change your mind about what it values and believes is true. Which is why without a little willingness nothing can change at all. Will, or the attempted resistance of will, to become unwilling, is what made perception and the world in the first place, and it is through willingness that you return to freedom from it.

Perception just happens to be changed along the way as a side effect. It's not even something you can directly do anything about. Similarly to how you cannot directly "heal the body". You have to change the mind first. Just as Jesus says, the only meaningful change of mind is when you choose a totally different thought system, which really means choosing heaven over hell.

The only freedom you have left is the power of your decision, your choosing. "Mind is the mechanism of decision" and it is where the free will is. And you exercising your free will IS the only choice you have left in this world. So it all starts with your willingness and then your perception will automatically take care of itself as you adjust what you want and what you value.

"The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God."

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"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."

If you know yourself, you are absolutely unmoved by anything. It's like being completely centered. You are unphased, unaffected, undisturbed.

"Truth is not frail. Illusions leave it perfectly unmoved and undisturbed."

"The stillness of your Self remains unmoved"

If you do not know yourself, if you are uncertain, you are moving into doubt and fear. This means you are questioning who and what you are. By doubting yourself, you become uncertain of your identity.

As soon as you're moving into fear, you're now looking for the world or other people to define who and what you are. To tell you what the truth is. To change you, affect you, control you, cause you. It is this alone that puts you in a position of being at the effect of the world and capable of suffering. If you are caused by an uncertain world of change, you must be afraid.

When you know who you are as God created you, you are accepting ONLY GOD as your source. ONLY God is given the power to cause you and define you. You accept yourself AS He created you, with no attempt to modify his will or change what he has created.

What it all boils down to is this. Who is your father? Are you the effect of God, or are you the effect of the world? Even a slight doubt or denial that you are as God created you places you onto a slippery slope into hell.

"Attack in ANY form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads FROM Heaven."

The slightest step upon the slope, in doubt of who you are, causes you to lose your footing and slip into fear. And then you will see yourself as under laws which are not of God, laws of vulnerability and attack and mortality.

If God created you, you are the will of God, and nothing can oppose his will. This is your immortality, your innocence, your guaranteed sinlessness, and your eternal life. If God did not create you, you are a product of external forces in the world, at the whim of fate, victim of everything.

Only if you are not permanent can you have moved into sin. Your permanent innocence must have undergone a change. Only through change can sin take place, because changelessness does not permit it. If you have changed you have sinned. If you are unchangeable you cannot sin.

You must therefore simply learn to "know thyself." If you truly are absolutely certain of the absolute self which the absolute created, then you are absolutely immortal. If you are in any way only relatively certain then you are relatively weak and relatively vulnerable and relatively mortal. To know thyself is to live forever.

If you are as God created you, you are under no laws but his, and his laws guarantee your eternal perfection. If you believe you have changed and are no longer perfect, then you have condemned yourself to be governed by the laws of spacetime. Whose laws and whose causality will you be under? God's or the world's?

As God knows you to be, that you are. As God created you to be, so must you be. You cannot be anything else. Give up trying to turn yourself into something else, it will never work. Trying to "be whatever you want" brings you all forms of suffering. Be satisfied that you were already created perfect and divine, and nothing can improve upon God's work.

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all." - ACIM

Look at the pivotal second line. "What you use the body for it will become to you."

So this literally means, the body *exactly matches* what you use it for.

This means, if just a moment ago you were using the body for one purpose, and you change your mind, the body MUST change. If you then change your mind back to how it was before, the body MUST change back as well. There ARE no other causes of the body’s condition besides the mind.

The state of the body directly matches, is tied to, and absolutely has NO SEPARATE WILL OR POWER over the mind’s choice of what it wants to express.

If the mind chooses to express beliefs in sin and death, the body will SHOW UP as a picture of sin and death.

If the mind chooses to express acceptance of atonement, the body will SHOW UP as a picture of perfection and immortality.

The body is a projection from the mind. Mind changes, body changes. Mind is cause, body is effect.

It is ONLY the belief that the body has a mind of its own, a will of its own, that it persists without your input, that it came to exist without your decision, and that it can die *against your will* - - all of which is a belief in MAGIC and VICTIMHOOD, that ever sustains the idea that the body can still be sick when the mind awakens.

There is no loophole in cause and effect. The idea that there are some effects which "escape" the influence of the mind’s causality, somehow caused by "some other power" - alien will - is a belief in *separation* between cause and effect, which is an illusion.

There are no OTHER reasons why the body can sustain sickness "on its own" or "because of the world" or "because of a pre-existing sickness". The body is ONLY ever a picture projected by the mind, REFLECTING its beliefs perfectly. If the mind changes, the body changes.

No-one dies without their own consent. The only way this is POSSIBLE is by mind having ABSOLUTE POWER over the body at all times. Otherwise, death could happen "for some other reason". It would also mean, when the mind wakes up, the body can STILL BE DESTROYED by some "other" will or force. This is impossible if no-one can die without their own consent. Their own consent is THE ONLY CAUSE of sickness.

Therefore, a sick body cannot possibly be maintained at all if the mind is free.

"A broken body is PROOF the mind has not been healed."

We cannot optionally, or technically, demonstrate sickness if we are to awaken fully to the truth. It is metaphysically impossible, meaning it is literally impossible for the body to be sick if the mind is not sick.

"Because it is holy it CANNOT be sick, nor can it die."

Sometimes people try to put you down, condemn you, make you wrong, call you names, claim you sinned etc. They may have a strong opinion, be domineering or power hungry. They may even say something quite vicious designed to push you away, shut you up, or shut you off.

This is always evidence of someone who does not love themselves. They have entered into a split mind where they are projecting, and they believe always that something applies to you that does not apply to them. They point a finger as if it’s not pointing at themselves. It is a very one-sided state. You are wrong, they are right. All the accusation seems to be coming out of them into you. And this makes it seem it’s entirely you who is under attack.

People like this can be difficult to deal with. There is also tremendous temptation to take this at face value and believe it’s happening to you. Or that it even really is about you or has anything to do with you. If you yourself do not love yourself enough, those weak parts of you will be triggered, seemingly hurt, react, and erupt with emotion and upset. You may then believe your experience was caused by them, that they actually attacked you.

If you do love yourself you will be unmoved. If you do not believe about yourself what the person believes about you, you will not be triggered. You will be clear it is not about you. Your forgiveness of yourself makes you immune. It then becomes clear they are talking about themselves, hate themselves, and are in a state of self attack. It also becomes obvious that how the attack appears on the surface is not what it really is.

The person is in a state of not realizing they are actually attacking themselves. They have disassociated from their self condemnation. They are in denial that they are hurting themselves. They are being murderous and harmful because they really believe and perceive that their attack is having no effect on them. They are not in their right mind. Self hate has blinded them, and now they are accusing a brother of their own sins. And they believe they can get away with it. They are unloving toward you not because you deserve it, but because they don’t love themselves.

If you can not buy into this performance, recognizing this attack as a call for love, realizing the person has made several errors, you have an advantage. Their self attack is something you can use to diffuse their attempted projection. It’s now your function to heal them, to love them, by reminding them of what they are ACTUALLY doing to themselves. You can look out for their innocent, holy self. Look at what they are doing to themselves in the interaction, NOT what they are doing to you.

You can now diffuse it by presenting the fact of what they are doing to themselves. Lovingly. To make them aware of how they are not loving themselves. This puts all the attention back on them and makes it clear this has NOTHING to do with you. You therefore are protected by love, cannot be hurt, and no-one can make you lose your peace.

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

It may not be obvious, but A Course In Miracles is basically trying to get you out of a state of mortality, into a state of immortality. Think about all the ways that it does this.

That you are not at the effect of the world.

That nothing in the world causes you or brings oppression or makes you sick or afraid.

That you have the power to dominate everything you see.

That your body has no power over the mind and mind is stronger than the body.

That in the rusurrecetion you overcome death entirely.

That all forms of suffering are forms of mortality/death.

That you are to dis-identify from being an illusion such as believing in the body or the world.

The fact you are at home in God, immortal and permanent, merely having a dream of death.

The teaching that your attack thoughts attack your invulnerability, that you can be attacked by nothing but your thoughts, and that without attack thoughts you are invulnerable.

The secret of salvation, that you realize you are doing everything to yourself, have made a wrong decision which caused you to not be at peace, and now you want to choose immortality again.

The application of forgiveness which is the same thing as atonement and true perception and salvation and resurrection, nothing short of overcoming death and becoming absolutely transcendent of all suffering.

"Swear not to die, you holy Son of God", clearly indicates that you as an immortal child of God should never be choosing death, which means never choosing mortality. Which means claiming your immortality.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt", the entire teaching about what you use the body for, that death is a choice and you cannot die unless you choose to, and the use of the body to demonstrate your brother’s innocence or sinfulness, is all geared towards you acting like an immortal being not a suffering sinner.

Every single aspect of the Course is geared not merely towards you becoming peaceful and dying, or happier but sick, but in fact is aimed at taking you totally beyond all forms of suffering, death, sickness, unhappiness and vulnerability of every kind. To never again be affected by anything. Nothing short of immortality. Never again to suffer, never again to die.

This is the central core of the course. "There is no death, the Son of God is...." IMMORTAL!

Every lesson, every quote, every paragraph, is all speaking to the vast collage of illusions we have invented to try to PRETEND to be mortal in a dream of death. To pretend it is possible to die. To make-believe things that seem to crumble, decay, erode and end. An entire fiction of a world that seems to come and go, having beginnings and endings which clearly are not eternal.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates MUST BE ETERNAL as himself."

It’s not merely a matter of whether the world is real, it obviously cannot be because nothing in it has immortality. It is a dream of death, and there really is no world.

This is all over the course. Immortality, invulnerability, not being affected, permanence, peace that lasts forever, God’s creations and minds carrying on uninterrupted forever, nothing being able to attack or sin against God/reality, nothing real being affected, the Son of God being beyond death, it all points to IMMORTALITY being your totally natural state of being.

"You cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."

This is also why "the body cannot contain you who are life". It’s also why "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there." This is why God’s Kingdom is an IMMORTAL LIVING FOREVER WORLD OF LIGHT.

Any time we entertain ideas of suffering, sickness, death, fear, being affected, caused, threatened, anything that suggests or even hints at us not being invulnerable and immortal, we are "playing dead". Any time we take illusions of attack, vulnerability, suffering, or any kind of non-immortal activity seriously, we are believing we are NOT immortal. And we believe this about others too when we fear for their life. That condemns us both to death, or at least tries to. No-one can really die!

Because your are immortal, you ARE still as God created you. God did not create you capable of death. Or sin. Or attack. OR murder. You cannot do any of these things in reality. So you DREAM of being in a world where all FALSE things are possible, where IMPOSSBILITIES seem possible, where everything is subject to attack and impermanence, and where death seems to strike at every thing that moves. An entire fantasy world that runs against every law of God and opposes His Will, trying to prove His children can die.

"The laws of this world go against your nature." This world goes against your IMMORTALITY.Your natural condition is to live utterly free of all attack, impervious to all suffering, incapable of death, incapable of unhappiness, and absolutely permanent in all your ways. Absolutely incapable of being attacked ever! You are not RELATIVE to life, you are ABSOLUTELY ALIVE. Forever. Nothing can affect you against your will unless YOU WILL TO BE AFFECTED. And then you are FAKING IT, because your immortality CANNOT be affected. All sickness, suffering and death is FAKE. A huge lie.

You are as permanent as God. Any attempt to believe, perceive, suggest, portray, act, think, or live otherwise, is a denial of your immortality. It’s an attempt to make believe that you are not immortal and that you can suffer. And every single form of non-immortality or vulnerability is a self-chosen, self-inflicted attack and an attempt to prove you are not immortal. And because all such attempts to change your unchangeability can never work, they are absolutely futile make-believe.

Death is futile. It has no causal effect whatsoever upon the Son of God. It does not work. Everything you are doing to make yourself suffer is a waste of time. It has no effect on your immortal spirit. And you are only your immortal spirit. Every single way that you pretend to be afraid, sick, suffering and dead, is absolutely 100% chosen by you as part of your attempt to ACT AS IF YOU CAN DIE. It’s an attempt to prove death is real and happening to you. How can death happen to someone who is IMORTAL? How can an immortal being be SICK or suffer or even unhappy in any way, thinking that something can disturb its permanent peace?

Potent questions to ask oneself:

1) Am I using this to pretend to not be immortal?

2) Why am I trying to prove I am not immortal?

3) Why am I believing that my immortality can be affected by this?

4) Does this have any power whatsoever to change what God created?

5) Why am I lying by pretending I can suffer?

6) Why am I denying that I cannot be affected by anything?

You are an immortal being, temporarily hanging out in a dream world where everything is an illusion of mortality. A world of death is obviously not the natural environment for a being of eternal life.

Yet the body can become a sign of life to those grown tired of the fetid stench of death. It can become a symbol of immortality, representing eternal life. Through its loveliness and health it can teach by demonstration with a power greater than a thousand tongues that there has been no attack, no vulnerability, no damage, no mark of sin, no evidence or proof of viciousness and no sign of evil effects. It can represent wholeness and healing and innocence and invulnerability, and thus teach this to everyone.

To awaken fully is nothing short of waking up to immortality, to eternal life in Heaven, the end of all sickness and death, the cancellation of sin and guilt, and a return to unlimited permanence. It requires the end of the body, which is nothing. "Indeed, you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge."

NOTHING REAL CAN BE THREATENED, because it is immortal! YOU are real. You cannot be threatened! You are totally permanently alive. Forever and ever. Why do you believe you can or have been affected by anything or anyone ever? You have done nothing but attack your own inherent invulnerability, trying to pretend you can suffer. Isn’t it time to own up to being immortal?

Continuing with the "it's bullshit" theme, let's look at how guilt is also bullshit.

Guilt is not atonement. It is not compensation. It does not make up for doing something wrong. It does not help the person who you hurt. It does not undo what happened. It does absolutely nothing to correct sin. It does not give a gift to the person you attacked. Guilt does not heal anyone.

It doesn't pay for or correlate to the amount of sin that you caused. It does not prove that you did not want to sin. It does not demonstrate that you have "repented". It does not equate to atonement or forgiveness. It does not indicate that you really did not want to do what you did. And it does not raise the overall level of happiness in the world.

Guilt is justified self-attack, resulting from a failure to forgive. But guilt has an even deeper motive.

When you sin, or believe in sin, it is very deliberate. Whatever act it is that you "did", you did it by choosing to do it. Make no mistake that in your ego belief, you wanted to attack, intended to attack, wanted to destroy God, desired to be opposed to God, were being murderous and hateful, wanted the consequences of your attack to be real, desired to overthrow God's will and power, wanted to affect God and make Him dead, and wanted to really believe strongly in sin being "reality" - that you really did bring about real "success" in your attempted separation. Sin is a belief that death is real.

Realize also that at every stage of separation from God, denial is used to try to make whatever is present go unconscious. It is an act of trying to get rid of yourself, because the whole purpose for the dream of death is to destroy yourself. You tried to get rid of yourself by getting rid of God, shutting Him out of awareness, making him unconscious to you. Then you are left staring sin in the face.

But this wasn't enough for you. Just "sinning" did not completely destroy you. So you had to keep on denying yourself, keep on making stuff go unconscious, and keep progressing towards a state of TOTAL DEATH. Sin demands death and will stop at nothing until it is enacted, because only when it is completely implemented will the belief in the permanence and non-reversibility of sin be completed.

So what you did next was make sin go unconscious, denied that sin had happened, and covered it over with another layer of illusion. On purpose. The purpose was to KEEP the sin real, not heal or reverse it, and to add another layer of denial to take you closer to death. You implemented this by INVENTING GUILT.

Guilt, then, is this state of mind in which you start to claim, and make illusions which appear to show, that you DID NOT WANT TO SIN. OOoo.... so ok, first you are believing in murder and death and killing God, and then.... you start to pretend that you did not want to do it, even though you did. Guilt therefore is your attempt to FAKE that you really felt remorseful, guilty, ashamed, that you somehow RECOGNIZED that you did something that you should not have done, and that now you somehow want to "take it back" or "wish that it had no consequences" or "yearn for re-uinion" or whatever else bullshit.

Guilt will position you as APPEARING to claim that you didn't want to sin and "wish" that it hadn't happened, BUT a WISH is not a WILL. The guilt will not actually *do anything* whatsoever to undo the sin. The guilt merely establishes that you believe heavily in the sin, because you think it has reality and truth to it, and you have NO intention whatsoever of undoing that or challenging it. The guilt is a total facade to try to make out that you feel sorry about it or didn't mean it, in a completely powerless, non-active, non-consequence-producing way, which has absolutely no effect on the sin itself or its consequences.

Realize also then that guilt or shame is completely self-serving, and also contains a component of feeling sorry for YOURSELF that, because you sinned, you now are going to lose out or be punished. Guilt is a reaction to sin, the opposite of forgiveness. Forgiveness will say you did not really sin and nothing was hurt and there's no reason to be upset. But guilt goes the other way, and says the sin was so real that you don't deserve forgiveness.

This lack of deserving or worthiness of being forgiven, then starts to establish your belief that you are "not good enough" or you don't deserve to be loved or you are unworthy of God or forgiveness. And this will create a belief in you that God couldn't love you, SHOULD NOT love you, and that you REFUSE to accept that He DOES love you, because really you have NO interest at that point in retracing your steps. The positioning of yourself as unworthy and unlovable, which comes across even to yourself as a kind of sorrowful, pityful, unfairly-treated sort of experience, is actually the total opposite in its purpose. IT IS FAKE. It's nothing less than an attempt to KEEP sin and guilt and do *NOTHING* about them to actually change them in any way.

Just as there is no such thing as real sin, there is no such thing as real guilt. All guilt is fake. A "guilty conscience" is a bullshit conscience. Guilt has been put on a pedestal by the ego to celebrate its success at murdering God, and to pretend that it is innocent. It wants someone else to be *responsible* for it, to accuse someone else of sin (even if that means they kill you), but only so that the "evidence" that YOU were the one who chose to make sin real is completely hidden. No-one would suspect you of murder if you APPEAR to be innocent.

No-one would accuse you of being the one who sins if you come across as having a facade of sweetness and niceness, guiltlessness, weakness, powerlessness, hopelessness, unworthiness, fearfulness, vulnerability, littleness, or ignorance. The ego's entire strategy for IMPLEMENTING DEATH is to first of all set up the belief in death by believing in sin, then enacting every step necessary to bring about death. It does this by attempting to strip you of all responsibility, all power, all will, all mind, and to portray you as a weak helpless VICTIM, who can't POSSIBLY have chosen to sin and who is now being completely unfairly accused by external sources. Those external sources will then come to be the pretend jduge and jury who deal a death sentence and inflict the final blow on your now completely helpless, victim-ridden self, to prove that YOU DID NOT SIN.

Who could suspect you of sin if you were just innocently, inevitably, unfairly attacked and mistreated, in such a way that is destroys you and APPEARS to be against your will? It is a fake death. You are faking your own death by pretending to not believe in sin when you still believe in deep down. People who APPEAR innocent are NOT INNOCENT. They are very filled with sin and guilt. The fake innocence facade is a perfect disguise. Guilt is the 2nd step in implementing it, and the belief in deserving punishment which comes from guilt lays the groundwork for implementing the 3rd step - fear of punishment, which is also 100% bullshit.

So you see, guilt is not genuine. It does not help anyone or correct anything or atone for anything to be guilty. It just keeps all of the consequences of what you did and protects them behind layers of denial. If you were really, really interested in "atoning" for sin, you would actually take action steps which would UNDO THE SIN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. You wouldn't be like, oh I guess you have to live with the consequences now, nothing I can do about it. Instead, you'd be choosing MIRACLES to correct and undo all of the side-effects of your wrong decision, with Holy Spirit. And that means lifting all of the signs of attack off of yourself and anyone who was involved.

Going into guilt also is usually SUPPORTED by the person that you attacked, whereby they feel justified in proving you are guilty, leaping at the opportunity to condemn you, and failing to forgive entirely. To hold you condemned in guilt for your sin, the other person thinks they are righteous and justified but they are just as much enacting bullshit. It does not help anyone to be guilty. What the attacked person should be doing is finding you INNOCENT, forgiving you, overlooking the belief in sin, PROVING that they cannot be hurt by you by disallowing any effects in their mind or emotions or body, and therefore teaching you that YOU DID NOT attack them and are innocent.

Only when there is "redemption", ie both parties are lifted UP closer to the light, closer to forgiveness, closer to truth, closer to the undoing of sin and guilt, that is the ONLY real form of atonement. If you're not approaching the atonement then you're going into the ego, no matter who you are or what side the victim/victimizer drama you fall on.

Guilt is a lie. A big fat stinking lie. It's just another ego ILLUSION designed to LOOK LIKE you gave a crap about sinning, while doing nothing about it, using it as JUSTIFICATION to attack yourself even more and put yourself down and destroy yourself as a SACRIFICIAL OFFERING to the person you supposedly did this to. Dying is not atonement. Self destruction is not atonement. Guilt is not atonement.

Another way many people fall into this is by believing that if they hurt a loved one, they should be GUILTY in order to show that they are LOVING. They will go into guilt-ridden justifications and compulsions to try to "make it up" to the person. They will do housework out of guilt. They will buy make-up gifts out of guilt. They will "owe" the person something. They will try to do stuff to compensate and "balance out" the offense, to try to win back favor. This is not love! It is so often believed to be what it means to give a shit or to love someone. IT IS ATTACK. It's like rubbing salt in the wound.

All guilt is bullshit. We need to look at this and admit to it and stop using this EGO WEAPON as a disguise to pretend that we didn't want to sin. We did want to sin. Every death celebrates that fact. If we truly give a shit, we will undo guilt, undo sin, undo death, undo ILLUSIONS of consequences that we think we caused, recognize our PERMANENT INNOCENCE, and return to God. Guilt is arrogant. You ARE worthy of love and forgiveness.

The soul, which is your self, your real identity, and your true nature, can be thought of like a piece of machinery in the engine of heaven - in the mind of God.

Given that the soul is WHAT YOU ARE, it's useful to know the operating perameters of yourself. What are you? What are you capable of? What can and can't you do? What are your limits? What are your design specifications?

God is the DESIGNER of the soul. He is the manufacturer. HE ALONE determines the design of your self, gives your self its function, assigns it its abilities, specifies what it can and cannot do, and guarantees that it will always function as HE WILLS IT.

"The only function of spirit is to extend God's being."

Your soul is like a machine. It serves a function. It plays a role. It is used by God for a purpose. It operates according to HIS RULES ONLY. "I am under no laws but God's."

This means that in the overall picture of heaven, YOU are designed by God for a specific FUNCTION. Your functionality includes certain FREEDOMS or abilities.

These freedoms are inherited or BASED ON God's abilities. God can only design what He can conceive of, and He can only use Himself as a reference. He designs you to be LIKE HIM, and to operate WITHIN the confines of HIS abilities.

Your functionality includes the ability to extend God, to create, to know, to love, to experience joy and happiness, to co-create further creations, and to increase the Kingdom.

There are also some things which YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO DO. And thankfully these things are not things you'd WANT to be able to do. You cannot attack anything real. You cannot sin. You cannot hurt or be hurt. You cannot damage or be damaged. You cannot cause or experience any kind of sickness or suffering. And you cannot die.

God DID NOT GIVE YOU the ABILITY to sin, attack, suffer or die. You CANNOT DO THESE THINGS. You HAVE NEVER done these things. You WILL NEVER do these things.

In your design, you also have an INPUT and an OUTPUT. The INPUT to you is God Himself. You host Him. He plugs you into His power source and his light, and extends Himself to you. He POWERS your soul. He GIVES it life. It SUSTAINS it in His mind. AND, he also MAINTAINS YOUR FUNCTIONING AT ALL TIMES.

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind."

God Inc's equipment therefore comes with a GUARANTEE. It is a lifetime guarantee. And in fact God creates such excellent quality equipment that it is guaranteed to FUNCTION CORRECTLY FOREVER. He Himself makes sure of this by designing the soul PERFECTLY, ensuring it never needs maintenance and cannot go wrong. God PROTECTS his equipment permanently and really get's behind his product.

Everything the soul machinery is able to do, is determined solely by God. He is THE ONLY designer. He is the cause of you. Anything you can or cannot do, any function you do or do not have, is by HIS WILL alone. You cannot add to yourself or take anything away. No-one else can add to take away either.

This means that your soul is FIXED in its functionality. It cannot change itself. It cannot redefine what it is. It cannot modify itself. It can only operate WITHIN the parameters it was given. So let's say that the soul is given certain FREEDOMS, such as the free will to create. It IS possible that the soul can potentailly MIS-USE its power to create, to mis-create, but it CANNOT give itself the power to CREATE REAL damage. It cannot cause REAL sin. It can ONLY create constructively.

The other thing about this is, that the soul should generally ACCEPT its design, its functioning, its place in the Kingdom, and its overall abilities. It is in its best interests to do so. But sometimes souls decide to rebel against their creator. They want to be something they can never be. They deny their inherent nature. They imagine they are something they are not, and that they can do things which they CANNOT ever do.

When this happens, the soul isn't going OUTSIDE of its limitations, but it is PRETENDING that it is. Because it DOES have the power to FREELY CHOOSE, and so can freely PRETEND through denial that it is NOT what it is. This produces a "shut-down" mode, aka spiritual sleep. In this mode, by denying itself, the soul is shutting itself down. And when it is asleep, it dreams of impossibilities that CANNOT be really happening.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

The soul IS FREE to do this, because it can use its freedom against its freedom, which is a mis-use of its own abilities. It can try to use free will to NOT WILL ANYTHING, which is an obvious contradiction in terms. When the soul tries to CAUSE something it was NOT DESIGNED TO OUTPUT, it merely causes nothing real to output. And instead dreams of imaginary outputs that don't exist.

The soul has been set up to have OUTPUT parameters as well as INPUT parameters. It can PRODUCE certain "products". It can generate living beings. It can CREATE LIFE. It can radiate love. And it can share joy and peace. It can experience relationship with other similar soul machinery (brothers), made by the same manfacturer. And it can enjoy perfection forever.

When the soul believes it is able to output something which God DID NOT MAKE POSSIBLE, it imagines it is producing things which it cannot possibly produce. These would include the making of bodies, planets, worlds, space and time, illusions of sickness, all forms of suffering, and death. None of these are REAL outputs, they are wishful thinking.

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

When the soul does this, it is akin to a toaster oven believing it can wash your car, or a tv set believing it can cook dinner. It still remains IMPOSSIBLE, but the soul is free to use its freedom against itself to DENY its inherent functioning, and to PRETEND that other things are possible.

Since God did not give you THE EQUIPMENT FOR SIN... because your "soul 2000 model" did not COME WITH "the ability to sin" built in, it literally CANNOT DO IT. It can pretend to do it, but it cannot really do it. It can only dream of sinning, and never really attack any thing real. Just as your vacuum cleaner cannot bake cookies."Nothing real can be threatened."

God did not give you the ABILITY to threaten anything real. He did not BUILD IN a FUNCTIONALITY that can in any way CAUSE suffering. He did not provide you the equipment or parts to PRODUCE death. You cannot undermine your perfect functioning. You cannot make yourself malfunction. You cannot interfere with your inner workings. YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARE AND NOTHING ELSE.

"I am still as God created me."

For the sake of what we'll call your SANITY, or operating in your soul in the WAY IT WAS INTENDED, without running amok and going haywire with UNPRODUCTIVE distorted outputs, it is in your best interests to ACCEPT YOUR FUNCTION. This means not having grandiose ideas of BEING SOME OTHER EQUIPMENT. It means not being jealous of the GOD MACHINE. It means not wanting to REJECT YOUR NATURE. And it means therefore the end of the authority problem.

You can't experience the EFFORTLESSNESS that God gave you, while you are trying to DISTORT your function. You cannot BE YOURSELF, while you are denying what you are. And you cannot be CONTENT or AT PEACE, while you are trying to turn yourself into something YOU WERE NOT DESIGNED TO BE. This means a willingness to ACCEPT your design specifications, without question, as GOOD ENOUGH. And this isn't some kind of second-best or booby prize either, because God creates perfect machinery!

The willingness to BE ONLY AS GOD CREATED YOU, to accept only the function THAT WAS GIVEN YOU, to fulfill the ROLE that God assigned to you, and to ONLY BE, HAVE, AND DO, that which God WILLED for you to do IN YOUR CREATION, is what re-aligns you with God's will and enables you to FUNCTION correctly. Or rather, to not disguise your true function with artificial functions.

This means having a willingness to accept FROM GOD, the specifications of WHAT YOU ARE. To allow ONLY HIM to define the TRUTH about you. To let him be YOUR FATHER. To let him be the one that decides WHAT YOU CAN AND CANNOT DO. And to acknowledge that you ARE EXACTLY HOW HE WANTS YOU TO BE. When you line up with this, and be ONLY this, and have ONLY what God gave you, and DO only what God willed for you, without objection, only then will you be happy and at peace and free from illusions.

To accept "the atonement" is merely to RECEIVE the ORIGINAL BLUEPRINT from the manufacturer. To be willing to ACCEPT that you ARE ONLY what God has designed you to be, and to function optimally within his parameters. To WANT nothing else, and to cease the MIS-USE of your function. You thus RESUME your function of creation and merely carry on as if nothing had happened.

Nothing can change what you are. You cannot change yourself. You cannot change other people's souls. You have NEVER DONE ANYTHING AGAINST GOD'S WILL. You have not exceeded your operating parameters. You have not BROKEN, gone downhill, degraded, corrupted, caused unnatural side effects or damaged anything. YOU CANNOT SIN OR ATTACK OR DIE. You have NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG.

You therefore are still exactly the innocent, perfect, holy, acceptable, worthy, beautiful, loving, harmless, immaculate, immortal, eternal, happy, joyful, powerful, free, flawless and completely divine piece of machinery that GOD CAUSED YOU TO BE. Just by being TRUE TO YOURSELF, knowing yourself, and BEING YOUR SOUL, you need do nothing else.

All that God wants for you is to be true to yourself and fulfill the NATURAL INHERENT FUNCTION he gave you. And since that function includes happiness and joy, it is a function you WILL approve of.

"All true pleasure comes from doing God's will."

When your attempt at healing asks "what is wrong with me?" .... you know you're on the wrong track, because you're actually trying to find something wrong with you.

The truth can NEVER be that there is something wrong with you. The truth is that you are always perfect. How can anything be really wrong with you?

Yet this mode of diagnosis is extremely prevalent, where the ego is trying to come up with an explanation for "why" you are sick. To explain why you are sick is to completely assume that you ARE sick. This alone cements the sickness in place regardless of what diagnosis you come up with. By the time you THINK you know what the cause is (which will not be the real cause), the sickness will have been amplified even more.

You can't find health by asking in what ways you are unhealthy. It just makes the sickness real. Once you've made sickness real, that means you've lent it a sense of truth and reality, and having done so, you cannot heal it. What is true is permanent and your belief that the sickness is real KEEPS IT.

God does not need diagnosis. Diagnosis is an ego device for prolonging the story and the drama surrounding the sickness, while PRETENDING to be doing something to deal with it.

What if the sickness were to just disappear, right now, never to return? Would you want it? Would you be willing to drop all of the drama and story and side-benefits that arise from having the sickness? Perhaps in your sickness you actually want to be sick because it's serving a purpose?

Most people who are sick... and this is not an attack... just observing.... most people who are sick, well let's just say ALL people who are sick, WANT to be sick on some level. They must. Jesus tells us so - nothing can happen without your own consent and you only get what you ask for. There are no accidents and no victims. So if you're sick, you chose it somehow, for some purpose.

This is what I'm finding to be a bit of a problem in terms of healing the sick.... on the surface they may very much want to be healed, but somewhere deep down there was a decision to be sick and a they wanted it. So there is always some kind of denial of healing, some kind of resistance to truth, and some kind of unwillingness to be healed.

Yet, if a person could leap from their state of denial and desperation and resistance, to a state of healing where the problem no longer exists... I think most people would simply celebrate and be grateful. The shift in awareness would remove all of the foundation for fighting against health. People think they want to be sick, but *REALLY* they want to be with God. This leap from not wanting healing to being healed, is a DIVINE INTERVENTION, which is why Jesus says in the miracle principles: "miracles intercede for your holiness."

So remember, as you try to perform miracles, or heal anyone, you have to be wary of yourself entering into a diagnosis mode, dwelling on the story of how the person was a victim, or of what ALLEGEDLY caused the problem. The truth is that nothing in the world causes anything because the world is nothing more than an illusory effect. So looking for answers in the world will always turn up empty handed. It's the ego's mechanism for distraction and for seeking but not finding, so that healing will not take place. Trying to diagnose problems simply makes them real, keeps them, and fails to cure them.

So we need to get into this mode of... instant healing, and it being not a spectacle, and simply being done with it and then moving on with enjoying Life. Like it's no big deal. But for most people it's going to seem like a huge deal because the limitations imposed by sickness probably has imprisoned the person for a long time. But sickness is nothing.

God doesn't need to diagnose in order to heal something. God is always in a state of health and radiates healing. God's health is instantaneous. He does not dwell on figuring out the cause, or why something happened, as though that would imply DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS depending on the problem. That would be a CONDITIONAL healing. He heals unconditionally, so doesn't care what the problem is or how difficult it seems. There is no order of difficulty in UNCONDITIONAL MIRACLES. He simply heals. Now.

Problem corrected. Done. Move along. Nothing to see.

Sin is really an attempt to make out that God is evil. It’s an attempt to turn a "loving cause" into "an evil cause".

When you are projecting your belief in sin outwards onto other people, what you’re really doing is trying to push God away by projecting ideas of evil onto Him, pushing Him out away from yourself, and to see Him as an external cause who is acting "against your will."

Really, sin is YOUR attempt to act against God’s will. The result of that is that you PERCEIVE that God is against your will.

When you see sin in a brother, you are really seeing your idea that God is a sinner. You see "cause" in the person, but you also combine that idea of cause with the idea of evil. So you see it as an "evil cause" or a "cause of evil". That’s the exact same thing as seeing someone as sinning against you, being against you in any way, being an enemy, etc.

You think it’s just your projection of your idea that you sinned, but it’s really the projection of your attempt to turn God into something unloving. You see this unloving cause outside of you because you think God is an unloving cause who is separate from you and acting against you.

When you choose to die, if you do, and given that all death is chosen on purpose, a state arises where you perceive that an "external deadly cause" comes along and finally manages to INFLICT ITS WRATH upon you, "causing you to die". In this act, it’s really your attempt to prove or play out your belief that God wants you dead, God is an evil hateful vengeful attacker who is causing you to die, and that therefore God does not cause creations of Eternal Life, but that God instead creates death.

So it is actually God who we believe destroys us every time that we die. We see it as this separated off, externalizations, rejected, hated enemy who is evil and vengeful who wants us dead. Even if we don’t acknowledge that consciously, EVERY DEATH occurs on this same basis of belief. This is the ego thought system playing out. Every death will appear to be caused by anyone OTHER than you, because you still see yourself as the "effect of God", and God has been mis-identified as causing death.

So when you try to die, you are actually trying to prove that God is a murderer. That it is God’s will that you be dead. This is why in your death wish, you actually believe that God WANTS you dead because you sinned. Or rather, you are attempting to prove that GOD is the sinner and that He is sinning against your innocence. You lay down and "allow" his wrath to happen to you to attempt to prove that you are not the one who sinned against God, but that HE Is the one who is murderous. When you prove this through death, you are trying to say that you do not believe in death at all - that He is the one who has rejected you, abandoned you, and who wants to punish you.

This is so twisted and backwards. God could not possibly want you dead. When you believe in real sin, your own sin, you WILL believe that God is the sinner and that you are innocent. You WILL see that God is outside of you plotting to kill you. And you will experience yourself as though "cause" is outside of you acting against your will. God’s will could never be against your will, if YOUR will were not trying to be DIFFERENT to His. Your opposition to His Will is what makes it seem as though His Will is acting against yours.

You will see this played out in all your relationships, because ultimately, your ONLY relationship is with God. So those people you think are your enemies, that’s really your mis-perception of God. You are not recognizing God, and instead see IN Him a false God of death. The real God is love, Life, and would never want to attack you. The real God is never against your will, although you can be against His and think that you are at war.

Sin is not real. You. Did not sin. God is not your enemy.

Our mind in its natural state is joined with our Soul and with God. In this state, it receives the causal expression and extends it. In a sense, the mind does not have its own content, it just extends what it receives.

After separating from God and ourselves, the mind is cut off from its "owner". This is due to a separation introduced between cause and effect. That which at the effect, the mind, starts to see itself as causeless, and so begins to make up its own ideas about what it is and what is true.

This turns the mind from being an extender of truth, to being a solo broadcaster of imagination.

The problem then is that anyone with an ego tends to broadcast a lot, and tends to receive very little. Being alone or isolated or trying to live without God makes us weak, vulnerable, afraid and helpless. Yet it also makes us spew out "noise", the noisy broadcasts of the ego, which basically is an attempt to be recognized as the cause of oneself, rather than being caused by God or Soul.

In a world where so many people are broadcasting themselves, there isn’t much listening. Consequently, even though people are broadcasting loudly, 24/7, everyone is talking over everyone else. People then are not really being present, available, un-distracted with themselves, or able to pay full attention. That means that those who are broadcasting, paradoxically end up not being heard.

This is because the rest of the broadcasters are not willing to receive. So no matter how loud you shout, if everyone else is also shouting your expressions will be stunted and stifled and you won’t feel like anyone really listens to you. In fact, the more that you shout louder in an attempt to be heard more, you will be heard less.

Many people in this world are expressing the ego. Few are expressing silence or stillness or presence or quietness or a willingness to receive. If you yourself become willing to receive from Spirit, your own mind will become quiet and you will subsequently become willing to receive ie listen to and pay attention to, what other people are expressing. Without distraction from your own thoughts or memories or judgements or attempts to process or reflect on what someone said.

Learning to listen is part of waking up, because it entails your own willingness to listen to Spirit. That means instead of running your own show, you turn your mind and your life over to the care of God. You become willing to receive input from Spirit. You become willing to trust Spirit. You become willing to let Spirit guide your every action, to even speak for you and through you.

The willingness to receive is what has become blocked by the ego. Separations and blocks to awareness are attempts to not listen to God, to hide from God, to replace God’s Word with your own, and to make up your own truth. Becoming willing to accept Atonement entails becoming willing to receive from God, to be guided by God, to allow yourself to accept love, and to let miracles be performed through you.

Therefore as you tune into Spirit, handing over your stolen life to its rightful owner, and giving back control of the mind to Love, you automatically become a better receiver and listener. You become better at being present. You become more available. And you start to allow others to fully express, willing that you receive everything they are offering. This simultaneously creates space for them to fully express themselves, to be heard, and to know that their expressions are not being met by deaf ears or a wall of selfishness. This holding space alone can be very healing.

You simply need to put all of your ego distractions aside, pay full undivided attention to the person, let them express absolutely anything they want to without interrupting or interfering or offering advice or any kind of transmission, without your secret mental judgements or attempts to chew on what they expressed, free of your reactions and defenses, just totally being fully present for them.

Do this for someone and you’ll be offering a tremendous healing service just by listening attentively without judgement. Afterwards, even if their ego erupts in a free-flow of expression, they will feel so peaceful and relieved that finally they could express themselves fully without someone being self-absorbed with their own ego reactions.

Give the gift of unconditional receiving and listening to someone this year. Let them have the microphone 100%, not 50%. Let them tell you whatever they want to tell you and just receive it.

Giving and receiving are one.

You are the cause of everything you experience. You cannot be victmized against your will. This is the secret of salvation. "You are doing it to yourself." You are responsible for choice because you have free will.

When you DISOWN this responsibility, forming a block to awareness - which is a DENIAL that you are the cause, your mind splits and dissociates.

You do not see the cause of your suffering within yourself because it is blocked from awareness behind your denial. So you reason logically, "if it is not coming from me, it MUST be coming from something that is not me."

Immediately you look outside yourself for a cause. This projects cause outside of yourself. The groundwork has been laid to BLAME anyone and anything, even randomly, for causing what you are experiencing.

So the JUSTIFICATION for anger or any kind of attack, is based on your belief that YOU aren't the one causing it.

IF it were true that someone else is CAUSING what you are experiencing, agaist your will, you WOULD be justified in seeing yourself unfairly treated, and right to be angry.

But since other people are NOT the cause of you, your anger cannot EVER be justified. That justification is based on a MISTAKEN BELIEF that YOU are not the one doing this to yourself.

Your inability to see that you are the cause of your experience, is an act of irresponsibility. So you disown responsibility and give it to someone else. They are now seen as the responsible party. And now anything that happens is THEIR doing.

If you were to remove the blocks to awareness and the denial, and heal the split in your own mind, you would become aware that you are the CAUSE of EVERYTHING you experience. And in that awareness, you would see it is OBVIOUS that no-one else can EVER be involved in causing you against your will.

The notion of blaming anyone for anything then becomes complete nonsense. The only way to blame someone is to start out with the FALSE PREMISE that YOU aren't the one doing it.

This is true no matter what the situation seems to be like, who seems to be doing what to whom, what you think of it, how you judge it, whether its moral or not, whether it's kind or not. No matter who seems to victimize who, if you are angry, you are DISOWNING your power.

Anger is therefore NOT an expression of POWER, it is an expression of POWERLESSNESS. It is an ILLUSION of power, which is actually the OPPOSITE to what it appears.

Those who are powerless are angry. Those who are powerful cannot BE angry. Those who have true power can be assertive, WITHOUT being angry. They also can be most effective. Those who are powerless can only attack and force because they lack any true strength to accomplish anything.

Being angry is NOT being assertive. It is being DESTRUCTIVE, in which there is an attempt to assert at the same time as an attempt to TAKE AWAY the power of another.

True power does not take away the power of others, it EMPOWERS them, recognizing they are one with you. You cannot accept your own empowerment if you are busy believing that others should have no power. You must actually give power TO others, in a healthy way, in order to BE powerful.

If it seems someone has power over you, it is because you have disowned your power and GIVEN IT AWAY through sacrifice and not through sharing. You have lost it because you are at war with yourself. What appears to be their power is really your disowned and projected power, which you must reclaim and reintegrate.

When no-one is seen as having power OVER you, all are seen as having power WITH you as equals. And then there is no competition and no-one "overpowering" others. When there is equal power there is mutual self-responsibility and no grounds for aggression.

People get angry because they are confused about what is causing something. And who woudn't be angry if they thought they had no power to change something, or that they were being caused against their own ability to cause. Owning up to BEING THE CAUSE erases the entire basis for projected responsibility, and makes anger IMPOSSIBLE.

Those who are at peace, are fully empowered, and never angry. Because they see that only forgiveness is justified and nothing can disturb their peace.

When you hold a grievance, where you demand that someone else has to change because they are unacceptable to you, you are using the ego's version of forgiveness.

If you claim they are wrong or bad or evil or sinful or guilty in any way, you are saying you need them to change. They should not be the way they are. They are wrong and bad and evil to be the way they are. They should not be this way.

This means really that you want THEM to change so that YOU do not have to change. And it also means that you in fact want to be AFFECTED by them, as a victim, but you want them to affect you in a way that matches your desires.

So if you were to get a person to change and be the way "you want them to be", then supposedly they'd now treat you the way you want them to, and give you what you want. Maybe they'd now "make you happy". But this is still a form of victimhood.

Being caused to be happy by something outside yourself is just as ego as being cauesd to be unhappy by something outside yourself. They are both forms of being at the effect of the world. And when you depend on the world being nice to you, giving you what you want, meeting your standards, or forcing you into preferable states, you're forgiving to destroy.

By demanding that someone change, or be not like they are, which is your projected judgement of them in the first place, you are destroying them with your judgement of them. You evaluate first that they are evil and then ask THEM to be the one to stop being evil. This is not only self destructive, it's an attempt to destroy the world.

It's like accusing someone of being a bad person, even when they're not, and trying to put that onto them, and then demanding that THEY change to get out of the prison that you've put them in, to make you happy. It's like asking someone to do your own dirty work.

So first you try to destroy them, then you demand they stop being the destroyed person, to appease you and for your own gain. Like hurting someone then requiring that they get up and thank you for it. This is how the destroys in order to try to bring about a "forgiven" state where the sin seems to have been removed. In a sense you demand that they "resurrect" from being evil, for your benefit.

If someone undoes the sin you accuse them of, by changing, and complying with your wishes, then the ego now says well, you have indeed forgiven, and now that I see you are not being the evil I accused you of, my perception of you is not seeing evil in you. And that implies that I've done a forgiveness. If you stop being the evil sinner that I hate, then apparently I have forgiven you. But nothing has really changed in my mind, so there has been no real forgiveness at all.

It's like when someone does something you disapprove of, and then you say you are not going to forgive them until they change their ways. They have to repent. And when they change their ways and meet your conditions, you will say yes, very good, you did what I wanted and now I approve of you, and now you are my loyal servant. Then you are temporarily bestowed with an ego blessing of seeming mercy, while still enforcing that if you return to your wicked ways, you'll be punished just as much as before.

This in effect is therefore like some dictating tyrant who wants everything to be their way and wants everyone else to comply. To have power over everyone and control everything. To force the world to stop being the way it is, or the way you judge it to be. If those other motherfuckers would just stop being assholes everything would be great for you and life would be smooth. And so the ego seems for an illusion of peace in the midst of its warring ways.

"The ego's plan for salvation centers around holding grievances. It maintains that if someone else spoke or acted differently, if some external circumstance or event were changed, you would be saved. Thus the source of salvation is constantly perceived as outside yourself. Each grievance you hold is a declaration, and an assertion in which you believe, that says, "If this were different, I would be saved." The change of mind that is necessary for salvation is thus demanded of everyone and everything except yourself."

Trying to forgive other people is an error. It is not the kind of forgiveness that ACIM teaches at all. It is an attack.

First and foremost, when you are in a state of unforgiveness yourself, you are perceiving incorrectly.

This erroneous perception is a state of judgement. This judgement causes you to mis-perceive. Your mis-perceptions show you things which seem to be real or true, which are not.

So as a primary starting point of all "forgiveness attempts", you pretty much will always find yourself believing that someone else is the problem.

Perceiving that someone else is the problem, the ego will step in and will guide you to take action. The action recommendation will be, "you need to forgive them."

THIS IS A LIE!

As soon as you begin to attempt to do something in response to the FALSE PERCEPTION that the other person is the one who needs to be forgiven, you will fall into the ego's trap even further. Attempting to forgive them is an ADDITIONAL LAYER OF LIES on top of the false perception you were having to begin with.

What then can come across as a desire to be more forgiving, as though more spiritual, is in fact an additional layer of attack. Those who are trying to forgive others for what they seem to have done, are attacking them, all in the pretense that they are being more holy, spiritual or forgiving, when in fact it is another form of condemnation in disguise. You've gone from bad to worse.

The "trick" to correct forgiveness is not in the REACTION to what you have mis-perceived, which compels you to think you have to forgive the fucker who just did something that upset you. The trick is, that you need to realize, that the only reason you THINK that the person is the cause of your upset, is because of YOUR FALSE PERCEPTION, and therefore something is wrong with your perceptual mechanism.

Your own perceptions are mistaken, and it is causing you to see other people as sinful when they are not. It is causing you to believe and perceive that they are causing YOU, producing effects in you, and that you have been victimized.

YOU HAVE NOT.

The "problem" you are trying to deal with or heal is NOT THE PROBLEM. The problem is not what someone caused or what someone appeared to do. The problem is that YOU are not seeing correctly. YOU NEED FORGIVENESS AND HEALING, not them.

Other people have absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH your upset.

Therefore, to correctly forgive, BEWARE of the temptation to think that you should "forgive them". That's a trap. It's a mistake on top of a mistake. You do not need to forgive them. You need to STOP, question whether what you perceive is EVEN REAL in the first place, and then set about the proper correction of YOUR broken perception, via YOUR mistaken beliefs, which are beliefs about YOURSELF, which need to be recognized as FALSE.

It's YOU who needs forgiveness, not anyone else. You CANNOT FORGIVE ANOTHER PERSON, because no-one else has really done anything and no-one is the cause of you. You are the one with the split mind, you are the one with ego judgement distorting your perceptions, you are the one who sees yourself as unfairly treated, you are the one who needs forgiveness OF YOURSELF, because of what YOU DID NOT DO.

You think you sinned, and you have tried to put your sin onto others and see it there, then attack it, to make out that it is not your problem. You are the one who needs correction. You can only forgive yourself. All attack is self attack.

The truth is, YOU DID NOT SIN EITHER, and sin has not happened at all, and there is no truth to sin, and sin is not real. Therefore, YOU are forgiven, and therefore in recognition of this you will accept that YOU are innocent, and then you will stop blaming your stuff on other people, in an attempt to then forgive them for what you think THEY did. They are not the one holding onto sin, it's you. YOU need forgiveness.

And you are forgiven, because you have not sinned, you cannot sin, you are immortal holy innocent and whole and free, are incapable of real sin, real sin does not exist, you have not separated from God, and therefore nothing has happened. Yay.

If you are not really clear that there is NO TRUTH in the world, because the entire world is an illusion, you will become quite confused.

You'll mistakenly keep searching for answers in forms, situations, explanations, authorities, rational deductions, conclusions, diagnosis, analysis etc.

You'll keep falling for every single illusion which says to you that such-and-such happened because of such-and-such.

You'll keep buying into the idea that you need to have a certain kind of special experience - the right food, the right sleep and water, the right environment, the right people - in order to be correct or healthy or happy.

You'll keep depending on stuff outside of you, and when that stuff is taken away you will be unhappy and desperate.

This all comes from believing that this world is REAL.

It all comes from LISTENING TO things that this world says, and things that the people in this world say, about why stuff happens, or what stuff is.

It takes many many occasions of stuff going WRONG and trying to figure out WHY and failing to come up with a really satisfying answer, to begin to realize that there ARE no real answers in the world. Every single one of them, every explanation possible, is STILL not the complete answer.

When stuff happens which nobody can explain, and defies all logic, and has never been seen before, and is completely insane, then you get a glimpse into just how obscure and nonsensical the world is. It is UTTERLY RIDICULOUS.

There can be no truth to it because it is an illusion. If it were real, sure, certain things would seem to make sense. There are various laws of physics and stuff which *seem* to hold true most of the time, except for when it breaks down, which it must, because the world is an unstable dream of chaos.

You can search and search and try to FIND answers and solutions and explanations here, in form, in events, in circumstances, in analyzing "what happened", and you will not ever find satisfactory answers. There aren't any. This is the ego's "seek and do not find".

If you THINK that you need to find an answer it is because you already believe there is a problem. If you believe there is a problem, you are MAKING a problem and have blinded yourself to the truth that there are no problems. So now you are on a hunt for nothing, trying to find out why nothing happened, thinking something happened. And you will FAIL. And that's a good thing, because maybe with enough failure you will learn WHY you failed. You failed because the world is not the truth and never will be.

God's truth is the only truth. "Only the truth is true" means that God's truth/reality is TRUE, and the world is FALSE.

Do not be deceived by sources of authority and explanation and proof and evidence that appear before your eyes in the world. Even if it makes sense. Even if it seems clear and obvious and totally convincing. Even if event A caused result B. Even that is not truth. Even if it can be proven in a court of law, that is not truth. It is not God's truth.

God's truth is that none of this happened at all, the world does not exist, there is no sickness or death, there are no problems, separation hasn't happened, the world is nothing, and you are immortal. If the world you are interacting with does not demonstrate that to you, it cannot POSSIBLY be real.

This is the only way that there can be miracles.... demonstration that what we think is "natural" is in fact unnatural, that what we think "happened" has not happened, and that what we think is "true" is completely false and does not exist.

It is just a device with a single, fixed function. It does what it was designed to do, like a machine. It can't be upgraded or changed or transformed into something more spiritual.

Like an old car, the fact is, at some point you have to just admit that the car is old and broken and it's time to let it go. It simply can no longer provide the function that you want it to provide. The ego is the same.

When you realize that the ego is just a fixed device, that means that you know letting it go is the only way to be free of it. You actually have a choice of whether to USE the ego device or not.

The device itself does not have any power over you. It can't stop you. It can only do what it does. It can create the illusions it was designed to create, which you might be convinced by, and that may indeed "stop you", but if you recognize these illusions and see that they are just a part of this ego thing, and not your self, then your self is free to choose again - free to step aside, put the ego device down, and let it go.

The ego can do absolutely nothing about this. It cannot stop you from waking up. It cannot act against your will or against the function it was designed to fulfill. It can only do what the ego was meant to do, and that is to paint a picture which is false and to pretend that it is true. If you no longer have a USE for that, and no longer see any PURPOSE in it, and it is no longer what you WANT, you will just put it down and stop using it.

You are free to choose again. You are free to drop the ego entirely. There is no power in all of existence that can stop you. There is no-one and no alien will capable of preventing you from waking up. The ONLY person or will that seems able to stop you from waking up is YOU, and the only way you can act against yourself in that way is when you choose to keep USING the ego and to keep denying that you have total freedom, total power, total choice, and that you are not in any way a victim of this ego thing.

To admit the truth is to admit that the ego is nothing but something you were using for a purpose. To admit the truth is to admit that your sickness was only put in place by you on purpose to defend you against admitting to your freedom. To admit the truth is to admit your upset and anger and retaliation against the attacks of others was only there to serve the purpose of you getting rid of your belief in sin, which was part of your belief in the ego being real. And to admit the truth is to own up to and accept the fact that, in truth, YOU ARE NOT LIMITED OR BOUND BY ILLUSIONS.

Literally, no-one is keeping you asleep. No-one is stopping you from being with God. No-one is keeping you imprisoned. No-one has power over you. No-one can stop you. There is nothing you cannot do. YOU ARE FREE! To believe otherwise, to be bound by illusions, to be caused to die, to be sick and suffer, to be incapable of performing miracles, to be unable to manipulate any of the ego's illusions, is to continue to USE the ego and to fail to recognize the whole truth of what you are. You are not an illusion but a reality.

You are completely 100% free of the ego if you choose to be so. And then it has absolutely no power over you, this entire world is at your command, and you are immortal.

If you are affected in any way, it is not YOU who is affected, it is an illusion (body etc). And if it is affected in any way, you are trying to use it to prove you can be affected. You cannot be affected, you are immortal. So you're faking it, and it's pointless. You can't change the fact you are immortal, ever. Your permanence is guaranteed.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

"He can see no evil; nothing in the world to fear, and no-one who is different from himself."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

"I am not the victim of the world I see."

"It is but an effect that YOU have caused, and you would not BE cause of this effect."

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

""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 is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen."

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"He MUST deny the world of pain, the instant he perceives the arms of love around him. "

"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. ... Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you IS unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built 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. ...This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all."

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"You are immortal and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do."

"I am not afraid but all powerful."

For years I thought scapegoating only happens one way. Usually you find a target and you blame everything on them and attack them. Yeah, not pretty. Usually the target is someone who you are are offended by, threatened be, some kind of "enemy".

But, what I've discovered is, it's possible to use a person that you are very close to, care about, love, etc... in a scapegoating way as well. It just doesn't look like scapegoating because it has all this "I want to help you" stuff thrown in.

You care about the person, you want to see them happy, you want them to not suffer, etc... various forms of "special love".

Usually in projection it's the "icky stuff" that gets projected. The shadow. You repress stuff with your persona and condemn it and project it. You project the sin and guilt most often. But sometimes, you also project from the persona.

This on the surface shows up like a kind of "positive projection" where you think you're just trying to help, fix, save, protect, care about, etc... but these are all ego attitudes. They're the ego's version of healing, the ego's version of forgiveness, the ego's versions of being helpful. They all have strings attached, are codependent, and are conditional.

Guilt within oneself can be repressed and denied, and then you go into a state of believing that you're guilty for causing your loved one to feel unhappy or being sick or having problems etc. So then you try to fix them, save them, change them, coerce them, control them, trying to "make their lives better".

But there's always this unacknowledged neediness, this dependency on getting the other person to heal so that YOU will get some benefit from it, and trying to use their situation of suffering as a way to prove your innocence. If you can undo their suffering, which you believe you caused, through your initial sin, it exonerates you.

This is how the unhealed healer operates. It's a state of believing you are helping when you are hurting. It's much less obvious than typical scapegoating because it does not LOOK LIKE an attack. It's wrapped up in care and special love and victimhood and being a savior and a hero etc. Even in terms of believing you are trying to prevent the person from suffering, sickness, even death. It seems noble. But it's bullshit.

For me this one has been much trickier to recognize and easier to fall into. What doesn't on the surface look like an attack, or making an enemy, is still an ego mechanism for trying to get your needs met. It's still manipulative and controlling. "I need you to be well" has this dark underlying tone of "if you don't be well, I won't love you".

The unhealed healer doesn't have the real love to give, to cause real healing, so doesn't know how to really heal. What passes for healing is not really healing. What passes for concern, worry, caring, is not really healing.

The real problem is the belief you sinned, are guilty for causing someone or something to be negatively affected, and now feel remorse and a sense of guilt that you need to do something to get someone else to reverse so that you can feel better about yourself. "They are healed, so I am not so upset now about what I did" kind of thing. And if they refuse the control and the subtle manipulation, out will come the ego claws "how dare you not get better!". lol

Quite the trap. But there is a way out. You did not sin. You are not guilty. So you do not NEED to fix your projected self condemnation.

When I am upset, feeling unhappy, having a cry, feeling guilty or afraid, or whatever, Holy Spirit is gentle and compassionate. He often says, "I know". Sometimes I feel a hand on my shoulder from Him or Jesus.

They are compassionate in that they know that *I* believe I am experiencing something upsetting, that *I* feel sad or whatever. They are there for me, and they don't judge it. They don't even use the opportunity to push me towards some kind of forgiveness or greater awareness. They just hold me and hug me.

However, the fact is that all upset feelings come from a mis-perception that I chose. And I chose that mis-perception so that I could further my separation from God.

So for example, I might feel upset because I saw myself victimized by someone. I might feel sad about how someone rejected me or whatever. And those feelings seem genuine, it seems like I really feel this way and that it's very sad and unfortunate. But, once I'm done with feeling, at some point I need to find the willingness to move beyond this.

I've witnessed how, in particular, when old hurts come up from the past, to be healed, they always feel like how it felt at the time. They're always based on how I was perceiving when I was younger and less aware. Even though at the time I did not understand what was going on, or what it meant, how it made me feel at the time based on that perception is now the feeling that I need to work through and release. But I've also seen how obvious it is, that these feelings were just how I felt 'within' the framework of a certain way of looking at life, and there is usually some kind of mistake in that.

I saw myself as hurt because I didn't perceive correctly. I saw myself as unloved because I didn't recognize my infinite lovability. I saw myself as unworthy because I devalued myself sort of 'by accident' because I didn't know what i was doing. And so I created feelings of unworthy and unlove and so on, which I must 'heal' and release, but even though these feelings seem like they reflected some kind of 'truth', they're not really the ultimate truth.

I need to become willing to admit that, once I've allowed myself to feel and release the 'energy' produced by a false perception, that the perception ITSELF was faulty. And it was the fault perception that LED to faulty feelings. Unhappy feelings come from unhappy perceptions. So I need to now be willing to see differently, to look for a greater truth, to own up to the part that I played in choosing to suffer, to take back my power, to claim responsibility for doing this to myself, and to realize that nobody involved was doing it without my will.

So there is a 'forgiveness' process that needs to occur, above and beyond unhappy feelings, to correct the perception that led to them. And even though Holy Spirit knows this, he seldom prompts or forces me to 'go there' especially not right when I'm feeling how the feelings felt. I let myself fully feel because this releases the energy, even though it's a FALSE energy, to clear it out. To cathart it. THEN my mind is clearer and can have a cognitive shift, as well as being more willing and able to now apply a 'forgiveness' to change my perception.

It's important to let yourself feel and let out the trapped negative emotions, but recognize also that they are only there because of a mistaken way of looking at life, and that mistake needs to be corrected at some point. When you are ready. And not before. And nobody is pushing you or forcing you to have to do that, especially not when you're in the middle of a deep release. Trying to rush someone out of feeling into truth isn't compassionate.

So it's possible to have compassion for someone who is feeling upset even if you know that their upset is false, and there really isn't a need to be upset. Holy Spirit knows that nothing has gone wrong and there is ONLY reason to celebrate, but to tell me that in the middle of me believing heavily that I've been wronged, isn't entirely helpful because I can't hear it until I'm ready and willing. We really believe we've done something terrible to God and deserve to be punished for it, and as we work through those feelings, Holy Spirit is very patient to give you time to 'process' the consequences of a mistaken decision. And then at some point, when you're ready, you will undo the belief that caused it.

I've recently been noticing that my work with the course has shifted to the undoing of guilt. And that this was not the case in previous years. Overall it seemed I was working on undoing fear much more often.

Just theorizing here, but maybe when we're starting out with forgiveness our mind is just too "low" in its degree of truth and light. Sin and guilt still seem too buried and unconscious, hidden behind blocks. Our conscious mind may more likely find itself so blocked that it deals with fear and punishment on a daily basis more than anything else.

Over time, we work on forgiving, and it gradually chisels away at this overall "large block" of mind-junk. From the bottom up, we are gradually removing layers of stuff and raising our overall level of awareness and mastery. While there may be some issues or lessons where we undo fear, or guilt, or sin, or are working on sickness perhaps, overall we're still deeply immersed in "the lower levels" of mind.

I've done such a lot of work on fear that I think I have a much better grip on it now. And while fearful challenges still arise, I am much less deceivable. So I feel that my focus is "rising-up" or "going deeper" into the prior level that comes before fear - which is guilt. If you recall basically we get into sin first, which demands guilt, leads to fear of punishment etc.

So my focus now, or what I'm most often presented with, is the undoing of guilt. In fact I recently seemed to be only just starting to become aware that I even feel guilty at all. I did not recognize it. I did not know that I was guilty and the guilt I was feeling didn't seem to fit into a common definition of what guilt is. I am learning about it first-hand as I dig into it. Because for example guilt can often express as anger or a strong desire to project, and can feel like being offended even.

What I have noticed is that in working on this guilt, which is dredging up a lot of old crap as well, fear goes bye bye very quickly. You can't be afraid of punishment if you are not guilty. Without guilt there is no fear. So I now experience that as I work to undo guilt about stuff, it seems to have a "more powerful" effect in lifting me upwards towards light and truth. It feels more rapid in its consequences, and the fear literally just vanishes without a trace without having to do anything to work on it.

I noticed this when one day, I suddenly recognized I felt very guilty that I thought I caused someone to be sick, although this was not true. I still felt it. And I acknowledged it and spoke about it and let it out. And since bringing that to light, the next day I immediately noticed I felt much less afraid. A whole swath of fear melted.

And then I also was working through some feelings about when my wife was in the hospital etc and how that felt, and suddenly was recognizing that it felt so hellish because I was actually feeling guilty, which was causing fear. Undoing that guilt has really shifted things quickly. It in fact removed what seemed like a looming resistance and sense of dread about what would happen next, that was hanging around all the time.

I know also from experience that if you go straight to the core, the belief in sin, which is really the ultimate turning point of a total change of mind, it has the power to undo not only fear but guilt as well, very rapidly. But you have to be able to unearth and look at the feeling and belief in sinfulness. Sinfuless feels pretty awful. I got in touch with it one time and it felt like a desire to be dead, so bleak and desperate and so strongly believing that I was criminal or evil or had done something so terrible there was no other way out.

But at the moment I think that level of ego crap is still mostly buried beneath the "guilt layer". As I move through the guilt and clear it out, I rise up in mind closer to complete forgiveness and atonement. And as I rise up I go deeper within and uncover the secret sins and hidden hates.

Overall there seems to be the stuff we go through to try to forgive specific issues, which vary a lot, but in the big picture there seems to also be this very gradual movement towards God, truth, light, forgiveness, which takes you through these clouds of ego crap. First through layers of fear, then through layers of guilt, then through layers of sin, and then into the light. We seem to be undoing this from the bottom up, gradually ascending as we do.

"Only salvation can be said to cure."

There is only one problem - the sense of separation from God. God is immortality and permanent health. If you deny God, you are denying life and inducing death. It is ONLY the separation from God which CAUSES ALL SUFFERING, including all forms of sickness and death.

To deny God is to attack your health. Defending yourself against God is an attack thought, attacking your invulnerability. Sickness becomes a defense against the truth (God), made to "protect you from God", but with the actual effect of "protecting you from health." In sickness you are attempting to "save your life" by protecting yourself from life. This is clearly insane and cannot work.

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt (are mortal)."

"It is your task to heal the sense of separation that has made him sick."

"The problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has already been solved."

There is no other problem. ALL sickness is caused by separating from God. Denying God induces illness. Your mind is the sole cause of all suffering, even death. The ONLY solution is the atonement, which COMPLETELY erases all sense of separation and accepts God as truth. This makes the denial of health impossible, making sickness and death impossible. Atonement cures wholly because it represents WHOLENESS.

"The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick (but does result in this), for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. (which heals the sick) And that is cure indeed.

***For sickness now is gone***, with nothing left to which it can return." Atonement is the restoration of your immortality. It makes you utterly invulnerable. You can no longer be sick or die. Nothing can happen against your will. You have no need for defenses because you know you cannot be attacked. Nothing real can be threatened.

"The mind that serves the Spirit is invulnerable."

"Those who accept Atonement, ARE invulnerable."

"You are invulnerable BECAUSE you are guiltless."

"This heals the Separation, and places within man the one defense against all Separation-mind errors which can make him perfectly invulnerable." When you separate from (deny, oppose) God, you block your awareness of the presence of love (life) within you. Seeing lack and being in need, you seek for what is absent, outside of you. This begins "seek and do not find." You will not find it outside because it is inside.

You look for yourself, your love, your life and health, outside of you, where they do not exist. Seeking outside of yourself for this CAUSES sickness and suffering, because it takes you AWAY from God and life, which are WITHIN you. You try to find them where they do not exist, and the more you try the worse you suffer. Seeking for God outside yourself is the avoidance of God within yourself.

"Peace is an attribute ***in YOU. You cannot find it outside.*** All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace." Perceiving a lack of love within, you project lack without. This makes a world of lack. Coming from the internal attack on God, it is a projected attack-world. "The world was made as an attack on God." "The world of bodies is the world of sin." "The world is a (projected) picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

This is also a projection of, and a disowning of, causal power. You don't want to admit that YOU CAUSE YOUR OWN SUFFERING - ie you are the one denying health. You imagine that causation is outside of you, and you see yourself as caused BY it. This frames the world as "sinning against you" ie causing you against your will, making you a powerless effect. This sets you up to be a victim, or receiver of the world, which you now "sense" through the body's inputs.

You have given the world, which you are dreaming/hallucinating, all the power it seems to have. You have given YOUR power away in trying to empower it to have power over you. You have given it your causality and will. You think it has your life, and contains your self. And you see it as causing you. It is therefore attacking you. It is your enemy and your savior, because it does things to you.

The world now is seen as a world of sin, in which the world can hurt you. It decides when you will suffer. It decides how you become sick. It decides when you will die and how much pain you will endure. All of this seems to happen against your will from the outside in. Anything the world can do TO you, is against your will, regardless of it seeming to be positive or negative.

You then divide up the world into separate parts to try to "spiritualize" some and "demonize" others. You pick and choose certain aspects of the world to "do things to you" that you prefer. You try to avoid its attacks, while collecting its lovely treasures. You defend against its harsh weather with your little fragile house. You seek for its fancy cars while trying to avoid a crash. You want only the good food not the bad stuff. And so you make a bargain with the world, to try to induce it to "do only good things to you", while avoiding all the bad things. And when it seems to go well, you think you are "living the dream." But you have gained the world, and lost your soul.

"What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

The world is two-faced. The world is self-contradictory. It offers you pain, and offers you salvation from that pain. It hurts you, then offers you healing. It threatens to destroy you, then tries to save you. This is because the world has come from the belief that BOTH heaven and hell exist. That life and death are both possible. And so the world depicts the contradiction of opposites. It seems to partly help, and partly hurt.

As a result, EVERYTHING in the world is not one thing, but two. It is a world of dualities and a double-edged sword. Everything which seems to help, MUST also hurt. Everything which seems to hurt, in some way helps. Snake venom can be a partial medicine. Surgery can kill you. ALL foods have toxicity to them, some worse than others. All medicines exaggerate certain body functions while depressing others. The external manipulation of the body is thus seen as the only sane solution to being externally manipulated.

This is actually inescapable. Anything the world can seem to do to you against your will is MAGIC. All magic is a mixture of attack and defense. To be "affected by the world" is still a state of being victimized and in need, regardless of whether the effects are preferred.

We try to focus ourselves on finding the "least harmful solution" to problems, to minimize the risks, and to skew the picture to make it seem like there are "completely harmless solutions". We have a fictional idea that some things in the world are totally harmless. But the world HAS NO harmless solutions. EVERY one of its solutions is a problem in its own right. Its effects cause more effects.

In fact, the world has a somewhat sinister motive, which can appear to be hidden. It basically wants you dead. Sooner or later. Even if it gives you scraps and hopes and promises, every one of its helping hands is laced with poison. Its every attempt to "make you happy" sets you up for loss and sadness.

Anything it can give to you, it can just as easily take away. Anything you "get" from it, is a deception with a cost. This is because the world was made WITH and FROM the notion of the REJECTION OF LIFE. The world is made of the idea of death, because it came from rejecting immortality. So it cannot actually offer you life. It cannot give you wholeness. And it cannot provide a CURE for anything - or a cure for ITSELF. And being the inducer of death, it will do anything BUT cure death.

"There is a tendency to think the world can offer consolation and escape from problems that its purpose is to keep."

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. ... All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

Because the world comes from the wish to die, ie the wish to deny God and health, it is driven by a MOTIVE of death. That was the PURPOSE in making it, as an attack upon God and life. Death motivates the world, and everything in the world ultimately drives TOWARD death. It cannot therefore induce immortality, cure you completely, or restore your wholeness. It cannot save you, nor can it give you eternal life. It MUST fail, because it came from the failure to recognize the truth.

"It is not Will for Life, but wish for death, that is the motivation for this world. Its ONLY purpose is TO PROVE GUILT REAL. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. These are the witnesses that are called forth to be believed, and lend conviction to the system they speak for and represent."

"Everything in this world is little, because it is a world made out of littleness, in the strange belief that littleness CAN content you. When you strive for anything in the world, WITH THE BELIEF THAT IT WILL BRING YOU PEACE, you are belittling yourself, and blinding yourself to glory." "There is NOTHING in the world to teach him that the logic of the world is totally insane, and leads to nothing."

"There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

"There is a light which this world cannot give."

"It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace, or upset you in any way."

Anything the world "does to you" is magic. Magic is the idea of a cause outside of yourself affecting you against your will. It is the opposite to internally-sourced miracles. This takes the form of anything the world seems to do to harm you, as well as anything the world seems to do to help you.

While you may prefer the "good stuff", having the world "do good things to you" is just as much a state of victimhood. It still focuses on you getting from the outside, what you lack inside, without your insides changing. It's still a state where you WANT the world to do something "to you" against your will, FORCING you to "be happy." This is "forgiveness to destroy", because you seek for the world to be the source of change, rather than yourself.

Since the world attacks and defends, and since its motive is ultimately death, and since it CANNOT induce wholeness or a total cure, ALL of its remedies are AT BEST partial. All of its remedies MUST therefore do the opposite to what they claim to do, as well. They MUST be two-faced and deceptive. If it is to "help you", it MUST also hurt you. There is ALWAYS a price to pay, and it does not help to deny this.

This means that ALL foods have a negative side-effect. There is no such thing as a perfect diet. It means that ALL medicines have harmful side effects. All surgeries have high risks of serious threats to your health. All vaccines INDUCE what they are ultimately trying to avoid. In some cases literally, while in others the form is less obvious.

It may not take the form of a certain vaccine "causing the virus" it was trying to prevent, but the real PURPOSE of a vaccine is to "ward off death", which it CANNOT really do. And in fact it must IN SOME WAY, induce it, to some degree. It MUST induce other symptoms as a result of its "interference". Some of these symptoms may be mild to barely noticeable, while others may be life threatening.

This has nothing to do with the competence of medical workers, or the proficiency of scientists, or the wonders of modern medicine, or the seemingly wonderful "benefits" of an extremely wide range of magical solutions. It would APPEAR that "lives are saved" by such things. Provided you recognize that at the same time, lives were also attacked by such things. There is NEVER a possibility of a perfect total "cure" through ANY magical external means. ONLY atonement can be said to cure completely.

This simply goes back to the fact that the ONLY PROBLEM is the separation from God, which is the sole cause of inducing all sickness, suffering and death. The MIND creates what appear to be viruses and invasions, putting them into the world. The world only then APPEARS to be their source. ONLY by correcting THAT problem, will sickness and death TRULY become impossible. Anything which does not address this ACTUAL problem, will not ultimately ward off death, even if it appears to in the short term.

This is the main problem which ALL magical solutions share. They appear to change the body, BUT NOT the mind. They may make the body seem healthier, but do nothing to fix the dripping tap of death-inducing separation.

There is no pill for "the separation". There is no medication that can induce runion with God. There is no surgery which can cut out the ego. There is no bandaid sufficient enough to heal the wound of the denial of health. And no vaccine can EVER fully guarantee your safety or that of others. It may seem to do SOMETHING, but it cannot do everything.

What that leaves you with is one of two options.

1) Heal the separation from God, accept atonement, receive a complete CURE, and never suffer again. This makes all sickness impossible because you choose to stop causing it, and there is no other cause.

2) Avoid healing the separation, MAINTAIN sickness, choose from a selection of LIMITED and PARTIALLY EFFECTIVE magical treatments which WILL hurt you in some way, and try to live with the consequences.

If you think that you can elect to use magical remedies WITHOUT ill effects, you are in denial. They only seem to do anything BECAUSE of your denial. You might weigh up the seeming risks, look at the manmade "statistics", and decide for yourself (or preferably with God) as to whether to indulge in magic or not. But let's be clear, for your health as well, that any magical solution cannot ONLY heal. It has to also cause some form of harm. It is because you BELIEVE in harm that you think you NEED it in the first place, and this belief works against your health.

Maybe you are willing to accept that, although you cannot honestly be fully at peace about it. No-one who recognizes without denial what magical solutions ARE and WHY they exist and WHAT their motive is, can rest in peace. You can resign yourself to a compromise, willing to suffer in some ways to OFFSET the others. But this is how the world worlds. This is the laws of physics and entropy. You become willing to suffer a seemingly "smaller pain" in exchange for the reduction of a larger one. It's a tradeoff. You buy and sell risk in an effort to minimize cost, while always having a cost.

Do not pretend though that medicines or a vaccine or an injection or a pill or a certain kind of food or drink or even any form of salvation - sex, drugs, rock and roll - can undo the separation in the mind and truly prevent illness. Nothing external can fix the INTERNAL problem. The internal problem has CAUSED the external to appear, as an hallucinated world of suffering. And then you are looking to a made-up death-induced world, to save you from death. It cannot ultimately work.

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

This doesn't mean you shouldn't necessarily USE magic IF you need to, want to, or for whatever reason. Sometimes such thing can seem to alleviate suffering. People wouldn't likely take them if they didn't "seem to help". Some people cannot "live" without external support, major medications, physical apparatus, and various other help. Surgery can seem to save lives. But surgery can also induce complications.

"All material means which man accepts as remedies for bodily ills are simply restatements of magic principles. It was the first level of the error to believe that the body created its own illness. Thereafter, it is a second mis-step to attempt to heal it through non-creative agents. It does not follow, however, that the application of these very weak corrective devices are evil."

Your best bet is seeking spiritual guidance from a higher source - the Holy Spirit - Jesus - Angels etc.... as to what to choose. And if that means you have to "settle" for non-miraculous external help, for a non-whole treatment, due to what you are willing to accept right now, so be it. But then keep working on your forgiveness and moving towards the acceptance of atonement as well. Atonement is the GUARANTEE of health forever.

Please don't misinterpret that this post is telling you what to do or not to do, NOR is it trying to paint vaccines in an unfair or negative light or to "put you off". They are what they are. They can only do what they do. If you're okay with that, so be it. It's your free will choice.

All sense of loss arises from believing that a changing world is real. If it is real, and if something goes away, a part of reality has been lost. If it is real, there has been a real separation. And if that's true, you absolutely must be in a state of deprivation. Time itself induces loss every second, and time is death.

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

Something that you thought was real and valuable has been taken away. A part of reality or God itself has been destroyed and kept apart. The mind reasons that, because it's real and because it's not there, there is an absence, and a part of yourself has been ripped away.

The feelings of grief then rise up to correspond to that belief that something real is lost. The mind invents them to make sense of the situation. Then people in the world who believe in bodies will tell you that it's completely normal and natural to grieve. It does make perfect logical sense, given the premise that this world is real and loss has happened, but it is not natural at all.

In God's immortal reality nothing real can ever be lost, suffer attack, be ripped away or destroyed, forgotten about or separated from. No-one can suffer or be sick or die. Everyone is a part of everyone forever, by God's will. Impermanence of any kind is impossible, and nothing real can be threatened.

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today."

What it then boils down to is, that if you to any degree believe this world or bodies is reality, you will be constantly in varying degrees of loss. If anything at all so much as moves an inch, it implies a separation. If something bigger and more important seems to go away, you will miss it. If a body person dies off and stops being around, you'll notice it intensely. And then there will be the logical conclusion of a loss of something real - a real loss and a real grief.

The problem we have is that we're still working on waking up to God's truth and we still believe in bodies. We still confuse people for their physical bodies and still regard this world as reality. And that sets us up for the consequences of our wrong decision. It means that we're primed to experience losses before they even happen. We've set ourselves up for a fall, by choosing to believe that something temporary can be depended upon forever.

It's our attachment to bodies, our valuing of bodies, and our confusion of bodies with souls/minds, that lays the foundation for devastation and despair and grief. If and when they do go away, which everything in the world of form does eventually, its cruelty will induce all manner of egoic reactions.

"They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

An important dynamic that I've experienced is the belief that the person dying is causing you to be upset. If they have gone way, they have attacked you and caused you to grieve. How dare they die. And how dare they stop being there. This will produce anger and resentment. And of course this means you will scapegoat the dead person and project guilt onto them to blame them for causing a loss, which will have nothing to do with them at all and everything to do with you trying to get rid of your own guilt.

Then even further, underneath the anger will be a sense of hurt, as though you have been hurt by the death. And of course that boils down to a belief that the death of anything can infect you and cause you to die along with it. And so now the person who has left the body has returned to life in heaven, and you are left behind in a state of death and suffering, and you are the one who is dead.

"The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death."

Death isn't real and doesn't really exist. It doesn't do anything to anything real and nothing real can ever die. But if you believe in a world that dies all the time, you can be sure you'll be upset before long. This is why the world is a constant disappointment, because you expect it to last forever. You'll be torn between efforts to wake up and acknowledge God's truth, and the continued belief that death is real which constantly pulls you back into hell like an anchor.

To try to forgive death really means forgiving the entire world of space and time and everything in it. To focus on the reality that a person has not really died, still lives on, and is still a part of me in communication and sharing is of course helpful. But at the same time, the other part of me which is ego aligned and trusts death, is continually pulled into the consequences of that belief. And that means the constant nagging reminder of "yes she really is dead isn't she!"

Feelings of grief, loss, absence, deprivation, anger, etc arise. The seeming "fact" that a person has died slaps you in the face, telling you that you have "suffered" a serious loss. As if the serious loss has happened to you against your will. You might be in grief and feeling like a victim, but at the same time it's true that nothing has really happened. And how can you have been caused to grieve against you will?

But this focus on truth can cause a hurdle to the grieving, because while you try to align yourself with God's truth of immortality, the rest of you is pulled horribly into a dark place of sadness and hopelessness and loss. You can't properly deal with the loss, in a typically dysfunctional way at best, because trying to be holy and perfect all the time makes it seem like a guilty sin to give it any time and attention. And yet it calls to you constantly to deal with it.

At some point then, if you're going to persist in believing in the world, you have left yourself with little choice but to go through a grieving process. If you are not yet ready to completely eradicate all belief in death and thus spacetime ("without the idea of death there is no world"), you're probably going to have to settle at least in part for second-best, failure, impossible struggle, and forced grief that seems pointless. If the world is real and the body is real and the body is lost, your ego is going to suffer about it.

So then at some point you have to turn to the grief and just go through it and feel the horrible shit, acknowledge it and be terribly upset. And this is the part that people call natural, but it is far from it. It's like being stuck in a state that you're not supposed to be in and having to deal with it in a totally conflicted way. And even when you egoically have a total spaz about it, which seems to make it go away for a while, it still doesn't solve it completely.

You can't possibly find peace and acceptance about the situation if the situation is real. There is no atonement there, so there is no cure. Grief will keep regurgitating and producing more upset emotions. There is no freedom while the world is still a reality. So then you're in a situation where you can't find peace and are forced face-to-face with a horrible loss, and all you can do is cry and feel unhappy and be a victim.

People will tell you that you then must allow yourself to grieve - embrace the victimhood, as though this is healthy, and perhaps it is at least better than bottling it up or going into less healthy forms of handling it. You are just going to have to feel it, grieve, and go through the loss. And that does indeed totally suck because it's not really a sane solution. And that means turning away from the constant barrage of God-truths and forgiveness statements and just letting yourself feel the horror for a while. Sometimes you just have to do something even if it's bullshit.

So then you cry, and you cry again, and you do some more and you have a huge catharsis. And somehow this is what the world calls healing. And supposedly you adjust and adapt, as though that's some kind of transformation or coming to terms with it, but that really isn't an awakening either.

It's more like a putting up with and a tolerating and a gradually undoing of the special relationship dynamics, attachments and so on. It's more like learning to let the person be ripped away and trying to just tolerate the pain of that until it stops hurting so much. And until the separation is truly undone it will keep coming back and haunting you for years to come.

It then seems like you pretty much have to grieve and be miserable and mourn and all that, which is a total course failure given that it means you're now part of the "black draped mourners" who are in the funeral procession and not doing God's will, per ACIM's teaching. But since you are where you are with this whole thing, and are not ready to totally surrender into atonement, you just have to go through the bumpy road rollercoaster of despair until it eases up somehow. Hopefully you can use all this as an opportunity to forgive and let go of the belief in death and the world.

"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself."

I'd like to say I personally am beyond all this but I'm definitely not. Last week was horrendous, entering into states of victimhood and terrible strong emotions and crying and being bedridden for several days trying to avoid vertigo and sinus stress. The body wasn't too happy about the grieving process either - feel the feelings and it becomes stressed out - don't feel the feelings and it develops physical symptoms instead. It's a lose-lose situation until you somehow just get through it. And it keeps coming.

Moral of the story is, if you're not enlightened it's going to suck. And that's your fault because you chose it, and you're not ready to stop choosing it, so get ready to suck. And then hopefully after some severe sucking you can free yourself from death's nipple and actually find some sense of happiness again.

You'll have to just deal with an impossible situation as best you can until it sucks less. And meanwhile do your forgiveness shit and hopefully someday you'll find true salvation about it all. You can't avoid the inevitable production of grief feelings if you believe there has really been a loss, and until you can face the fact that you do believe there's been a loss and feel through it, you'll just be in denial.

At least something we have to look forward to is the day when we remember to laugh at all this and realize that none of it was ever true anyway.

There is a huge amount of resistance to the idea that ACIM is teaching us to perform LITERAL miracles. As in, healing the sick, raising the dead, walking on water, etc.

The resistance comes because the ego's thought system is completely proven false when a miracle happens. The ego has absolutely no way to understand it, no way to stop it, no way to interfere with it, and does not know what is happening. This means the ego is going to have a huge resistance to the miracle.

So anyone with an ego left, is going to be resistant to the idea of miracles, because the ego does not believe in cures, or sudden revelations, or instantaneous healing, or defiance of the law of gravity, or any other thing which the miracle demonstrates is possible.

Miracles are expressions of love, therefore expressions of truth. When the truth "happens", it will demonstrate HOW, and the FACT that, all of the ego's so-called "laws" are not true. The miracle bypasses space and time and completely ignores ALL ego laws and just does whatever God wills.

From the ego's perspective, it is frantic to try to deny and block and explain how the miracle did what it did, to try to diminish it and cover its effects so that it will be less obvious that the ego has just been shown to be totally false. Anyone with an ego, which is almost every Course student, is going to therefore have a huge resistance to "real miracles" because they are seen as an attack by the ego. They are the truth, come to demonstrate that the ego's ways are completely illusory and cannot be believed.

There is nothing a miracle cannot do. And that totally blows the ego's mind.

To the ego, miracles should not be possible. There is nothing in the ego's thought system that supports them. When they happen, the ego may go into shock or fear or denial to try to resist it.

If you were in Jesus's presence and some person had died and He told them to come back to life and they did and they stood up and were not dead, you would be like, holy FUCK!

If you were in Jesus's presence and a person that you knew for years who was born blind, suddenly had real eyeballs, and can see perfectly, and there is absolutely nothing in your ego belief system to support how this is possible, you might well run the hell in the other direction!

If you were in Jesus's presence and his body suddenly disappeared in front of your eyes, then reappeared, then disappeared, then reappeared, several times, like someone was flipping a light switch, you'd be like, FUCKING HELL! What the fuck is going on?!!

If you were in Jesus's presence and He suddenly turned the tree you were sitting under into a bunch of flowers and handed them to you, and you took them, and then the flowers turned into a snake which you threw to the ground, and then the snake turned back into a tree, you'd be like, HOLY COW! What the F just happened here?

But in each of these situations, Jesus's demonstration of miracles would have educated you on WHAT IS POSSIBLE, and those possibilities would have taken your awareness far outside the realm of the LIMITATIONS that you are used to believing cannot be transcended. Obviously if Jesus's body is switching on and off like a light switch, it shows you that the body is not really physical. That alone will blow your mind but also you will never again be able to believe completely that bodies are real.

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do." - ACIM

So it's simply that students are anti-miraculous because their ego's are still strongly believing in a state of being where NO MIRACLES happen, a highly unnatural state where there is NO LOVE. That's the ego's entire focus. It doesn't believe in miracles, it doesn't believe it's possible to change one object into another, or that bodies can come back from the dead, or that sickness can suddenly disappear, or that people can grow new eyeballs out of nowhere. It doesn't want anything to do with this ego-law-defying demonstration of truth.

Also given that all resistance to the truth produces sickness and miracles are demonstrations of the truth, people could actually CHOOSE to become sick as a defense against witnessing a miracle. If the miracle were sufficiently outside their mind's ability to accept it as real, they might cling tightly to the body through sickness and pain in order to try to escape from it. Ultimately you could say that all sickness is caused by a refusal to accept that miracles are possible. Or that people get sick because they choose NOT to perform miracles.

A couple of days ago, I rubbed my eyes a bit too much and triggered some swelling. Maybe a small blood vessel was broken or something. My upper eyelid swelled up and was red and sore and uncomfortable all day.

I at first wasn't sure whether to try to perform some kind of miracle on it or not. I knew that if I were to "fight it" I would be making it real and making a drama about it, which wouldn't help. At first that made me feel like I had to just accept it and live with it.

But part of me also wondered, what is it that stops me from accepting a complete and total healing instantaneously right now? Why should I tolerate this? How can I accept it and have it disappear as well?

So then I went to Holy Spirit. I asked, should I do something about this?

He said no.

But I had this sense that, I hadn't asked the right question. I indeed needed to DO nothing in the truest sense that, really, this thing had not really happened. But this also keyed me in to realize that, I needed to believe that it had not happened in order to truly embody the need to do nothing.

So I set about cancelling it by collapsing every belief and sense of truth about what had caused it. I told myself plainly that it did not exist, was not there, was already healed, there was no swelling, no soreness, no discomfort, no damage.

I undid all belief in the various causes that I'd convinced myself of such as "because I rubbed it" or "too many tears" or "didn't want to see something" or that issues about certain people were responsible.

When there were no more imagined "reasons why" it should be there, I really got into the sense that it is gone already and did not exist at all. This is an important point because we need to assert the state that we choose to manifest right now, not something off in the future. It's like painting a new picture of what you believe is real now - a vision of divine health and present happiness - rather than in any way accepting that sickness still exists.

So as part of that, I started to affirm gratitude to God that He had already healed this, that it was already resolved, already undone, had already disappeared, and that there was now a completely restored and healed eyelid free from all problems.

This was when I think Holy Spirit stepped in and suddenly I started with the energetic shaking. But also something 'new' happened, right after I thanked God for having healed it already.

Thanking God for healing in effect invites the receiving of healing while simultaneously affirming that the problem is gone, which is the proper mental "direction" for allowing God to extend and flow. God works in the now and in the awareness that the problem is solved already, so we need to learn to shine "thank you that it is healed already" (acknowledgement of receipt) rather than "please heal it because it's not healed".

Note that in the bible there is a phrase about asking, and that if you believe you have received it, you shall have it. The believing it is received, through thanks to God, and therefore acknowledgement of its PRESENCE, is the key to miracles flowing.

The area in question suddenly was filled with what I can only describe as an extremely high "heat", so hot and intense that I wondered for a moment if something had burst or become worse. It was very intensely focused right in the middle spot where this issue was located. It seemed to cover an area no more than a couple of millimeters, and held there in one spot.

I just observed it for what seemed like maybe 20 seconds or more. It didn't move or change. It was just there. It seemed hotter than any physical heat you could experience. Yet it didn't burn and was not uncomfortable at all. It was not pain. It almost felt like an intense presence, hard to ignore. Like some kind of "liquid fire".

I've heard some Christian healers etc talking about Holy Fire and this idea that Holy Spirit can bring some kind of intense healing "fire" from heaven or something, which heals stuff. I am presuming this was my first encounter with it.

I then relaxed and eventually went to sleep. I could already tell even then, that it was much less sore, I couldn't barely feel it anymore, and it was much more comfortable. This morning the problem has almost disappeared. It looks and feels a lot better.

Sometimes I am grateful for little, relatively minor physical issues, because they can present good opportunities for practicing miracle-working and healing. They indeed are lessons when used appropriately.

When the mind dreams, it is capable of projecting any kind of image at will. It does not require time in order for anything to "evolve" within the mind's projected images.

The mind doesn't have to wait for time to pass, for its projected images to develop certain states or conditions. It is able to project NOW, absolutely any image.

It can project NOW an image of sickness, an image of a body which seemed to have aged, an image of a baby which was just born, an image of a body in great condition, or any kind of body at any point in "time", with absolutely NO NEED FOR TIME TO PASS in order for that body to ARRIVE AT that condition. It is projected in its "whatever state", RIGHT NOW.

You can easily see this at work when you dream at night. When your dream BEGINS, an entire environment can show up complete with what appears to be qualities and properties which, in time, would have to have taken many many years to establish.

That environment isn't "brand new" looking. It isn't the beginning of evolving an environment. It isn't the start of civilization. It isn't the beginning of the universe. Instead, the mind projects NOW images of bodies already in a state of decay, environments which must allegedly have been "built" by people over time, trees which must have "grown" in order to become as large as they seem, and events which allegedly could only come about through an entire sequences of prior events.

The mind puts all of this in place NOW. It does not take for you to dream for 100,000 years in order to have a dream of a planet Earth in which you are walking around. The dreaming mind INSTANTLY projects what APPEARS to be forms at a certain point in time, with a certain condition. It therefore instantly also invents HISTORY, all of the prior events which SEEM like they must have happened in order to lead to THIS moment. And yet, you only started sleeping an hour ago, and here you are dreaming of a world which has been around for a billion years.

With this in mind, realize this about your current mind also, in your waking states. As Jesus says, your waking dreams and nighttime dreams differ ONLY IN THEIR FORM. The mind that you have now is dreaming NOW, it is projecting an entire universe NOW, it is making images of stuff which "must have taken a very long time to arrive at" NOW, without having to go through ANY of that time.

Therefore, realize this. Whatever is showing up NOW, is an ILLUSION of something which took a very long time to evolve. ANY state of existing in form can be projected INSTANTLY. Any environment, any body state, any experience, any condition, any sickness, any objects, any condition of objects which allegedly have developed wear and decay and weathering can all be projected NOW, afresh, to LOOK LIKE they have been around for a million years. It makes you wonder, if history really exists, doesn't it?

And guess what.... your mind is projecting YOUR BODY in exactly the same way. The way that your body is showing up NOW, HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THE PAST. And the key to understanding this is to understand what a decision is.

The ego's illusion is that, at some point in time, you make a decision. You make this momentary decision and something happens. This decision is then "locked into" in the past and cannot be changed. This is the idea of irreversible sin which you can do nothing to undo, and have to just suffer the consequences going forward. The consequences of this decision then seem to carry over into the future, over a long period of time. For example, it may SEEM as if, in time, you hurt your leg, and thereafter, your body had "leg problems", which seemed to sustain over time, and was "because of" this event which happened in the past. THIS IS NOT HOW DECISIONS WORK.

When you decide something, it means that you are typically choosing a new BELIEF. You are, essentially, making a change of "direction". Like turning corner. You establish a belief in your mind, which you have made be your "new truth", and then you KEEP THAT BELIEF. Because that belief is kept in your mind, it is CONSTANTLY REPROJECTING whatever that belief would produce.

So if a situation comes around where you choose and create an illusion of your leg being hurt, and you then put in place a belief that your leg is hurt, that there were "real consequences", you will KEEP THE BELIEF OVER TIME. Your mind will then continually REPROJECT a damaged body over, and over, and over, and over again.

At any given moment, the body has no existence of its own. At any given moment, the mind is projecting a BRAND NEW IMAGE, an out picturing of an inward condition. At any given moment, the body you had "just now" has DISAPPEARED, and it has been REPLACED with an entirely NEW PROJECTION.

An analogy to this is a digital movie. Movies are comprised of "frames", which are still images. Each frame is a snapshot of a given state of images. The projector (mind) SHOWS one image at a time. It shows a picture of a body in a certain state, then the frame ends, and is removed, and then the NEXT FRAME REPROJECTS an entirely *separate image*, nothing whatsoever to do with the previous image, showing a DIFFERENT PICTURE of a body.

Since this happens very very quickly, at every quantum of time, this creates an ILLUSION OF ANIMATION. Also, and this is the really key point... if the mind keeps projecting a very SIMILAR IMAGE across multiple frames or moments, it creates ****AN ILLUSION**** that there is something "consistent" or "continuous" present "over time".

This ILLUSION leads you to believe that there is some object, some form, which exists "through time". And because it seems to exists through time, YOU start to believe that IT HAS A LONG-TERM EXISTENCE OF ITS OWN. That somehow it is a "thing", an "object", a discrete ENTITY, that somehow continues on existing ON ITS OWN. *This is entirely an illusion*!

The course tells us that at NO point in time does the body really exist, being either an anticipation of the future, or a memory of the past. This is the illusion I am talking of. The *appearance* that some "thing" continues over time and therefore, is a consistent "thing" IN TIME, being maintained OVER TIME, that has ITS OWN EXISTENCE. The body does not have its own existence. It is a temporary IMAGE, which is SWITCHED OUT constantly, BY THE MIND, and replaced with a new image, every tiny instant of time.

Now. Realize then, that when you make a decision, forming a belief, you KEEP that belief in place OVER a long period of time. You keep it in the mind. The mind is a projector of the body "image", and the presence of a false belief in the mind will project an image of that false belief. It is not projected ONTO the body. It is projected AS the body. The body is not a discreet thing in its own right. Therefore, the mind DISTORTS its perception and PROJECTS a distorted, malformed, corrupted, disabled, limited, damaged picture. It therefore shows up as a picture of a BROKEN BODY, proving that the mind has not been healed because the mind believes separation is truth.

IF YOU KEEP that belief "over time", your mind will keep continually REPROJECTING body IMAGES (yes plural, over time, billions of them), which will create the ILLUSION that there is a "long term sickness". It will also create the illusion that the "cause" of the sickness was way in the past, at some single moment in time. IT WAS NOT. This is the ego's attempt to pretend that sin is in the distant past, you can never go back to the past to change your momentary decision, and therefore you are stuck with the consequences FOREVER. This is a bullshit lie, because this is not how decisions work and you can CHOOSE AGAIN AT ANY TIME.

The cause of the sickness is the content of the mind *NOW*. The mind NOW has a belief in sickness and NOW it is projecting a sick body. And the mind is perfectly capable of creating ANY ILLUSIONS OR IMAGES necessary in order to make it seem consistent, justified, believable, obeying "ego laws", even showing seeming evidence from "the past", or changes "over time", because the mind - just as when you DREAM at night, is perfectly capable of creating an ENTIRE UNIVERSE RIGHT NOW as an INSTANTANEOUS PROJECTION. Th year 2017 IS NOT the result of all previous years of "evolution", it is being projected NOW, including every sign and "evidence" that it SEEMS like it took billions of years to evolve to this point. That's an ILLUSION. The dream is being dreamed IN THE PRESENT and automatically INVENTS pictures of "there must have been a past" AT THE SAME TIME.

So, in terms of miracles of healing, what needs to happen is that the mind is healed of ITS BELIEF in some lie, some false ego belief. This false ego belief had been MAINTAINING LONG TERM SICKNESS showing up AS a sick body, because the MIND was "sick" for a long time. It had nothing to do with moments in time or one-off decisions. Decisions ARE CONSTANT. You change your mind by changing which ROAD you start walking down, and a you KEEP walking down that road ENDLESSLY until you change your mind and take a different direction. That's how decisions really work.

So if you seem to have "long term sickness", it has absolutely nothing to do with the body itself, it has nothing to do with the past, it has nothing to do with anything that happened outwardly over time, it has nothing to do with the world, it WAS NOT CAUSED BY ANYTHING EXTERNAL, it is ONLY being caused "now" by the beliefs that you are holding onto NOW, REPROJECTING that body image to look "similar to before", because the BELIEF is still similar to before. If the belief has not changed, what is projected is not going to change either. And that creates the illusion that the body is a "thing" in its own right which gets "its own sickness" and "has a mind of its own".

This ILLUSION of long-term sustained bodily conditions is responsible for deluding people into the belief that the sickness exists ON ITS OWN, or that the body ITSELF gets sick, or that something happens TO the body, or that the body is happening TO the mind. It is also entirely the reason why people who believe THE ILLUSION of continuation of the body, also believe that the body's condition WILL CONTINUE TO BE SICK, when the mind wakes up. This is EGO BULLSHIT! It is not true whatsoever. It's entirely an illusion.

There is NO REASON why the body should stay sick if the mind is healed. The ONLY REASON the body is even appearing WHATSOEVER, is because the mind is projecting it. The body is not showing up as a result of you "being born in the world." Your parents did NOT create your body. Your MIND put YOUR BODY into your mother's womb and manifested its form entirely ON ITS OWN, without any "real" processes occurring on the part of the mother. Everything to do with "having babies" is part of the ego's ILLUSION that what you are is born FROM THE WORLD, and not from your mind.

Since your mind is PROJECTING your body image RIGHT NOW, afresh, every moment, a complete new projection, complete with all the "stored beliefs" and "kept self-attack" which the mind is holding onto, causing the body to SEEM to show up again and again and again in roughly the same "form".... there is absolutely NO REASON WHY your mind could not project a COMPLETELY PERFECTLY HEALED BODY RIGHT NOW. This is what miracles are capable of showing!

That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind, proves the mind MUST be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this!

The mind PROJECTS the body. Every instant. Every moment. As an outward picturing of what the mind believes IN THAT MOMENT. The body does not show up FOR ANY OTHER REASON or as an effect of ANY OTHER CAUSE. The body is not caused by the world, or by matter, or by forms, or by anything external. Mind makes the body.

So guess what happens when you change your beliefs in your mind? Guess what happens when you undo your belief in separation from God? Guess what happens when you stop believing in attack? The body will CONTINUE to SHOW UP AS a projection of the content of your mind, but because your content has changed, the body that shows up WILL BE DIFFERENT!

It is entirely possible, therefore, for ANY AND EVERY alleged form of sickness, TO BE HEALED INSTANTLY! Jesus says this himself: "The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, "I have no use for this." There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once." Realizing that your mind's projections are occurring IN THE PRESENT, and that the past DOES NOT EXIST and has no influence over the present, should show you (if you get this), that when your mind changes, your body image MUST CHANGE. Your mind WILL project a different image, to reflect the change in beliefs.

The body CANNOT STAY SICK if your mind changes its beliefs. It cannot stay sick because IT HAS NO LIFE OF ITS OWN and it is purely a mental projection. Nothing else can make the sickness stay. Nothing else in the world or in time can cause the sickness to stay. THERE ARE NO CAUSES outside of the mind. The body is a results of YOUR DREAMING IT!

This should tell you that there is absolutely no grounds whatsoever for believing that sickness in the body will "stick around on its own" when you wake up, that somehow you will become "at peace with sickness", that you can be "happy about dying", that "sickness will stay" when the mind is healed, that you need to learn how to be at peace "in spite of sickness", or that it's even the teaching of the course that sickness is real and will CONTINUE ON ITS OWN when the mind is in a state of enlightenment. ABSOLUTE LIES! Makes no sense whatsoever, is absolutely untrue. This is NOT what happens. This is not how the mind works. Believing any of this bullshit demonstrates that your mind HAS NOT BEEN HEALED, because it means you believe in a reversal of cause and effect, your mind is continuing to maintain defenses against truth, and therefore the mind CANNOT BE AWAKE.

The state of the body is a DIRECT REFLECTION of what the mind PUTS OUT THERE, based on ITS BELIEF SYSTEM and the content of its sense of SELF. The body is a depiction of "this is what I think of myself". ALWAYS. It never deviates from that, it has no will or mind or power of its own to choose otherwise, NOTHING can make it change against the mind's will, and there are NO CAUSES external from the mind that can influence it's condition. NONE. Mind is cause, body is effect. Period.

THIS HAS TO MEAN, that when the mind TRULY and genuinely overcomes its obstacles to peace, is TRULY genuinely healed of beliefs in separation, uses of the body for attack, defenses against truth, long-term false beliefs and so on... the body that "shows up" being projected out from the mind's inner condition, MUST, *ABSOLUTELY MUST* show up as in PERFECT UNDISTORTED HEALTH!

I quote:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all." - ACIM

Key term here.... "CANNOT BE SICK" when the mind is holy. CANNOT. Will not maintain sickness, has no sickness, literally is IMPOSSIBLE TO BE SICK PHYSICALLY if the mind is healed. I know many people have resistance to this idea and think it's either not important or an incorrect focus or not what atonement is for. But atonement WILL BRING HEALING TO THE BODY because the mind that is holy will only project a holy image, i.e. an image of wholeness - a body which is not lacking or limited or broken in any way. If the body continues to show up as sick, something IS WRONG WITH THE MIND. Or to put it more accurately, the mind will STOP PROJECTING A SICK BODY and will only project a healthy body. Healing doesn't happen TO the body, it happens to the mind and the mind projects the body form to match.

This is law. This is how mind functions. The body is the mind's projection, it's dream. It ALWAYS CORRELATES to the state of the mind. Healed mind MUST only project a healed body, a sick mind MUST only project a sick body. This is also why Jesus teaches that we are meant to DEMONSTRATE THAT WE CANNOT BE HURT BY OUR BROTHER, by only ever showing him a HEALED BODY, proving that whatever he did or even tried to do, HAS NO EFFECT on your body because it has no effect on your mind, and your mind is totally in charge of what kind of image it projects. This therefore proves, if you are holy in mind, showing only a holy body, that your brother IS INNOCENT, through PROOF, because his attack DID NOT CAUSE YOU OR YOUR BODY TO CHANGE!

For miracles, there are no orders of difficulty, there is no hierarchy of illusions, and there is no PAST that has power over the present. Bodily states have nothing to do with time, and nothing to do with history, and nothing to do with the body seeming to be a "discrete thing" that someone can point to over time and say, that's a consistent object in its own right. It is not. It is a freshly projected DREAM, right now, this instant. When the instant is being projected from a mind of holiness - the miracle of the mind will completely dissolve and NOT PROJECT an image of sickness.

When the miracle occurs therefore, which is a movement towards God and an undoing of separation beliefs in the MIND, the body MUST SHOW THE CHANGE in some way. It can't refuse it, it can't block it, it can't prevent the projection of the mind's healed condition. The body has NO POWER over the mind whatsoever. It has to OBEY. And so this means it is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE, as Jesus said above, that if there is an instant of a miracle, shifting to a vertical perception and undoing the illusion of separation, which means letting go of a long-term belief, the mind CAN be healed INSTANTLY, and therefore it CAN project an image of the body having been healed *INSTANTLY*. One moment there was terrible sickness and suffering, the next moment it was simply not there. One moment the body seemed practically DEAD as a picture of the mind's belief in death, the next moment it was showing up as "alive", to represent the fact the mind is now ALIVE.

Instantaneous! No delay whatsoever. Miracles in this way produce a skipping of TIME, they completely ignore ego laws, pay no attention to the past, have no regard for illusions of difficulty or severity or importance, and create an interval of time in which there is a shift towards God, into invisibility, which is why they heal THE MIND, which then projects a healed body IMAGE. This can happen absolutely instantly. One instant there was terrible sickness, the next, gone. Healed. Boom!

The illusion of a continuous body with continuous sickness is entirely within the LEVEL of the ego's dream. Miracles and the power of the MIND OVER MATTER, extends from an entirely higher LEVEL where the mind is the CAUSE of everything that shows up AS THE DREAM. Bodies that move, mountains that move, planets that move, is all being DREAMED by the mind. It has no will of its own. It has no effects of its own. There is literally nothing that your HOLINESS cannot do. There is nothing your MIND cannot do. Mind NEVER LOSES its creative power, even IF it is mis-creating images of false bodies on false planets in a false universe. Even IF it is creating an illusion of time, history, the past, a future, or anything other than realizing WE ARE PROJECTING ALL OF THIS ENTIRE UNIVERSE THIS INSTANT. It did not come from the past. It is happening in this illusion NOW.

Just as in our dreams at night, which differ only in their form, the waking world, planet earth, and all the people in it, are being projected NOW, in whatever condition they seem to be in, because the mind projecting them has false beliefs NOW, which MIGHT be similar to beliefs it had "just a moment ago", creating an ILLUSION of things being maintained over time. Nothing is being maintained over time but a KEPT BELEIF which has not been let go of. Time is an illusion. There is nothing keeping us asleep and nothing keeping planets in motion other than the mind CHOOSING TO DO SO OVER TIME.

There is no reason whatsoever in all the universe why you cannot be completely healed and whole in physical form and mind, RIGHT NOW. If you were to choose this, it would happen for you, right now. If you are showing sickness, and if you've had sickness for 30 years, it is because you are believing in sickness RIGHT NOW. It's got nothing to do with the past or anything that came before. NOTHING. You create your "reality" by creating your DREAM of what you want to be true RIGHT NOW. History has no power over the present - that's an ego illusion.

At no point in time does the body really EXIST, because it is only ever a projection in the NOW, not in time, and it does not even really exist in the now. A mind which has BELIEFS IN SEPARATION, will project a picture of a self WHO IS SEPARATE. This is what we call "the body". It's not a body. It's the MIND showing up with "body-formed" CONTENT, AS its BELIEF in being a separate individual. Such thoughts take "form". The body APPEARS because the mind is regarding ITSELF (spirit) as limited and separate in some way. It has false beliefs and a false sense of identity. This is what MAKES THE BODY.

To put this even more clearly, how you think of yourself is how you will SHOW UP. If you regard yourself as sinful and guilty, you will show up with a FORM OF SIN AND GUILT. As the course says, "the body is the idea of sin made real then projected outwards"!.... Literally this is what I've been saying in this post. if your mind believes "you" are "made of sin"... YOUR MIND will manifest an "image" of a "sinful self", which will "appear" as what people call "a body". That image is not really who you are. But it's what you think you are. Whatever you think you are, you will show up AS! If you think you are AN ILLUSION, you will show up AS AN ILLUSION. That's what makes the body appear. If you do not believe you are an illusion AT ALL, you will show up as - HAVING NO ILLUSORY BODY AT ALL - pure spirit.

WHEN the mind no longer has *ANY* false ideas about its identity, has no beliefs whatsoever, is aware of God, and does not believe in ANY form of victimhood, reversal of cause and effect, that the world is ANYTHING but your OWN DREAM, and that it is ALL coming from YOUR MIND, THEN.... what happens to the body? IT DISAPPEARS COMPLETELY!

A mind which is being entirely true to spirit, true to the true nature of YOURSELF, will show up as. .... TRANSPARENT! Transparency means total honesty. Total willingness to be aware of and ACCEPT WHAT IS, as it is, which means, no distortions, no illusions, no thoughts to the contrary, no limitations placed on SELF, and therefore the mind PROJECTS ETERNITY, projects LOVE, projects abstract God, projects LIGHT, projects absolute total lack of "forms of error", and therefore, STOPS PROJECTING A BODY. To those in the world, this will appear as though the body DISAPPEARS ENTIRELY. To the mind that is disappearing the body, IT IS NOW AWARE that the body WAS ALWAYS based on false beliefs, and has NO REALITY of its own, and NEVER EXISTED, and HAS NO TRUTH, and is not being KEPT by the PAST or the WORLD or any other cause outside of the mind. Therefore the mind stops supporting it, stops MAKING IT, and it stops showing up at all!

This is how Jesus made his body DISAPPEAR, as given in the "extra notes to Helen" after the course, where he stated that he finally recognized the last illusion - that death was not real, and therefore, had no further need for the body, and therefore, caused it to DISAPPEAR, because all that was TRUE, all that could REMAIN, was pure spirit at one with its mind, fused with God, in absolute eternal truth and atonement. This is how YOU LEAVE THE DREAM. Through truth, not through death, not through sickness, not through suffering, not through the body going through a death process. Through making it VANISH, because the mind HAS NO ILLUSORY CONTENT IN IT, and therefore STOPS PROJECTING THE BODY!

There is no body. There is no world. There is no sickness. There is no death. There is no sin. There is no guilt. There is no fear. There is no separation. There is no time. There is no space. There are no forms. There is no planet earth or physical universe. There is no consistency over time in the world. There are no sicknesses which last on their own. There is no life or power or will or mind in the body or in the world. The world has no effect and is not the cause or the birthplace of anything.

You do not need a body to exist because you are IMMORTAL SPIRIT. You are as God created you, AS SPIRIT, not as an ILLUSORY BODY IMAGE. You are not a projection of a sick mind. You are ONLY IMMORTAL SPIRIT. This is the only truth about you. Everything to do with the body is a lie.

The body will and MUST become "healthy" BEFORE you awaken. It cannot stay sick if the mind is to be healthy. A healthy mind WILL project a healthy body. The body must go through "becoming healthier" "over time" as the mind gradually is healed. Sicknesses must fall away "over time". A sick body is proof that the mind IS FURTHER REMOVED from God than a healthy body. "A broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." This is why, before awakening, bodies WILL and MUST become healthier, and therefore health will be enjoyed more, and healthy bodies feature in HAPPIER DREAMS, which precede awakening.

Making the body healthier per-se is not the ULTIMATE goal, because the body ITSELF is a picture of separation and sickness. But before that ultimate goal is reached, the body WILL BE HEALED and sickness WILL be undone and the dead WILL BE RAISED and all forms of "things which cannot be undone" will be undone.

I quote:

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

Miracles CAN DO ANYTHING, CAN HEAL ANYTHING, CAN REVERSE ANYTHING, even death. If miracles could not undo death, we would be STUCK HERE FOREVER. There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do. You are the Son of God! You are not at the effect of the world and you are IMMORTAL.

I have a number of reactions regarding those who are sick.

All of these reactions entail me feeling sorry for the person, or wishing they were well, or being sad that this has happened to them.

I have reactions of guilt that somehow I caused it, and reactions of fear that somehow it will worsen.

And I also have reactions of compassion and understanding.

But all of these reactions are actually responses to perceptions which are not true.

Ego reactions always occur after having perceived something wrongly, and unless you are coming from love your reaction is founded in victimhood.

It can seem like I am caring or wanting a person to be healed, because I am upset about them being sick. It can seem like I am wishing for their best. It can seem as though I want the sickness to go away and that this is a good attitude to have, or shows a sign of caring or compassion.

But the truth is, these reactions are all founded on DOING NOTHING ABOUT IT.

They are not attitudes of correction, or healing, or forgiveness, or undoing. They are responses founded on the belief that the sickness is real, that it is happening, that the person is suffering, that "someone" needs to swoop in and save the person - anyone other than me.

If you really look at this in yourself, you may well be a very sympathetic, empathetic, compassionate, caring-seeming person, but the fact is that a lot of these responses are born in a state of inability to help. A state of disempowerment. A state of passivity. A state where you believe that there is nothing you can actually DO to correct it, even though you may be filled with wishful thinking about how you would do something if you could.

YOU CAN!

These attitudes are actually a cover-up for miracle mindedness and an excuse for not forgiving. They are an ego response that looks as though you are deeply concerned about someone, while at the same time strongly believing that they really do have a problem.

What we have to come to learn is the art of correction, which is more to do with an active undoing of the problem rather than an agreement that it exists. Corrective measures. And we DO have the ability to do this, not alone but as a result of our union wth Holy Spirit and God.

I've been in states of sorrow and despair plenty of times in which I've "begged" God to help and sometimes there is some help and sometimes not, but in general each time that I find myself thinking of asking someone ELSE to help, someone who "has the power", I am either nudged or have an innate knowing that doing so is basically shirking an obligation.

God has empowered us to extend His love and healing, and to do so through the mechanism of forgiveness, in which we cancel out, undo, correct and make vanish, all signs and symptoms of artificial causes, demonstrating that separation has not occurred, that problems are not real, that sickness is an illusion and that even death can be reversed.

It is one thing to be terribly upset and guilt-ridden. You feel guilty and responsible for causing someone's suffering, even if you did not appear to directly cause it, because you feel as though you are supposed to be able to take it away but are failing to do so. So in a sense, your mind knows this and actually will experience guilt when you are not performing miracles. When you are in support of sickness and are believing in problems and are making it real instead of correcting it actively, your mind will know that you're actually using this as a way to avoid your ROLE as "the light of the world", and this produces guilt.

So you will feel guilty when you are not helping others to heal, and you will feel guilty when you are failing to forgive. It's not your fault, but either you are choosing health as truth or you are choosing sickness as truth. Being upset that someone is sick does not mean that you are a believer in health and wellbeing. It means you believe sickness cannot be undone, which is a strong belief that sickness is the truth.

This we have to become honest about and weed out of ourselves, to become the miracle workers that we are meant to be. Forgiveness is the way to bring about miracles, through the correction and undoing of what is false. Not through the ego's victimy reactions of guilt, powerlessness, well-wishes and the like. Those are like saying, sorry you are sick, but I believe in sickness and therefore I think you should be sick.

We need to learn to make the universe disappear and all sickness along with it. The end of death, sickness, the body, and the world.

Both sides of every war are run by the ego. The war is symptomatic of the ego attacking itself. War is self attack.

When you believe that one side of the war is the good guys and one side is the bad guys, YOU have fallen for the ILLUSION.

BOTH sides of every war are played ultimately by the SAME side. There is only ONE side which has divided against ITSELF, and is attacking itself in both directions. This is the ego mind, the split mind, pretending to be TWO, when in fact it is one. The human race is attacking itself.

When we are deceived by all of these ILLUSIONS that someone did not ask for something, someone is a victim, someone is unfairly treated, someone is sick against their will, someone is suffering unfairly, etc... if we believe these things, that the person did not in any way choose or want this, WE TOO have fallen for the same illusion they fell for. And now we are supporting and adding to their illusion, and have kept them imprisoned.

We need to learn that the world is FULL of illusions of Party A appearing to be separate form Party B. In every way that this expresses, it ALWAYS looks as though one group of people is separate from another group of people. Ie that there are two distinct identities, or parties, or teams, or groups, or agendas, or whatever. Always two separate camps. And the appearance of two separate camps is the EGO. That's what the ego split mind looks like - a mind with multiple personalities, where those personalities are at war with each other.

We need to learn not to fall for these illusions. They are NOT the truth. It is NOT true that victims are victims. It is NOT the truth that things happen to people against their will. It is NOT true that death isn't chosen. It is NOT true that people do not want to be sick. It is NOT true that those who are afraid are being caused to be scared by someone or something outside of them. It is NOT true that people suffer against their will. These are ILLUSIONS, lies, disguises, covering up what the person is secretly really doing to themselves.

When we then believe and fall for these illusions, we are not seeing correctly, and we ourselves have become insane. And now we are entering into FALSE EMPATHY with others by joining with them in this delusional thought system, supporting their CLAIM that they do not want this, or that it happened without their choosing it. By entering into this with them we support and empower them to STAY the way they are, thus keeping them imprisoned. We cannot set them free until we are willing to FORGIVE, which means to overlook the ILLUSION that what they're presenting to us is the truth.

People who are victims will fervently express the belief and conviction that they did not want this to happen. People who are sick will passionately proclaim how this suffering is unfair and unwanted and they did not ask for it, and that they want to do everything to get rid of it (while doing nothing to really cure it). People who are in fear, are actually attackers who believe in disempowerment and weakness and attack others by seeing them as guilty and sinful. Do not believe appearances!

You have to learn, if you're to be a miracle worker, to OVERLOOK all of these illusions because they are all LIES. They are untruth, and dishonesty, and irresponsibility. Do not get into pity and sympathy and false empathy about how people are suffering against their will. They are attempting to bring you into a delusional thought system. They are attacking you with their DEMONSTRATION that they believe in attack and defense and war and conflict and fear and suffering.

Do not believe in sickness. Sickness is not REAL. Do not believe in death. Death is not REAL. Wake up! Be the light of the world and demonstrate a different truth. Demonstrate that the secret to salvation is that we're doing all of this to ourselves, and that owning that is being responsible and honest. Demonstrate miracles, that no matter what has happened, it can be undone, because there IS no real sin, and all of the effects of an ILLUSION of sin must be reversible.

The world is full of lies and liars. Be careful of listening to other people's "obstacles to peace". Beware of the way that other people make sin real and attack you by reinforcing their own belief that you should be afraid of "real bad things happening". These would not come from a sane mind or a mind that is aware of God, and aware of Reality. Discern the difference between illusions and reality. In truth nothing has gone wrong, no-one has suffered against their will, there is no death and there is no world.

Time to wake up!

"The power to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference"?

If you believe there is something outside of you which has causal power that you can do nothing about, you are *GUARANTEED* to live in a state of fear and suffering.

Accepting these "causes" as "outside of your power" CANNOT bring you peace.

"Letting go" of stuff that you supposedly cannot "control", could well be you resigning yourself to powerlessness and inevitable death.

How about.... I can change anything at will?

How about... the mind is so powerful there is nothing it cannot do?

How about... there is nothing that cannot be changed, and nothing that cannot be reveresed, and therefore, no "acceptance" of the consequences of sin is required, or possible? How about, this form of "acceptance" is an attempt to live with sin and death, letting them go unchallenged?

Who can "accept" that the consequences of sin are irreversible, and call that a healthy state of mind? What exactly are these effects which we are supposed to "let be" and do nothing about? How is it possible to live with suffering?

Instead, the Course is not teaching this. The course is not telling us to accept the world "as it is", as such.

Now, to clarify here.... there IS merit in RECOGNIZING what the world really is, clearly, and accurately, with true perception, without adding to or removing anything from it perceptually, which is an act of "not resisting" it. Or, in a sense, letting it be what it is rather than trying to turn it into something it is not.

HOWEVER, THAT DOES NOT MEAN, that you have no power to change it or no reason to do so. Nor does it mean that you are supposed to therefore "accept the form" of it as though it's written in stone tablets and can never be changed. Nor does it mean that whatever sickness or suffering is occurring, you're supposed to just "accept it" and let it be there. Otherwise, we literally would be saying, that we are supposed to accept death. And that is completely the opposite of what the Course is leading us to.

The course is not asking us to accept death, or to accept sickness. It's telling us that both are not reality and can be reversed and undone and healed. It's telling us to demonstrate that there IS NO DEATH and no sickness. It's telling us to show everyone that we are not at the effect of ANY causes in this world, because we are the cause of the world.

Jesus demonstrated in his resurrection that he was able to make another body, simply to show that "the mind that made the body can make another". And therefore that you are immortal spirit. But people did not understand it.

We're not supposed to be making the world real and then, like, believing that there is real sickness and real suffering, and then feeling compelled or motivated to try to "get rid of it" because of how awful it is. That's a trap of becoming a "fixer" and trying to NOT accept what you yourself as making real.

If you've made shit real, and if you either try to "accept it" or "fix it"... BOTH OF THOSE responses are ego and false. The course is not teaching either of those.

But the course is also not saying, that you are powerless to do anything about these things. It is by recognizing that they are NOT real that you will, paradoxically, recognize that you HAVE POWER OVER IT. That "illusions can easily be changed". As you realize that this stuff is not the truth, it becomes EASIER to change it, not harder. As you recognize sickness has NO POWER over you, it becomes EASIER for you to make the sickness GO.

Not to make it go because it seems real and you are "really suffering", but to make it go TO PROVE that your mind is healed and to demonstrate not only that you BELIEVE there is no sickness, but also that you will stop using the sickness to accuse your brother of being the sinner who caused it. Every sickness proves that. And every broken body proves the mind is not healed.

We are asked to NOT ACCEPT sickness or death as real, or as inevitable, or as a "death sentence", or as something we can do nothing about ("because its real") and to then simply turn into a passive mouse sitting on the sidelines waiting to die.

DO NOT ACCEPT DEATH! ACCEPT LIFE. Accepting life is accepting the atonement. But to "accept" that this world is only what it is - an illusion of a world with no power to do anything, and in THAT form of acceptance you will have power over it and not the other way around.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace."

This means that if in ANY WAY I am not at peace, am sick, upset, unhappy, afraid, in pain, suffering or dying, it has come about ONLY because *I* made a wrong decision. This "consequence" is showing up ONLY because of the power of my own decision. I put it there. I made it happen to myself. There are no other causes. I am responsible for having attacked myself. I decided wrongly and it produced these effects. I must claim responsibility and ownership of this power to choose what I experience and stop blaming others.

"I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise."

This is further compounded in this second line - that *I* made the decision myself. Which means, the secret to salvation, I did this to myself. I am not unhappy because of something someone else did or something that happened to me against my will. I made a DECISION, on my own, which was a poor decision, which was a DELIBERATE decision, to choose ego and suffering, on purpose. I have to own that. I made myself suffer and unhappy. I chose it.

Then once I can see that I own that fully, I can now realize that, in spite of this, I can change my mind and "choose again". Acknowledging that I chose this in the first place puts me in touch with the power to choose. Owning the choice I MADE allows me to own my power of CHOOSING and therefore puts me back in touch with my power to choose a different experience. And whatever I choose, I will receive.

"I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace."

Notice in the early version it says I *WILL* to decide otherwise meaning I actually DO IT, whereas in the FIP version they changed it to "I want" which is somewhat removed from actively DOING it. And so now you are realizing, that you no longer want what YOU CHOSE, you no longer want the suffering YOU MADE HAPPEN, and so now you WILL - choose - actively -towards a more sane decision which will results in consequences of peace instead of conflict.

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

You now recognize clearly that you have not sinned, and merely have been mistaken. Mistakes can be corrected and they call for forgiveness, not punishment. Therefore you do not need to be guilty, which isn't helping anyone. Guilt is not love or a change of mind. I also don't have to worry about all the giant fuck of a mess that I made, myself, that I did to myself, even if that means having attacked myself and made myself sick or suffering or in pain or half dead.

Whatever the consequences of my wrong decision were, whatever the MANIFEST EFFECTS were, THEY can be undone. AND they can be undone BY the Holy Spirit through supernatural healing means. And the only thing remaining to ALLOW this to occur is my own willingness to LET HIM HELP ME. There is no consequence He cannot undo, including incurable diseases, and including death.

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

Again this says that I WILL, whereas I think in a later version it was changed to "I choose". We need to realize that WILLINGNESS is very important because it indicates full commitment and POWER. Your choice and your will are very powerful and your mind is powerful. This isn't merely an inert, neutral, powerless small decision. It is a choice to OPT for and CLAIM a different experience. If you change your mind, the whole world must change. You are ruler of the universe! Nothing happens that you do not choose and whatever you choose MUST HAPPEN.

Additionally, when you ALLOW Holy Spirit, you invite him into you, you let him help you, you ask for His healing and you RECEIVE the truth (atonement), He can AND WILL AND DOES come into you and can heal ALL OF THE CONSEQUENCES that you produced in your wrong decision. He can heal all pain and sickness and suffering. And you must be WILLING to let him, to trust him, to allow him, to give him permission, in order to have him take your INVITATION and come in to heal you and clean up the mess.

He is here to HELP YOU and you do not have to tolerate suffering of ANY kind, and you do not have to put up with consequences you caused, and you do not have to stay sick, and you do not have to do this all on your own. Allow yourself to RECEIVE THE LOVE that you now choose and WILL and accept as a sane decision. Love will heal you AND your body.

Given everything is driven by free-willed cause and effect, nothing is accidental. There are no mistakes. There is nothing happening randomly or by chance. Nothing happens at all without someone choosing it and willing it. There must be a CAUSE, before there is ANY effect.

You might think this is not true based on what appears to be a world or 'nature' that seems to do random stuff and is hard to explain as being anything but chaotic. But the fact is that nothing happens without some kind of "cause" making it happen. Whatever the cause may be. Without a cause there is no effect, so whenever something is 'happening', something caused it.

You then also get the idea that even if you cause something, it seems to have a cascade of completely "unintentional" consequences or side effects. There's seemingly knock-on effects or a whole chain of seemingly chaotic aftershocks. Yet are these things truly random? Are they not simply cause producing effects, which act as causes producing effects, and so on, in a chain of causality?

As the Course says, those who are to meet will meet. So for example, people meet because they choose to do so.

If you also look at My Self is Ruler of the Universe, it explicitly states that nothing happens without your say-so, and anything you choose happens, and nothing else.

The course also describes how teachers of God make all decisions fully consciously, with total awareness of the consequences, meaning, they know exactly what effects they are causing, and cause only those effects, on purpose, deliberately. And it is by choosing only loving choices that they guarantee their safety.

So this world, while it may SEEM like it's a total mess of random chaos and accidents and things happening against your will and victims and mistakes and all these illusions of uncertainty, in actual fact absolutely nothing is happening without a cause. It is all chosen. All deliberate. All instigated by a mind, somewhere.

Nothing moves or animates without mind making it move. Nothing appears or disappears without mind's say-so. Even the laws of nature are being "run" by a mind, somewhere, deliberately choosing what will and will not occur. The entire world would not even show up if it were not for a decision made somewhere.

And just because we think okay, we "set it in motion" and now the chips will fall where they may and a completely automatic random chaos follows, that's simply not true. Causality ensures that the consequences were set up in the causing, not as a result of the effects. Effects do not choose. Effects are not the source of decision. Even if there seems to be an entire cascade of consequences, one thing leading to another, is that not also completely specifically deliberately set in motion by a mind making a choice?

The truth about this world and enviornment then is that nothing happens without your consent, everything that happens is chosen, the world doesn't even spin unless someone spins it, and it is literally impossible for anything to happen if you do not choose it to. You are the author and dreamer.

You are the causer, chooser, instigator, of everything. You are never at the effect of some 'other chooser' choosing against your will, or things happening 'on their own' or as a result of some process or sequence of events that seem totally unrelated. There is no 'un-asked-for' anything. Remember that this entire world didn't even exist until someone explicitly put every piece of it in place, through choice and belief.

So there are no accidents, of any kind, ever. There is no victimhood. There is no mistake or something un-asked for. BUT, it DOES remain possible to make a POOR decision. It's possible to make a wrong decision or a decision for something that brings suffering. It's possible to evaluate situations and set in motion things which later turn out to be harmful. And it's possible to be very deluded as to what you have chosen or why.

The law always holds. Your free will is never violated by anything. If you would simply choose to wake up, you would. "Heaven is a choice I must make". Nothing can keep you imprisoned in hell against your will, other than YOUR choosing. You CAN make a poor choice, producing explicitly selected consequences or conditions, but you cannot make NO choice, and whatever you DO choose WILL happen. No exceptions.

The task then simply becomes one of, making a better choice. "I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace - I made the decision myself but I want to choose otherwise - I want to choose otherwise because I want to be at peace". Choose again, the course says. You are free to choose, but not free from the consequences of choosing. And all consequences are chosen. This is how you create your own hell. And it is how you find salvation.

Complaining is victimhood. And it doesn't work.

Anything that happens, you choose. If you are conscious, you make a conscious choice, with deliberate intent to produce an effect. You cause it, implement it, make it happen and put it in place, because you want to.

"God's teachers choose ... It is a conscious choice.For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences."

Having done so, you now have produced effects, circumstances and results. Since you know that you put these things there, on purpose, and that you had the power to do so, you would also know that if you so chose, you could abolish these effects just as easily by changing your mind.

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

But when you cause something unconsciously or you cause it and then use denial to pretend you didn't cause it, you set yourself up for the basis of victimhood. It now seems that cause must have come from someone or somewhere else. If that's true, and if you didn't seem to have the power to put this situation in place yourself, then it seems to be up to someone else to change their mind and cause the situation to change.

This then leads to the perfect foundation for complaining. In complaint, you now assert that you do not want the effects you ended up with, BUT, you're not willing to admit that you caused them OR that you have the power to change them. You believe someone else had that power. So you now try to manipulate the surrounding environment and its contributors by making a lot of 'noise' about why you don't want the results that have appeared, and why someone else needs to be stepping up to make the changes.

So complaining is victimhood. It's a state where in truth, you WANT the situation to be the way it is, having chosen it, but you are claiming that you don't want it. And it's where you have no actual intention of changing your OWN mind, or causing the situation to change. So the ego is then making a lot of noise about why the situation sucks, is unwanted, isn't agreeable, should be different etc, while unconsciously continuing to choose it, cause it, make it and put it in place. All the while trying to suggest that someone else needs to take some action.

You DO have the freedom and the ability to correct the situation. It is the lack of OWNERSHIP of the causing of the situation, and the perception of yourself has having NO POWER OVER IT, that is the problem. You CAN change any situation. You can heal anything. You are free.

"The Holy Spirit will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let him."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

"The power of decision is our own. Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear."

"This holy relationship has the power to heal all pain, regardless of its form."

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

"As God created you, you have all power."

"The will you share with God has all the power of creation in it."

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS."

"For you have ASKED it be withheld from power to heal all dreams. There is no miracle you cannot have when you DESIRE healing."

"For you HAVE power to save the Son of God because his Father willed that it be so."

"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world."

"he HAS the power to heal and bless all those he looks on"

"The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you."

"The power of the Sons of God is operating all the time, because they were created as creators."

"It is you who have the power to dominate all things you see."

"No one can grieve, nor fear, nor think him sick, unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish and nothing is omitted that you choose. "

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"There is a place in you where nothing is impossible. "

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

"That the body cannot heal the mind but the mind can heal the body proves the mind must be stronger than the body. EVERY MIRACLE DEMONSTRATES THIS."

When your mind is sane, you know you are causal. You have no level confusion. The body comes OUT from you.

When your mind is insane, you project causality outside of yourself, which causes you to see yourself as an effect.

The levels are now reversed and perception is backwards.

Seeing yourself as an effect is the idea that you are being CAUSED from outside yourself, and that must mean you believe you are at the effect of those causes.

Seeing yourself as "affected" is an external attack (really self attack) and shows up as ALL forms of sickness in the body, including death. The mind that sees itself under siege cannot help but PICTURE itself as attacked, and this picturing shows up AS THE BODY.

When externalized causes are believed to define what you are, you begin to DEMONSTRATE that you are at the effect of others. And you now start to PROJECT an image of a body that is under attack.

This demonstration is an accusation and an attempt to condemn your brother as the "cause" of sin. If he is a sinner, and you are not, you might be innocent, but you ARE now AFFECTED.

This means you now believe you are BEING attacked by your brother, and you PROVE this by manifesting illness in your body. Then you claim, "brother at your hand I die." "Sick bodies are accusers"!

When this reversal of levels, this belief in magic, this projection of sin, and this displacement of causality, which is ALL THE SAME THING, is corrected, your mind becomes sane again.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

Now that you see yourself as CAUSE and NOT at the effect of anything, you now position yourself as incapable of suffering, incapable of BEING AFFECTED, and incapable of being attacked. This invulnerability shines away the sickness which was held in place by insane level confusion, and THE BODY NOW HEALS.

The mind is responsible for every condition of the body. At all times. When mind has level confusion, it SHOWS UP in the body as illness. When the mind does not have level confusion, it SHOWS UP in the body as physical health.

This is the central teaching of the course, that you cannot be at the effect of others and when you recognize this you will ONLY CAUSE LIFE.

This is a course in life, healing and miracles. It is not a course in being sick or dead.

"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. The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be CHANGED."

"The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain, and NO reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence."

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"Healing is the result of using the body solely for communication. Since this IS natural, it heals by making whole, which is also natural. All mind is whole, and the belief that part of it is physical or NOT MIND is a fragmented (or sick) interpretation. Mind cannot be made physical, but it can be made manifest THROUGH the physical if it uses the body to GO BEYOND itself. By reaching out, the mind EXTENDS itself. It does not stop at the body, for if it does it is blocked in its purpose. A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has TURNED AGAINST ITSELF.

The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else."

If you dream that an animal is attacking you, you can hardly blame the animal for attacking you. If you believe it is not you that's making the animal attack you, then you might believe the animal itself its attacking you with a mind or motivation of its own. And then you will be scared it and believe you are able to suffer from the attack. But if you remember that the entire performance is coming from your mind as the dreamer of the dream, then recognize not only that it's really you attacking yourself, but also that you can't be hurt by a mere dream.

This places you outside the dream as the dreamer of the dream, and then you do not confuse the dream for something happening to you from some other source. If you will simply recognize what you are doing, you can no longer be lost in the dream or at the effect of it. You'd have absolutely reaction to it at all if you remembered you were the one making it happen. It would be foolish then blame the dream for doing anything, knowing that you're the one doing it. And then you can simply stop dreaming and be free of it.

What if the world - a world of dreams - is only doing what you are dreaming that it does? And what if you are the mind making the world turn and the animals move and the things happen? And what if anything that happens or seems to happen to you, is the result of you putting it there to do it? And what if you merely need to be aware of dreaming in order to recognize this is your dream of self attack? And by remembering you are the dreamer you can no longer blame the world for causing anything, knowing that you are the cause of everything.

And then the world has no power over you, because you are making the world according to your will. It can have no affect on you or upset you or disturb you in any way or bring oppression or make you sick or dead or anything at all. Because being the dreamer of the dream you are its sole cause and are beyond what the dream is. You are no longer confused with what the dream is, or thinking you are a figure in the dream as a dream body, or believing that you can be hurt by something that is merely an effect of your dreaming. When you decide to stop dreaming of being hurt you will simply awaken and dream no more.

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

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."

Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees NO differences where none exist, and He will teach you how each one is CAUSED. None has a DIFFERENT cause from all the rest, and ALL of them are easily undone by but a SINGLE lesson truly learned. Salvation is a secret you have kept but from yourself. The universe proclaims it so. But, to its witnesses, you pay no heed at all. For they attest the thing you do not WANT to know. They seem to keep it secret FROM you. Yet you need but learn you choose but NOT to listen, NOT to see.

How differently will you perceive the world, when this is recognized! When you forgive the world YOUR guilt, YOU will be free of it. Its innocence does NOT demand your guilt, nor does your guiltlessness rest on ITS sins. This is the obvious, a secret kept from no-one but yourself. And it is this that has maintained you SEPARATE from the world, and kept your brother SEPARATE from you. Now need you but to learn that BOTH of you are innocent OR guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that you be UNLIKE each other; that they BOTH be true. This is the only secret yet to learn. And it will be NO secret you are healed."

"And thus they see in you their holiness, saluting you as savior and as God."

Sometimes we like to think that we are God. But then we start to feel that this tempts the ego and is arrogant and wrong. Sometimes we like to think that we are not God, which makes us separate from God and non-existent, which also tempts the ego and is arrogant.

It can seem grandiose to suggest you are God. But ACIM's teaching on this is a kind of "yes and no".

You are God, because God created you by sharing and extending himself. You have God in you, God goes with you everywhere, you are part of him forever. There really is no way for you to exist or live without being a functioning aspect of himself.

Since God shares all of himself with you, and thus is one with you, you are in this sense every bit as much "Godly" as God is. But at the same time, you are a creation of God's, an effect of His, which he has produced by his causal power. He created you by sharing himself, and by retaining you within himself. This has caused you to exist as though an independent being, but nevertheless you are still one with him.

"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."

What becomes arrogant and mistaken is when you start to go into the either/or thinking process of... either I am entirely God alone, or I am not God at all. Neither of those conclusions is correct. ACIM is not non-duality, or duality. God has created many beings, but they are still part of him and cannot exist without him. You are 100% God, and 100% yourself.

So the truth is that yes you are God, but you are also God's creation. God existed and was complete before he created you. He added you to himself, using himself, made of himself, as and within himself. But he is also himself, first-cause, prime creator, and origin of all that exists.

You do not cause him or create him, so your role is different being a kind of second-order co-creator. But being "a separate being", while granting you total freedom, also doesn't separate you off from him in the sense of being divorced from him or orphaned. You are still a part of him and every part of you is a part of him. You both exist, but you are both one. I and my father, as two, are one. "This may appear to contradict the statement “I and my Father are one,” but there are two parts to the statement in recognition that the Father is greater."

So yes you are God, entirely and fully, but you also are a created individual with a mind and soul and freedom. It's not grandiose to claim to be God, therefore, so long as you are not claiming to be exclusively God and nothing else. You have to still acknowledge that you are his effect, inheriting everything from him, in awe of him, because God IS in and of himself greater than you. He encompasses a great many beings and creations besides you, in the sonship, spanning beyond your own self.

You are as much God as God is, but God is also greater. I know that sounds contradictory but only to the ego's either/or logic. To claim your authority, power and natural state of being part of God is accepting atonement and regaining your inheritance. You can't be anything without being part of him, and you live in him forever.

It is also true to say that the Holy Spirit, while being the voice for God, and a standalone creation, is also still God. One with God, fixed on God, and wholly God, yet himself. Just like you, and part of you also. Anything that exists is you, and you are also yourself. "the Holy Spirit is part of you. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God and you, as you are God and Him together."

If sickness is real, and given that God is the author of Reality, it would have to mean that God created the sickness. And since God is Reality, this would mean that God Himself IS the sickness.

The belief that sickness is real, is therefore actually a belief that God is sick and that God wants you to be sick. If the sickness is truth, ie reality, then God cannot be a loving God.

Love would not create sickness. Love would not want someone to be dead. To suggest that sickness is real, is to suggest it was created by Love, and that Love wants you to die. This is utterly ridiculous!

Sickness therefore CANNOT be reality. It simply cannot be real at all. It MUST be an illusion of sickness. ALL sickness must be an illusion. It may look like sickness, behave like sickness, be caused by things like sickness is, etc, but IT IS NOT REAL SICKNESS.

There cannot be real sickness. If reality is associated with sickness in any way, God would have to be sick.

The belief that sickness is real is the belief that an ILLUSION is actually real. It is the belief that illusions are real that IS sickness. Sickness is the belief that Reality is not reality, and therefore that illusions have taken the place of reality. It is the belief that God is not healthy, and therefore it is true and real that God must be dying or dead.

Sickness is therefore an attempt to kill God and His creation, to destroy His son, and to render God nothing. Anyone believing in sickness as something real, something serious, something to be afraid of, or something to struggle with, is believing that sickness is not an illusion, that God is dead, that sickness is the truth, and that it is God's will that you die. Again, UTTERLY RIDICULOUS!

So, let's all learn this and learn it well. Every single person or establishment or governing body or hospital or clinic or doctor or researcher or scientist or anyone in the public or anyone struggling in their home with sickness etc, ANYONE that claims that sickness is REALITY, they MUST be out of their mind! They are not sane and they are not telling the truth. This MUST be a false belief.

God cannot and does not create suffering. God is LOVING. And God is REALITY, and therefore only love is real. And since love would not create suffering in any way - love only creates love and health - ANY and EVERY form of sickness, suffering, lack, death, loss, pain and misery must be a complete illusion. It is NOT REALITY.

We need to wake up to this. We need to become clear about this and recognize this. And we need to stop accepting and listening to everyone who says that sickness and suffering are real. It is a lie. Even told by those who are sick or those who are jist onlookers. People who look at the sick and think others are sick but they themselves are not sick, ARE sick, because sickness is real to them.

People are doing the best they can to try to deal with the sickness, rarely finding a cure. There is a better way. Miracles are everyone's right!

Not believing in sickness means not believing that an illusion is real, which means being SANE. And sanity is the solution to all sickness, because all sickness is mental illness.

Who and what you are in REALITY cannot be sick. You are fucking immortal! You cannot be sick, you cannot die, you cannot change, you cannot be unwell or tired or lacking or depressed. You cannot be dead. You cannot be dying. And you cannot be suffering in any way. Anything that looks like it is contrary to that it MUST be an illusion. And if you believe it is not an illusion but a reality, then you are mistaken and you need correction by the Holy Spirit.

As I see it now, guilt isn't just some little emotion you have only some of the time, in certain situations. The way Jesus presents it, ANY amount of separation produces guilt.

As soon as you separate, you are asserting a desire to not share. This means you want to take from others and have what they lack. This selfishness brings with it automatic guilt, based on the knowing that you have deprived someone and caused them to suffer.

Similarly as soon as you attack, you are asserting that you want someone else to not have something. You are attacking an innocent being, which induces guilt. Any desire to separate from another in any way is an attack and will foster guilt in the mind. Seeing yourself as not at-one with them will make you guilty for having pushed them away.

Jesus also describes attack as being another word for sin, and another word for sin is also insanity, which is a split mind. Any amount of separation whatsoever produces a spit mind which believes in sin, is attacking, and therefore is inducing guilt.

It's not as if you are just innocent most of the time and then you only feel guilty if you specifically attack someone on a specific day. You are ALWAYS IN GUILT so long as you are in separation. So long as your mind is split, there is guilt. So long as you deny God, there is guilt.

Guilt is a universal guilt, a systemic system-wide guilt, a side-effect of separation. If there is any separation at all, to any degree, or the mind is in any way divided or split or attacking, it MUST produce a guilty state. Such attacks are sin, and all sin demands guilt and punishment.

So in fact, for example, you being body identified, is a guilt-inducing state. Believing you do not share an identity with other people will produce guilt. Seeing someone as a body induces guilt. Having any lack of oneness whatsoever produces guilt.

This has to be the case because, as Jesus says, the ego depends on guilt.

"Only the ego can feel guilty."

"Without guilt there is no ego."

This means that fundamentally, if you are IN separation you are IN guilt and are being ego. If you are NOT separate there is no ego and there is no guilt. That has to mean that the guilt accompanies the separation. Where there is separation THERE IS guilt, and you cannot have separation without it.

To undo guilt you must transcend all separation, and only upon doing so do you undo the ego. And until you do so, you will feel guilty because you still have an ego that attacks. To be separated off is to be guilty, to be a body is to be guilty, and to see yourself as not your brother is to be guilty.

"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY."

"You WILL feel guilty 'til you learn this. For, in the end, whatever form it takes, your guilt arises from your failure to fulfill your function in God's Mind with ALL OF YOURS."

"And you WILL feel guilty for this imagined "crime," which no one in this world, or Heaven, CAN POSSIBLY commit."

"And who, BECAUSE he wishes to attack, can FAIL to think it MUST be guilty, to DESERVE the wish and leave HIM innocent? And who would see the Son of God as innocent, and wish him dead?"

"Are YOU a sin? You answer "yes" WHENEVER you attack, for BY attack do you assert that you are guilty, and must give as you deserve."

"You are guilty OR guiltless, bound OR free, happy OR unhappy."

"The ego teaches you to attack yourself BECAUSE you are guilty, and this MUST INCREASE the guilt, for guilt is the RESULT of attack. In the ego's teaching, then, there IS no escape from guilt."

"You are NOT guiltless in time, but IN ETERNITY."

When I used to consider "the secret of salvation", which is the idea that you are "doing it to yourself", I could recognize the need for total responsibility. I saw that anything which I thought someone was doing to me, from the outside in, I must be doing to myself. But I didn't entirely realize a key portion of this.

What I see in it now is more. I see that we are immortal beings, who can never be attacked or hurt or damaged or upset in any way against our will. The ownership and identification with this is our true responsibility.

This lays a new foundation. Because now it means that if I am suffering, or seeming to suffer at the hands of another, or because of the world doing something to me, it must mean I have secretly attempted to stop being immortal.

The "what I a doing to myself" isn't so much the appearance of what others are doing, but is in fact the DISTANCE between my immortal self and the mortal victim self I'm portraying myself as. Between the invulnerable self and the ego. It is the traversal of that distance that I am responsible for, and which is my own attack upon myself, placing myself in a state of weakness.

Even if it may appear that the world is seeming to be the cause of something, happening to my body, inducing fear, causing effects in me, it cannot be true. These things are not put in place from the outside in, they're put in place from the inside out.

If I stop recognizing my immortal invulnerable nature, and attack myself first, I will lose track of who I am, question and doubt myself, go into uncertainty and fear, and project the idea of causation outside of myself. Then I will see myself as potentially caused by the world, instead of by God.

That faulty perception of myself, that body identification, that self denial, is something I am doing to myself. And it means I'm putting myself in a position, in a role, where I seem vulnerable and in need of defenses against a cruel and unsafe world. But I can't blame the world for being in this position, when it's me that's putting myself there.

Even more so, the world is my dream, in my mind, coming from me decision. If I dream of my body being attacked surely I have consented, and have attempted to use the body to prove I am not immortal. I have done this to myself. I cannot be attacked if I am permanent and unchangeable. Portraying myself as a victim must mean I'm attempting to destroy myself, and that is my own doing.

The responsibility is not in terms of what others appear to be doing to me from the outside in, but what I have attempted to do to my immortal self, to my unlimited mind, to render is less than whole and lacking and limited. That is an internal attack which merely is disguised behind the outward expression of that deception.

The immortal cannot suffer. The immortal cannot be sick. The immortal cannot die. The immortal cannot be attacked or hurt. The immortal cannot be upset or have their peace disturbed. The immortal are responsible because they know themselves and have owned up to their true christ nature. They no longer deceive themselves with the idea that a fictional alien will can act against them, and so their mind is not split.

The secret of salvation tells us we are responsible for all of our own suffering. It tells us that it doesn't matter what the seeming cause of suffering is, there is only one cause, and it is in our own mind. It tells us that we are doing it to ourselves. And who are we, that this is being done to? We are immortal beings. And so if we seem to suffer, we must have undermined our own invulnerability. Just as "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

You are not weak but strong. You are not afraid but all powerful. You are not an illusion but a reality. You are not mortal but immortal. You are not vulnerable but invulnerable. You are not destructible but permanent. You are not guilty but innocent. You are still as God created you.

(and you must!)

The "sickness is a defense against the truth" section says a lot about how we make sickness AND reverse it.

Basically, sickness doesn’t just mean bodily sickness it means any kind of belief that separation is real. That belief is in the mind. The mind is projecting the body currently, because the mind sees itself as an illusion not a reality. When the mind sees itself as being "made of" something ego, it manifests the very thing it sees itself as, like a body.

Sickness is "made" or put in place, by the mind, by using the body without love, or rather, by using it for attack. That means you’re believing that you really did sin against God, are really separate, and are now trying to get rid of that sin by denying and projecting it. That means you’ll try to project it through, and onto, the body, or rather you’ll project a body which appears sick, which makes the body show up with sickness. When you attempt to therefore get rid of the sin by accusing someone else of being the one to sin, instead of them receiving the consequences or effects, you do. You do it to yourself.

This is because there is a law of the mind, to do with how a mind of oneness and wholeness works. That law is, that what you do to another, you directly do to yourself. It sort of along the lines of "do unto others as you’d have them do unto you" except that version does not work because it leaves open the possibility that someone else might not reciprocate. Instead, the law says, a mind that is one with another mind, WILL experience directly the effects of its causes. So if you were to attack that other mind, you WILL attack your own, because your are one with them. You therefore have a vested interest in ONLY loving your brother and yourself, otherwise you will make yourself suffer. This is the meaning of having SHARED INTERESTS.

When we then get into the ego, that law STILL applies at all times, but the ego goes into denial about it. Then it believes it can get away with murder by being able to attack/cause another person without experiencing the effects/consequences. So the ego will then attack trying to get rid of sin, but the law kicks in, and all the effects/consequences you have attempted to "give" to the other person, you DIRECTLY give them to yourself. So suddenly your body will become sick because you have attacked yourself. This is the secret to salvation, that you are the one who is giving yourself ALL the sickness and suffering and death that you imagine is caused by other sinful people or things in the world.

Sickness, as a belief in separation from God, and thus a belief that sin is real, is basically DENIAL. It is a way of trying to defend against God, to block God, to shut off access to Life. Obviously if you shut yourself off from that which gives Life, you will suffer and become weak and sick and die. So denial is the ego’s device for pretending that the truth is not true. Denial causes projection because it puts you into a state of mind where it seems *possible* to get rid of your sin without having to deal with the consequences. All death is suicide and no one dies without their own consent.

That means that if there is any sickness showing up in the body at all, or the person dies, it is PROOF, that the person believed in sin and separation somewhere in their mind. Their mind was not healed. This is absolutely rock solid bullet-proof cause and effect. Anyone who believes in separation will become sick in some way and they will attack their body and it will become sick and eventually die. And that will be a CHOICE. AND it will be implemented entirely personally BY that person who believes that. Hence "a broken body is PROOF the mind has not been healed."

Jesus describes it in that section about defenses against truth, that basically in the ego, having sided with it, we misperceive through it, we look at the truth and believe that the truth is not the truth. We see in it something false that we put there - sin. And make it out to be an attacker. This seems to "logically" then make sense that we need to DEFEND our life against this perceived attacker, and the seemingly sensible thing to do is to put up a defense against it. This defense is implemented by increasing the sense of separation between you and God/attacker, in your mind, psychologically. You put illusions of walls and defenses in place.

The problem is, that by doing that you inadvertently attack yourself, separate yourself from life, make yourself go unconscious, believe you have been attacked by God, believe that it’s God’s will that you die, and so SICKNESS or symptoms of sickness start to show up in your body. The ego’s advice, or its solution to the problem it perceives, always SEEMS like it will make things better for you, but actually makes it worse. So in an act of what seems like "self defense", you end up actually attacking yourself and hurting yourself. Then you get sick, then you die, and you did it to yourself. There IS no other CAUSE of sickness in the entire world.

Once you know this, you’ll realize as Jesus says, that there is a PURPOSE to your sickness. It was put there to deny God and defend your EGO-identified self against what it thinks is an attack. The key then, is recognizing that you only thought you NEEDED the defense, because you mis-perceive what the truth IMPLIED, because you were interpreting its meaning with the EGO, and the ego had a REACTION based on a false perception.

You can then become WILLING, to recognize that what you thought was some kind of sin or evil "IN" the truth, or in God, or some kind of malicious intent, WAS NOT THERE, that the truth really DID NOT mean you were going to stop existing, you had a misperception as a result of seeing the truth through the ego, the truth is NOT trying to hurt you, and therefore you do not NEED "protection". ALL sickness is an attempt to PROTECT yourself, and so it’s paradoxically hilarious that doing so REMOVES the natural protection that love would offer you. The ego’s protection is attack!

When you can realize you had this PURPOSE for your sickness, your defenses, and that you do not NEED them, because you can see clearly (with corrected perception) that the truth is actually supporting you, loving you, is on your side, and it was your alignment with EGO that was hurting you.... you are correctly RECOGNIZING the ego‘s illusory conclusions for what they are. You recognize the truth as TRUE, and you recognize the false as FALSE.

This makes it really OBVIOUS to you that you have no need for the defense whatsoever, and that KEEPING it would only mean that you are continuing to believe the truth is attacking you. You recognize how pointless that is, how meaningless and useless, and so you no longer have a NEED or a PURPOSE for the sickness. The sickness itself then will simply be DROPPED by you, you will stop USING it, you will stop attacking yourself with it, you will recognize it is futile and absolutely not working, is only making things worse for you, and that you have no further use for it.

You will also recognize that the ONLY reason it is there, the only CAUSE of it, IS YOU! It is only there because you WANT it to be, you put it there, you made it, it HAS no other cause keeping it in place, and if you do not WANT it, IT CANNOT STAY. Once you do this, you are withdrawing your belief from it, and IT WILL DISAPPEAR!!!!!! "Illusions recognized must disappear." It disappears because you SEE THROUGH the illusion, you no longer believe there is truth in the sickness, you recognize it was never real, you don’t believe in it, you know you made it up and it is a fantasy, and then it is EFFORTLESS to let it go. Recognizing it is ALREADY GONE, and WAS NEVER REALLY THERE, makes it vanish!!! Belief that God is truth, puts truth where it belongs and vanishes untruth. Belief that ego is truth, puts truth where it doesn’t belong and turns sickness and death into reality.

The sickness was ONLY there because your mind was maintaining it and thinking it needed it. That’s the ONLY cause of any sickness ever. It’s not caused by the environment or the body or other people or food or liquids or events or objects or anything outside of your mind whatsoever. It is cause solely by YOUR misperception of the truth through the ego. And since you MADE the sickness, you therefore can UNMAKE IT. "You made sickness and death and therefore can ABOLISH both". Jesus is absolutely 100% literally meaning that..... there is no sickness that will not disappear INSTANTLY if you no longer have a purpose for it and do not believe in it as being the truth.

This is also why a broken body proves the mind CANNOT be healed. And this is also why, when a healed body shows up, IT IS PROOF that the mind HAS been healed. Sickness, if it’s showing up In the body, always confirms that the mind MUST be believing it needs a defense against truth. And that means it is NOT in acceptance of the atonement. It is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE for the mind to accept the atonement and for the body to remain sick. The body HAS TO show up as healed, because the mind no longer has the guilt in it that the sickness was MADE OF. It also no longer has defenses against the truth, so simply those "defenses", which project as PHYSICAL DEFENSES, are GONE from the mind and therefore from the body also.

When you stop using the body for attack and stop believing in sin and stop misperceiving truth, the body BECOMES INVULNERABLE, because the mind no longer believes in attack or defense. IT needs no defense. Therefore it does not MAKE or support any, and so they do not show up. Recognize the mind is re-projecting an entirely fresh IMAGE of a body every instant. The "past body" has not properties of its own or ability to keep sickness in place. It has no will or power or conitnuity whatsoever. If the mind accepts the truth, it WILL project instantly a healed body which is not only "holy" it CANNOT BE SICK, and IT CANNOT DIE.

There IS absolutely a direct correlation between the mind’s belief and how the body appears. And there is no other cause for how the body appears. Healed mind, healed body. Sick mind, sick body. Cause and effect. Absolute mind over matter. You cannot be at peace and be sick. You cannot be at peace and die. Death is the opposite of a belief in God. There is no form of sickness that cannot be reversed if the mind accepts the truth and becomes clear about what is true and what is false.

We are supposed to not only demonstrate that there is NO CAUSE outside of us that justifies keeping the body in sickness or damaged or broken, that our brother HAS NOT attacked us, that we CANNOT be hurt, that we are NOT at the effect of the world, that MIND has power over the body (which every miracle demonstrates), and that the Son of God CANNOT BE KILLED. And we are supposed to demonstrate that IN THE FLESH. To use the body as a symbol of IMMORTALITY. For as long as it is useful to do so. Then we lay it aside by making it disappear entirely.

The body itself was a form of sickness. It was made from a belief in sin. "The body is the belief in sin made flesh and projected outwards." When we finally let go of ALL needs to defend against God, we will DISAPPEAR THE BODY - it will vanish, and then we will be entirely Spirit-identified.

The secret to salvation is.... you are doing this all to yourself. So if you don’t like what shit you made for yourself, STOP MAKING IT.

This is why you have to be 100% responsible for every single thing you experience and put in place. YOU HAVE THE POWER TO REVERSE DEATH AND TO MAKE DEATH IMPOSSIBLE. No-one needs to find a way to tolerate sickness, to put up with it, to suffer justifiably, to make do, to live in pain and fear, to suffer, or to die. No-one is supposed to be DYING ever! Use the body with love and, while it shows up, it cannot die. It will become a sign of immortality.

Some time ago, I did not even remotely recognize that I was choosing to be a victim. If I was afraid, attacked, threatened, hurt in any way, I would see it as the other person was entirely responsible.

Over time, as I've tried to apply forgiveness principles and the secret of salvation, taking responsibility for what I'm doing to myself and for choosing all feelings, my victimhood role has changed in appearance.

Now I see that when I "go into victimhood", this entails me deliberately trying to position myself as "at the effect" of others, trying to pull off a stunt of projection and blame, weakening myself, choosing to be upset, and generally being the cause of what I'm feeling.

As I practice this more and more, becoming "victimy" is recognized much more clearly as me descending into a funky state of "being affected", where I'm attacking myself and trying to pass it off as someone else's fault. I start to notice attacks coming out of me in an attempt to hurl it towards someone else. And I start to feel the typical feelings of fear and hurt that accompany this "role-play".

But I more quickly catch myself and take responsibility, to admit this stress and upset and suffering that I'm experiencing is solely because I've slipped down the slope into dishonesty, into projecting and blaming and trying to force myself to be affected by something. It's a way that I use other people to try to hurt myself. And I can no longer wholly accuse them of being the reason why I feel this way.

So the challenge now seems easier, to get myself out of this role and to stop "playing the victim", in recognition that I not only have the power of decision and responsibility to do so, I can do so and, when I do, no-one else can stop me doing so. It's up to me to decide that I want to feel better and to change my mind so that I do. This is especially much easier once you can see clearly and squarely that it's you doing this to yourself when trying to put forth the "lie" that it's not.

I now recognize much more clearly the component of self-caused suffering mixed in with what used to appear to be just the effects of attack. The unconsciousness of believing it was always coming from someone else is lifting. It's getting to the point where even if I do try to attack, project, hurt or blame, I simultaneously am aware of feeling that I am hurting myself, attacking myself, and am fully included in all the suffering I'm trying to get rid of.

I am seeing that this position of victim simply does not work, and I cannot escape what's happening inside my mind because "ideas leave not their source" even when I'm split minded and believing it's someone else who did this. I have "re-framed" the lie of fear enough to recognize that its entirely bullshit to claim I am afraid "because of" anyone or anything. In my fear is simply a dishonest attempt on my own part to disguise myself and portray myself as suffering, to try to gain the "reward" of passing off causation onto someone else through an accusation of sin.

As you become clearer and more recognizing exactly what it is you are doing, in your mind and attitude and choosing, versus what you thought you were doing when it was on auto-pilot, it simply becomes very obvious that you cannot move into egotism without feeling like shit, and you cannot escape the consequences of your choosing, nor can you blame without being blamed, or try to make suffer without suffering yourself.

The next step then is of course, in admitting to this charade, and recognizing its utter futility, simply stopping this "behavior" and lifting out of it, now that you "know better" and cannot pretend to hide from the simply truth that "you cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself." I am ceasing to play the role of victim and to instead step back into the shoes of Christ, personally empowered and stronger in the light of truth.

The victim role is not what it appears to be. It's not even remotely to do with what other people are causing or doing to you. It's entirely a fake postulating of yourself in trying to pull of a representation of you as "a sick and suffering you", so that you get the payoff of trying to blame someone else for it. Always always always you are doing it to yourself, and being in DENIAL of this fact is really the only problem.

Once you admit to it enough you can no longer put the cat back in the bag. And it's then impossible to even try to attack others when you're aware that doing so makes you hurt. If they are to suffer, you will suffer. The only way out is to stop hurting yourself. And when you choose your immortality and invulnerability, nothing can ever hurt you again.

"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."

When we separated from God, believing we had sinned, we projected the idea of this sin onto God, blaming Him for abandoning us and forcing us to be separate.

When we then entered into guilt, we projected this guilt onto God, accusing Him of being the one who made us sin.

When we then became afraid, we projected the cause of this fear onto God, claiming we are afraid of Him, because of Him.

Then we feared punishment, and we projected the source of this punishment onto God, believing he is the one who is going to punish us.

When we experienced punishment and felt close to death, we projected the cause of this onto God and believed that God wanted us to be dead.

And then we died. And it was God's wrath.

These are the stages that we have gone through in order to INVENT A FALSE GOD. Every ego projection of our own stuff, onto God, paints an image 'out there' of a source, a God, who has caused all this to happen. This is the ego's idea of God, a God invented to replace the Real God.

So now we have projected the cause and reason for all stages of separation onto God. God is the one who rejected us, God is the one who made separation happen, God is guilty, God is fearful and the cause of fear, God is going to judge and punish us, God is punishing us for good reason, it's God's will that we die, and by dying we're doing what God wants.

This is how we have defined and generated this false ego-created God in our minds. This is what we believe God is like. We have a death wish, trying to die, not just to escape God's wrath but because we think this God wants us to die, that it is His will, and that we are carrying out His will by dying.

At every stage, it is our ego denial of ownership of what we're doing, that brought about a projection and disassociation of that condition, onto God. We've tried to pull God into the problem. We've tried to blame Him for all of it.

This is also why we have an existential terror that God wants us dead. This is why we feel guilty just for existing when God apparently doesn't want it. This is why we feel unworthy of love. This is why we believe we can't go back Home to God because we don't think He will ever want us back or forgive us, wanting instead for us to be dead. We actually have this belief in us, and we also believe that God is the one who decided that we're terribly guilty.

It was never Him. God has had nothing to do with any of this. All of this disownership of the causes of this unfolding of sin-guilt-fear-punishment-death, has all been our own choosing and our own doing, to ourselves, within ourselves. None of it has taken place outside of ourselves. None of it has involved anyone else, no other, no person, no God. We have done this to ourselves. But along the way we've progressively disowned every part of it and projected it.

All of this projection has built an outward, separated picture of what God is like. This is the ego's false God. The ego also believes that it stopped having a parent/Father/Mother when it separated from God, and therefore has had to invent this alternative God, an artificial false God, which it not only worships and obeys (by carrying out its apparent death wish) but also fears to such an extend that it would try to escape into the grave to avoid God's wrath. This is how we've built this fiction of a God that is unloving, unkind, unforgiving, hurtful, vengeful, judgmental, condemning, conditional. This is not what God is like at all.

All of this has happened because of our disowning of ourselves. Our progressive disowning of ourselves at every stage of the development of the idea of being completely separate and unlike God. It's all to do with us disowning our power and projecting all of our self-attack onto God, believing He is the external cause of it all. So now it's all God's fault and we're just victims, lambs to the slaughter. This is the ego's creation story.

The ego attitude that we have, is an attempt to say that all of this terrible stuff happened because of anyone other than ourselves. And therefore we can't do anything about it. But the truth is, this entire process of 'creation', making, has taken place entirely within our own self. In our own mind. It never really projected. It was never God's fault and doesn't involve God whatsoever.

God is pure love. God is holy. God is innocent. God is freedom and light. God is happy with you. God is beautiful. God is harmless and ageless and deathless. God is peace. God isn't against you. God doesn't think these hideous things of you. God loves you unconditionally and for all time and beyond. And always will.

All sickness, all death, all upsets, all war, all destruction, all horrors, all terror, all guilt, all fear, all hatred, all deception, all darkness and all insanity, are all stemming from one place.

You.

They are coming out of you, because you are expressive and creative, but a part of your mind has become inverted, turned inside out. Everything that flows through this obstruction takes on opposite meaning, as though having asked for a flower, you had asked for an army.

All sickness that befalls you is also coming from you. You are choosing it, but you do not see how you are choosing it, and so you are "tempted" to believe that it is being caused by make-believe causes outside of you. Fictional enemies and forces beyond control seem to conspire against you, as you describe the world as a danger and perceive it as unsafe.

Every fearful, angry or upsetting reaction that you experience, you are putting into yourself. You create it with your own mind. You do not create it in response to an external threat. It accompanies the threat, and you create both of them simultaneously. A mind which pictures an external threat must believe it is in danger and must experience fear or reactions of horror, and as such the mind then manifests not only the danger but the reaction to it. Both of them are chosen by you.

Every single blame that you've ever made towards other people, events, circumstances, life, God, nature, the neighbor's dog, the weather, whatever, absolutely NONE of those things are really the cause of any of what you have experienced.

If we are going to really strip this ego down and take a firm look at the truth, then we're at some point going to have to realize that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAS HAPPENED TO US. Nobody who we have accused of causing us ANYTHING has ever been the true cause of that experience. Nothing that we have ever claimed as having happened TO US, has ever really been the cause of anything at all. We are adept at finding blame and projection for every sin all over the place, left right and center, and in every place other than within ourselves. "We but accuse our brother of our OWN sin.' ACIM

You can only be a victim if you perceive that there is ONE, EVEN JUST ONE case of something outside of you doing something to you. It is enough for your mind to invert and perceive causality as outside of you, and effects of that cause inside of you. Reactions are nothing but you producing effects WITHIN which were meant to be WITHOUT, as a result of this reversal of cause and effect, and you experiencing effects makes you suffer. You make yourself suffer.

Nobody has EVER done anything to you. This is the testimony that Jesus wants us to be able to express, not just in words or ideas but to actually live it, and to experience it, and to express it, such that we are actually IMMORTAL, completely immune to everything, unable to be destroyed or harmed or upset whatsoever. And to demonstrate this is to show that it has been learned.

That entire huge list of all the people who did stuff to you over the years? It's all a lie.

You need to remove from your mind the aspect which is distorting your creative impulses. It inverts and reverses the intentions of what you would create, turning life into death. It is because of this ego distortion that you seem to create sickness out of nowhere and then, seeing not the cause of it, think that it was put there by some other force. Thus you then believe that the body can become sick on its own, or as the result of the environment. It is YOUR MIND that is making it sick and nothing else.

Therefore, you HAVE every capacity to bring about complete and total immortality, to reverse and undo every sickness, to overcome death, and to be completely free from every form of suffering. You already have this in you. And this power is already working and operating. But you are MISUSING IT, attempting to use it to create a world which is not real, to project a sense of sin onto causes that don't exist, to blame everyone but you for owning it, and to remain unaware of God's presence. Only sickness can result from distorted ideas about the truth.

This is why your mind needs to be corrected. There is NO OTHER CAUSE for your sickness but you. There is NO OTHER SOURCE of suffering but you. There is NO OTHER POWER greater than the power of God which you share in and extend freely, with unlimited supply. There is NO OTHER WILL other than God's will, which you also share entirely. And there is NO OTHER WAY TO LIVE besides extending His eternal life in every way.

It is time to let go of every accusation you have made, every sin you have tried to scapegoat onto someone else, every form of blame and projection, every judgement as though someone else chose for you, every effort to get other people to change so that you don't have to, and every attempt to disown who you are. You are God's beloved child, you are immortal, and you have no enemy.

Let yourself be lifted into the truth of being. This world is not real. You are not at the effect of causes separate from your own. And there is no reason to be afraid, for only love is real.

All of the problems in the world, every sickness, every war, every argument, every lack and death, all separations, all special relationships, are all symptoms of the absence of God and nothing else.

Here's how Jesus puts it:

"A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking.

The idea of order of needs arose because, having made this fundamental error, you had already fragmented yourself into levels with different needs. As you integrate you become one, and your needs become one accordingly. Unified needs lead to unified action, because this produces a lack of conflict."

Now, this is a huge thing to get your mind around but essentially, it means that being with God solves everything. It also means that the ENTIRE CONTENT of this universe is coming from a single idea of not being with God, and without that idea this entire universe would disappear.

It informs us also about how to pray. When we pray and we go to God with all kinds of problems and questions, what we're really doing is asking for these things to be solved or go away. But we often ask God, hey, fix this shit for me. But there's an unspoken premise - that God will fix the issues and then we'll remain separate from God, enjoying a better separation. That's absolutely impossible. The only solution to ANYTHING is becoming closer to God.

All suffering, every conflict, all sickness, all unhappiness, every broken relationship, all problems, all sense of lack, every death, it is all what LACK OF GOD looks like. When there is not a lack of God, these things CANNOT EXIST.

We had NO NEEDS when we were with God. There was no world. There was no "life and death". There were no problems. No lack. No sickness. Everything was perfect. So when any of these things are showing up, there IS a belief in being separate from God. These things CANNOT show up unless there is such a belief, because these things are merely the FORM of the illusion of God's absence.

War is MADE OF "God is not here". Sickness is MADE OF "I am guilty and separate". Death is made of "Sin is real". Broken cars are made of "I am limited". Cancellation of your favorite TV show is made of "God hates me". I'm not kidding. There is NOTHING in this entire world that can exist unless there is some degree of a belief in God being absent.

So what happens when God IS PRESENT? What happens when we simply return to awareness of God's presence and allow and accept and receive it? What happens to all this STUFF which is completely meaningless which showed up only after the separation? It simply DISAPPEARS. It must disappear because light shines away darkness and all of this shit is just the form of darkness. When God is present, death is impossible. When God is present, there can be no suffering or lack or tears.

So you think, well, there are many many separate problems. There are not. There is only one problem. It encompasses THIS ENTIRE UNIVERSE and everything in it. Every collision of every particle, every planet blowing up, ever sun being born, every murder, every success story, every sunset, every fire hydrant, it's all part of the "I'm not with God" experience.

So when you go to God to pray, if you're putting all this shit on the table and asking for it to be fixed but you're not asking for the NEED for it existing to be undone, or for God's presence to increase, or for you to be One with God, then you're not asking for a solution. You're asking to make shit real, to keep it, and to have God change it into an even more appealing illusion. The only true prayer is to commune with God and be one with Him, which SOLVES ALL PROBLEMS, makes all questions disappear, resolves all needs and lacks, heals all sickness, and reverses all death.

So you do not need to learn a whole bunch of techniques and strategies for coping with hell. You don't need to figure out how to get more. You don't need to figure out what caused certain problems. There is only one thing you need. It's God. And if you get God, you are done. All the rest, will be simply forgotten and disappeared like it never existed or mattered, because it doesn't. There is nothing to learn, only a whole bunch of crap to unlearn. All you need is love.

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

Think about this and what it means.

The mind MUST be stronger than the body. That means, if the body is doing ANYTHING, the mind has MORE POWER than it, and therefore gets to decide EVERYTHING about the body's condition and what it is doing. It gets to override ALL SICKNESS, and ALL DEATH.

Believing that your body has power over your mind is level confusion, and this believe ALONE can "cause" sickness to show up. Believing that your body has a will of its own, a mind of its own, can do stuff you do not want, can make sickness show up, or be caused by the world, or made to die against your will, PRODUCES SICKNESS, because it is FALSE. It's a lie.

Your mind is MORE POWERFUL THAN YOUR BODY.

And, every MIRACLE folks... every fucking *MIRACLE*, demonstrates this.

So if you are not demonstrating this by having a sickness remain, or you go off and die, or you did not overcome death, or you keep having this sickness show up in the body while you THINK that your mind is awake and at peace, then you are IN DENIAL. Plain and simple.

Your mind IS more powerful than your body. Your mind MADE your body. And it is being projected BY the mind, IN the mind. So the mind can do ANYTHING IT WANTS to change the body. if it "can"t.... if you think you do not have that power or ability, you are ASLEEP, and you are in DENIAL, and not aware of the defenses against truth that you have erected.

Sickness in the body MUST therefore be undone, by the mind, in order to PROVE, that the mind is more powerful than the body. IF the mind cannot do this, the mind is NOT more powerful than the body, and you still believe in being a victim of the world, and will at some point go through death.

Its very simple. We are to get to the point where the mind CAN and WILL demonstrate that the body is entirely an effect of it, and so is EVERYTHING In this world. All bodies. All forms. Are effects of the mind. And if the mind gives command that these things shall change, do you think there is any power in all the world which can PREVENT that? There is nothing that can prevent that other than YOUR MIND.

The only thing which stops your mind demonstrating this power, is YOUR MIND, working against ITSELF. Because the secret to salvation is that you are doing this all to yourself. You are willing against yourself. That's what produces sickness and death.

There are no forces in the world, or wills, or minds, capable of stopping your mind from exerting its power over all things. The only obstacle is YOU. Your lack of belief in yourself. Your unawareness of God's power that you share. Your DENIAL. Death is denial. Sickness is denial. You cannot die happily or at peace. If death occurs, you are in denial.

The mind is more powerful than the body. EVERY MIRACLE demonstrates this. So that means, whatever the body state seemed to be, IF IT IS REVERSED and UNDONE by the mind, THIS IS A MIRACLE. A demonstration of PROOF that the ego's laws do not apply and the sickness was put in place by YOU, and therefore because "you made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both"!

Your mind is responsible for the state of your body!

Check this out!!!:

"Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source. "

Believing the body is SEPARATE from the mind or that its condition is nothing to do with the mind, IS DENIAL.

Your mind is the cause of everything. You are a powerful creator. And you are to demonstrate WITH MIRACLES that your mind is more powerful than ALL FORMS OF MATTER. Every body, every mountain that you literally move, every storm you calm, every sickness you reverse, every death you undo, and every life you save.

Something that I am really connecting with strongly at the moment, is the very ultra-simple truth that I am GOD’S CREATION. This is reflected in ideas such as:

"I am forever an effect of God,"

"I am still as God created me."

I focus simply on the fact that whatever I am, I MUST BE what God has determined me to be. I come from Him, and from nothing else. I am the extension of Him, per His Will. And everything I have He has given me.

It bypasses all lower level ideas and concepts and simply focuses on WHAT I AM, in relationship to God. The primary relationship of cause and effect between Father and Son.

This entails acceptance and acknowledgement of having been created BY God, and that therefore I am His child, and must be EXACTLY as He created me to be.

I am still as God created me.

God designed me to be perfect so I must be perfect.

God created me therefore I am exactly what He wanted to create.

I must be innocent because God created me innocent.

I must be sinless and guiltless because God did not design me with sin or guilt in me.

I cannot die because God did not Will that I be dead.

As you play with this idea and elaborate on it, you can come up with some very powerful yet simple, holy ideas about your real self.

God is the cause, you are His effect. I acknowledge that since God caused me, I must be whatever HE wants me to be. I must be as he designed me. I must be loved and holy. I must be perfect and divine. I must FOREVER be immortal and flawless and deathless and ageless and free from all corruption.

Acknowledging that I am God’s effect or creation, means admitting to being Christ. Jesus said to me, putting words in my mouth, "I need to restore my identity as Christ." This line of thinking does exactly that.

I will to simply remember my true nature. To remember who I am and what I am like. To recall why I must be free from anything God did not put into me. To recognize why I must be still as he designed and in perfect accord with His will and blueprint.

I can ONLY be what God has chosen to create me as. I cannot change this. I cannot redefine myself. I have no say in or power to alter myself. I have never changed since God created me. I’m incapable of being or doing anything God did not build into me to be capable of.

Therefore I have a "function", which God has set in place, a role if you will a machinery, a way of operating, a potential and capability, a talent, which God has given and is irrevocable. Nor can I add the slightest anything to His design. Nor can I take anything away.

I can ONLY BE what God wills me to be. I come from God. I am His holy extension. I am like Him. I am in His likeness and of His nature. I have INHERITED Him. I am HOST to Him. I am what He would have me be, and nothing more or less.

I am God’s Son, God’s child. I am from Him alone. Everything about me is HIS choice. I can only accept and celebrate that He has given me blessings and freedom and joy and beauty and power and everything of Himself. He has shared Himself with me. He has GIVEN Himself to me. I am HIS property.

The relationship of communion with God is the fundamental primary relationship of the soul to its creator. It is the recognition of what you ARE and MUST be, because of WHO created you. And it is the acceptance that you CANNOT BE anything else, nothing else is true of you, and only His truth about you is true.

You are anchored to your true identity as Christ because this is what God has willed. He created you Christ. You ARE Christ. And nothing beyond God has any power over you to define, change, attack, distinguish, affect or alter you in any way.

You are God’s creation. Holy, innocent, and free.

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

When your sense of identity has become confused with the ego or body, you see it as your SELF. You associate your existence with it as though it is you.

In order to then preserve your "own life", you will defend the thing you are identified with because you think it is really you. When it is threatened, you are threatened. You will therefore seek to maintain and preserve IT at all costs.

When the truth comes along to reveal that you are not the ego or body, your ego-identified self WILL perceive it as a threat. It’s a threat because IF the truth is true, it proves that the ego is not real. If YOU are the ego, that means YOU are not true and you don’t really exist.

What could seem more threatening than this implication that "you are going to be undone", or "your life" is going to end because what you ARE is being attacked by the truth?

In the name of protecting what you THINK is your life - your self, you will DEFEND your "self". Or at least, you think you are. You are defending the ego because you think it is your self, not recognizing it as not you, because you don’t recognize who you really are.

To defend yourself AS the ego, you will USE ego methods to protect yourself. The ego has only one tool - separation, which is the same thing as denial. In the name of what you THINK is protecting your SELF, you will implement MORE separation to try to put safe distance between you and the truth.

When you emphasize more separation, you split your mind, increase mental illness, and foster sickness in the body. This is unavoidable. Choosing to withdraw from truth is choosing to withdraw from life and health and wholeness. The defense that SEEMS like it is there to PROTECT you and save your life, with the purpose of self-preservation, is actually HURTING you. It makes you sick.

The ego is insane and every guidance it gives is a lie that does exactly the opposite to what it claims. It claimed that you protecting it (you) would make you safe from attack. Instead, it attacked you and now you are sick and worse off. The signs and symptoms of sickness start to show up in the body as well. You tried to protect yourself and you were attacked ("if I defend myself I am attacked").

In this state, you are WILLING TO TOLERATE SICKNESS and KEEP IT because, to your ego-body-identified self, the purpose of the sickness is to KEEP YOU SAFE. While you perceive that you NEED this defense, to keep your "self" safe from the truth, you will NOT be willing to drop the sickness. To do so would make you LESS safe and expose you to the perceived attacker. No-one in their right mind would want to become more vulnerable to attack, so it seems a reasonable to maintain and increase the sickness.

Even though the sickness is intolerable, and suffering is awful, you unconsciously chose it on purpose. Consciously now, because you are in denial and implemented denial in order to make the threat go away, you have blocked awareness of the choice you made.

You therefore don’t see that you did it to yourself. You then will see the symptoms of sickness as unchosen, unwanted, undesired and unacceptable. You will seek externally for possible "causes" trying to explain what caused the sickness to show up. It was you.

The secret to salvation is that you did this to yourself. The sickness is protecting you from God. The more you can make the body sick, the more pain it is in, the more you will focus on the body. You withdraw and contract yourself towards it, hugging it tightly in pain, because doing so reinforces your sense that you ARE the ego body. The more identified with the body you are, the more you are trying to make your ego-self strong. The more tightly you cling to it, the sicker it becomes.

The body is the primary place where you escape from God’s wrath, and yet escaping to it attacks it. An increase in confinement and isolation and body-identification seems to prevent God from stealing your identity away - your self, which you are trying to protect. But the more you BIND yourself to the body in suffering, the sicker you become. You simultaneously believe you are actually becoming SAFER from God, but are horrified that you also are in a state of suffering. The sickness seems to prove that the truth is attacking you, and that you do not want it.

The ONLY problem here is a mistaken sense of identity. If we did not believe we are the ego or the body, we would not perceive our SELF as under threat from the truth. We would have no reason to defend ourselves because we would be strong and truly safe. And recognizing ourselves as immortal we transcend the NEED for sickness. Without a purpose of protection, sickness HAS no purpose, and not perceiving a purpose in it, you will withdraw your belief in it. "Illusions recognized must disappear". Sickness will vanish.

Atonement cures because it removes the perceived NEED for the sickness. Accepting atonement is a willing acceptance of the truth without resistance or fear. In that willingness there is no more identification with ego or body. Nothing to defend, nothing under attack, nothing real can be threatened. In this is the TRUE escape from all sickness and death forever. Atonement is the resurrection of God’s Son to eternal life.

Jesus is telling us in ACIM to do the same thing he did in his resurrection. That is, if someone comes along and kills your body, YOU RESURRECT IT.

This means, no matter what anyone does, no matter how hurt or sick, no matter the effect of sin, you MUST resurrect the body to prove that you CANNOT BE HURT. And you should be doing this ALL THE TIME, to guarantee the body's health and restore its condition regardless of what anyone tries to do, to PROVE that you do not believe in sin.

This in fact is the true meaning of "turning the other cheek". You will literally be willing to allow anyone to do anything to you including "hitting you again", in the recognition that you will NOT be hurt by it, will HEAL the body, and will PROVE to him that you have power OVER the body. Your demonstration that you ARE NOT HURT PHYSICALLY, teaches him his innocence.

THIS is what real forgiveness means. Forgiveness is not real if it does not heal the body. It is not real if the body is still testifying to your brother's sins. It is not real if you have not forgiven AND UNDONE THROUGH ATONEMENT the effects of sin in the body.

Jesus literally meant that if someone hurts you, you should turn your cheek and invite him to DO IT AGAIN. Because you will be able to prove THROUGH MIRACLES that it has no effect on you or your body. This only makes sense given that you CAN perform miracles to undo physical damage. And because HE COULD, this is why he is teaching us to do the same.

Jesus had the power to NOT BE AFFECTED. Such profound confidence and fearlessness. That he would "allow" crucifixion because HE KNEW that what he really was could not be hurt, and that HE COULD DEMONSTRATE this by resurrecting and healing the body.

---

"You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness. ***Show him that he cannot hurt you*** and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of "turning the other cheek."

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"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. ****IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt****, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.

Show THIS 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."

---

THIS also directly ties into the secret of salvation. Jesus tells us that we'd be willing to allow people to be AS VICIOUS AS THEY MAY, that it can HAVE NO EFFECT ON YOU. This will set you free from suffering in ANY FORM. Thus will enable you to UNDO ALL FORMS OF ATTACK and demonstrate that you can repair the body just as easily as it can be hurt by someone.

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

--

Thank about Jesus, totally aware that he cannot be hurt by anything, totally aware he is not a body, able to resurrect bodies, able to heal the sick and raise the dead, able to cancel all effect of sin and attack on him. Even DEATH was not able to be sustained and he re-manifested a complete human body just to prove that he had power OVER all suffering. No-one could do anything to him. They could seem to attack his body but he could simply override it. He had supreme confidence and fearlessness. Imagine how safe you would feel if you were in touch with this power of God, this supernatural protection, ABLE to work miracles to undo anything that happens. You would laugh in the face of any threat or danger.

What Jesus DID in "the resurrection" he was ALREADY practically doing prior to the crucifixion. He had already got himself to the point of being able to reverse death and sickness. He could barely be harmed. He could've undone any illness. And when the crucifixion happened which was him ALLOWING an "outrageous extreme assault" to occur, he knew that he would resurrect from it and prove that it had no power over him. He must've been laughing inside at the preposterous idea that he would have to suffer forever more or be caused to "stay dead" at the hands of some foolish attackers.

And so similarly we are asked to demonstrate resurrection principles HERE AND NOW, in the world, as teachers of God, proving that we are under no laws but God's!

Ego always wants what it doesn't want, and doesn't want what it wants, because it is a contradictory though system that makes no sense. It may say it does not want death, and does not want people to be dead, but it does.

So while it says it does not want death, does not want people (bodies) to die, does not want sickness etc, it simultaneously is believing in and wanting those things. It is simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by everything, which is part of the uncertainty of fear as well. Insanity is two-faced like this, it can't commit to any one thing fully.

So in our egos, in our false perceptions, our insane split minds, our belief in separation, we literally believe both that a) we do not want death to happen and b) we totally want it to happen. This has to be looked at and recognized. It does mean that if we "don't want death", we DO want it.

Adopting any attitude based on "it really happens" is wanting it, having already given it reality and truth and value. If you value it you make it real. If you value it you want it to happen and try to make it happen. To believe in death, which is not love, is murderous.

Making death unreal is the only way to not play the game and get out of the flip-flopping confusion of wanting it and not wanting it. It's like being addicted to something that hurts you. You hate it and love it at the same time, in a twisted sort of way.

While you might try to take a side, and side with the angle that you do NOT want a person to have died (a body identified person), the mere belief that they are a body and HAVE died IS a decision to join in false empathy and to therefore value death and WANT it to be real. This is why for example in ACIM Jesus says that we try to keep people in their bodies, held there by guilt.

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT." UrT15H12

Our world-driven body-based perspective that bodies are real people, and we do not want them leaving "this world" because that seems like an end from our point of view, is totally blind to the fact that we belong in another world, and coming HERE is death. Birth is death. And even coming into this world took place BECAUSE we wanted to believe in death and keep it.

Prisoners have gone into a prison and are so insane that they believe the prison in their home and they don't want to leave, and are kicking and screaming to stay in the prison, because they think that outside the prison walls is a prison, and that they are free right now in their cell. They have no idea how backwards their thinking is and do not even recognize a prison when they see one.v

So yes if you are "upset by" some body person dying, it does mean that you believe it is real, want it, are choosing it, are reinforcing it, are being murderous, and are participating in trying to keep the person in a state of death. You'd rather they be suffering and dying than alive in God. Whether your ego likes to hear this or not is another matter, but we have to be honest and willing to look at it if we want salvation.

Being in grief, the grief simultaneously is a reaction that seems to say "I care greatly about this person and now they've been destroyed and I feel bad about that because I don't want it" .... at the same time as ..... "I totally want to believe they're dead and I'll happily bargain that they come back into their body and stay in a body forever in my little prison world and die along with me."

So then you discover that the grief is not just "pure grief" or purely justified or purely innocent or purely anything. It's not a whole story. It's a tainted mix of ego reaction and a sort of fake remorse masquerading as caring and feeling a loss, much like what we do in guilt. The loss is a lie because if the mind believes there is a loss it is choosing it and wants it. All emotions are caused by the mind choosing to feel what it wants.

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is." UrW152L1

We do have secret ulterior and selfish motives. We want them back because WE feel deprived. Our egos want to keep people in bodies forever and keep destroying them forever. A living death, followed by the death of non-life. Just recycling around over and over again, but never waking up from it. We can even say that yes it is selfish to grieve, it's always about a sense of what we want, what we have lost, how we feel hurt by what someone has done, anger at someone's leaving, as if their death attacked us. It's not easy to admit to how unforgiving this viewpoint is.

Remember that nothing real can be threatened. If something seems to have been threatened it cannot have been real. We believe it was real, which is a mistake. Believing a person is a body and that the body and world are real is a mistake. When the body, like a chunk of reality, goes away, we are forced into an experience of having lost a part of reality itself, as if part of God is dead. That MUST cause a sense of loss. It's not based on a real truth, but it's based on a perceived truth, and can produce horrendously deep despair.

But the despair is a lie. It's fake. It seems justified and understandable and common ("normal") and so on, but it is not really natural under God's laws. If nothing real can ever die, which is true, then there can BE no reason for despair. And the despair must be a smokescreen to hide a wish for death to be real, and for God's truth to not be true.

Grief isn't just grief, it's a mask used to cover up attack. Just as the "face of innocence", which sees itself as unfairly treated and unwillingly caused to lose something it values, secretly hides a vicious special hatred and a desire to attack and destroy. The victimy little "poor me" of the suffering grieving self is essentially an attempt to enter into the perceived death and join with it and be one with it, such as to become dead also.

This is why in grieving we are not really living, and people have a really hard time returning to life. I might feel grief still but at the same time that means I am believing in death and not life. It means I'm trying to join with the death and die along with it. That's not living. Eventually the sympathetic "part of me has died" game has to be given up and we have to RESURRECT back to a firm commitment to immortality and eternal life. God does not will that we suffer.

Yes it is very very very hard and deep and horrible to go through grief, but grief is not grief. Nor is the only way out to "go through it". It is deception. And no matter how long it takes or how quickly, we are asked to rise up out of it (the battlefield) into the light where loss is impossible and we can be only happy. We do not escape death by dying, we escape it through the light of truth.

The end of grief is the end of death. How much suffering is enough before we will choose again for a better way?

"Loss is not loss when properly perceived. Pain is impossible. There is no grief with any cause at all and suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream. Such is the truth, at first to be but said, and then repeated many times, and next to be accepted as but partly true, with many reservations, then to be considered seriously more and more, and finally accepted as the truth. I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt. And I would go beyond the words today, go past all reservations, and arrive at full acceptance of the truth in them." W248

"For what would be the use of pain to me; what purpose would my suffering fulfill; and how would grief and loss avail me, if insanity departs from me today, and I accept my holiness instead?" W285 "Who could despair when perfect joy is yours, available to all as remedy for grief and misery, all sense of loss, and for complete escape from sin and guilt?" UrW165L5

"Forgiveness IS your peace, for herein lies the end of separation, and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss." UrT29G1

"He laughs as well at pain and loss, at sickness and at grief, at poverty, starvation and at death. He recognizes sacrifice remains the one idea that stands behind them all, and in his gentle laughter are they healed." UrW187:6

"The way is not hard, but it IS very different. Yours is the way of pain, of which God knows nothing. THAT way is hard indeed, and very lonely. Fear and grief are your guests, and they go with you, and abide with you on the way. But the dark journey is not the way of God's Son. " UrT10D4

"Release the future. For the past is gone, and what is present, freed from its bequest of grief and misery, of pain and loss, becomes the instant in which time escapes the bondage of illusions where it runs its pitiless, inevitable course." UrW195L5

"Unshaken does the Holy Spirit look on what you see; on sin and pain and death, on grief and separation and on loss. Yet does He know one thing must still be true; God still is Love, and this is not His Will." UrW95L5 "If you have the gift of everything can loss be real? Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? UrW155L2

"Through this, he learns that where he anticipated grief, he finds a happy light-heartedness instead; where he thought something was asked of him he finds a gift bestowed on him." UrM5B5

"The gentle have no pain. They cannot suffer. Why would they not be joyous? They are sure they are beloved and must be safe. Joy goes with gentleness as surely as grief attends attack. God's teachers trust in Him. And they are sure His Teacher goes before them, making sure no harm can come to them. UrM5F1

Let's think about projection as more like an energy thing. You are a light, and you shine outward. You broadcast and radiate energy.

It depends what's in you, at the root of the light, as to what will shine out of you. If there are clouds of darkness at the source, it blocks some of the light coming out, and darkness seems to come out instead. But if the light source is free of blockages, the light shines brightly and strongly.

Another way to think of the blockages is as filters. They filter the light. The more opaque they seem to be the less light permeates through. And different kinds of filters block different frequencies and "color" the light. Anger might produce a red light, maybe fear produces a dark green light, and perhaps guilt is orange.

This light emits out of you, out of your body, our of your face, through your eyes. It in fact influences your vision. You look out through the light that you shine, so if it's blocked your vision is blocked as well. And if the light has taken on a lesser color, your seeing is also flavored by that sentiment.

You thus look out and have a direct experience of what we call the reality of the world. This is in two layers. There is a contribution from physical sight, but there is also this overlay of colors and energies, or emotions and felt experience, of meaning and purpose, which you project onto the physical. Anything less than love distorts how you see, and therefore what you project. And what you project narrows what you see, and thus defines it.

If I am in fear, I try to shine, but the shining diminishes, and leaves a lack of light, which seems like a darkness. And now I shine out what seems like a darkness, and my vision becomes dark, and I see reflected back to me that darkness. The darkness interferes with what I'm looking at and filters it. Now everything seems frightening and dark, because I am looking with fear and darkness.

"I can obscure my holy sight, if I intrude my world upon it. Nor can I behold the holy sights Christ looks upon unless it is His vision that I use. Perception is a mirror, not a fact. And what I look on is my state of mind reflected outward. I would bless the world by looking on it through the eyes of Christ. And I will look upon the certain signs that all my sins have been forgiven me."

You might think that the things you see in such looking is objective and passive, that you're seeing what's really there. But you're really seeing a distorted version of what's there, filtered through your blocks to light. You can only really see what you put there to see, and whatever you're seeing you have actually projected. You see fearful things because you are looking in a fearful way.

You then might think that you see many things which seem objectively fearful, that dramas are amassing, and problems are mounting, and dangers are looming, and risk is increasing. And you will take this to be the whole of reality, because you don't see anything outside of the confines of the filter of darkness. And this further deceives and tempts you into fear.

"The world you see is but the idle witness that you were RIGHT. This witness is insane. You trained it in its testimony, and, as it gave it BACK to you, you listened and convinced yourself that what it saw was true. YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF. See only this, and you will also see how circular the reasoning on which your "seeing" rests."

Soon, you don't recognize that you are projecting fear, and instead believe you are seeing the whole of what is really there. This is because you've lost context, due to blocked light frequencies. And now the world appears frightening and dark and terrible, with no way out, like a living hellish nightmare. And everwhere you turn you are confronted with fear and threat and danger. As if it is an inherent part of everything.

But if you can step back and check yourself, check your broadcast, check what kind of energy you're emitting, what kind of light you're shining, what you're giving, then you may be able to realize that you're actually making things look frightening. It's because you're projecting fear from within you, and not because the fear is starting outside of you. You either project fear or love, and everything else is just a variation of that.

Then you have to recognize that you have fear in you before you project it, and you can only see it when you project it. And you aren't seeing fearful things unless you are making them fearful inside of you first. Wihch means really there is a fear in you, lurking behind your projection, behind the radiant glow of your energy, which is blocking your light much closer to the source.

So then we have to look deeper within, much more intimately, much closer to your self, much nearer to where the projecting begins. The issue that's interfering with the light is happening much sooner and closer to home than you thought. It's in your mind, it's even prior to your projections. Somehow there is a fear in you that you didn't realize was there, which you've just been projecting all over the place and believing it's outside of you.

This begs the question, if there is fear inside of you, and the fear is not in the world or caused by the world, what is making you afraid WITHOUT the world? And that line of questioning has to lead to realizing that you likely have made yourself guilty, are punishing yourself, are threatening yourself, and are believing you have sinned against God. Because really it all goes back to the original sin and to what you think you did that made you worthy of suffering and punishment.

Always the projection of your inner content is extremely deceptive. It's fine if you are coming truly from an inner peace and a loving heart, which projects innocence and safety and sinlessness, rendering everything appearing to you as completely harmless and beautiful. But if you have blocked this love, and thus have guilt and fear in you, then this is going to fly out of you at the earliest opportunity, from the cess-pool of your mind.

Minds area always projecting, because it is their natural function. They give or express what is in them. It expands and moves outward. All minds shine like lightbulbs, regardless of whether the light is filtered or covered up. It's not a question so much of if you will project, but whether you will interfere with the natural extension of love, trying to pollute it with egoic beliefs and dark veils and false beliefs. Or such things as hidden hates and secret sins and unhealed wounds.

If I look to what is coming out of me, which I can FEEL, if I've crossed the line into believing that the world is the problem, I am already very deceived. If I am buying into the projected version of what was inside, believing it's outside, I'm already way down the line of the chain of causation. I have to look at my energy, what does it feel like, what am I broadcasting, what's coming out of me, am I attacking and fearing and accusing and trying to find scapegoats, or am I loving, safe and happy?

A scapegoat isn't just some person you pick out, it's the target of your energetic broadcast. It's a psychological thing you attach your inner gunk to. The mind looks to scapegoat, ie to find something to associate its dissociated guilt and fear with, so that it can attach it to something outside of you. Kind of like flying a kite, anchored in your mind, on a long tether, flying in the sky in front of your eyes, dangling like a carrot of temptation.

To scapegoat is to project ego, just in the mere act of projecting it, regardless of what is being said about a person or how they're being used. If I'm projecting fear or sin or guilt, I am scapegoating. I'm actively trying to get rid of my inner content. It's being pushed out of me, hurled onto the world. It's actively RADIATING out of me like an energy broadcast. I'm putting it onto the world.

It may land and attach to certain people or bodies or objects or events but it's always going to be something physical, because fear always blocks the light and narrows vision to illusions. And once I'm seeing fear and guilt outside of me, I see it as making me afraid and guilty. And now I'm stuck with a backwards perception and am deceiving myself. I have to realize I'm the one who is making the world frightening, by putting my inner fear onto it and singling it out as a target.

"When vision is DENIED, confusion of cause and effect becomes inevitable. The PURPOSE now becomes to KEEP OBSCURE the cause of the effect, and make effect appear to BE a cause. This seeming independence of effect enables it to be regarded as STANDING BY ITSELF, and capable of serving as a CAUSE of the events and feelings its maker thinks IT causes."

I have to watch myself doing this. It doesn't happen at an intellectual or theoretical level, it happens experientially and in a felt energetic broadcast. It's a psychological state. It's not a story or a concept about someone - that's just some form it might take later. It's more to do with, whether I am blessing with love and light, or am I cursing with nasty dark harmful energies, trying to attack psychically or whether I am providing the gentle healing remedy of a miraculous expression.

It is actually especially useful and a relief to recognize that nothing in the world is causing any of your upset, any of your fear, any of your guilt, or any of your belief in sin. Nothing, not ever, has any influence on you, but yourself. Becoming lost in the world and believing it's doing stuff to you, or your happiness and peace depends on someone else changing, that's all about being lost and confused in your own projections. It's NEVER about other people or the world. It's all to do with what you are doing to yourself on the inside.

To be wiling NOT to project hate, attack, anger, guilt, shame, blame, judgement, fear, sin, etc onto others, and to not let it leave your mind (seemingly), keeps it from latching onto external targets. It renders everyone innocent and loved, because really your upset has nothing to do with anyone else or the world. Then you can go deeper and unravel the mystery of where this interior bullshit is coming from, why you've attacked yourself, finding the reason why you cannot be sinful, and finally to embrace the atonement for yourself.

ALL of your problems are INSIDE OF YOU. And NONE of it is caused by anything outside of you! And it can ONLY be corrected INSIDE of you where the problem and solution are together. You are responsible for how everything looks to you, because it entirely depends on what you chose to believe about yourself, and how that radiates through your vision. Light IS vision, and seeing IS projection. Project only love to see through the eyes of christ, by seeing yourself as christ first.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness."

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

""This is the ONLY thing that you need do for vision, happiness, release from pain, and the COMPLETE escape from sin, ALL to be given you. Say ONLY this, but MEAN it with NO reservations, for here the power of salvation lies:

I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear." "You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."

"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 is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing."

Lesson 136, "Sickness is a defense against the truth", contains statements by Jesus which are hard to accept. They seem like extraordinary claims about what sickness is, how it is undone, and the impossibility of a healthy mind producing a sick body. It speaks of immortality, even at a bodily level.

In ACIM, sickness means a belief in separation from God. This applies to the level of the mind and it is in the mind that it is healed. However, the body is being projected by the mind and is "within" the mind, and reflects the mind’s condition. It is an out-picturing of the inward condition.

Every "form" of sickness which shows up in bodies is included in the scope of sickness applying to the mind.

Sickness projects a sick body. Bodies which have forms of sickness, suffering, damage, something broken or missing etc, are expressions of the belief in separation. These things can ONLY show up IF the mind maintains that belief.

Interesting stuff happens to bodies when the mind is healed. Sickness does not stick around on its own, nor is it sustained by the body or by the world. It is solely MAINTAINED by the mind, and so if it is showing up in the body, the mind IS maintaining it, thus believes in separation, thus is not healed. A broken/sick/dead body is PROOF that the mind has not been healed. When the mind IS healed, the body MUST therefore NOT PROVE that sickness is real, and therefore all signs and symptoms of sickness MUST disappear.

Let’s see what Jesus says which is so radical (my emphasis):

— "(Sickness) Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. WHEN THIS IS SEEN, HEALING IS AUTOMATIC. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

So right off the bat, Jesus teaches us that all forms and expressions of sickness (including cancer, stroke, heart problems, broken limbs etc, and death), MUST DISAPPEAR when the purpose of the sickness is recogized. Later Jesus tells us that we make sickness in order to DEFEND ourselves against the truth. But we only keep the sickness so long as it serves this purpose, and when the purpose or "need" for the defense is gone, the sickness MUST disappear.

—"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole."

Clearly then, sickness attacks and defends us against the truth. This includes all physical symtoms which is how the mind’s sickness shows up. If the mind is attacking the truth, it is also going to attack the body. The body will then become weak and sick. Since sickness is an attack on the truth, it is NOT POSSIBLE for there to be sickness if there is not attack, and it is NOT POSSIBLE to wake up to welcoming the truth without putting the sickness aside. Doing so must make it disappear, otherwise if it remains in any way, it continues to prove the mind is not healed.

Notice also how Jesus describes the mind as trying to twist, distort, make inept, and reduce to split-off parts. This act of the mind is HOW SICKNESS IS MADE. If the mind is TWISTING REALITY, it TWISTS THE BODY. If the mind is distorting reality, it distorts the body as well. Holy Spirit showed me this happening in a sudden vision not long ago, where the mind was literally "twisting" and distorting, like applying a psychic force, towards the body, making the body sick.

Our attempt to attack and change reality, attacks and changes our projected body image as well. We can’t hold a belief in attack in the mind AND keep a picture of a healthy body in the mind at the same time. The body WILL suffer if we attack reality, and if we DO NOT attack reality, the body MUST BE HEALED for the same reason - the mind cannot hold a picture of a sick body in the mind at the same time as believing in health/wholeness/truth.

Here is how ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH is implemented:

—"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."

So yes, Jesus is literally saying, we can ONLY be sick if we DECIDE TO BE SICK. We can only be sick when we misperceive the truth and believe it is attacking us, and that we NEED A DEFENSE to keep us "safe" from it. We will then use separation as a device for trying to put distance, or a gap, between us and God. This puts a gap between us and LIFE. The result is that we cut ourselves off from LIFE. And that means, we just chose to be sick and to die.

Jesus also tells us here that sickness DOES NOT HAPPEN TO US against our will. This mean ALL sickness. And death. Neither sickness nor death can appear AT ALL unless YOU decide to make them appear. That’s quite some responsibility that you have! You MAKE sickness from guilt, as an attack, to make the truth go away, so that you can have an illusion of your EGO being safe. Since sickness does not happen against your will, neither does it HAVE any will of its own, and therefore CANNOT STAY if you will to accept God’s truth.

—"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be."

Here Jesus is telling us that we attempt to BIND OURSELVES to the body in order to DEFEND ourselves against God/Life. By equating/identifying yourself with the body, you align yourself with the physical and attempt to SHUT OUT the mind. If you can identify yourself with the body, and if the body will then be sick and dead, this is HOW the ego attempts to kill the Son of God.

He also tells us that believing this distortion, which is also a belief in magic, and is also the authority problem, has the capability of bringing about DEATH. All death is a choice. Suicide. There is no accidental death. No-one dies without their own consent. He continues:

—"Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will"

"Your choice to die". Hmm. Yes. We CHOOSE it. Which means, it CANNOT HAPPEN if we do not choose it. Death is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Sickness is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Furthermore, sickness and death (which you made, and can abolish), does not continue when you decide NOT to be sick or die. When you decide NOT to be sick or die, SICKNESS AND DEATH CANNOT HAPPEN.

—"You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin."

So you can pretend to die, if you want. You can pretend to be sick, if you want. But sickness and death are both a dream, not real, and what you really are cannot die. God does NOT SUPPORT SICKNESS AND DEATH in any way. He does not create them, he does not view them in a special way, he does not include them, he does not believe in them. God is ONLY LIFE, not life and death.

Here’s a clincher:

—"Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where truth has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms, and cease to play with folly"

Read this and read it again. Sickness (illusions) cannot remain where truth has been allowed to enter. This means, ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH cannot *REMAIN* if the mind chooses to accept the truth. Accepting the atonement, or any act of forgiveness or miracles, MUST undo sickness and death in some way. And that includes at the body level.

Read it again. Truth has a POWER stronger than defenses (sickness, death). When truth’s POWER has entered the mind, sickness and death CANNOT REMAIN. Neither in the mind, nor in the body. NOWHERE. Because truth knows that sickness and death DO NOT EXIST at any level. If you STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF with sickness and death, you will STOP BEING SICK AND DEAD.

—"Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings."

Peace an truth TAKES THE PLACE of the vain imaginings that were "sickness and death". All sickness is imagined, made by the MIND. Stop dreaming it and it will cease to be.

Does the undoing of sickness affect the body? ABSOLUTELY!

—"It (mind) will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey. Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

NOW IS THE BODY HEALED. When the mind heals its belief in sickness, the body MUST HEAL. The SOURCE of the sickness has received relief, and therefore the sickness must "clear up". It must disappear in a MIRACLE.

Now let’s break out the big one.... the IMMORTALITY OF THE BODY:

—"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."

Wowza! The body‘s health is guaranteed, ie it is IMPOSSIBLE for the body to be sick or die. In a state of truth in the mind, SICKNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE. It cannot exist, it cannot stay, it MUST be healed, 100%! You cannot have a sick body and a healthy mind at the same time!!!! This is also supported when Jesus says elsewhere:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for IT WILL BECOME to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will SEE IT as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes HOLY. Because it is holy it CANNOT BE SICK, NOR CAN IT DIE. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."

So as Jesus has said here, the state of the body is ALWAYS a direct reflection or correlation to the state of the mind. If mind SEES it as sinful, it becomes SICK, and dies. This accounts for the sole cause of ALL SICKNESS in the entire world. And all death. BUT... IF you SEE IT AS HOLY, it becomes whole, it becomes INVULNERABLE TO ATTACK, it becomes INCAPABLE OF BEING SICK, and IT CANNOT DIE! Another word for that is, IMMORTALITY!

Let’s be clear here, before the controversy takes root, that Jesus also says that at some point this "invulnerable, deathless body", which doesn’t even need food or water (!), will likely at some point be laid aside. When it is not longer USEFUL it will disappear. But this does not mean it will be put down on the ground and made to rot. THAT IS DEATH! The holy body can only be "ended" by DISAPPEARING IT by the power of the mind. Nothing else can end it, and it CANNOT be ended by attack. Attack will merely KEEP it and create more sickness and reincarnation.

So yes, at some point the body can become incapable of being attacked in any way. Sustained by the power of God supernaturally. Eventually we will RECOGNIZE that we are not a body at all, and it has no usefulness, so our TRANSPARENT MIND will extend only transparency (total honesty). This will mean it STOPS PROJECTING A BODY. The body thus disappears into the nothingness from which it came. This is how the dream is left! It is the only exit. Leaving via DEATH is the TOTAL OPPOSITE OF CHOOSING LIFE.

Jesus concludes with a reminder:

—"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment 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."

Note here that Jesus says we make a body identity which, separately, attacks the body. This gives a different meaning to body identification.

If we believe we are separate from God we will see ourselves as being an illusion, which will show up as an IMAGE - a body. He warns us here to be careful of MAKING OURSELVES SICK, beause our mind literally does have this power over matter/form. Every miracle demonstrates that the mind must be more powerful than the body. Therefore the mind has power over ALL matter.

Hoepfully it is clear from this chapter alone, that we do not NEED to be sick, sickness CANNOT STAY unless we want to KEEP mental illness along with it, when we choose the TRUTH it is *GUARANTEED* that all sickness and death must be UNDONE COMPLETELY, and it is God’s will that we be perfectly happy and healthy even in a body.

No-one needs to suffer. No-one needs to die. The body cannot be sick unless you make it so, and doing so will keep you from God. But choose again, and sickness will vanish before your eyes. All sickness can be reversed. All death can be reversed. There is nothing your holiness cannot do.

First of all, let's touch on what the "authority problem" is. You as a Child of God, were authored by God. God caused you. His authority, or His power to Author you, designed you to be the way God wanted you to be.

You are the result of His Will, your nature is as He chooses, everything you have is inherited from Him, you only have what He has given you, you are only capable of what He created you to be capable of, your identity was given to you by sharing His with you, and you cannot change anything about yourself.

In fact, you are an extension of God Himself, you "host" God within yourself. It's not just that God is sitting there in a chair and then created you sitting in another chair some distance away. He extended out from Himself and put Himself into you, as you.

"I, who am host to God, AM worthy of Him. He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling- place in me created it as He would have it be."

"When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, He ESTABLISHED you as host to Him forever. He has NOT left you, and YOU have not left HIM."

You host Him, which is what your "inner altar" is. So you are not only a self, you are a self that also contains all of God. You are joined to God within you. You overlap with Him. You are a part of God which is also host to the whole of God. His own being is embedded into what you are. It's like, His light is shining in your heart. He is radiating through you. He is so intimately close with you that He is inside of you, and together you co-create as one.

In the separation idea, you questioned authority. Which means you questioned who was the Author of you. You questioned God. You protested against being Authored by God, and became unhappy with the fact that you were ONLY as God created you. You wanted to be not only the author of yourself, you wanted to be the author of God also, the definer of reality, and the chooser of what is true.

You wanted to become something other than you are. You wanted to change your idea of what God is. You wanted God to stop Authoring you, so that you could "be God", ie so that you could take Authority away from Him, and have this authority for yourself. Even to the extent that you wanted to have authority OVER His Authority, which is the idea of sin - the ability to affect, change, and cause God.

In concert with Him, you shared His Authority. His Power, His Authority, is in you. And it operates through you. But you wanted to be able to exercise a power that did not come from Him. You wanted a power of your own, or to regard yourself as authoritative without His Authority being the source of it.

"The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has an "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself"

In fact you wanted God not to be your Father, to not be the source of you, and to not be the Author of your identity, inheritance, or nature. And by denying that God was the Author of you, you denied that you had been Fathered (created) by Him. This was necessary in order to reject or oppose His Authority.

But by doing so, you made yourself fatherless, like an orphan. And so instead of being the Self that God created, you become "anonymous", attempting not to share His identity, rejecting your inheritance, and claiming to have not been Authored at all. This was an attempt to separate cause and effect, Father and Son, and to block awareness of your identity.

"and men preferred to remain anonymous when they chose to separate themselves FROM their Author. The word "authority" has been one of their most fearful symbols ever since."

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all. "

Now that an individual has developed an artificial "problem with Authority", they move into the ego thought system. Here they believe God is not their Father, who and what they are is not defined by God, they do not want to be defined by God, they are the author of themselves, and they even proceed to invent a new Father to explain their own origins.

"being uncertain of their true Authorship, men believe that their creation was anonymous. This has left them in a position where it SOUNDS meaningful to consider the possibility that they must have created themselves."

"Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of God (including himself) has arisen, and is tolerated. ... Fourth, that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him."

"The "attack on God" made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression."

"he would not accept the fact that, although he was a creator, he had been created."

While rejecting God's Authorship of you places you into turmoil, accepting it restores you to peace. God HAS established the only facts of your existence, the only truth that is true of you, and is the sole source of your nature. You cannot change this fact because it is absolute. It is impossible to alter God's will, but you can deny it. You can reject the fact that "you inherit God", but this just makes you unaware of your inheritance, which God saves for you.

"Peace is a natural heritage of the Soul. Everyone is free to refuse to accept his inheritance, but he is NOT free to establish what his inheritance IS. The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship."

"He has thrown away the reason for his own peace, and sees himself only in pieces. This strange perception IS an authority problem."

The question then is how to return to an acceptance of what your true Authorship is, how do you return to being a host to God, how do you become aware of your inheritance, and how do you resume your real function in heaven. Obviously this will involve the undoing or ceasing-to-do of the various ways that you play God, the attempt to author/define yourself, and the unwillingness to accept your function as extender of God's being.

It entails acknowledging that whatever you are, you are what God says you are. And you need to become okay with that. It needs to become acceptable to you, even welcomed, that you are ONLY as God created you. That ONLY the truth is true of you, and nothing else is true.

It means you have to recognize that the way Creation is set up, you ARE an effect of God, He DOES define you, you CANNOT define what you are AT ALL, and you have no desire to do so. Accepting Atonement simply means accepting the truth is true, accepting your position in the machinery of heaven.

You were created to create with God. You were created to HOST God. God is in you, at your sacred inner altar. You and God are one, and everywhere you go He is in you. You do everything together. And you are still as He created you. Nothing has changed, you have not changed His Will or His Mind, and you Will only to Will like Him, in accord with His Will.

"Instead of "seek you first the Kingdom of Heaven" say "Will ye first the Kingdom of Heaven," and you have said "I know what I am, and I will to accept my own inheritance.""

This means putting aside your need to be the gatekeeper or decider of what is real or true. It means making room for God to operate THROUGH you. It means accepting that you have nothing of your own, and everything you DO have, which is everything, is OF or FROM God. Even AS God.

"Recognizing that all Power is of God is to gain all Power."

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE. Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

It means giving up trying to do everything alone, or by yourself, or dependent on your own strength, which is at best highly lacking. You HAVE nothing that God has not given. Not even strength, ability, will, power, mind, or anything. You are in a symbiotic relationship with God. You cannot live without Him.

"Symbiosis is misunderstood by the mentally ill, who use it that way. But I also told you that you must recognize your total dependence on God, a statement which you did not like. ... God and the Souls He created ARE symbiotically related. They are COMPLETELY dependent on each other. The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not. God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly. He gave them His peace so they would not be shaken, and would be unable to be deceived."

You and God function like a Team. It's kind of like He is the hardware, His mind and power is His software, He creates you as a new piece of Hardware, and downloads His software into you. Without Him you have nothing. With Him you have everything, but you only have what He has given, and what you create together.

So it's really a matter of humbleness and honesty and a willingness to make room for you to host God again. You have to receive Him. You have to allow Spirit to guide you again. You have to plug your mind back into your Soul. You have to become an instrument through which healing can occur. And you have to be willing to let your mind be loving so that it can not interfere with the automatic extension and expression of love, which is miraculous.

In your purified state, you resume the proper function as the Light of the world, because HIS Light is in you and extends through you. You resume your place as powerful miracle worker, because HIS power operates through you. You act as a relay station for His miraculous love.

"The miracle extends WITHOUT your help, but you ARE needed that it can BEGIN. ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED."

Your proper function is to express God and Christ. To be in such a state of cooperation and alignment and agreement that their functioning empowers your functioning. You thus become a miracle worker, able to give what you are receiving, to others. This is simply because having been Authored by God, He has given YOU the ability to Author, and thus you become able to create and to work miracles. To extend and express what is in you, which is God Himself.

The final acceptance of being host to God, and thus that God operates through you to others, is what establishes you as an UNLIMITED miracle worker, and is the acceptance of the atonement. It requires you acknowledge God is your True Father, the ONLY cause of what you are, that you are not caused BY anything else, and therefore resume your place as a Son of God, co-creator of miracles and life.

"Souls were given their own true authorship"

When you act as/with Christ, operate through the Holy Spirit, and activate the Power of God, there is nothing your holiness cannot do.

"24. A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. EXPLANATION: You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

"A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers. " simply reflects on this arrangement of beings. You host God, God is in you, God is the source of miracles, Holy Spirit is the mechanism, it extends THROUGH you, TO ALL OUR BROTHERS, or perhaps to an individual brother. You operate as a "physician of the lord" to go out and profess Christ, healing the sick and raising the dead as a miracle worker. This is atonement - being part of the great crusade to give to those what they seem to lack.

"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment.

Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

"A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking."

Before the separation there were no problems. There was no sickness. No death. No war. No lack or suffering. No pain or fear. No guilt. No sin. Nothing. There was only joy and love and creation and peace and light and truth and celebration.

Recognize this then. ABSOLUTELY EVERY problem or difficulty in this world is symptomatic of what happens when you leave God. EVERYTHING.

Everything in this world is MADE OF "God’s absence". MADE OF IT. ***It IS the separation***. It is not something that was "tacked on" after separation, it is the separation ITSELF. The direct and unavoidable RESULT of trying to exist without love.

All sickness and all death are nothing more than an aspect of you being separate from God. These things did not happen for any other reason. There was NO CAUSE whatsoever other than the causality in Heaven, prior to the separation.

Problems, sickness, death, suffering, it is all a manifestation of "being without God". All needs that have arisen are there ONLY because we are LACKING GOD. Every form of sickness is the absence of God. All forms of death are the absence of Life, and God is life. Every war and every conflict is arising because of the absence of God.

To in any way suggest that your return to God/truth will entail the retention of ANY PROBLEM, any form of sickness, suffering, lack or death, or even this world itself, is absolute bullshit. ALL of this "stuff" IS THE SEPARATION. When there is no separation, there IS NONE OF THIS.

There is NO PROBLEM other than the separation from God. There IS nothing happening in this world that isn’t symptomatic of trying to be away from Him. EVERYTHING here is the RESULT, of pushing God away.

You do not have a problem paying bills. You do not have unfair sicknesses caused by improper diet. You do not have struggles with coworkers which is their fault. You do not have issues with people on facebook groups. The separation from God IS THE ONLY LACK YOU NEED CORRECT. You have a problem with GOD, not with this world. This world is the FORM of your problem with God. And there is **no problem** love cannot solve.

"Let me recognize my problems have been solved. If you are willing to recognize your problems, you will recognize that you have no problems. Your one central problem has been answered, and you have no other."

Every question that you have, every fear, every doubt, every problem, when you are EXPOSED to God, if you try to commune with God, none of those questions become answered. What happens instead, is all your questions DISAPPEAR. They simply vanish. Every question was a form of fear arising from the ABSENCE of God. When He shows up, the entire foundation for those questions no longer exists.

When you go to God, you are SOLVING every problem you have. When you join with God, His MERE PRESENCE is the SOLUTION to every issue in your life. Because every single issue in your life, no matter how it APPEARS, or how specific it seems to be, or how confined it seems to be, or how much it seems to be about specific people and not others, IT IS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OF THAT.

Pushing God away introduces lack. Pushing God away introduces fear. Pushing God away makes you feel guilty and want to die. Pushing God away is the source of ALL ILLNESS. Pushing God away is the source of every war and every single death that has even taken place in this dream.

Every aspect of every nightmare is the result of the "darkness" that seems to come about when light is absent.

All financial problems are a lack of God. Every argument arises from a lack of God. All injuries are a lack of God. Every disease is a lack of God. All problems in your job are the lack of God. Everything you attack or judge is the result of the lack of God. There is not a single problem in this world that is anything other than a symptom of God being absent. Upon his "return" to your life, it simply all will disappear because it was all made of his absence. This is a metaphysical fact.

Loving with God = eternal life. Trying to exist without God = suffering and death.

You do not have any other problem other than not being with God. All you have done is you have pushed away the provision of every need you could possible have. You have rejected life. You’ve separated yourself from effortlessness and from being natural. You’ve tried to deny eternal life and immortality. You’ve attempted to suppress all power and creative potential. You ONLY have a shit life because you’ve shut God out.

There is no other problem to solve. And this problem ONLY HAS ONE SOLUTION. The ONLY solution to EVERY problem in the world, is love. God Himself. The restoration of your willingness and awareness of the presence of God in your life, in your mind, in your heart, in your being. LOVE SOLVES EVERYTHING. Not only does it solve everything, it is THE ONLY WAY to solve ANYTHING. There is NO OTHER ANSWER.

You cannot be happy without God. You cannot live without God. And in truth, you cannot be separate from God either. So all of these problems you have, cannot be real problems. They must be illusions of "being separate from God". A dream of "what might it be like without love". This dream fortunately is NOT THE SAME THING as "separation really happening". It’s just a great big IDEA. Wake up. God still loves you and that’s forever. And that’s all you need.

"You're doing this undo yourself."? No way!!!

The ego objects to the secret of salvation. "I CAN'T be doing this to myself! There's no way I'm causing or choosing this! I don't want this, I didn't ask for this, I didn't do anything to make this happen."

Of course the ego thinks this because this IS the defense that is covering up the awareness that you are all powerful. That you chose and caused.

See, ego equates responsibility with guilt and it has absolutely no notion that you can be responsible WITHOUT being guilty. It sees responsibility as "where the blame lies", who is guilty, who sinned, who did it.

It doesn't WANT to be open to the idea that you could take responsibility and be INNOCENT. And so it has a lot of defences and denials and resistance to this idea.

When you start taking responsibility the ego is going to come in and say that you are guilty because of this. So you're going to have to learn to separate out the responsibility from the accusation.

It can really challenge you to be willing to consider that you might actually be choosing what you are experiencing. It means you're going to have to let everyone off the hook and not hate them. It means you can't be a victim, you can't be unfairly treated, you can't be being misrepresented or not heard or accused.

The ego sees taking responsibility as on par with admitting to a crime that's going to send you to prison. It does not want to do it. It sees confession of truth as totally against your best interests. It's like admitting to being a guilty sinner, tapping into your deepest hidden hurts and sense of regret and guilt and shame.

Who wants to admit to being the cause of something awful, or some suffering, or something unpleasant even? But this is what we're going to have to do. The ego has been judge and jury and has decided that the only way you can have the power to do anything is by having the power to be a guilty suffering attacker.

This is why it's a bit challenging, admitting to the truth. You suspect that you sinned, you suspect you're guilty, you don't even want to look at it in case it's true. Or it seemed true when you last looked at it, so you hid from it and vowed to keep it hidden.

But the truth is that you cannot suffer unless you choose to do so. And that's easy to say but a lot harder to totally own. It means you're going to have to look at and question how you might have actually done this. How you chose. The power of your decision. How you decided and the purpose you were trying to serve in your deciding. Why you wanted to suffer. Why you wanted sickness. Why you wanted pain and misery.

Probably you'll feel that the reason for this self-attack was some kind of horrible sin that you committed long ago, maybe an ancient sin, you know, like trying to kill God? Which you believe is true. So you're going to have to confront that at some point to find a path through so that you can get to where you are responsible without the guilt. Where responsibility can mean a verdict of freedom.

We are quite averse to admitting to what we think we've done because we don't want to. And we've become used to projecting it rather than owning it, because owning it feels like shit. But we are not being asked to own up to something terrible that we did, we're being asked to own up to having NOT DONE ANYTHING.

But the road to freedom requires the total acceptance of total responsibility. Without ANY sin or guilt entering into it. When responsibility is polished clean of all guilt, it simply means you are still as God created you, pure and clean, innocent and sinless. And cause for celebration.

"Loudly the ego tells you NOT to look inward, for if you do, your eyes will light on sin, and God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do NOT look. Yet this is NOT the ego's hidden fear, nor YOURS who serve it. Loudly indeed the ego claims it IS. TOO loudly and TOO often. For underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is NOT certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet ANOTHER fear, and one which makes the ego tremble. What if you looked within, and saw NO sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego NEVER asks. And you who ask it now ARE "threatening" the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to PRETEND it is your friend."

What do you mean, you're not treating me exactly the way that I expect you to? How dare you! lol

"Respect" is a term that egos love to use. It's supposed to be a sign of treating someone right. But there's more going on than meets the eye.

When someone is in ego, they have a lot of insecurities. They're carrying guilt and shame, living in fear, feeling unworthy of love, etc. They are not treating themselves and others with love.

As a result, the person becomes irresponsible, disowning themselves and their power. They project causality outside themselves and attach it to other people. They then expect other people to be the ones who act responsibly toward them.

This is the same as the ego's form of "forgiveness to destroy", in which others are expected to change while the person stays the same.

Effectively the whole world revolves around the person as the ruler of their kingdom, as though they are sitting on a throne and everyone must worship them. If the inferior external people do not measure up or treat them right, anger and murder become justified.

You'll notice that people who NEED "respect" from others, also become intimidating, aggressive, abusive, threatening and violent. Especially if the respect is not given, as they see it.

Only a victim needs respect. Only an attacker demands respect. Only an unloving and truly "disrespectful" person wants others to respect them.

This idea of respect is completely backwards. It says that everyone else is to blame for your suffering, and its all their fault, they're sinners, and they have to change their wicked ways in order for you to be happy.

If they treat you how you think you want to be treated, you'll consider them "respecting you". But what that means is they are agreeing with your evaluation of yourself as some kind of important special figure.

If they go along with your inflated ego, they are "respecting" it, effectively worshipping it like a God. This triggers the special love. If they don't go along with your control and your dominance and your threat of revenge, out comes the special hate.

An immortal innocent holy son of God does not need the respect of others. It does not matter what other people do in their attempts to "treat" you in any way at all, because you cannot BE "treated". You choose what you experience, not them.

Someone who has taken full responsibility for causing everything they experience, including all of their feelings, cannot be caused by others. Not do they have a lack of love, or a need to coerce others into giving it to them.

A self-loving person doesn't become a terrorist, or an intimidator, or a crime boss, or a ruler over people, or a dictator, or a tyrant, or any kind of threatening person who DEMANDS that others AGREE with their evaluation of themselves.

You would actually be doing a service to someone who believes something FALSE about themselves, such as that they don't deserve love, and instead giving them that love.

Giving love is the higher "form" of true respect, but isn't there as some kind of idol worship. It's an agreement as to the true higher nature of a person in spirit, rather than pandering to their ego.

Yes we all want to be "respected" or at least "not attacked", preferably. But this is only a short-term goal. In the big picture we should be working towards NOT NEEDING people to treat us a certain way. We are supposed to meet whatever happens with forgiveness, not revenge.

Yes, sure, let's all be "reasonably respectful" to each other.. as in, how about let's not be trying to murder each other. But at the same time, we have to be careful not to believe that this "treatment" of people is there in order to appease their egos. It's not TRULY respectful of a person to insinuate that they need to be treated a certain way in order to avoid them being "hurt".

We are immortal beings who ultimately cannot be hurt, cannot be upset, cannot be offended, cannot be terrorized, cannot be attacked and cannot be destroyed. This has to be central and foremost in our view of ourselves and others. Recognizing this in others is the only sign of true respect and love.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." UrT27I10

"We have emphasized that the miracle, or the EXPRESSION of Atonement, is always a sign of real respect from the worthy TO the worthy. This worth IS re-established by the Atonement." UrT2E3

"An Elder Brother is entitled to respect for his greater experience, and a reasonable amount of obedience for his greater wisdom. He is also entitled to love, because he is a brother, and also to devotion, if he is devoted. It is only my own devotion that entitles me to yours. But you will notice that I have knelt at your altar as readily as I would ever have you kneel at mine." UrT1B40X

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness." UrW190L5

When you resist something in life, when you can't accept the fact of what is, or what has seemingly happened, when you are fighting with it and don't want it and want it to be a different way, you WILL experience being unhappy.

Resistance itself, causes unhappiness.

As you resist, what is happening? You're putting up barriers, you're shutting down, you're trying to control, you're blocking out what is, you're fighting, you're wasting a lot of futile energy not being able to change any facts, you're draining yourself on impossible wishes, you're running up against reality, etc.. And all of these actions, are experienced AS feelings of unhappiness, feelings of anger, feelings of sadness and fear, feelings of exhaustion, feelings of threat and danger, feelings of intensity and tension.

Now, when you are resisting life, no matter what in particular, what you need to realize is that it is the resisting ITSELF that doesn't feel good. You will resist, thinking that you feel unhappy 'because of' the thing you are resisting. You'll think, you feel angry or outraged or upset 'because of' what you don't want to be happening. Whatever it is that you 'cannot accept', you will say that THAT is causing you to feel unhappy.

This is not true at all.

ALL of the feelings and experiences of unpleasantness, unhappiness, upset, anger etc... all of them are PART OF what it feels likes like to RESIST WHAT IS. And it doesn't matter what form your opponent takes, because ultimately 'what is' is God, and any form of resisting God shuts God out, and that does not feel good at all. If you shut God out, you will shut out love, light, happiness, joy, peace, harmony. So you can be pretty much guaranteed, if you resist what's happening, you MUST feel unhappy and upset.

So now, realize this. .... unhappy feelings are caused by RESIST-ING, not by what you are resisting against. Resistance in other words, is a form of skapegoating, in which you're trying to make out that 'they' - your enemy - are the cause of your problem. That they are causing all of the anger you feel, all of the unhappiness you feel, all of the tension and stress that you feel. It's all their fault. It's all the fault of 'what is' (ultimately blaming God). But this is not only spiritually irresponsible, it is also deluded. What you're resisting against or fighting against is NOT the cause of your upset. The cause of your upset is ONLY, the fact that YOU are choosing to resist it.

That's all. There is no other reason why you are unhappy other than that you are choosing to resist what is, and are then blaming or justifying 'why' you are resisting, onto the other person or situation. It's not their fault that you're resisting them. It's not their fault you are unhappy. It's not the 'now's fault that you are going off into the past and future on a tirade story of how you've been victimized.

Ultimately then, all of the experience of victimhood and suffering and upset and unhappiness is a DECISION YOU ARE MAKING, in order to justify and explain WHY you are choosing not to ACCEPT what is. Why you are not accepting God.

"You are never upset for the reason you think" - ACIM

"You are upset because you see something that is not really there" - ACIM

What you see that you think is there, is an enemy who has suddenly arisen out of 'what is', which you have labelled as wrong, having given it all the meaning it has, and now you are in a state of resisting, which you chose, and because of this choice, you are now experiencing suffering. AND THIS IS ALL YOUR OWN DOING TO YOURSELF.

"The secret to salvation is this, that you are but doing this all to yourself." - ACIM

SOOOOO..... what this means is... and here's the clincher....

*IF* you were to decide to stop resisting and fighting with what is, IF you were to choose to ACCEPT IT, instead of trying to move away from it, IF you were to choose to ALLOW IT, instead of trying to make it be something else, IF you were to choose to WELCOME IT, then guess what's going to happen to how you feel?

You're suddenly going to feel more peaceful, more happy, more calm, more joyous, more free, more empowered, more clear, more alive. All your feelings of suffering are going to just disappear. Just like that. All your upset, all your anger and outrage, all your depression, all your sickness, all your sadness, all of it is going to just disappear because you're choosing to welcome GOD. God is what is. Accepting what is is far closer to accepting God, and God is love, and accepting love HEALS YOU.

So.... realize this..... if you choose resistance, you will INVENT and manifest sickness and suffering, purely because you are resisting. And before you resisted, you did not have any of this. And as soon as you resisted, the suffering showed up. And now in your resistance you are suffering, but you're trying to blame the cause of it onto the thing you're resisting against. It's got nothing to do with that. Resist, you suffer. Don't resist, you be happy. That's all it boils down to. It's a black and white decision.

Either you accept what is and be happy and at peace.

Or you resist what is and experience suffering and unhappiness.

You cannot resist and be happy. You cannot fight and be at peace. You cannot blame and be at peace.

So really nothing is happening to you. The thing you resist is not causing your suffering. The people you don't like are not causing your suffering. The group you didn't want aren't causing your suffering. The suffering is YOUR WAY OF RESISTING THEM.

So you chose it. You're literally doing it to yourself. And the only way to NOT suffer, is to give up your position. You cannot maintain your position of resistance AND be at peace or happy. It is IMPOSSIBLE!

Choices:

a) resist what's happening and be unhappy and suffer and sick and die, you can never win and you will never get your way.

b) allow and accept what's happening and be completely happy and at peace and still not get your way, but at least you are happy.

So resistance is a smokescreen where you pretend to be justified in resisting. But resistance itself is what makes you suffer and is the sole CHOICE to cause yourself to suffer. You say, "I'd rather resist this and suffer and be upset". And then you project it. Your only other option is. ... accept the truth. Accept the facts. Surrender to what is. Allow it

Then you can be happy and at peace. And then what the fuck does it matter what's happening?

There are different teachers for different students at different points on their path. The teaching that is given to the students at any given stage are appropriate learning for what that student can accept at the time. The student is only able to learn what is 'next' on their path and according to their willingness.

At some point if the student has learned something beneficial, they will increase in awareness and will begin to see flaws and cracks in the teacher's teaching that they did not notice before. This indicates teaching has been accomplished in some way. It may be necessary for the student to then move on to a different teacher who has the ability and appropriateness to teach the next lessons that the student is ready for.

There are teachers who teach to large numbers of people and many of those teachers are not necessarily teaching the whole truth. Now, the ego jumps in here because the ego is fantastic at drawing comparisons, measuring-up who is who and who is saying what and whether said persons are being 'as truthful' as others. It loves to make a competition out of everything.

The are two sides to this. From the student's point of view they will start to compare teachers and find ways that their current teacher is flawed and become disillusioned with this teacher. They are recognizing that the teachings being offered have been outgrown, but they are still expecting that this particular teacher is meant to be the teacher of ALL lessons, and that they're failing to be 100% authentic. This comes about because the student has become attached to the teacher and has set them up with idol worship in some way, which is part of what caused them to come together initially.

The other side is from the teacher's point of view - remembering that as the student progresses they become a teacher also to those who "have less light" - and so the teacher is now aware of the flaws and shortcomings of the message being given by other teachers who seem to be 'behind' them on the path, and begin to downgrade them as inferior students and as being wrong for teaching what they're teaching. This is all ego and is driven by insecurity that their own teaching and learning is incomplete.

Now, what we need to recognize here is this. "Those who are to meet will meet" - ACIM. There are appropriate teachers and appropriate teachings for everyone, based on exactly where they are at, their individual curriculum, what they need to learn and can learn and are open to learning at the time. Everyone is very different and has their own path. There is rarely a single teacher who teaches everything to everyone, because usually the ego is too strong in novice students to accept full exposure to the truth that might come from a 'higher' place. So instead the Holy Spirit works with everyone where they're at and sends them the appropriate lessons and teachers at the right time, to take the next small steps on their path.

Without an ego comparison entering into it, those who are therefore 'teaching less truth' have perhaps volunteered to fulfill the role of building bridges between those who are teaching even less truth and those who are teaching more. Just because these teachers do not have all the answers doesn't mean we have to hold them accountable or find them guilty. They're providing a service. Even Hitler is a teacher. Even Saddam Hussein was a teacher. Even Jack the Ripper was a teacher. For the appropriate students, these people taught what needed to be taught and what could be learned by the appropriate students, who agreed to be exposed to those lessons because they needed to.

So instead of us saying, well, ok Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyre, Deepak Chopra, Oprah, etc.. instead of saying like they all teach only part of the truth or they're not totally pure or they're guilty for peddling lies - and technically they are not telling the whole truth so that's true - instead of them being guilty for falling short of perfection, recognize instead they are the right teacher for the right students and the people attracted to them will naturally be drawn to do so because thats what those students need, psychologically. They're not ready for a greater truth. They're not willing yet to open up to a greater truth. They need a bridge. They need stepping stones. And therefore these teachers are being really helpful by positioning themselves as the bridges to a higher place.

So what you can take away from this is... recognize that it's okay to like who you like and to learn from who you're learning from and you don't have to listen to certain people if you're not resonating with them. You will naturally flow to the company of the people that you are ready to be receptive to and that you can open up to and learn from, regardless of where those teachings lie in the big picture. Everyone finds their way to God eventually and it doesn't matter that it takes a very long time or that people are 'deceived' temporarily along the way. When students become aware enough in their own true learning they WILL learn to recognize a greater truth and WILL discern and WILL know when there are flaws and WILL move on when they're genuinely ready. So let them have their teachers and their lessons and where they're at. And let yourself have your teachers and your lessons and where you're at.

Do this without trying to force yourself to always be absolutely perfect and whole before you're ready, and without making yourself guilty for liking who you like or not liking who you don't - that's your guidance system - your program for today's performance. Trust where you are at. You are in the right place at the right time doing the right thing with the right people. You are on the right path. You have the right teachers, unless you're transitioning to a new one which in itself is also right. And so is everyone else. The freedom to let others be where they are at without pressure to be where they're not, gives that same freedom to you.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well.

The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."

...This section of the Course is interesting. It clearly says that "the world IS false perception", having not left the mind. In other words, the world is inside the mind, is made of mind-stuff/images/illusions, and is not physically real or objectively real. But notice it says the world *IS* false perception, not just that you are misperceiving a world.

Notice also it doesn't say the world is 'out there' and you PERCEIVE IT falsely. The world ITSELF IS perception. Your perceiving hallucinates a world, because "projection makes perception". Projection making perception does NOT mean that you are just projecting ONTO the world and perceiving things that are not there, it means that you are projecting THE WORLD ITSELF and are then perceiving it. Your interpretations of what you then PERCEIVE is just another LAYER of projection on top of the projected world. You are projecting the world in your mind and THEN you perceive it with the body.

This is an important distinction because so many Course folks are thinking that you just need to fix your perception OF something that exists kind of on its own, and that if you can get the right perception of it then you'll be in reality. That's not how it works. The world seeming to exist AT ALL is because of perception, which is false.

When the thought of separation (which hallucinated the world) is seen in another light (ie right-minded perception), you may see the forgiven world (which is lovely), BUT only as a stepping stone to LEAD TO the truth, "where all the world must disappear".

"WHERE ALL THE WORLD MUST DISAPPEAR". Because it's not real to begin with. It's just a great big IDEA of separation in the mind.

"Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well". Its source is the idea of separation, and the effect of that idea was the hallucination of a world existing. Not just a hallucination ABOUT a pre-existing world or on TOP of a world, but THE world itself.

I think one of the main reasons a lot of people think they just need to "change their mind about the world" is because that IS a stepping stone toward the truth - but is not the final goal. It's just a way to get to where you stop protecting the illusion and are ready to dissolve the underlying thought of separation/attack-on-God which caused it to appear. And since the Course does speak to taking those steps toward undoing distorted perception, people get caught up thinking that's all they need to do, and that after that the 'real world' will be kept - the physical world. That's not what it means. There are steps after that where the world disappears because it as only ever an illusion in the mind.

I think also this has a lot to do with how people perceive themselves as a separate body. That's what we come to the course with. I'm separate from 'the world out there'. I have a mind 'in here' in my body which is separate from the world 'out there' so this is the only part of reality that I have control over. I can change 'my mind' in here to see what's 'out there' differently. But that's NOT the point.

The point is, the very IDEA that your mind is separate from the world is what has to be undone - the whole idea of 'I have a separate mind' that is separate from the world. Because if you don't see that, you'll just want to keep the world and stay in a body and remain a separate ego identity having its own perception. And the truth is, you can't HAVE correct perception if you are still separate because as the mind is HEALED it is healed by union and undoing separation and joining and sharing, which means you have to realize that the world is IN your mind and it/your body are just mind-stuff. And as mind-stuff, they are just illusions, not reality. So the whole world ITSELF is not real. This is a very fundamental Course concept.

Again "The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought that gave it birth is cherished." - Jesus

Once we stop cherishing the thought (separation) which gave 'birth' to ERROR, which is the world (the form of error), it will REMAIN NO LONGER and will disappear. Forgiveness is meant to OVERLOOK error, ie overlook the world, to get to where perception is purified so that it can see the world for 'what it is', and what it is is an illusion. Forgiveness must look PAST the illusion otherwise it is not forgiveness. It overlooks the world and recognizes it is NOT really there, because it's just a figment of the imagination. In all its physical-ness and energy-ness and all of its 'life forms' and everything - it's all unreal. It is not reality at all. This is why the idea of "there is no world" is so threatening to ALL Course students (me too) - it implies the total non-existence of the ego self that they think they are.

So what's left, if there is no world and the world disappears?

God's Creation! God's Creation was hidden BY the world, and that was the world's only purpose. Once removed, we will be AWARE of God's Creation again - not conscious of it, not perceiving it, but AWARE of being it.

The world is just a giant mind-game.

There is no evil, only the seeming absence of the good.

There is no sin, only the seeming absence of love.

There is no death, only the seeming absence of life.

There is no darkness, only the seeming absence of light.

To take something and suggest that just because it is ABSENT, must mean it is the PRESENCE of something negative, is an error.

Evil does not ASSERT itself and maintain its own existence. It seeming presence ENTIRELY depends on the absence of the good.

Darkness cannot prevent light from shining it away when the light is present.

Death similarly cannot RESIST life. When life is supplied, the appearance of death MUST change to resurrection. Death is nothing more than the seeming absence of life, a lack of love, and when the love returns there cannot be death.

Sin is not a "positive sin". It isn’t an assertion of real attack. It is literally nothing OTHER than the seeming absence of love. A lack of love is not the same thing as an ASSERTION of sinfulness. You don’t have to FILL the lack of love with fire and brimstone, or REPLACE an absence with some other opposite material.

All things illusory ARE simply the appearance of the ABSENCE of something REAL. They are just lack. A lack of love is not a presence of hate. Hate is an illusion of being unloving. Someone who seems evil is just a little bit loving. They could be more loving, but judging that amount of love as the PRESENCE of evil is a failure to overlook illusions.

Every seeming symptom, effect, sign or symbol of the ego, every form of sickness and death, all darkness and attack and murderousness and sinfulness, is not ACTUALLY what it appears to be. It is only the LACK of something. There is a NEED, and the need is a CALL FOR the supply of that need, such as the call for love.

Attack is not attack. It is a request for the lack of safety to be supplied. It’s a request for a reminder of immortality. It’s a need to be reminded that reality cannot be threatened and no one can sin. It’s not the PRESENCE of evil.

Shadows on a wall do not have their own existence. They can only maintain so long as light SEEMS to be blocked. As soon as the blockage is remove and the light is supplied, it fills that area with light. The supposed darkness simply VANISHES. It has no staying power, no properties of its own, no will or power to remain, and it cannot resist the light. The notion that the darkness can HIDE the light or MAKE the light go away, is insanity and falling for the delusion of illusions.

Similarly sickness and death are ONLY the seeming absence of health and life. And when health and life are GIVEN through extension, when lack is supplied, these things MUST vanish. They do not have reality of their OWN and they have no power or will TO RESIST the healing. There cannot be anything keeping them in place because they DEPEND ENTIRELY on life, health, and love being temporarily lacking. When life is supplied, death MUST BE UNDONE.

Sickness isn’t sickness. It is merely a lack of health. That is not the same thing. The appearance of a lack of health can SEEM LIKE the PRESENCE of a sickness, a damage, an infection, a malfunction, a breakage, a disorder or disease. But these appearances are NOTHING OTHER THAN the seeming LACK or absence of life and love. They are no different to a shadow. And when light comes the shadow cannot stay, just as when the healing power of God’s LIFE is supplied, all forms of sickness and death MUST BE CURED.

A failure to heal, thus, must be because you simply have NOT GIVEN what is lacking. Because if it were given, sickness cannot stay and has no way to resist its undoing. It DEPENDS on life’s absence. Giving life supplies what was missing, and now there is wholeness, with no lack that sickness can be based on. Sickness is guilt, just as it is caused by sin, because sin is the belief in a lack of innocence and guilt is a belief in a lack of deserving love. Supply innocence and love and sickness cannot be there.

Nothing can resist this healing, except for possibly an assertion of free will, whereby someone WANTS to maintain the belief that darkness is real, sickness is its own thing, the body is autonomous and causal, evil exists, or that they are sinful and it cannot be undone. If the person does not show at least some willingness, love does not enter and miracles do not frighten. If someone does not consent, God’s help is held back. Not because it can’t be given but because there is unwillingness to receive it. Those who are sick have to have some faith and willingness, in order to receive help.

Besides this, the law is simple. Either there is the presence of immortality or its seeming absence. And when it seems to be absence, supplying it corrects the absence. And then all sights of mortality must go.

"My Atonement was for the canceling out of all sins (ie., lack of love)"

"The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love. It perceives it as a POSITIVE ACT OF ASSAULT. This is an interpretation which is necessary to its survival, because as soon as YOU regard it as a LACK, you will automatically attempt to remedy the situation. And you will also succeed. The ego regards this as doom, but YOU must learn to regard it as freedom."

"Remember, I said before that because "nature abhors a vacuum", it does NOT follow that the vacuum is filled with hell fire. The emptiness engendered by fear should be replaced by love, because love and its absence are in the same dimension, and correction cannot be undertaken except WITHIN a dimension. Otherwise, there has been a confusion of levels."

"The second step is inherent in the first, because light cannot tolerate darkness. Light dispels darkness automatically, by definition. EXPLANATORY INSTRUCTIONS: Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacy that darkness can hide."

"There is no darkness that the light of love will not dispel, unless it is concealed from love's beneficence. What is kept apart from love cannot share its healing power, because it has been separated off and kept in darkness."

"My purpose, then, is still to overcome the world. 9 I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of what it is. 10 Light does not attack darkness, but it does shine it away. 11 If my light goes with you everywhere, you shine it away with me."

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR of awakening."

Fear is not "just fear". It's not just "an emotion". It's not just "one thing". It's not just "a reaction". Everything that fear appears to be, it is that, and it is not that. There is much more happening that isn't obvious.

Fear is the opposite of love. Death is the opposite of life and life is love. Fear and death are therefore the same state - the end result of the ego's thought system of sin.

Fear is self deception. Let's look at how the ego thought system deceives us.

God establishes what is ACTUALLY true. This truth is reality. It is eternal life, love, happiness, safety, peace. This truth is always true. Nothing can change it.

Ego means nothing more than truth reversal. It's an attempt to oppose the truth through denial. Ego can't change what is true. But, in ego you can DENY it or "pretend" that it's not true.

To deny what's true, you believe it is false. God's truth, or the truth about you, becomes false to you. Simultaneously, things which are false and unreal start to SEEM true and real. You start believing UNTRUE things about yourself.

Jesus describes the end result of this process (the ego thought system) as "total confusion". It's a state where everything true has been confused with or mistaken for, everything false. And everything false has been confused with or mistaken for, what's true.

You could not be more confused than to have no idea what is ACTUALLY true or actually real. It's a state of not recognizing anything for what it is. A total loss of perspective. It is insanity. Fear and death are insane. Fear is paralysis, or the stopping of life, which is death.

When your mind is confused, it's because you believe something is true which isn't REALLY true. Something seems real that is not real. Something seems to be happening that isn't really happening. You think it is, but it's not. In this state, you are simply very MISTAKEN. And in denial. And unwilling to accept that a totally opposite truth is the real truth.

What is false? Death, sickness, suffering, unhappiness, fear, guilt, sin, attack, murder, threat and danger, darkness, insanity, delusion, disassociation, not knowing who you are, unreality, non-existence, etc. All of this is false because it is OPPOSITE to what is actually true - God's truth. None of it is real and none of it exists.

What is true? Eternal life, happiness, freedom, fearlessness, freedom from sin and guilt, immortality, being incapable of sickness or death, nothing to be afraid of, no threat or danger, total safety, peace of mind, invulnerability etc.

When you CONFUSE these two, and put belief into the false stuff, you "make it real". You try to invest it with reality and truth.

"Whatever you BELIEVE IN becomes REAL to you."

To do that you have to deny what's really true. This denial is a block to awareness. It makes you UNAWARE of the real truth or the big picture. It disassociates you from what you are believing in the big picture, and the consequences of that belief.

That means you are CAUSING things (making them through belief), which are producing EFFECTS, but you are no longer aware that you are causing them, so they seem to be caused by something other than yourself. Who wouldn't be frightened of an "alien will" (a will outside of your awareness of what your own will is willing) that seems to do things "against your will"?

It's the mere fact that you are unaware of what you are choosing, wanting, supporting, believing in, that results in "stuff happening" that you didn't SEEM to will. And this stuff is then experienced as being unfairly treated. Especially given that everything that happens in ego is a form of suffering. And who wants to suffer? No-one sane.

So then, naturally, you perceive that you are suffering not because you chose to, but because someone or something else separate from you caused it. You really caused it, but you don't see that, so you HAVE to pin it on some other cause, automatically, to try to make sense of where it came from. This is the root of all projection.

The simple notion that there is "another cause" besides yourself, is the root of all fear. Because if something can CAUSE YOU other than God, can change you, affect you, or hurt you, without you being able to prevent it, that is grounds for terror. The mere perception of "a separate thing" that seems cut off from your oneness is grounds for fear.

As you move further into the ego darkness, increasing fear, consciously you start to experience what SEEMS to be a greater unwillingness to want or 'own' what is happening. You want to get away from the danger, away from the source of threat.

Because in denial you believe/perceive more and more than it's got nothing to do with your own choice. That you are having absolutely no part to play in making things happen, did not choose them, do not want them, did not cause them, and don't even HAVE a choice. And death is an attempt not to choose at all.

The more this increases, the more you go into denial, the less aware you are that you're choosing to believe death is salvation. Here, false = true and true = false. If both the true and the false are false, and the true and the true are true, there is a total blurring of distinction and no difference between them, resulting in total confusion.

The threat of death seems to be on the increase, your conscious horror at this increase makes you squirm like you don't want it and try to avoid it, but unconsciously you are choosing it.

For example, if you believe in cancer, at all, you will become afraid. Believing it exists whatsoever, that it has power, that it causes death, that it even exists at all, places your mind into denial. Because in God's truth, cancer does not exist. Cancer is false, untrue, unreal, non-existent, powerless, causeless, nothing. Cancer is totally an illusion that has no effect on the Son of God.

But if you've moved into "I believe cancer exists", you MUST now be in denial. That means you believe in cancer, but you are not aware that you believe in it. What's left of your conscious awareness is now limited only to the scope of what you are AWARE of. You are not aware of your belief, BUT, your belief is moving you TOWARDS cancer. Because whatever you BELIEVE EXISTS, you WANT MORE OF.

Whatever you believe in, you try to invest it with reality. You try to MAKE it be true. You give it a sense of truth, power over you, an alien will, causality, strength, threat. The more you believe in it the bigger of an 'enemy' you make it, and the more your perception warps to make it seem large and looming and able to affect you.

So there's your mind believing "cancer is a very real danger", which puts you into denial of the truth, which makes you unaware you believe in a dangerous threat, which makes you confused about what is true and false, which makes you think cancer is real and true and your salvation, which makes you want it, which CAUSES IT.

So now there is an increase in your 'environment' of the presence of this illusion of danger, and your conscious awareness is becoming afraid because strange disconnected threats are looming on the horizon, and you are not aware of how they got there. It seems like they're happening "on their own", separate from your mind. And because they seem separate, you perceive that you have no control over them. This perceived lack of "ability to influence it" produces fear.

This is the general state most of us find ourselves in - seeming to have no power or control over anything external, anything that seems separate, or anything in the world. As if the world is causal, decides your fate, and you just have to suffer, or run away in fear. As if it has its own will, separate from yours, that you can do nothing about, making its ultimate attack unavoidable.

Whatever you believe in, you make it real. Whatever you believe in, you give truth to. Whatever you believe in, you value. Whatever you believe in, you want to see. Whatever you believe in, you will perceive. Whatever you believe in, you make happen. Whatever you believe, you'll defend with your life, because you associate LIFE with "whats true".

It is not possible for example to believe "cancer exists", while also claiming to believe you are not threatened by it. I do not have it but I am scared of the idea, purely based on beliefs in its existence. You cannot believe in a causal power outside you without feeling threatened. You are not immune to it just because "it doesn't seem to be happening to me". You will fear it even if it's not seeming to happen. And the unconscious masses have done a lot to amplify its "reality".

The only way to not have fear of cancer therefore is to not believe in cancer. AT ALL. ie, cancer does not exist, cancer has no power over me, cancer does not cause death, cancer isn't affecting me, cancer has not done anything to me, cancer cannot do anything to me, I do not believe in cancer, cancer does not exist, there is no cancer, cancer is a lie, cancer isn't real, cancer is an illusion I made up, cancer has no mind of its own, cancer does not exist at all, there is no cancer, cancer is nothing, cancer is not making me afraid, I have power over cancer. etc

That's what you have to believe in order to be free from it. And being free from the BELIEF in it DOES make you INVULNERABLE. That's what you have to believe in order to not put yourself into the state where you'll be afraid of it. And that's what you have to believe in order to not CHOOSE IT. Because if you "believe it exists but I don't believe I have it", you are trying to have it.

Whatever you believe in, you are CHOOSING. If you don't want to choose something, you must NOT believe in it. You can't believe in something and then claim that it does not apply to you. You can't believe in something and then claim to be free of it. Believe it, and you give it power over you instantly and are moving towards manifesting/materializing it into your experience. And fear and suffering then become the consequence of that.

The secret of salvation states that you are doing everything to yourself. That means, in your confusion about what is true and false, you keep choosing things which are FALSE, by believing they are TRUE. By mistake. Because you are mistaken about what is true. You keep choosing things which are unreal, by believing they are real. And that means you literally WANT TO SUFFER.

By believing in illusions or false things, things opposite God's reality, you are electing to make those things part of your reality. So that you can have a false experience of them. Beliefs are attempts to CHANGE WHAT IS TRUE into what you want to be true. But belief can also be used to line up with what is ACTUALLY true, so that you believe the Atonement truth, which sets you free.

In fear, which includes unawareness, you are consciously kicking and screaming to get away from what seems to be coming to you "on its own". Unconsciously, ie behind denial, you are actually MAKING IT COME TO YOU by believing in it. And that literally translates to, you are doing it to yourself. Or the adage, "what you fear comes to you" or "what you fear increases". This is literally true.

Jesus says "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

This also means there are NO CAUSES OF SUFFERING BEYOND YOUR OWN CHOOSING.

"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."

And that then means, if you were to actually sort out what is REALLY TRUE, from what you THINK is true, ie that you WANT GOD, and learn to recognize the ACTUAL truth again, you would also simultaneously recognize that false things ARE false. You would recognize that cancer is an illusion that does not exist. You would recognize that there IS NO THREAT. Because then you have stopped threatening yourself.

All fear comes from self-threat. A sense of danger that results from YOU believing that you are under attack. Which is an attack on yourself. "My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

For example, if you believe you sinned, and choose not to forgive yourself, you'll believe you are guilty. But this isn't merely a belief in guilt. It's a belief that you ARE guilty and an acceptance that your guilt is TRUE. If guilt is true, you will WILLINGLY ACCEPT that you DO deserve punishment, because it it SUPPORTED by what you believe is true. You will not object to it. So instead, you will WELCOME suffering. But even more-so, MAKE SURE IT HAPPENS.

This now means you YOURSELF believe that you logically deserve to suffer. And this means you now ACCEPT that you MUST suffer. Which means you believe you should suffer. Which means you now have it in for yourself.

It means you are now seeking to attack yourself in order to punish yourself, because it is justified, and this is SELF THREAT. It is suicidal. And that is going to terrify you more than any external projection of "who is causing fear" or "how its going to happen".

Guilt leads to fear. Guilt leads to more self attack. Your SELF attack is what frightens you. YOU are the cause of your fear.

So then when you are in fear, you are trying to hurt yourself. You are scaring yourself. You might project it onto all kinds of external stuff but it's self attack. Ever notice that when you are afraid you start finding all kinds of EXTERNAL things or "causes" to pin the fear on? Many things around you start to become threatening? That's projection. Your perception is warping. It's the same as accusing your brother of your own sins. You accuse your brother of your own self attack and reasons to fear.

So fear is really a state where you are CHOOSING TO SUFFER, where you are wanting what you are threatened by, are trying to make it happen, to undermine your immortality. BUT you are disowning it so much that it SEEMS like you have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

You are in denial that the thing you thought was going to help you is actually hurting you. You are in denial that your savior is your attacker. You are in denial that what you WANT is actually working against you. You are in denial that your defense against truth is causing you to be MORE sick. And you are under the impression that death is going to save you from God's wrath.

Your internal conscious messaging might be "I hope that doesn't happen, it's scaring me". But your ACTUAL activity is "I hope that happens, I want that to happen, I believe in it, it's going to save me." Your mind holds visions of threats and dangers in front of its perception to attack itself.

This is why fear is such a slippery thing. It's so deceptive, back to front, inside out and upside down. It SEEMS like the TOTAL OPPOSITE of what it is. The experience of it seems like you totally don't want it, but this COVERS OVER the fact you are WANTING exactly what you are frightened by. If you are scared, YOU scared yourself.

You have to own up to this, look deeply at it and realize what you actually are doing, rather than what seems to be happening on the surface. All victimy persons, everyone who is afraid, all who are terrified, ACTUALLY are choosing and wanting everything that they are afraid of. AND they are the one DOING THE ATTACK. This is why victims are victimizers and victimizers are victims.

Fear is choosing with the ego, siding with deception.

In fear you secretly choose to suffer, by choosing something that does bring suffering (ie to God it is FALSE), but which you BELIEVE brings salvation. And this stems entirely from being CONFUSED about what is really true and what is false.

All the attributes of God's truth need to be given back to God. You need to re-associate aspects of truth with God's truth. God's truth is where the safety is. God's truth is where salvation is. God's truth is what will ACTUALLY help and heal you and give you life. God's truth is what will protect you from harm. God's truth will give you immortality. And by choosing it, you will GET what you EXPECT to get, rather than the total opposite.

Learning to RECOGNIZE that is the entire process of working on your spiritual awakening. The "sorting out" of true vs REALLY true. What do you REALLY WANT to believe in. What are you believing that isn't REALLY true. How might you be very mistaken in your conviction that death is real? How might you be mistaken in believing that cancer even exists? How might you be confused about whether you can even be affected by anything, given you are immortal?

Gradually you will side with the ACTUAL truth rather than siding with what you BELIEVED was true. And that's a really good thing. Because now your expectation is that the truth will help you and make things better for you, and it ACTUALLY DOES. And then you will develop TRUST in it. You can't trust the ego. It is all lies and deception. One thing pretending to be something else. It is two-faced because it contradicts the real truth.

Only the truth is true. Only the false is false. Only eternal life is real. Death is an impossible illusion and does not exist. In God's love there is NOTHING to be afraid of. "Nothing unreal exists." Nothing false is true. And recognizing that will bring you peace and freedom from suffering forever.

In our default ego react-to-the-world mode, it seems that how we feel is dictated by what happens. The "hierarchy of illusions" tells us that something has a given amount of importance or seriousness and that we should have an appropriate amount and type of reaction.

How much ego emotion you have about external events seems to be driven by those events, as if automatic. As if you should be upset when you find out about cancer, or you should be frightened by a tornado, or you should be hurt when someone attacks you. As if you are merely an effect of the world.

But Jesus is training us to be more responsible for how we feel, what we think, and what we experience or make of things. He's telling us that we are cause, not effect. After a while we start to notice a certain amount of detachment from external stimuli. What happens doesn't necessarily have the power to change who we are, dictate how we feel, or force us to be upset.

This entails a combination of knowing yourself, taking responsibility for thought and sight, not giving away your power, the cessation of playing the victim role, dis-identifying with the attackable body, an increased recognition of reality, and a willingness to forgive.

This movement away from victimhood towards empowerment gives you the strength and clarity to remain "less changed" by what happens. You are not so easily tossed about on a rollercoaster of suffering. And you are equipped with more tools to help you apply principles and techniques to get you out of victim-mode sooner.

You might then start to notice that when you're in a better frame of mind, you feel more invulnerable, more confident and assertive, able to stand your ground and remain true to what you choose to experience. When external problems arise, you are less thrown around and more able to stay centered. Your happiness is less disturbed and your peace of mind less upset.

You will probably also notice that when you are not in such a great fame of mind, have entered into upset, are having reactions, buying into temptation and illusions, suffering and in pain, sorrowful and unhappy, you feel really out of touch with it. As if you're back to square one, forgetting how to forgive and feeling like a powerless victim.

But eventually you'll rise up again in strength and light and love and forgiveness, and remember your training, and return to a state of greater peace and confidence. And then you'll compare the two states and realize that how you feel is not really dependent on the world. What you make of events, how you perceive them, and the effects that you put into yourself, are not quite so strongly bound to the world or other people.

That means you awaken the ability to deliberately choose to remain in the light more often. You start to realize that you aren't happy or unhappy "because of" external things. You realize that if you are unhappy about something it is really an internal state, and not really caused by the external. And that anything that's disturbing you is the result of you putting it there through a mistaken choice.

Gradually you separate yourself off from the external and spend more time in the happiness and strength that you want to be in. You realize that, if you could just be happy right now, a certain event or situation or problem wouldn't be upsetting to you. That you don't "have to" have certain upsets or reactions or ego emotions of despair and fear.

Then it becomes more about moving through life as though you are in the world and less "of" the world, being "passer-by", being less changed and disturbed regardless of what happens, buying into illusions and temptations less, remaining more calm and centered in your truth even if it contradicts what's happening, etc. It means you become more in charge of your destiny and able to not only cause things to happen deliberately but able to withstand the ego's onslaughts more easily.

"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 is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept." UrW253

And so you develop a real sense of there being a difference between what happens and what you feel. That how you feel is not based on the world or its problems or how people are doing or what's happening. And you can in a way float above it or beyond it, out of reach of it, regardless of what seems to be transpiring. This places you "above the battleground", where you are safe and invulnerable.

When you dip into ego and nightmares and victimhood you'll probably forget all this, lol. ... but when you rise like a pheonix back out of the ashes, you'll remember again and laugh. And you'll stop making all your feelings dependent on external things. You'll return to being able to stay centered in power and stillness, a calm in the storm, a "need do nothing" of rest, regardless of the world.

"He will remain when you forget, and the body's activities return to occupy your conscious mind. But there will always be this place of rest, to which you can return. And you will be more aware of the quiet center of the storm, than all its raging activity. This quiet center, IN WHICH YOU DO NOTHING, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent." UrT18H10

Eventually you'll master this so much that you'll remain in your "happy place" forever. No longer driven by outside events, deceived by appearances, tossed around by threats or made to be anything not of God.

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events OUTSIDE him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were NOT his choice. His power of decision is the DETERMINER of every situation in which he seems to FIND himself by chance or accident. No accident or chance is POSSIBLE within the universe as God created it, OUTSIDE of which is nothing. Suffer, and YOU decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you GAVE the power of decision to Him Who MUST decide for God for you. This is the little gift you offer to the Holy Spirit, and even this He gave to you to give yourself. For, BY this gift, is given you the power to release your Savior, that HE may give salvation unto YOU." UrT21C3

Sometimes it seems like stuff happens that you did not ask for.

The only reason this seems possible is because you are not fully aware of every part of your mind, and some hidden parts of you are working against you.

You believe that your current awareness is a full awareness, that you are fully aware of your entire self. Wherever you sense the edges of your awareness to be, that is the boundary that you believe is the edge of your entire being. And that there is nothing else beyond it.

But your mind, unless you are spiritually awakened, has parts to it which you are unaware of. There are parts which are hidden behind walls of denial and fear. These parts are essentially unconscious to you, i.e. you are not aware of them in your conscious awareness and this makes it seem as though they do not exist. There is more to your mind than you realize.

If you were to ask most people if they have an unconscious mind, it would be a complete guess, because really you can't be aware of the unconscious until it is made conscious. So you have to take someone's word for it that you may even have unconscious parts to you. But unless you are aware of the presence of God, there must be some parts of your mind which are outside of your awareness.

Now, simply because some parts of your choosing mind may be outside of the scope of your conscious awareness, it is possible that those parts of your mind are active and are choosing to make things happen, but without your knowing it. These parts of your mind are filled with beliefs and thoughts and attitudes which do express and do create situations and events to reflect what it believes.

Particularly, the unconscious mind is usually a repository of darkness, self-attack, guilt, hatred, and all manner of insanity. And this tends to be so denied that it shows up in your experience as though it is outside of your body, and embedded into or laid on top of other people. You experience it out there as though it has nothing to do with you at all, and yet it is your own hidden self-hate.

So then, it seems to your conscious self as though stuff starts to happen to you that you did not consciously want or remember choosing. And to explain the origin of these things that happen to you, being unaware that you chose them yourself, it seems to make sense to now find some "other" source of these things. Like other people.

So the mere fact that you have a split mind which is partly conscious and partly unconscious, automatically puts you into a situation where you see yourself as being victimized. Choices are being made, a will is performing its desires, and someone somewhere is deciding things, but it doesn't seem to be yourself. So automatically, you will look outside of yourself for the cause.

This is the origin of all scapegoating, all blame, all perception of being a victim in any way, all anger towards others, all attempts to find other people guilty or wrong, and all belief that it MUST be someone else's fault, simply because you are not aware of what hidden parts of yourself are doing to yourself. You become hell-bent on finding someone else to be the cause of your condition, not realizing that YOU are the cause.

Given that you are not aware of the full scope of your whole mind, and given that the hidden parts of your mind are still believing that you are guilty, and given that those beliefs will lead to self-punishment, it is no wonder that once those punishments start to happen, you're going to be desperate to find out WHO did it to you. You'll think it's not you.

It can seem to be difficult to accept that you chose suffering or difficult situations or major problems or sicknesses or pain or fear. It can seem like there is just no way that you would've wanted this situation, and that there is no way that you - your conscious self, would choose this. But you're not aware of your whole self, so you don't really know that you chose it, or why.

Over time, with forgiveness, which is really just the insight that you've been doing EVERYTHING to yourself and NOTHING has happened to you that you did not choose - unconsciously or otherwise, you will become more aware of the content and attitudes hidden in your unconscious. The unconscious will be integrated back into awareness, you will uncover your secret sins and hidden self-hates, and through healing you will come to a fuller awareness of the whole of yourself.

It is in the light of that fullness of who you are, rather than being a little portion of yourself, that you can recognize that you cannot possibly have been victimized. You will be honest in admitting the truth, that you have been doing this to yourself, you did plan it all along, and there is nobody else to be held accountable.

If you can see and accept that you really DID do this all on your own, to yourself, without needing anyone else to explain why things happened, then automatically everyone else is innocent and you have hope of freedom. But this DOES require that you be AWARE, i.e. able to see, that you really ARE doing this to yourself. Then you will not even think to blame it on anyone else because you obviously are the cause.

Because now that you are in your full mind, you can choose again, and decide to stop hurting yourself. You can choose life. You can give up your death wish. You can let go of your self abusive attitude. You can stop hating yourself and stop condemning yourself. You can stop believing that you are sinful or guilty. And you can come to realize that God still loves you because you have not really done anything at all.

Awareness sets you free of the delusions and illusions of suffering, that you conclude are caused by anyone other than yourself. The belief in your fate being chosen entirely by "other than me" is a choice for death. And even then you are still doing it to yourself. You do not have to die.

Increasing your awareness through undoing of the blocks that keep the mind in the dark, will set you free and bring you back to life. This is the time of your resurrection. This is your return to who you really are, free of the illusion that you can suffer at the hands of another. It was never anyone else's fault.

The secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself, and have been all along. And yet you have done nothing real at all. In this view, both you and others are equally innocent, and all is forgiven and released.

The idea that you are totally equal to God, is what's called the Authority Problem. Actually it's also the idea of sin. Some who think their relationship with God is to be "one" with Him, and thus completely equal with Him, are not understanding that God came FIRST. Or that oneness does not actually mean "you are Him".

He is the creator of you, you are not the creator of Him. He created the Sonship and you were created to ADD TO the Sonship. But you cannot create God or cause God or add to God Himself. That makes you "below" Him in a sense, or as Jesus says in the course, "the Father is GREATER".

It is also appropriate to have AWE of God because He IS greater and above you, and not to have awe of your brothers who ARE your equals. God is GREATER because He is all encompassing, and you are within God, as a part of God, caused BY God, as one of His thoughts, and He therefore spans more than just your own soul.

The idea that being one with him means total equality completely ignores these dynamics and suggests you are as much the creator of God as he is of you. And that unfortunately is where the tiny mad idea began, where you as an effect of God attempted to be the cause of Him, and where the entire ego thought system started. His Kingdom also cannot increase at all if you are God's exact equal because you and God would be in a deadlocked power struggle.

You have to be a son, in order to set up the dynamic that "A Son of a Father must have a Son", establishing God's fatherhood and your sonhood. And being like the father you too become a father, thus co-creator with Him. But your co-creatorship does not allow you to co-create God Himself, and yet God Himself does create you.

And so you are not equal to God in all ways and functions, but you ARE like Him in terms of mirroring the ability to create, IN ADDITION TO what already has been created BY Him. The notion that you have equal creative function with God is to suggest you are capable of creating yourself, and that is what the ego believes is true.

You can add your creations to His Kingdom, but you cannot overthrow the Kingdom itself. Nor can you attack or destroy what HE already created, that being yourself, your brothers, the Holy Spirit, and the angels. All of this "state of the union" is somewhat more elaborate than simply to say that "it's all just oneness", and it certainly is not compatible with an idea of non-duality which implies "no sons at all."

God has a family, and you are part of it. God is a creator with many creations and those creations have many creations and all of them co-create together. This is what A Course in Miracles teaches, not that we're all going to just dissolve into nothing, with no self and no creative function. God has established you as a free-willed co-creator forever.

In fact, if you weren't a SON of God and not God's equal, you would have INHERITED NOTHING, and would never be a HOST to God Himself. God GAVE you everything He had in your creation, thus extending His Self to you, sharing His will and mind and power, and establishing you as SHARER of his being. Because God is your father, you have an inheritance which is waiting for you to reclaim it.

"The world, in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man by God, AND the proper creation by man in his Right Mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given."

"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."

"My mind holds only what I think with God. That is a fact, and represents the truth of What you are and What your Father is. It is this thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself."

"Revelation is NOT reciprocal. It is always FROM God TO man (souls). This is because God and man are NOT equal. "

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER."

"The creative power of both God AND His Creations is limitless, but it is NOT in reciprocal relationship. You DO communicate fully WITH God, as He does with YOU. This is an ongoing process in which you SHARE, and BECAUSE you share it, you are inspired to create LIKE God. But in Creation you are NOT in a reciprocal relation TO God, because He created YOU, but you did NOT create Him. We have already stated that only in this respect your creative power differs from His."

"I have repeatedly emphasized that awe is not appropriate in connection with me (Jesus), BECAUSE of our inherent equality."

"The word "Awe" should be reserved only for revelations, to which it is perfectly and correctly applicable. It is NOT appropriately applied to miracles, because a state of true awe is worshipful. It implies that one of a lesser order stands before the Greater One. This is the case only when a Soul stands before his Creator. Souls are perfect creations, and should be struck with awe in the presence of the Creator of Perfection."

"Equals cannot be in awe of each other, because awe ALWAYS implies inequality. Awe is not properly experienced even to me (awe of Jesus). That is why in that short introductory vision, I knelt beside you, FACING the light."

"Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for your creation. They do not leave you, any more than you have left your Creator."

"He (God) does nothing last, because He created first and for always. It must be understood that the word "first" as applied to Him is not a time concept. He is first in the sense that He is the First in the Holy Trinity Itself. He is the Prime Creator, because He created His co-creators. Because He did, time applies neither to Him nor to what He created. The "last step" that God will take was therefore true in the beginning, is true now, and will be true forever. What is timeless is always there, because its being is eternally changeless."

"You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal"

You are immortal. Generally that means you live forever without any kind of end, you can never be changed, and you are permanently the same all the time.

You'll then find that any notion of "change" introduces the potential for coming to an end. If you can change or be changed, you could be stopped, interfered with, attacked, damaged, or caused to die.

"This is the world of time, where all things end."

So change of any kind cannot be part of immortality. Which is why changelessness is your real nature, and this is also why you remain still as God created you. You have not changed a single bit since you were created.

This then has to mean that if there is anything that does change, it cannot be a part of you. If there is a body that can change, it cannot be a part of you. If there is a building that can be destroyed, it cannot be real. If there is a planet which can go through seasons, it cannot be real. Any kind of change is a form of death.

It's very simple really. You can just ask yourself if something will last forever. If the answer is no, then it is not a real creation and not a part of God. If it lasts only a little while in time and then changes and then goes away, it cannot be part of creation or of God. Nor can it be God's will.

"Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

Here Jesus simply affirms this by saying that all things which are visible will have an end. Some will last longer than others but ALL of the visible things will have an end. It then doesn't matter how you are looking at the visible things, whether you hate the visible things or love them. ALL of them will come to an end.

This again tells you essentially that if anything is visible, it is not a part of God's kingdom. If it is visible, ie forms of matter, energy, bodies, planets, stars and so on, they will come to an end some day, and therefore cannot be a part of immortal reality. Anything that does not last forever uninterrupted is not a part of God, nor can it be made into a part of God.

There is a world that we made, a world of space-time and of physicality and of forms of matter and objects. These things are visible and will end. They end because of their nature being part of a dream of death. And because of this, they are not a part of God or a part of you. Nor are they a part of heaven.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

Bottom line, if it's not immortal it doesn't really exist. It's a very simple test for anything. If it's not immortal it's not of God. If it changes it is not of God. If it can be attacked it's not of God. if it goes through a transformation process it is not of God. If it can be born or grows or withers or suffers or dies it is not of God.

It also doesn't matter if you change your perceptions about such things, to see objects in a different light or from a different vantage point. Seeing objects that end in a different way doesn't actually override the fact that they still end.

Just because you are happy it will not make the earth last forever. Just because you are loving it will not stop the seasons from changing. Just because you are peaceful it will not change the falling of leaves when the weather get's cold.

These are still proof that these things are not a part of God's reality. It doesn't matter if you see a unity in these things or a reflection of God in these things, they still behave and act and function in ways that are open to a denial of immortality. If the thing, the object, the matter, the form, the body, the world etc, can in any way ever be modified or changed, then fundamentally it cannot be a part of reality.

This is why "there is no world." This is why "God did not create the body." This is why "the body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." This is why we withdraw investment in physical sight and open up to a different kind of vision which overlooks/forgives the world. And that the world can BE forgiven is purely because is it an illusion of a world, and not a reality. Only illusions can be overlooked and "a world forgiven cannot last."

We can accept the reality of God's Kingdom, which is to accept God's truth and God's law and God's wholeness. That is the wholeness of the Kingdom of heaven, in which all things live forever and never change. It is not a place where bodies are born and planets spin and stars exhaust their fuel supply. It is not a realm where objects get stuck in crevices and the dust of dead flesh settles on surfaces or where food rots and decays and turns to a corpse. None of these things can be a part of heaven.

Only the immortal is true. Only the immortal is alive. Only the immortal is of God. Only the immortal exists. Everything else is an illusion. Not even what ACIM calls "the real world" will last forever. "Even the real world will vanish from your sight." You cannot convert an illusion into a reality. You cannot turn an unreal world into a real one. Nor can you turn a picture of death into real permanent life.

What lives forever must be created by an immortal creator to live forever from the beginning. What is made in an insane mind out of illusions which intended they die, cannot have eternal life. They have not been created or given immortality and so they do not exist at all. Their illusion of existing is nothing but a deception and the recognition of this fact is enlightenment.

"Only the creations of light are real."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever."

The simple change that must occur in order to wake up to reality, is a change in premise. If the premise is that this world (earth etc) is real, then everything that happens in the world is real, and is God's will. Because God is the author of reality.

So now everything you see in the world is real and cannot be undone, and cannot be forgiven, and sin is real and death is real and there is no escape from hell. Or more to the point, murder is no longer a sin but is God's blessing.

But if the premise changes from "this world is real" to "this world is a dream", ie is not real, then this changes the entire perspective on the world and what seems to happen in it. EVERYTHING in the world now must take on a new meaning in light of this information, because if the world is NOT real, it changes your ENTIRE relationship to it.

All events ultimately are therefore nowhere, the changes wrought are substanceless, nothing is really causing anything, there is no meaning in the world of itself, it is all just a dream, the whole planet is an illusion, nothing is really being hurt or attacked, all sickness is a lie, death is impossible, and there isn't even really a world here.

That is the simple change in vantage point which ACIM and any spiritual path entails. Ultimately it leads to the simple recognition that only God's reality is real, and this world is NOT God's reality. This world is a dream in which imaginary figures seem to come and go and try to destroy each other. Where lovely illusions come to soften the blow of death, and where everything turns into something it is not.

Either the world is real, or it isn't. If it is real, it cannot be changed or undone, or forgiven or overlooked. You are then required to love death and murder, to look on war as justified and attack as healing. All of hell seems to be heaven to you, as you use it to avoid God and to hide from sanity. If the world is real, God himself ordains its every property, all happenings are his doing, and there is nowhere else to go.

But fortunately the world is not God's doing, nor does it represent him, nor is it anything like him. Fortunately when your mind fully reframes the world as "this is just a dream", it changes the ENTIRE context of the WHOLE universe in which you think you live.

If it is just a dream, nothing here really matters, nothing is really any more difficult or easy than anything else, nothing really means anything more or less than anything else, all senses of separation and difference are illusions, the very form of objects is a fantasy disguise pretending that it is not the same as something else, and everything your body sees is not really there.

It ultimately and simply leads to the fact that there is no world. A world which is just a dream isn't really a world. It's an illusion of a world, held in a mind that is seeming to be asleep a while. When that mind awakens, it does not awaken to the world it was already dreaming of, it stops dreaming it entirely and awakens to God's reality of heaven.

There is really no world here because the world is not real. Anything you take seriously in the world is deception. Any time you buy into it you are falling for temptation. Any time you think someone is a body and refer to their body as their self, you do not see them. Bodies are illusions of life which are not even really alive, or really anything. Everything in a dream world is literally NOTHING pretending to be something.

All things in this world are impossible. It was made to be impossible. There is no permanent solution to anything. There is no escape from problems. There is an endless barrage of attack and strife. Death is waiting inevitably for every single thing that thinks it lives. And everything in the entire cosmos eventually destroys itself. There is no salvation here, no freedom, no real safety, and nothing to gain. It is a tired old world that was ready to rot as soon as you dreamed of living like a mortal.

In truth you are an immortal being in heaven who is simply asleep at the wheel, dreaming of being not mortal. Of being not yourself, being opposite to your God-given nature, pretending to be things you are not, believing false truths, and trying to GIVE reality to a world that isn't real. To a premise that isn't real. A premise that God is dead and you can make of yourself what you will. None of that is possible or true beacuse God means permanence.

There is no world, there is no sickness, there is no suffering, there is no pain, there is no death, there is no cancer, there is no heart disease, there is no war, there is no torture, there is no abuse, there is no attack, there is no sin, there is no guilt, there is no fear, there is no difference, there are no races, there is no earth, there is no solar system, there are no galaxies, there is no sun, there is nothing here whatsoever.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is AFRAID of them, when he perceives HE MADE THEM UP. The fear was held in place BECAUSE he did not see that he was AUTHOR of the dream, and not a figure IN the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him that his wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his OWN attack, but sees it at another's hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but NOT their cause. He authored NOT his own attack, and he is innocent of what he caused."

What did you do?! Did you hurt someone? Did you steal something? Did you break it and cover it up? Did you destroy a relationship? Did you deceive and lie? Did you commit a secret crime? What was it? Come on, own up. You really did something bad and evil didn't you? Something you want no-one to ever know about?

Ok well..... you didn't do it.

So long as you believe that IT HAPPENED, in some kind of "reality", in a real world, that you REALLY did it, you will not be able to forgive yourself. It doesn't matter how much you reframe it, cathart it, think about it, process it, heal it, work on it. There will always be this "core" thread that seems to keep it tied to you. Something that prevents you from COMPLETELY letting it go. You just can't seem to forgive yourself all the way.

This happens because the belief that YOU DID IT, is the core of sin. It is the absolute ROOT which is anchoring it in your mind. The memory of you doing it, the experience of it, the feelings surrounding it, the sense that "that happened".

It doesn't matter how much you hack at it with your amazing spiritual tools and healing devices. It WILL NOT go away so long as you believe, fundamentally, that "you did it." It doesn't matter how loving you attempt to be, or how much you try to forgive yourself "for doing it". If you believe and accept "I DID THAT" .... you MUST find yourself sinful.

Psychologically it simply is impossible to be forgiven for something that you BELIEVE IN. Your belief in it keeps it anchored in your mind. It means you WANT it, and so your mind holds onto it. The only way you can be free of it, to truly let it go, and feel RELIEVED, is to recognize IT DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL.

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in this view are all your sins forgiven."

The only context in which you DID NOT DO what you believe you did do, deep down, is where this world is NOT REAL. Only if this world is a DREAM, a fiction, in which fantasies play out, and in which NOTHING REAL IS THREATENED, can it be possible that you DIDN'T REALLY DO what you think you did. And only in this context can you BE forgiven.

Your innocence can only logically and psychologically remain pure IF you DID NOT do it. If you did it, you are a sinner. If you did not do it, you are innocent. This is all your mind understands. But the only way that you could NOT have done it, is if your actions were IN A DREAM, and NOT in reality. If you only did it in dreaming, then nothing real has been harmed. If what you did took place NOT IN HEAVEN, but in some kind of fictional world, then your real innocence has NOT been changed. You just IMAGINED that you sinned.

This is the crux of the matter. Do you believe it was a real sin taking place IN REALITY, or was it a FAKE SIN taking place in a FAKE WORLD? If it took place in a fake world, then you DID NOT sin, and sin is NOT POSSIBLE. "There is no sin." This is what sets you free. This is ATONEMENT. Accepting the truth that "I am still as God created me", you have not changed, "God has not changed his mind about me", and your innocence is STILL undefiled.

You are innocent because YOU DID NOT DO what you think you did. You were mistaken. You mistakenly believed you did something wrong, when all it was is a fantasy in an UNREAL world. Nothing real has been hurt. You have not done anything to God. You have NEVER hurt another soul. No one else has EVER done anything to you. No one has ever died or suffered in truth. None of "what you did" took place in the reality of God, and he knows IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO SIN in his kingdom.

God did not create you capable of really sinning, or attacking, or hurting, or damaging, or stealing, or betraying, or breaking, or doing anything at all to destroy any kind of perfection. You CANNOT SIN. You have not sinned, ever. You never will sin. This is the view of forgiveness. This is the only light in which you can recognize YOU ARE forgiven, by yourself, because it's the recognition that YOU DID NOT SIN in any real way.

This world is just a dream. You did not do what you think you did. Even your "physical actions" WERE FAKE. Even the PROOF that you caused something to happen IS FAKE. Even the "lasting effects" ARE FAKE. Even your memory of DOING it is fake. It has NOT happened in reality. Nothing real can be threatened or destroyed or hurt. You have never hurt anyone. You DID NOT DO what you think you did. You are innocent and holy and forgiven.

Only in this light can you recognize that you are FREE FROM the feeling of guilt and sin because it has NO TIES TO YOU, because you HAVE NOT DONE ANYTHING in God's reality. What happens in dreams stays in dreams, and only in dreaming did you ever seem to do anything wrong. Dreams mean nothing. They have no real consequences upon anything real. You have NEVER sinned and you never will. Stop crucifying yourself.

"God's Will for you is perfect happiness because there is no sin, and suffering is causeless."

"There is no sin. Creation is unchanged."

"Healing is done, for what is perfect needs no healing, and what remains to be forgiven where there is no sin?"

"Before a holy relationship, there IS no sin."

"What is forgiveness, but a willingness that truth be true? What can remain unhealed and broken from a Unity Which holds all things within Itself? There is NO sin."

"The Holy Spirit will NEVER teach you that you are sinful. ERRORS He will correct, but this makes no-one fearful. You are indeed afraid to look within, and see the sin you THINK is there."

"Then let me, Father, look within and find Your promise of my sinlessness is kept; Your Word remains unchanged within my mind, Your Love is still abiding in my heart." "

"Now let His true perception come to me, that I may waken from the dream of guilt and look within upon my sinlessness, which You have kept completely undefiled upon the altar to Your holy Son, the Self with Which I would identify.""

"If you would look within, you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace, upon the altar to your Father."

"What if you looked within, and saw NO sin?"

If you believe you are guilty, it's because you believe you really did something which has caused a loss or damage to someone else. It means you believe you succeeded in attacking and taking something from them. The guilt tells you that because you did take something away from another (sinned), you owe them.

This means they are justified in doing something to you in return, in attempt to take back what you stole, and to retaliate against your crime. You now must fear revenge, and see it as an inevitable, constant threat. You believe in their likelihood of revenge because you believe in your success at sinning, hence your guilt.

So long as you believe that the person is suffering the consequences of your sin, which you want to believe because you want to have succeeded in separating, you will believe they are going to hunt you down and attack you. You believe they are completely justified in doing this and even agree with their motivations, even if it threatens you.

Therefore your guilt has automatically produced a state of fear, whereby simply because you are guilty, you yourself can see the sense in someone else wanting to attack you back. You believe in what you stole and see them as seeking revenge, to atone for the sin. Of this you must be afraid, and so guilt leads to automatic, mandatory fear of punishment.

The guilt will therefore automatically imply, project, and turn into fear. Now that you are in fear, you believe that you should be afraid, because you believe that punishment is going to come. And even though you yourself believe that you don't want the punishment to happen, you cannot help but be afraid it is going to happen because you already believe in the reason for it. It must happen, because you are guilty, and all your efforts will be to try to avoid and escape it, even though you believe it is inevitable. You attempt to escape BECAUSE you believe it is coming.

However, your own belief in your guilt will keep producing the fear, and the fear itself will keep visualizing the ways in which punishment is going to happen. At every turn it will haunt you and you will not feel safe, threatened by the revenge that you believe must be coming. In fact, so strong will be your belief that the punishment will come, that you will in fact begin to make it come. You will draw it to you, ask for it, and even take steps to make it happen. You will hate yourself for this but you yourself believe in the logical sense that you should be punished, and so you will agree to allow punishment to come to you, even if it makes you suffer.

Therefore because you have condemned yourself as sinful, it leads eventually to you implementing your own self punishment. Even if other people will not comply with your attempts to destroy yourself, you will do enough of a job on your own to ensure you receive what you believe you deserve. And so you will continue to prove your worthlessness by demonstrating that you deserve punishment, enacting it against yourself, and literally hurting your own self by your own hand.

And so fear inevitably leads to the enactment of punishment, because it strengthens the belief that you should be punished, and what you fear you attract. Fear pretends to not want what it focuses on, but it feeds tremendous energy into what it would avoid, through attempts at further separation, which only intensifies the sense of sin and guilt and produces more of the same. Eventually the shame and guilt produces so much fear of punishment that it starts to produce actual punishment. And so fear turns into punishment, sickness, and suffering, and perhaps even death.

Fear perpetuates and justifies a perception of yourself as being victimized, whereby whoever is to attack you is justified in doing so because of your sin. You owe them, and you know it. Therefore you dread the punishment that you yourself believe you should be receiving, and it's only a matter of time before it finds you. And if it is taking too long, one way or another you will cause it and welcome it, because you believe it is what should happen.

As punishment increases, so too is fear increasing, and gradually the atoning for sin nears completion. The more you are punished and suffering, the more you believe you are getting what you deserve, even if you exclaim that it is unfair and undeserved, and even if it is scaring you shitless. You yourself started this whole cycle through your own self condemnation, and your guilt and fear and punishment is just the fulfillment of your own belief in your worthiness of suffering. And so punishment comes and as it continues to ramp up in severity, so do you inflict upon yourself what you think you are worth.

The final blow of punishment is of course death, the idea that your sin is so great and so irreversible that you might as well give up on life completely and just let yourself be caught by those who you believe would bring the punishment to you. You surrender to death and lay down your life as though it is simply inevitable, because there is absolutely no way out of the logical sequence of conclusions you come to as soon as you start down the slippery slope of sin. Here you have followed sin to its logical conclusion, the call for atonement in death. The sinful must die, and the inescapable progression of logic from sin to death gives no way out, regardless of your protests.

This need not be.

The Son of God is not sinful. You are not guilty. And you have no reason to be afraid. Sin is not real, and no matter what you did, it is forgiven already by God. It wasn't reality and it didn't happen in reality. Only in a dream. Wake up to the happy news that all is forgiven and you are welcome home.

The progression of unfolding from sin through guilt fear punishment and death, need not occur, if the root foundation of that entire thought system is dug out. You must be willing to question whether the sin was real, whether you really did separate from God, or whether nothing has happened. This is the undoing of the dream of death, and is what the atonement represents. The idea of truth, that you cannot possibly separate from God, your attacks cannot have any effects, you cannot really sin, and no real consequences have come from trying.

You still remain as innocent as God created you to be. All the rest is just delusional nonsense and dreaming. You don't deserve to die. You deserve to live forever.

We are asked to be willing to give up "the pleasures of the world." The reason is that, if we see ourselves as at the effect of anything in the world, we're saying it has power over us to cause us. That makes us a victim.

It doesn't actually matter whether the world is doing something positive to you, or something negative. If you are affected and changed by it in any way, you are powerless and a victim. The world is not supposed to alter what God created to be changeless.

That includes being affected by sunsets and puppies, by beautiful landscapes and lovely colors. It includes physical sensations of pleasure as well as your favorite toys and objects, clothing, your home decor, etc.

You don't necessarily have to physically give it up, which would be a sacrifice if you value it, but you do have to learn to not depend on it for your happiness or peace. If you are trying to surround yourself with things that "make you" happy, this is in direct denial of the fact that GOD is the one who makes you happy.

Your happiness and contentment are given to you by God and are gifts from him, placed in you at your creation. They are permanently a part of you. You cannot get them from the world because the world if not God or a part of God. When you try to seek externally for these things in the world, you go into mental illness, because you are denying where these things really are while pretending to seek them (seek and do not find).

All happiness comes from God, not from the world. The world cannot make you happy, or take your happiness away, unless you give it the power to do so. To give it that power is to make yourself a powerless victim. Even if you're getting stuff that you think you like, being bestowed tons of money and gifts and pleasures and sights and sounds and adventures, whatever, if you're using them to "make you happy" you are in denial of real happiness. It means you've become a "consumer" and "devourer".

This doesn't mean either that you have to live in squalor or deny your body food or wear rags or not bother cleaning etc. It simply means your mind is not supposed to be believing that anything in the world can substitute for, match up to, replace or add anything to, the power and the glory that can ONLY come from God within you.

We therefore have to learn to be willing to wean off the world, wean off the lifestyle of NEEDING an external scenario of an illusion of peace in order to be happy, or to get a lot of things, or to have events go a certain way. We have to become immune to the world and unaffected by it, unchanged by it.

We can remain in our love and light and inner happiness and look out onto the world and be happy, but not BECAUSE OF it. We GIVE it happiness from God through us, we don't TAKE happiness from the external. You may feel joyful and "enjoy" doing certain things, because you GIVE it joy and be IN joy while you do it, which is an internal decision, but not because of the thing you do. Not caused by it. You can interpret that to mean "taking pleasure in" (doing God's will) doing things, but not because of what the thing does TO you.

You don't really want the world. You don't really want to want the world. You want to want God. And you don't need the world for that. The world has never added even a slight enhancement to what God created, and it cannot save you from itself.

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him."

"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." "We said before that ALL real pleasure comes from doing God's will. Whenever it is NOT done an experience of lack results. This is because NOT doing the will of God IS a lack of self."

"What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed! Let it be given you today. It waits but for your choosing it to take the place of all the things you seek but do not want."

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."

FED-UP WITH SUFFERING? PUTTING UP WITH WHAT HAS HAPPENED? TOLERATING PAIN? WANT SOME RELIEF?!!

The ego’s thought system is specifically geared to make you suffer for as long as possible.

Every time something "happens" in this world, it is symbolic of sin. Sin seems like an irreversible event which, once it has happened, produces inevitable consequences. The consequences are believed to be irreversible, and so we resign ourselves to tolerating them, accepting them, allowing them putting up with them, and SUFFERING, for a long long time.

Sin, or events, as soon as they happen, move into the past. This was our ego device for using time to keep the "cause" of all problems locked in the past, beyond access to the present, so that it could not be changed. The past ITSELF is the idea of "something happened which cannot be changed." And pretty much everyone believes, you cannot undo the past.

Then, the consequences of sin proceed according to ego laws, extending indefinitely into the future, featuring lots and lots of suffering. We believe we cannot do ANYTHING to change what has happened, so we just put up with it. Our mind, believing this ego arrangement, starts to become CONDITIONED to think and perceive and be USED TO living this way. Stuff happens, we accept it as real, we do not undo it, we think we have to LIVE WITH IT.

This mental conditioning, kind of a habit of thought, which runs completely OPPOSITE to the thought system of the Holy Spirit, is a thought system of maintaining suffering. Ie, maintaining the consequences of sin indefinitely. We become used to it. We think it’s NORMAL! We then tolerate the suffering for as long as possible, until it adds up and destroys us. Living this way, is unforgiving. We have condemned ourselves to death.

Since this conditioning has been built up over a very long period of time, it seems almost impossible to even question it or do anything about it. Surely we cannot undo sin? Surely we cannot REVERSE the consequences of our wrong decisions, or events which seemed to "happen"? But we can.

Holy Spirit had news for me, because I believed and acted this way. I did not believe stuff could be undone. I didn’t even know there was ANY OTHER WAY to live. I was so USED TO accepting that whatever happens, it’s a done deal. As soon as I become sick, I accepted I must suffer it and use magic and try to get over it the "normal" way. This always means, a long drawn out period of suffering. Lots of time spent feeling like shit. I did not even IMAGINE that it might be possible NOT TO HAVE TO SUFFER this way.

Holy Sprit started teaching me that "you need not suffer". One day I burned my hand on hot water. It became sore fast. I started believing, I was going to have a sore hand for a week, would have to suffer with it, this was really really annoying, and I was mad about it. I saw no way to avoid that suffering, other than trying to use magic. It hurt, and I was pissed. But Holy Spirit had news for me! He said, "you need not suffer". My hand started to shake. A miracle was happening, but I did not want to LOOK at it. I was a bit frightened, because miracles blow the ego expectations out of the water.

Something was happening completely contrary to how things normally happen, against y ego, and against my resistance. After a few moments, I looked. All of the soreness was completely healed, all the redness gone. And at that moment, just for a moment, something happened in my mind... a sudden glimpse of some kind of miraculous state of being, a mind which knew that anything of the body can be flipped on or off like a light switch, to which it was completely immune. It was a moment of LIGHT. A state of mind I had never experienced, caused by my EGO ILLUSIONS being proven before my eyes, that they were NOT TRUE. Miracles are teaching devices!

At times I also have emotional releases of old pain. These used to require that I cry at great length. I have cried so many times over the past years doing the course it’s probably in the 1000’s. But lately, Holy Spirit has been teaching me, "you need not suffer". As I go to cry, showing a willingness to release, Holy Spirit immediately steps in. I can’t even get a tear out. He does his healing thing, producing various temporary effects and shaking and so on, and then the upset is GONE. Just disappeared. No need to cry at all. In fact, laughing at the end of it. I thought I had to suffer, feel upset, let it out the painful way. Not any more! Now, every single time I go to release emotions, Holy Spirit does it for me! You could say, I never need to cry ever again. Isn’t that something to be thankful for?! It’s a miracle every time.

Now, this applies to all of us, because this is what happens when a MIRACLE happens. Miracles REVERSE what seems to have happened (sin), proving it was NOT irreversible. They can reach BACKWARDS in time and beyond all "causes" that we think were in the past out of reach, and UNDO them, restoring us to how we were BEFORE stuff happened. Restoring our innocence and immortality! Miracles reverse time! This is completely the OPPOSITE of what we usually experience as "linear time". Linear time seems to only move forwards, shoving sin into the past and guilt and suffering into the future. Not so, say miracles! Miracles GO THE OTHER WAY! They rewind, they undo, they collapse, they correct, they reverse, they heal, they restore, and demonstrate that YOU DO NOT NEED TO SUFFER EVEN A LITTLE BIT FOR ANY TIME AT ALL!

This is mind-bending for us who are accustomed to thinking with the ego, assuming that linear time (shit happens and it gets worse) is "normal", and just taking the way this world SEEMS to function at face value. My mind is so used to moving "forwards" with the consequences of sin, that to get myself to even THINK about moving the opposite direction is a real challenge. My mind doesn’t seem to want to go that way! It’s like a whole different direction of perception. It takes baby steps. It takes practice. And each time I am a little bit willing to entertain this idea...."maybe I DON‘T HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS", and the sooner the better, and imagine that it MIGHT be possible to NOT have to go through the whole train of suffering in the future, I open up to the Holy Spirit, who CAN OFFER HEALING NOW, and prevent having to suffer a long drawn-out PUNISHMENT.

Holy Spirit is capable of REVERSING absolutely anything the ego has made, of undoing absolutely ALL SIN, proving and demonstrating that NOTHING stands in the way of God’s healing power, and that SIN is absolutely NOT PERMANENT and HAS NO REAL CONSEQUENCES. "Holy Spirit will undo the ALL the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him", literally means, MIRACLES WILL OVERRIDE ALL CAUSES AND EFFECTS and will UNDO every form of suffering you ever thought you "had to experience" based on "what happened" or "what you did". We do not "have to" go along with the whole "something bad just happened, let’s immediately accept it has happened and PUT UP WITH IT" bullshit. THAT IS THE EGO! We must STOP TOLERATING THE EGO, because the only place it leads to is suffering and death.

It can be hard to do, especially at first. I have experienced this myself, and I still feel like a baby at this. Each time something "goes wrong", or some sickness pops up, or whatever temptation there is that "there’s nothing I can do about this", the challenge is to catch myself and stop myself and be like.... wait..... I don’t have to accept this crap! This is not God’s will. I don’t have to SUFFER! MAYBE there is another option. "I can see peace instead of this", or rather, "I can choose a miracle and UNDO THIS SHIT RIGHT NOW! I don’t have to just go into a future-predicting VICTIM mode and the whole story of how this is going to ruin my life forever. THERE MUST BE A BETTER WAY.

There is! Question that time must go forwards. Question that you are stuck with what happens to you. Question the temptation to believe there is NOTHING that can be done to undo this. And you will be going up against YOUR OWN BELIE that there is nothing anyone can do, and it’s a strong one! You’re going to have to really stretch your mind to consider and be open, that EVEN THIS.... even this "thing" thats happening, big or small, EVEN THIS you don’t have to accept, it doesn’t have to stay, MAYBE it can be undone, MAYBE there is a way to heal this with God. And gradually you will develop TRUST in the Holy Spirit and be willing to BELIEVE His Power to heal anything, and thus become OPEN TO RECEIVE THE HEALING. Holy Spirit has an unlimited supply of healing waiting for you!!!!!! There is nothing your holiness cannot do. There is nothing his holiness cannot do.

But it will take practice, because your mind has been TRAINED to "go along with the consequences of sin", at great length. So much that you think it’s totally NORMAL - everyone seems to suffer the asame way, bad stuff happens and there’s nothing we can do. That’s the battle-cry of SIN! The ego LOVES TO SUFFER! Our mind may even have DIFFICULTY even beginning to entertain this idea that events can MOVE IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. Like someone hitting REWIND on the VCR! We do not have to live in a world of "doing" (to us). We can live in a world of UNDOING. Simply because we do not see hardly anyone demonstrating this, we have ASSUMED that we must suffer and whatever caused stuff to happen, we’re stuck with it. It’s bullshit!

We have not seen someone coming BACK to life after being dead. We have not seen a car accident being reversed and no consequences coming from it. We have not seen someone with terminal cancer suddenly have cancer no more. We have not seen a dead baby being resurrected. We have not seen a leg which was broken 5 minutes ago be completely healed. We have not seen broken objects be repaired, or lack be filled out of nowhere, or people being CURED of what the world says "cannot be cured". Ego/sin says nothing can be cured! It is CERTAIN of your death. We must choose the OPPOSITE DIRECTION! That’s what miracles are. Every miracle demonstrates the mind is more powerful than the body and more powerful than SIN.

Miracles are reinforced by forgiveness which recognizes sin has no consequences, and it UNDOES THEM! We simply ASSUME that everything proceeds forwards, starting with sin, ending in DEATH. It does not have to!

Let’s practice being the ones to DEMONSTRATE that sometimes, and it should be ALL THE TIME, things can go backwards. Stuff can get healed. There can be total reversal of death. "Causes" can be nullified and cancelled out, and all effects which came from them UNDONE. We need to work with the Holy Spirit in our OWN EXPERIENCE, learning that we don’t have to put up with the things that "happen to us" in life. Let him show you that you need not suffer.

Let him show you that you DON’T have to tolerate that cold for 2 weeks, that you DON’T have to just accept that you will never get your paralyzed limb back, that you DON’T have to just lay down and die just because SIN claims that you do.

This is learning to trust the supernatural healing power of miracles, which UNDO everythig the ego tries to DO. It is nothing short of the complete reversal of all death and destruction and chaos, and the undoing of the separation, and the guaranteed RESURRECTION of God’s Sons. Miracles REVERSE what the ego has "done". That is how they UNDO. Miracles don’t really do anything at all, because all they do is undo? Is that a sorry excuse for a watered down non-miracle? MIRACLES UNDO EVERYTHING THE EGO HAS PUT IN PLACE!

Guess also why Jesus says the MIRACLE is the only tool available to you to control time? Because miracles MOVE TIME BACKWARDS in order to revert and undo the consequences of sin! They RETURN YOU to innocence, health, wholeness and happiness from which you came, which is symbolically in the distant past. With miracles, you need not AGE, you need not DIE, you need not SUFFER, and you need not be SICK ever again! Nothing needs to go wrong and stay wrong! There is NOTHING YOUR HOLINESS CANNOT DO. This takes learning, patience, practice and trust, in the HOLY SPIRIT, that HE has the power and ability to HEAL ANYTHING FOR YOU if you will allow it and just be open to this one simple idea ..... maybe there is a better way, than having to suffer the consequences of sin.

There is a simple law about health that you need to know about, as described here:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."

If you do not regard yourself as an illusion in any way ("I am not an illusion but a reality"), you do not see YOURSELF as an illusion, and therefore you do not SHOW UP AS an illusion. Instead, you show up as INVISIBLE. As if you have no body. You do not need a body, and the body would not be an accurate identification of what you think of yourself.

The body is always coming from your mind, as an outward picture of an inward condition. Always. It is always being projected outward. It never has its own condition or its own state of being or its own mind or will or power or thoughts or anything else. It’s purely a projected mental image. It is YOUR mental image about what you think your identity is. Or, what you are made of. Or, what you think is true of you.

If you think it is true of you that you are less than as God created you, pure spirit, wholeness, having no form or need for form, you WILL materialize - ie mis-create - what appears to be a body out of nowhere. The mind makes the body. And the mind can make as many bodies as it likes. As Jesus said in the special notes to Helen, here are his exact words where he describes exactly what I’ve just said:

"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."

His body disappeared because He had no illusions about himself, his identity. He did not identify himself as dead, or made of separation, and so He stopped showing up as that. He stopped imagining himself as that.

Note he also says, the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. The mind MAKES the body. And it constantly is projecting a body when it sees itself as limited. It is projecting the body at every moment to sustain an illusion of a constant self. But the body is always an effect, never a cause of anything. So if the mind wants to believe something else, the body MUST change. It has no will to stop the mind.

Now, a very important thing to realize is, the state of the body, being a mental picture of "self", directly corresponds ALWAYS to how a person’s mind is seeing itself. What it believes it is. So if it believes it is sinful or guilty, the mind will attack itself, thus attack its own image of itself which will show up as a body infected by or attacked by guilt and sin. This will make the body appear, ie be projected as though, it seems to be "sick". It does not "have" a sickness, it IS a sickness.

It will REMAIN showing up as sick for as long as the MIND decides to be sick. It will have no ability to heal itself. Bodies DO NOT heal themselves. The immune system is a bullshit ego concept. It is an illusion. Bodies does not heal anything. They do nothing. Only the mind orchestrates stuff happening.

When the mind says jump, the body jumps. Literally. When the mind says, I am sick and separate, a body will be projected which shows signs of sickness and separation. When the mind says, now is the time that I am well and joined with God, the body MUST show up as a picture of a body that is in perfect health.

You have to realize, the body has NO ABILITY to counter the choice of the mind as to how it wants to identify itself. It IS the mind’s attempt to identify itself as an illusion. There also IS NO OTHER CAUSE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD that can do anything to the body. It cannot be made sick, or hurt, or damaged in any way, unless the mind is believing it is damaged. And then the MIND puts the damage into the body, not the world. As Jesus says here clearly:

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself ... No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

That means there is NO CAUSE outside of you, at all. Ever. The body CANNOT be caused against YOUR will. Ever. However it shows up, is how you are MAKING IT show up.

There is nothing in the world that makes your body do or feel or adjust or change in any way at all. Any appearance to the contrary is some illusion the mind is putting in place to pretend it is irresponsible. Sickness IS irresponsibility. The mind however is ALWAYS in charge even if it makes an illusion of death. Death cannot happen to the body unless the mind destroys the body itself. "No-one dies without their own consent".

This also means, that if the body is showing up as sick, SOMETHING IS WRONG with the mind. Guaranteed. 100%. If the body is sick, the mind HAS NOT been healed. This is metaphysical law with zero exceptions. There can be states of mind reached which seem like awakening, but where the body remains sick. In such states, the mind HAS NOT awoken from the dream of death, as proved by the fact that the body still seems to die, because the mind STILL BELIEVES it does not deserve eternal life, and so accepts death - an illusion of giving up all will and causality. An attempt not to choose at all.

Rather than see this as some kind of condemnation or guilt-inducing statement that, if you are sick, it’s your fault, which the ego would love to indulge, instead see it as perhaps shocking or upsetting at first, to have to admit that YOU are responsible for making your sickness. This is not always welcome news, often producing ego reactions of guilt and fear and so on. But it is also revealing to you a POWER that you have. A power and a CHOICE, a FREEDOM, a HOPE, in which IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND, you NEED NOT SUFFER.

This does not EVER mean, that if you change your mind, you will transcend sickness and death and not care that it "happens to you". This is 100% missing the point and a total bastardization of the teaching. No-one can be at peace with death because peace is evidence you do not believe in Eternal Life. Sickness and death DO NOT happen to you. YOU HAPPEN. Sickness only happens in your body beacuse it’s a picture of YOUR MIND’s sickness. Death only happens in your body because YOU DESTROY YOURSELF. This has to be owned up to before you can claim the right, and power, and freedom, to EXERCISE your FREE WILL choice to NEVER SUFFER AGAIN.

It does mean, on the one hand, you HAVE to admit to being responsible for causing ALL of the suffering you have experienced, it was ALL you doing it to yourself, and no-one and nothing-else EVER caused anything you’ve experienced. That can be a big chunk of crap to swallow. BUT.... it also opens the door to the POSSIBILITY, that you still have this power, and can CHOOSE AGAIN and therefore produce a state of NO SUFFERING.

You MUST demonstrate a body that is invulnerable, cannot be hurt, cannot be damaged, has no sickness, does not show any signs of attack, and PROVES that your brother and the whole world has done NOTHING to affect the Son of God. OTHERWISE... you WILL attack yourself, and you will suffer, by your own hand. No-one else will be doing it to you but yourself. This is the SECRET TO SALVATION! YOU ARE DOING THIS ALL TO YOURSELF. And because you are - if you OWN IT - you can choose simply to NEVER AGAIN be sick or dead or suffer in any way. Claim your IMMORTALITY!

There is no power in all the world that does anything to you against your will, other than YOU. There is no cause in the world whatsoever to produce effects in you or your body that YOU do not put there yourself. Worldly causes are cover-up jobs for your mind to pretend its irresponsibility is someone else’s fault.

There is no form of sickness, even DEATH, that cannot be reversed, if the MIND decides to no longer believe in it. Whatever you believe about yourself, IT WILL SHOW UP. It must. Mind is cause. Form is the effect of believing in illusions. Your mind has power over ALL MATTER. "My self is ruler of the universe".

So realize this. While you have a body, your body ALWAYS EQUALS your state of mind. So long as you THINK you are a body, YOU WILL MAKE ONE. So long as you think you are separate from God, you will PRESENT A PICTURE of what you believe for all to see. "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt"!! But there can also be a totally transparent depiction of what’s going on inside of you, if you fully accept atonement.

If the body is showing up as sick, your mind *IS* sick. You ARE responsible for it. No-one else is. The world is not. The body is not. Having mastery over form REQUIRES extreme, absolute ownership and responsibility for EVERYTHING you are experiencing, down to the atoms that make up the body. YOU are putting them there. If the body is not doing well, it’s because you keep attacking yourself. Period. Don’t let this induce guilt or worthlessness. Instead forgive yourself and choose again.

If you can recognize this correlation between mind and body, you will realize that *IF* you change your mind, THE BODY HAS TO FOLLOW. It is guaranteed. It is a depiction of your "Self" as you see yourself. This is why when you shift into a miracle, you temporarily move into INVISIBILITY. "Miracles are temporary shifts into invisibility, that is why they heal." Invisibility (of form) correlates to having a mind which is CLEAR and FREE OF SEPARATIONS. You can see through it because it has become transparent and UNBLOCKED. This movement into formlessness heals the mind and thus the body MUST follow.

This also means, as Jesus has said, *IF* you get your mind into a state of perfect clarity and truth, and given that you are temporarily still projecting a body, the body BECOMES INVULNERABLE because YOU ARE, it cannot BE sick for ANY reason, because you are not sick, and IT CANNOT DIE because you see yourself as immortal spirit. Or at least a glimpse of that. Jesus assures us there is a divine protection that the body will experience IF we will be purely vigilant for the truth. Your body CAN be indestructible, free of aging, weather, the need for food and water, and so on. "I am sustained by the love of God all through the day", goes to the extreme!

And He literally means this..... IT CANNOT be sick. Sickness is IMPOSSIBLE where guilt has been removed. Sickness CANNOT RETURN where guilt has been removed. A guiltless mind cannot produce a suffering body. And why would it. A suffering body is an attack on your brother and yourself, due to a belief the world is causing you. Sickness is NONSENSE. It is a portrayal of a victim who believes they are sinful. But everyone is free to choose. You can choose whatever you want, but you cannot escape the consequences of your decisions.

You are cause. This is a course in cause, not effect. Choose health by choosing to heal the mind of its misperception of itself, and it will automatically take care of projecting a healthy body in the short term. This is the same as saying to seek first the kingdom of God and your way will be made straight.

A Course in Miracles is a teaching us to leave a dream of mortality, and return to a state of immortality. Everything in the course points to this. You are not merely substituting one limited illusion for another. You are literally substituting DEATH for ETERNAL LIFE. That is why the curriculum culminates in RESURRECTION.

Resurrection is the return to ETERNAL life. The atonement is your acceptance of the fact, that you already have eternal life, eternal life is the only thing true of you, and you have always been immortal. Immortality is your natural state of being. God created you to live FOREVER, without ever suffering, being sick, afraid, dead, or unhappy.

Every single part of ACIM is geared towards you disassociating from illusions of death, vulnerability, victimhood, being affected, being hurt, sickness and all forms of suffering, and re-associating yourself with your IMMORTAL SPIRIT.

As the Course states.

1) You are immortal and you cannot die.

2) You already have eternal life, given by God, and it is permanent.

3) You cannot change your immortality.

4) You are always immortal but when you deny your immortality, you PRETEND to be mortal. You dream of being attackable, suffering and dying, but this has NO EFFECT on your immortality.

5) Those who are sane would never use the dream body to demonstrate SYMBOLS of attack, suffering, sickness or death. To do so is a mixed teaching combining PROOF of belief in attack, with an attempt to teach otherwise. The teaching is only PURE when you are demonstrating the immortality of the body, at least as a SYMBOL of immortality. The body can become a symbol of eternal life, a breath of fresh air to those grown sick of the fetid stench of death.

Life is eternal life. There is no life that is not eternal. This is why there is no life outside of heaven, and life "in the dream world" is an illusion of life.

The entire course is trying to get you to own up to being immortal, invulnerable, completely beyond all forms of attack. You are absolutely permanent. And any time that you ACT as if you are not, as if you have been hurt, affected, caused, damaged, made to suffer against your will, you are LYING, you are in denial, and you are PRETENDING that you are not immortal.

You can see this truth throughout all of ACIM's teachings. e.g.

Deny anything not of God the power to affect you (you cannot BE affected, you are immortal)

Nothing in the world can bring oppression or make you ill or sad or weak or afraid (you cannot be ill or weak or afraid or upset because you are immortal)

There is no cause in the world, it is just an effect (the world cannot cause you in any way because you are unchangeable)

You are not a victim of the world you see (you are incapable of being a victim because you are immortal)

Your attack thoughts are attacking your *invulnerability* (your invulnerability cannot BE attacked because you are immortal, but you can pretend it can)

You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself (because you are immortal, and even your hurt of yourself is fake)

You are immortal and cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do (simply, you are immortal)

My self is ruler of the universe. Nothing comes to me unbidden by myself (because you are immortal)

It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. (because you are fucking immortal)

It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. (because nothing can CAUSE YOU, because you are NOT AN EFFECT of anything but God, and you are immortal)

If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this. (because the mind has immortality)

He MUST deny the world of pain, the instant he perceives the arms of love around him. (deny the world because it is an attempt to prove you are not immortal, and its a lie)

This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. (you must deny all illusions of death, because you are immortal)

Teachers of God choose to look upon dreams a while... they are not deceived by what they see. (because they are immortal and know "death is the CENTRAL ILLUSION from which is all dreams stem" and you cannot die, because you are immortal)

I am not weak but strong. I am not afraid but all powerful. (because you are immortal, nothing has power over you)

YOU ARE IMMORTAL AND YOU CANNOT DIE. And any attempt you are making to PROVE otherwise, is futile and pointless and a form of self deception. When you stop deceiving yourself and others with this denial, you will stop trying to kill yourself, will stop making the body sick or dead, and will OVERCOME DEATH FOREVER.

Immortality is the only truth about you. Ask yourself, why am I trying to prove I am not immortal? Why am I accusing someone of being ABLE to hurt me? Why am I BELIEVING that I have BEEN hurt? Nothing can affect you. It is your own mis-belief that it CAN, that affects you. You hurt yourself, and nothing in the world can cause you suffering of any kind.

Owning up to your immortality is the key to the atonement, the resurrection and the life. THIS is A Course in Miracles. This is the way home to God. Accept your immortality, live by your immortality, demonstrate your immortality, and deny everything else any reality.

Nothing real can be threatened, and YOU ARE REAL. So YOU CANNOT BE THREATENED. Because you are immortal!

So any attempt you make to act as if you are not immortal, to believe someone affected you, something happened to you, something went against your will, you're victimized, you're suffering, etc... it all you PRETENDING TO SUFFER by pretending you are the body, making *IT* suffer, to try to prove that "you" are suffering. Your immortal is unaffected by suffering, sickness and death.

There is no REAL death. The son of God is FREE. But the Son of God can PRETEND to die, by using ILLUSIONS of things that seem to die, to try to prove he is NOT the son of God and not immortal. It's a lie. Do not believe it. Own your immortality and use it to contrast what you are doing that betrays your immortality. Compare your immortality to your victimhood. Can you REALLY have been affected if you have immortality? Can you be justified in TRYING to prove you can suffer?

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt". "A damaged body is proof the mind has not been healed." ie if the mind believes it is NOT immortal, it uses the body to TRY to prove that "it" is attackable and vulnerable. And this is always a self deception. You hurt yourself on purpose to try to prove you are not yourself. That has to end in order to accept the atonement and live the resurrection. Your return to ETERNAL LIFE is the goal fo this course.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus is asking us to be fully responsible for everything we experience.

It means you cannot ever again be a victim in any way.

It means nothing happens to us against our will.

It means if we decide something, it happens. If we don't, it doesn't.

It means the body and its condition are exactly what we asked for and were given.

It means that everything that happens around us is what we explicitly asked for and are given. That all prayers are answered.

It means everything you feel, everything your body is doing, is coming from you. Directly.

It means there is no cause in the world able to do anything to you whatsoever against your will.

It means absolutely everything that you do and experience is 100% deliberate, intentional, on purpose, and there are no flaws, no accidents, no mistakes, and everything is exactly the way you want it.

It means you have freedom of choice, because choosing one thing gives you that one thing, and choosing something else gives that to you also.

It also means that whatever you decide to perceive, you will perceive. Whatever you want to see with your perception, you will project so that you can see it. Literally, projecting objects out of thin air.

It means nothing can attack you and nothing can affect you and you cannot be sick nor can you die and the body can be used to demonstrate this, proving that the Son of God cannot have anything happen to him against his will.

It means you do not ask questions, you express. You create. You create (or make) whatever it is you want to create (with or without God's will). You paint pictures. You do not ask pictures to change, in that they might decide not to. You put there what you want to see. You create what you will experience.

It means projection makes perception because you first project and then you perceive what you have projected. You project whatever you want to see. If you want to see an entire planet you will project an entire planet, "making it" in your dream. But when you are done projecting and perceiving, you will stop doing that, and it will disappear.

It means when you make a decision, the consequences are immediate and permanent, and there is no ifs or buts, no fears or doubts, no uncertainty. God's will BE DONE. What God wills CANNOT BE DENIED.

It means that because you have free will, whatever you ask for you will be given. You will never fail to be given what you ask for. Only what you ask for will be all that is given to you. And nothing that you receive will ever be something you did not ask for.

It also means that the world is not causing you, God is not attacking you, other people are not doing anything to you, no-one can hurt you, you MUST be invulnerable, and you cannot die.

It therefore also means that YOU MADE sickness and death and can therefore ABOLISH both, in yourself and in another IF they are willing to ask for help. This means you do not have to go through death if you do not choose to do so, and you would only choose to do so to attempt to prove you can be hurt against your will, which is a bullshit lie.

It also means other people with free will are 100% responsible for EVERYTHING they experience, there is nothing you can do to them, you cannot hurt them, you cannot attack them, you cannot judge them, you cannot forgive them, and they are absolutely immune to anything you express, other than your sharing of love.

It also means, therefore, that anyone's victimhood or sob story or justifications for revenge or reasons to be right or wrong or ego reactions or upset emotions or pain or suffering or sickness, which are all acts of IRRESPONSIBILITY, are attempts to get rid of ourselves and to disown who we are, denying the ABSOLUTE POWER that we share with God.

It also means, that nothing real can be threatened! Reality could only possibly attempt to threaten itself, and if it does so, it will make only illusions of threat - pretend threat - because reality cannot be threatened, and nothing can happen to it against its will.

Can you sense the absolute explicit deliberateness of this? This is the thought system of a miracle worker. This is the kind of belief about ourselves that we need to have, or rather, to get rid of the belief that things happen for reasons OTHER THAN yourself. This is RIGHT MINDED THINKING.

The secret to salvation is that you are doing this all to yourself. That's because of all of the above. NOTHING can happen to you against your will. No-one can die without choosing to do so. No-one can suffer or be sick without choosing to do so. No-one is a victim of anyone else. No-one can be hurt against their will. No-one can show "effects" caused by anyone or anything else, unless they themselves PUT the effects into their own body to pretend that someone else put them there.

You are not at the effect of the world you see. You are not a victim of the world. No-one can suffer without his own consent. The secret to salvation is that you are doing all of this to yourself, including making your body sick and die, to try to prove you are not doing it to yourself. No-one needs to die. The dream of separation is NOT left by death, only by THIS TRUTH.

Total absolute responsibility for everything makes you IMMORTAL, INNOCENT, INVULNERABLE, and incapable of death.

You can't sin. What is sin but the ability to actually achieve separation from God in some way? Whichever way that separation manifests, whether it is a thought of murder or attack or withdrawal or hate or a split mind or a tiny mad idea or whatever, the fact remains it is impossible for it to happen in *reality*.

God CANNOT be separated from. God is so pervasive and so everywhere that there just is nowhere to go that He is not. Believing it is *possible* to do this is just insane.

You can't sin because you are permanently innocent.

If you are completely pure and holy, do you think it's really possible for you to do anything or act in a certain way that is not pure and holy? How could you even CONCEIVE of it being possible to do anything that isn't innocent? It can't even occur to you or enter your mind. Your innocence is permanent because it is established by and recognized by God, forever.

It is SO holy and pure that it simply CANNOT PRODUCE SIN. Sin cannot COME FROM innocence. So it is utterly impossible for there to one moment be a state of perfect innocence, and then the next moment, for sin to suddenly show up. Sin CANNOT have come from innocence or from an innocent mind or an innocent Son of God. Sin 'appearing' has to be totally unreal and fictional.

Sin therefore HAS to be a huge lie. It is causeless. Sin is bullshit.

Symbolically speaking, it would be like saying that a newborn baby is capable of murdering thousands of people as soon as it emerges from the womb. It's obviously absurd because the "innocence" of the baby is so obvious (even at the level of illusion). No-one in their right mind would even begin to consider that this crime is possible, it is utterly ridiculous. (nb: this is just an analogy, innocence in bodies is not real innocence)

As the course says, "no one can argue with a fact." When something is plainly obvious and has not been denied, it simply cannot BE denied. You just have to admit that it is plainly true. It is plainly true that you are STILL 100% as innocent as you always were and that you are utterly incapable of anything you could call "real" sin.

Sin is not real. It doesn't take place in reality. It does not have consequences which are real. It does not affect what is real. It has no truth to it and is entirely a fictional story you are dreaming. The sin is INSIDE the dream, not outside of it in reality. All of the consequences that sin supposedly has inflicted or produced, are HALLUCINATIONS. Not one of them is accurate or truthful or real.

The intent of sin is to murder God, to get rid of yourself, and to deny Life. Its natural consequence is death. From the very start it is an act of war and vengeance and a strong belief that sin has power OVER the will of God, able to affect God, hurt God, change God, and destroy God. It is the authority problem - believing you have power over God's will, which you don't. Right off the bat, sin is a lie.

One of the problems is that, since you are dreaming and you THINK you are a PART of the dream, inside the dream, you believe that sin is real. You think it is real because you think the dream is reality. The dream is NOT reality, even if it seems real.

You think that your sin against God REALLY HAPPENED. Somewhere in the dark recessed of your mind hidden behind layers of denial is a belief that you sinned IN REALITY, caused reality to change, and now deserve to die. This gave rise to the death wish, which will not stop until it finishes you off, unless you undo the belief that sin is real.

When you start to explore your mind and undo denial and remove blocks to awareness you will likely encounter this belief in sin within yourself. You'll experience it as though it is real and true, as if you actually DID something horrendous, causing you to be guilty. But as you question sin and take a closer look at the facts, admitting the truth, you can actually start to RECOGNIZE that this thing you referred to as "real sin" is actually FAKE SIN. It is an ILLUSION of sin happening. You thought it was real, which is why you have freaked out. But it's not. It's a PRETEND CRIME.

There is nothing that sin claims that can be true. It is not possible to oppose the will of God. It is not possible to change God. It is not possible to make God hate you. It is not possible to hurt or attack or damage God. It is not possible to make God disappear. It is not possible to kill God. It is not possible to kill yourself. It is not possible to change your permanent innocence. It is not possible to oppose reality and replace it with an illusion which isn't even real. Everything sin claims you HAVE DONE, is not true.

It's like, you're this kid who THINKS that they did something terribly wrong, because they were in a state of fear and misunderstanding and did not really perceive correctly what happened. They think they did something really terribly bad and that they're going to be horribly punished, and because they think they really did it, they will be convinced they deserve to die, and will refuse any suggestion to the contrary. But this is all based on a MISUNDERSTANDING.

Another example might be, if someone were driving a car and accidentally didn't see someone step into the street, and their car seems like it hit something right at that moment, which you thought was the person. You were so horrified that you fled the scene, without having actually seen IF it was true, and lived the rest of your life in guilt and self-torture. What you didn't realize is that you did NOT hit the person, no-one got hurt, and you're not even guilty. You just drove over a piece of wood in the road that you didn't see. So then you try to kill yourself for something YOU DID NOT EVEN REALLY DO.

God is here to tell you, "My Son, you are innocent and always will be. There is nothing you can do to deter me from loving you. I am forever in your presence and reminding you gently of your lovability and worthiness. You have done nothing to offend me. I am at peace. I am unharmed. I love you now and have for eternity. There is nothing you can do to make me resent you. My only will is for your return to me to embrace in love and live forever in my sight. I love you now and always will."

Sin is not true of you. You did not do what you think you did. You imagined a crime and made it up, wanting to believe it was real and possible. THANK GOD it is NOT TREU! Sin isn't real. It's a fantasy. "What if you looked within and saw there was no sin?"

You are forgiven. Come home.

I keep hearing various people say things like "using miracles as spectacles is wrong" and various other statements which make it sound like we should not be performing miracles.

These are all based in fear!

Jesus's statement (from an earlier version) is: "(A miracle is misunderstood when it is regarded as a spectacle.)

11. The use of miracles as a spectacle to induce belief is wrong. They are really used for and by believers."

What he is saying here, is that miracles are used BY believers - people who believe in the correct sequences of cause and effect, who believe God wants to heal all the time, and who are in touch with the willingness (not fear) to extend the miracles of love all the time rather than accept the consequences of sin.

He is also saying here, that such miracles are typically given TO those who BELIEVE. Which means, someone, as a receiver, typically needs to have some faith of their own, some belief in God, in order to be WILLING to receive a miracle.

This aligns with the unfortunate scenario, that if people do not want healing or are not ready for it, miracles cannot do anything to help them, especially if they would scare them, and quite honestly, miracles COULD produce fear in a lot of people indirectly because of the way they totally defy every expectation of the ego.

So what Jesus is saying is, since miracles are typically given BY someone who "believes", TO someone who has at least some measure of belief, this is the natural way that miracles CAN operate. So when you try to go outside of that, to "induce belief", to enforce belief, to try to MAKE someone believe, or to perform a miracle against their will, for the sole purpose of trying to create a FICTIONAL scenario where they might be shocked and awed and caused to react in some way, as a SUBSTITUTE FOR BELIEVING, that would be in appropriate and a mistake.

So you would not attempt to use a miracle to just entertain a crowd or to try to get people to follow you or to show off or to "force people" into complying or healing or obeying or anything like that. This is because miracles come from LOVE, love enters where it is WELCOME, and therefore it is LOVING not to try to coerce people with some kind of dazzling light show that is just there to be a "spectacle". When we are using miracles in this way as spectacles for that sole purpose, we are basically attempting to turn them INTO MAGIC, to put on a magic show, which has as its only purpose to delude and manipulate, rather than to ACTUALLY HEAL, or to be RECEIVABLE by someone who believes in God's love for them.

This is ALL that Jesus is telling us not to do. He is not in ANY way telling us not to perform miracles, NOR is he telling us that our miracles need to be SMALL AND WEAK AND UNNOTICED. Nor is he telling us that we should not move a physical mountain, or even something bigger than that. Nor is he telling us to keep miracles on the HUSH HUSH and make sure no-one notices. Nor is he telling us to never show or demonstrate anything which someone looking on MIGHT come to be shocked and in awe of.

The ego is SUPPOSED TO BE TAUGHT by a miracle, that the laws of the ego do not apply. Miracles are teaching devices. They WILL BRING INTO QUESTION what people believe is possible and true. If someone who was just dead, is suddenly brought back to life, this is going to radically challenge the belief system of ANYONE who sees it happen. They won't be able to "believe their eyes". Some of them will be in awe, although they should not be. Some of them would be perhaps even afraid and run away in fear that some kind of magical voodoo is happening, because they don't understand or aren't ready to receive it.

Miracles are CAPABLE OF BEING "spectacles" in that, they are capable of being very IMPRESSIVE, and extraordinary, and way out of the box, and not something that you typically see every day (which is sad, because miracles are supposed to be happening ALL the time, every day).

Perhaps my favorite demonstration of a miracle is Jesus walking on water. I mean, talk about the POTENTIAL to be considered a spectacle. Quite a demonstration! To suddenly see someone out in the ocean not sinking whatsoever as though he was lighter than air. To SEE THAT, would've been extraordinary, and you could think well, Jesus is just SHOWING OFF. No he is not. It was a teaching situation to PROVE that the ego's laws do not apply and that ANYONE can walk on water. He was giving an EXAMPLE of the truth. Some would call it a spectacle because they put it in the same category as "anything which is extraordinary or dazzling is a spectacle". No. Spectacles are ego attempts to induce belief instead of building UPON belief. It doesn't in any way mean you shouldn't walk on water or float through the air or turn yourself into a giant mushroom.

When Jesus came back from the dead and showed up, just kind of casual like, probably laughing, "and you all thought I really died, haha".... the people who saw him were probably like... is that a ghost? Am I hallucinating? Am I seeing things? Have I lost my mind? The ego will be severely challenged. And at the same time, it would've come across as awe-inspiring and really radically impressive and intense and life changing!

Jesus is not telling us to SHOVE MIRACLES UNDER THE CARPET, nor is he telling us to AVOID BEING SUPERNATURAL, nor is he telling us to "beware" just in case we scare someone, nor is he telling us to keep miracles a private secret. NOR does he mean that such miraculous healings and reversals of sin/separation/death are MAGIC. They are NOT MAGIC. Magic goes in totally the opposite direction and makes things WORSE. Miracles make things BETTER. They heal and undo and correct and reverse what the ego has tried to accomplish. They have nothing do with magic at all, UNLESS you start to twist their purpose as a way to try to FORCE someone to believe when they are not ready to. This is all that Jesus is warning us about.

That we keep using these kinds of statements as a way to POO POO miracle-working is a really sad misuse of the course and a really unfortunate way to KEEP PEOPLE POWERLESS, as well as being a massive form of DENIAL and FEAR about what miracles are and what they are capable of. When the Holy Spirit performs a miracle, your mouth is going to be hanging open! This is only because we're so used to being UNMIRACULOUS that we think that's normal, and that miracles are UNNATURAL. Miracles are natural, being sick and dying and having to suffer is UNNATURAL.

So no, miracles are not inherently spectacles to be avoided by all who are afraid of the power of the mind. It is just a CAUTION, not a turn off.

"WHAT IS NOT LOVE IS MURDER" - ACIM

Here's how this works.

A mind which is fully awake and aware, recognizes that it actually shares a mind with everyone. It is at one with them. It sees its own identity within others, and knows that they are part of itself.

A mind of oneness therefore recognizes that whatever applies to others directly applies to itself. It is aware enough to see that, because it is "in" others, if it were to attack others, it would be attacking itself. And because this is very obvious to the awake mind, it recognizes that such actions would be completely self-defeating, and so does not attack.

When the mind can see clearly that it is one with others, it will treat others only with love, because to do anything else would hurt its own self.

However, when the mind enters into a belief in separation, what it's doing is it's introducing an illusion of denial inbetween itself and others. This denial makes it seem as if other people do not have "shared interests" with itself, other people are different somehow, other people are disconnected from itself, and therefore what applies to them does not apply to itself. It does not recognize or see itself in others so does not believe that what applies to them applies to itself.

On these terms, the mind is now partly unaware that it is one with other minds, does not see itself in others, and does not recognize that to hurt others would hurt itself. It now seems plausible that there is an `option`, a possibility, to do something unto others that is not done unto itself.

Another way to put this is that a separation is introduced in-between cause and effect. The mind now believes it is capable of causing effects in others which are not caused in itself. It does not see that attempting to hurt others hurts itself, so it think it can "get away with" or be excluded from those effects.

The idea of being able to do something to others which does not directly affect yourself, is the idea of "getting away with murder." It means you can now seem to attack another without experiencing the consequences. This is attempted murder. The entire ego thought system is based on this, and absolutely everything that happens in the ego thought system is murderous!

The problem of the mind then is that even though it believes it is not one with other minds, and that it can get away with attacking/causing without being affected, it's actually not true that it gets away with it. In one way or another, the mind IS still attacking itself, and it is hurting itself when it tries to hurt others. The ego will claim this is not true, and that you can escape from the consequences, but it is in denial. If the mind attacks another, it itself will be attacked BY itself.

This then becomes the ego trap of believing that you can get away with projecting your sin onto others without having to deal with the consequences. It sets up the entire foundation of how you will deal with your sin/separation, by trying to make someone else receive the consequences of it, supposedly making you innocent or rather, letting you "get away with" your murderous intentions by having someone else be blamed for them. In this way, the ego creates a state of "fake innocence"... where you seem innocent because someone ELSE has taken the blame for your attack.

Therefore to the ego, innocence is murderous. To the ego, it is possible for the innocent to sin, and for the innocent to insanely destroy others without destroying itself. Can you imagine how ridiculous and twisted it is to believe that someone can be free of responsibility even though they're standing there with the murder weapon having just attacked their brother, believing they are completely free of all consequences? Within the dream, this is insanity, given they did not and will not escape the consequences. The cost of attack is the loss of their own identity.

When we say "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", this does not really mean that other people are separate from you and you should just treat them well. This would mean that maybe, maybe not, they might treat you well in return. This is still a breakdown in cause and effect, leaving open the possibility that even if you treat others well, they may still attack you.

The real meaning of this is that, in the mind aware of its oneness, how it treats others IS how IT treats itself. Therefore it is in its own vested interest ("shared interest") to treat others as it DOES treat itself, because whatever it does to another it IS DOING to itself. This does not rely on others to decide whether or not to reciprocate, because if you treat others with love you WILL experience the effect of love. This is also the true meaning of "karma", not that separate causes will decide to attack you in retaliation, but that YOU attack yourself. All attack is self attack.

What is not love, is murder. Any belief in attack, any sin, any guilt, and anger, any argument, any belief that something applies to others and not you, any way you come between people, any sense of separation, any illusion of being innocent while secretly scapegoating your sin onto others, means you are being murderous. You are trying to "get away with" having sinned and to not suffer the consequences.

The fact is, you do not escape the consequences of sin. If you believe in it, it will destroy you. It's not possible for something to apply to someone else that you don't also believe applies to yourself. You never really get to be "right" and others wrong, because if you are right, you are wrong. You never get to "succeed" in the ego's terms, because that means you have failed. You never get to "win" the ego's game, because that means you have used separation and have lost.

The only way to end the murderousness is to return to love. That means removing the blocks to awareness which prevent you from being able to RECOGNIZE yourself in others, to be aware of your ONENESS with others, and to therefore KNOW that if you do even one tiny thing to hurt anyone, it's going to hurt you. That's a pretty big incentive to always remain loving, because to attack is to be attacked by yourself, and who in their right mind, a sane mind, would want to do that? There is no sense to it.

The fact that what is not love is murder should not be used by the ego right now to make you feel guilty, or to say, well, this means that I'm being murderous because I'm not awake yet, therefore I'm even more sinful. Don't let the ego use this information to accuse you even more than you already have. Simply recognize this is what's happening and continue with your forgiveness of yourself. Murder is not REAL, it is an illusion. There is no REAL attack or REAL separation. It is just a state of being mistaken and thinking that it's possible to accomplish murder and to get away with it, when in fact it's not possible, AND you cannot really hurt who you really are.

There is no murder in heaven. There is no murder in God's reality. Only love is real.

In the separation from God, we introduced an idea of "separateness" into wholeness. We believed it was possible for there to be a lack of wholeness. This produced the idea of "over here" and "over there", each distinct and different and seeming to lack the some part of the whole, setting them apart.

This laid the foundation for both space and time - notions that what is here is not there, or what is there lacks what is here. And so each seeming part of it seems to have a different form, a partial collection of attributes which sets them apart from each other. And neither has everything.

"You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness." And then we continued to subdivide and split the mind. We tried to assign certain collections of properties, aspects, characteristics, to some parts, and others to the rest. To break wholeness into seeming isolated chunks of form.

Each part took on a different form and meaning. Various forms or examples or versions of the same one error of separateness. This caused a multitude of differences to seem to appear, each held apart from the rest and separated out as if many things.

This inevitably produced an entire universe of many "forms of error", where each object or body is different to the rest. Each lacks what the others have, rooted in sacrifice and limitation. Not one is whole, and every one is partial.

And so each form appears to comprise different materials, shapes, structures, behaviors, colors, textures and appearances. From these scattered fragments of illusion, entire worlds seemed to arise, each unlike the others and unique in its appearance. Including every human body and every atom.

An illusion is the appearance that something is other than what it actually is - seeming to be something it is not. The single idea of separation, the one problem, shows up as multiple things and multiple problems. It is really one thing, but separateness leads to many forms. And every form is an illusion that the one error is many errors.

Each form says, "look at the ways I am not the same as the rest". And so as one form pulls itself away from sameness, another form does the same. And the two forms try to disguise the fact they are one thing.

And now each form seems to vie for attention. Every form is different, and therefore in conflict and competition. Some are larger, smaller, more or less important, more or less valuable, more or less serious, more or less difficult to deal with.

And now we have an entire hierarchy of illusions, from the gigantic to the tiny, and everything in between. The form that each form takes deceives by distracting you with its claim that it is not like the rest. My car is not a house. My boat is not an airplane. My trousers are not shoes. My ice cream is not a burger.

Every form is designed to assert a deception, a temptation, an illusion, that if its form is real and true, then it IS NOT the other things. This was founded in the simple premise that this world is NOT reality, or the negation of God, and so everything appears to be NOT the rest.

If you believe it, you are deceived. Because every form is a form of deception, an illusion that a singular idea of separation is many things.

One part says, I am not like the other part. Look at how I am different. Look at my different shape, color, size and makeup. Look at what sets me apart. Look at what I have which the other lacks. Look at our differences. Look how we are separate and not the same at all.

And to believe this is to be completely blinded to the the truth. Because if you fall for this and take sides, if you come to prefer one form over another, or think they are truthfully unique and valuable, then you have fallen for the ONE temptation of the world.

Every form is a lie. Every physical object and every body is a lie. Every planet and every star and galaxy is a lie. They are all designed to hide and disguise the one single illusion of separation.

So long as you are caught up in a life where the worshipping of DIFFERENCES prevails, where you prefer some forms over others, where you think that two things are not THE SAME, you are deceived and blinded. There is nothing so blinding as to fixate your vision on the perception of FORM, making the separation real.

The body's eyes look only upon the forms of error. Only the body makes the world seem real. Its fixation on differences, changes, inequalities and comparisons, blinds you to seeing any kind of singular truth. It sees a world of a billion truths, none making any sense or meaning anything at all. The whole message of ACIM is that we need to transition AWAY from a world of differences, towards wholeness. To repair the sense of fragmentation in the mind and restore singular oneness.

This requires seeing THROUGH the deception of form, and not believing it. Not believing that a car and a house are real differences. Not believing that a living body and a dead body are real differences. Not believing that some objects are more important or valuable than others. Realizing that we gave the world of forms ALL the meanings that they have.

To flatten the hierarchy of illusions is to recognize that ALL illusions are one illusion. A single error presents itself to you in every conceivable form of deception. If you buy into it, you think there is an order of difficulty, where some things are harder to deal with or change than others.

To recognize there IS no hierarchy, is to recognize that all forms are the SAME. That every form of suffering is the SAME. That every form of sickness and death and life is the SAME. That there is ONE thing here, not many. That the manyness and the differences are entirely untrue. That one thing is sneakily showing up as a massive multitude to HIDE its true nature of being just one thing.

This is why there is really only one lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, that ALL FORMS of suffering have a SINGLE cause. This is why the workbook lessons have us NOT be selective in which forms we apply things to, so that we will learn that forms are meaningless decoys. This is why we are to recognize there is ONE problem not many. And this is why there is ONE truth and ONE law and ONE atonement.

Every form that the world takes is a lie. Every time it says you should want this form or that form, it is trying to get you to take sides. Every time you take sides there is war. Every difference of form IS conflict. Everything you see with the body IS conflicted, with objects vying for attention, some nearer some further, some louder some quieter, some more "appealing" than others.

All of this is ONE thing, one effort, one scheme, to TEMPT you to believe in the differences so that you will not recognize they are ALL THE SAME. That this whole world is entirely unreal. That not one form is more real or important or valuable than another. That there aren't billions of choices, there is only one choice.

ALL illusory forms are like two characters who act and speak and present themselves differently to try to create the illusion that they are not ONE actor. The mind is ONE actor, taking on the role of multiple simultaneous parts, pitted against each other. So long as you do not recognize that ONE mind is playing ALL the roles, of both victim and victimizer, you will be deceived by form.

In a world of forms, all the forms are untrue. Not one of them IS reality. And none of them show you what is true. To see only physical form is to see nothing but error and sin. True vision will show you that their many appearances are lies, and that there is a singular truth behind them. We are addicted to a world of forms, believing in specialness and made-up values. Made-up worth. Made-up importance. Goals and toys and special jobs and relationships and things you want and things you don't want.

All designed to keep you locked into a hell of form and separation. To keep you tempted that the next big thing will save you. That the next form the illusion takes will be the one you've always wanted. So that you never realize NONE of them are true, NONE of them are real, and NONE of them are what you really want.

That without deception, lies, falsehood and temptation, there is NO WORLD HERE AT ALL. Without form, there is no planet and no body. And behind all forms is the one lie that started it all, which the world of forms was made to hide - that separation is even possibe.

"A problem can appear in MANY forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts."

"It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real."

"For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes which have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?"

"Today's idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as different. On one side stand all illusions. All truth stands on the other."

"Illusions battle ONLY with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment."

"Illusions CAN conflict, because their forms ARE different. And they do battle ONLY to establish which FORM is true."

"The meeting of illusions leads to war."

"EVERY illusion is an assault on truth."

"Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless."

"The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague, uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the gap is NOTHING."

"The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take."

"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion."

"For time and space are ONE illusion, which takes different forms."

"The dream is but illusion in the mind."

"The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing."

"Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."

"You are so used to choosing between dreams, you do not see that you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and ALL ILLUSIONS."

"This course attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the SAME illusion and the SAME mistake."

"Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized."

"Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion."

"Those who are special MUST defend illusions against the truth."

"Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin."

"What is perceived takes many forms, but NONE has meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent."

"Yet has God given Answer to the world of sickness, Which applies to ALL its forms."

"NO illusion has ANY truth in it. Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

"What relevance has preference to the truth? Illusions are illusions, and are false."

"Illusions HAVE no witnesses, and no effects. Who looks on them is but deceived."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true."

"For this establishes degrees of TRUTH among illusions, making it appear that some are HARDER to be overcome than others."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."

"This illusion can take many forms."

"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth.""

"The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth."

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."

"Though the dream itself takes many forms, and SEEMS to show a great variety of places and events wherein its "hero" finds itself, the dream has but ONE purpose, taught in many ways."

"Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees NO differences where none exist, and He will teach you how each one is CAUSED. None has a DIFFERENT cause from all the rest, and ALL of them are easily undone by but a SINGLE lesson truly learned."

"Not once do the advanced teachers of God consider the forms of sickness in which their brother believes."

"The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms."

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see ONLY illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside FORM of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"

"You are advancing to love's MEANING, and away from ALL illusions in which you have surrounded it."

"You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still IS what it was. That ONE error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it. And every special relationship you ever made is PART of it."

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs."

"Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing forms that shift with time and place, is an illusion that has no meaning."

"Never foster this illusion in yourself, or encourage it in others. An "object" is incapable of release, because it is a concept which is deprived of creative power."

"What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it."

"All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

"Fear is the emotion of the world. It has but one. Its forms are many - call them what you will - but it is one in content."

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning. ... Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured."

"Before a holy relationship, there IS no sin. The FORM of error is no longer seen."

Suffering is really in the mind. It is not really in the physical universe, in the world, or in the body. What is physical does not really suffer. The experience of suffering is psychological only.

The world and the body are a projection in the mind. The law of projection is one of giving, or of pushing outward, based on what is within. In its pure form this is the extension of the Kingdom of God. In its distorted ego form, it is the pushing outward of an inner state of sin, guilt, fear and denial.

The ego thought system in the mind therefore tries to deny and "get rid of" what it does not want, which ultimately it YOU, by first attacking you and then projecting the attack. The projection of attack, in an attempt to give without receiving, which is murderous, is an way the mind "hides from" its own content. The physical world and the body arise as make-believe images and now act to disguise what the real problem is.

This means really that it is your psyche that suffers, and your mind that is hurt, and it is the mind that needs healing. It is your beliefs that twist your thoughts, and distort your perceptions. And it is really only the mind that can seem to be sick.

But when the mind IS sick, it has entered into denial and separation. And as the law of projection now functions, the mind tries to dissociate (separate) from its own suffering. It tries to push "separateness" outside of itself, to create distance and delay between itself and the problem. This produces spacetime. And the whole physical world and body arise to SYMBOLIZE and represent the inner state of mind, as if the mind itself has become physical form.

This means that if the mind is sick, it WILL attack the body and render the body as a sickened image, a broken body, showing up as if deformed or malfunctioning or damaged. And this body now acts to testify that IT has been attacked. And since the cause of the attack is not SEEN, because it is in the mind, we instead look to the world to explain HOW it came to suffer.

We even look to the body itself to ask how the body could make itself sick, and also look to the body to make itself well. But the body cannot attack itself, or heal itself, because ONLY THE MIND puts the body there. And only the mind attacks the body. And only the mind heals the body.

Or to put it in a better way... if the mind attacks itself first, it will project an image of an attacked body in an attacking world. If the mind heals itself first, it will project an image of a healed body in a healed world. There are many statements in ACIM that support this. And it means that the only true way to heal the body is to heal the mind, so that IF the body is projected, its form will symbolize and represent and point towards its origins - as a mirror of a sane and harmless mind.

"The body is endangered by the mind that hurts itself. The body suffers that the mind will fail to see it is the victim of itself. The body's suffering is a mask the mind holds up to hide what really suffers. It would not understand it is its own enemy; that it attacks itself and wants to die. It is from this your "laws" would save the body. It is for this you think you are a body."

"And it grows old and dies, because that mind is sick within ITSELF."

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment 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."

"Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as NOT within the body, and its innocence is quite APART from it, and where ALL healing IS."

"The lesson is the MIND was sick that thought the body COULD be sick; projecting OUT its guilt caused NOTHING, and had NO effects."

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that IT will suffer pain. It is the obvious effect of what was made in secret"

"The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience."

"For your beliefs converge upon the body"

"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."

"Your PERCEPTION of the body can clearly be sick, but project this not upon the body."

"Defend the body and you have attacked your mind. For you have seen in it the faults, the weaknesses, the limits and the lacks from which you think the body must be saved. You will not see the mind as separate from bodily conditions. And you will impose upon the body all the pain that comes from the conception of the mind as limited and fragile, and apart from other minds and separate from its Source."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"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."

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and your way will be made straight" - this is the ULTIMATE FORM OF FORGIVENESS.

I will explain.

There is only one problem. Not many. Not multiple layers. One problem: separation from God. We are simply too caught up in being distant from God that we keep trying to forgive stuff within a layer of mind that is still quite far from the origin of all problems, cleaning up the mess, dealing with what appear as multiple fragmented issues. But as we 'home in' on God and on the real CORE of EVERY problem, it all boils down to this one totally simple thing: You believe that you did somethig to separate yourself from God.

So now in your forgiving you attempt to address the 'fallout' of this separation in various layers. Maybe you try to let other people off the hook, maybe you attempt to withdraw your projections, maybe you try to withhold judgement and just observe, maybe you monitor your thoughts and try to have 'the right ones', maybe you go to Holy Spirit and ask Him to do something. But let's be clear now. All of these remedies attempt to address the real cause of all problems somewhat distant from that cause, hidden behind multiple layers of psychological fragmentation. Where is the ROOT CAUSE?

Behind all these worldly distractions and needing to forgive individual people and needing to deal with specific body issues and needing to correct thoughts and so on, there is ONE PROBLEM and it is that you believe you are separate from God. It is very abstract and very primary. It underlies EVERYTHING else that seems to have gone wrong.

So what you need to ultimately do, whether you do this now or soon or in future or whenever, when you are ready, at some point you are going to have to GO TO GOD. Your relationship with God appears to have suffered. You believe you attacked Him and rejected Him and now he seems distant from you. How do you suppose this is going to get HEALED by you pussyfooting around the real elephant in the living room, avoiding this one fundamental issue?

Imagine you had a big fight with someone you love or a best friend and you feel terrible about it, but it caused you to be at odds and now you're not talking. You've gone off on your separate ways and you feel alone and guilty and angry etc. How exactly do you suppose you're going to repair this relationship? It's not going to be enough for you to focus on withdrawing projections or questioning judgements or all this kind of stuff that happens `down the pipeline`. You're likely avoiding that person. You don't want to go near them. But how are you going to get to what you really WANT, which is a REUNION with them? How are you going to get to where the two of you are standing there in a moment of rapture and love, letting go of every single sense of grievance and upset, utterly overjoyed at accepting each other back into your lives and completely dismissing everything that ever came between you?

At some point your'e going to have to GO TO GOD. Ok. So, God is the Kingdom of Heaven - that's His creation which He is One with. The more you AVOID Him the more you will orbit around and make silly noises and try to explain why your relationship is getting repaired from a distance. But what you really want is to reunite with God completely. You want to go up to Him, reaaaaaly close and personal, and have a confrontation of sorts (which you are terrified of), and 'apologize', so to speak, and move PAST all of the hurt and sense of separation that has kept you apart. You want to really get in there and commune deeply with Him, letting go of aaaaal accusations and fears and worries and all the guilt that stemmed from your falling-out. And you want to get past all of that and get to where you are beaming at each other with love in your eyes and joy in your heart at the absolute beauty and RELIEF that the love you thought you'd lost IS STILL THERE. It hasn't been hurt, nothing serious has transpired, and all is forgiven. Now your'e back to being 'best friends' and the whole separation bullshit has just disappeared.

That's what it would be like to seek first the Kingdom of Heaven. If you're going to totally undo all your problems, you need to UNDO THE SEPARATION. So as you apply forgiveness, instead of focussing on the distant levels, go straight for the jugular. Recognize that whatever your problem is, it's because you believe you are separate from God. There is no other reason. You don't need to blame it on the projection or the judgement or the thoughts or wahtever. It's all because you and God had a falling out and now you want Him back. Period.

"Holy Spirit, correct my belief in separation and help me to reunite with God". How about that?

"Holy Spirit, undo the guilt I feel because I separated from God and help me reunite with His Love."

"Holy Spirit, my body is sick because I am separate from God, please remove this evidence of separation."

"Holy Spirit, heal the separation between me and God"

Or even better, sometimes addressing Holy Spirit can be a way to avoid God ;-) ..... I don't see many people including GOD in their forgiveness words....

"God, please forgive me for trying to separate from you and help me to be with you again."

"God, please heal this separation now"

"God, I rejoin with you in peace"

"God, we are One"

Try this... Try skipping all the other levels of forgiveness and go straight for the repair of your sense of separation. ALL your problems stem from it so if you fix that one thing, everything else should take care of itself and "your way will be made straight."

All you really want is to heal the separation between you and God and return to a loving relationship. It's no more complicated than that.

When someone comes along and says something to you which seems hurtful, and if you are affected by it, it is because somewhere inside you you've taken it seriously. That means that you believe there is some truth in it.

If you did not believe there was any truth in it, you would recognize that this person is just calling out for love, that they are mistaken, that they need healing and correction, and you would just respond with love and laughter. You would make light of it and not take it seriously or personally at all.

When people come along and provoke you in this way, they are actually attempting to help you, by pointing out places in yourself where you actually believe that something is wrong with you. If you didn't believe something is wrong with you, when people say these things to you you would not react at all. It would not move you or disturb your peace, or your confidence, or your certainty.

Clearly, if you are upset by what someone has said, it is because, sadly enough, deep down, you believed there is some truth to what they said. In other words, you've abandoned your certainty that you are wholly truth and love and light, and have entered into a lower estimation of yourself, which is in agreement with their evaluation of yourself. If it seems that they have so easily triggered you into a reaction of hurt and retaliation, then clearly you have too easily fallen into a belief that you're not good enough, and that you deserve this mis-treatment. And this will be marked with you viciously retorting that 'thats not true at all', in a very upset way, because some part of you actually does believe it's true. You say you don't want it, but you do.

Therefore, people come along and seem to hurt you but in fact, you could not be hurt if you did not agree to be hurt. And then you must in fact be hurting yourself, because the other person isn't the one who forces you to agree. That's your choice. You don't have to agree, you can hold firm in the truth, certain of what the truth about you is. But if you have any fear as to who you are, or any doubt as to your worth, or any undermining of the truth of you, then for sure, you're going to attract people to come along and poke and prod at your sore-spots to try to get to look at them to heal them. And you'll take these helpful provocations as unwanted attacks. ALL of your sense of attack, however, comes from yourself, and you attack yourself plenty enough without needing to claim that anyone else has added to or caused it.

So if someone has said something to me, something that is not true, and if I have a reaction to this, it must mean that I have an ego, which means that I believe I am not as God created me, and therefore I am the one who is not certain of my own integrity. And it is my own lack of certainty in myself that is being pointed out, and it is my own agreement with what they've said about me that sends me into a tailspin. But I have to realize that I really am responsible for this reaction. I am the one who believes this (and probably worse) about myself, it just *seems* like they put the hurt into me by seeming to be the one who attacked me. They did no such thing. All they did was raise to my awareness the pre-existing hurtful attitude about myself that was already inside me, which I put there, because it's what I think of myself.

People who are frequently easily upset and easily triggered and easily angered and easily offended, do not think well of themselves. People who are often reactionary and get extremely worked up when other people seem to say or do things that are unacceptable and 'clearly false', you know that those people are 'weak' in their loyalty to the truth, and have little faith in themselves. They don't realize who they really are, or how much God loves them, or what the truth is about them and others, otherwise they would be in a constant state of invulnerability and joy and peace.

This state of invulnerability is what we all deserve. We are all worthy of it. We are all good enough. None of us are sinners. We've done nothing wrong. All of us are equally innocent and divine. So if that's all we are certain of, we could not be harmed by anyone attempting to say otherwise. We would just laugh and not take it seriously. But if we do not believe and know and experience this truth, then yes, we will have a reaction of 'how dare you say that' and will feel hurt and have justification for blame, to disguise the fact that we ourselves actually are the ones who don't believe in ourselves. The other people just came along to show us that, to point it out, to make us be aware of our own pain, so that we could have an opportunity to choose again as to how we regard ourselves.

And it is our own self-attack that we experience as inner hurt, not an attack by another person. We are 100% responsible for everything we experience and feel. And before we attack others for how they seem to attack us, we need to really honestly take a look at how we are attacking our own self with our own beliefs in unworthiness, negativity, lack and so on. Why is it that we don't deserve absolute love all the time? Why is it that when such and such a person comes along to tell us that we suck, do we recoil in horror that WE ourselves actually believe this is true, and how dare they point it out?

"I am not upset for the reason I think." - ACIM

Many many times in the Course it talks about the importance of *extension* - that if you do not share what you have you cannot have anything. 'Having' to the ego means not sharing. 'Having' to Holy Spirit means sharing. But why is this?

God extends Himself AS you to Create you and sustain you. You are His Creation. And because He gives you all the properties of Himself - his 'Fatherhood', you also therefore would naturally be a Creator and express your own fatherhood by further extending. So provided there is all this extension going on, everything is natural and normal. It's when we refuse to extend, that we enter into ego, because we're trying to stop Creation.

Now, Course stuff is sometimes hard to really understand using our regular language. In Heaven there really isn't any time or distance and there isn't a before-and-after scenario. But the idea of extending you can't really get a sense of it unless you put it sort of a chronological order like that, i.e. God extends from him to you, then you extend from you to others etc.

So I asked myself, if it weren't for this way of looking at it, how would I understand extension and why does God even extend at all.

I see it as... God radiates everywhere. Like a glow of light. It is his Presence (I'm hearing). Presence everywhere, God everywhere. God being everywhere. It's not like, God is separate from you and he shines outward onto you or through you. It's more like, God radiates His Presence everywhere and you ARE this 'radiation', somehow. I know we really can't properly put it into words, but.

So God being everywhere shares Himself everywhere. This idea of 'sharing' really means... God is present everywhere. There is nowhere that God is not, so that must mean he is 'fully shared'. The opposite of that would be that God is absent somewhere, so that would mean God does not 'share in' that part of existence (thats the ego's idea). So sharing has a lot to do with presence and Oneness and wholeness.

So God shares himself, be's whole himself, shines himself everywhere, and that is extension. The Course then says God did not will to be alone. By this I assume it to mean alone as in lonely. The Course also describes being alone a an ego concept of being separate. God doesn't will to be separate. But God is ONE, and whole, so it's not like God's sitting there twiddling his thumbs wondering if anyone is going to show up to play with. But for some reason, at least in Course terms, he 'creates' a Son. The Son is this idea of the 'end result' or effect of His Cause.. but really cause and effect are One and this doesn't happen over the course of time. The effect is always present forever because God causes/sustains forever.

But how do we explain that God created a Son out of the need to not be alone? Perhaps this means that God didn't will to not receive. He willed to both give and receive, and in a sense, what he receives 'from' - although it is One with Himself - is what the Course is calling 'the Son'. The feedback, if you will. But again there is no separation or time involved here. God shines everywhere and the radiance of God upon Himself is the Son.... even though this again suggests a gap of separation of time or separate caused and effects etc... this is why it's impossible to really describe.

Anyway. God extends us and we therefore must be extenders also because we are like Him. When we withhold extending or deny extension, we're trying to put a stop to Creation and to being an end to Life. That is the ego's choice for death. So to choose Life you must extend in the same natural way that He Created you. This means God radiates 'through' you, in a sense, although again there is no space or time involved here. God doesn't broadcast and then the broadcast travels through space and time a bit and then is received by you or relays through you. There is no spacetime. Extension is His shared Presence. Extension is the idea that God is already everywhere.

So when we have blocks to love, are trying to deny God, are trying to stop Life's extension, are trying to bring about an end/death, we're standing in the way of Creation and suffering. When we lift those blocks away and ALLOW GOD, everything 'flows' naturally and there is no blockage, thus no sickness or death.

Sometimes God's suggestion to me is.. ... "shine".

So here I am, shining a bit.

Let's get back to 'having'. If you don't extend you can't have anything. What this means is... the presence of God is blocked when it is not extended, so it if is really thoroughly inhibited, this essentially prevents God's presence. God's presence is WHAT IS, which means that's what you can HAVE i.e. experience in reality, so you can't join in that experience if God's presence is not being allowed to extend. So in effect it's like snuffing out a candle... if you stop the light you can't have the light. If you stop God you can't have God. And you can't really have anything other than God because nothing that He didn't Create exists.

So if you want to 'have' you have to "give all to all" i.e. give God - all that is - to God - to everything. This sharing, giving, extending of presence, shining, radiating, allows God's presence and thus for you to 'have' and own your real Self, which is One with Him. You can have all of your real self by extending it. It gives because it shines and is present everywhere. Without shining/extending you have nothing - by not extending, you prove there is nothing to extend, which implies you have nothing to extend.

Something like that.

You can't forgive the world, by focusing on it, and trying to regard it as forgiven. You can't love it by loving it directly. It's not there. This is something that I get hung up on quite often. I ask myself, how do I forgive the world?

Usually I'll take a look at the course and see it saying over and over again that awakening is recognition, there is no world, the world is unreal, it's not happening, etc. But in that I find it hard to see how love enters into it. It's just a "fact" that the world is not real, but this is rather a cold clinical truth, and doesn't integrate the love.

So then I ask myself why would I love the world, especially when the world seems so cruel? And the fact is I can't love a cruel world. If it is really there and it's really cruel then it is unlovable and cannot be overlooked. If I make it real, if I believe in it as not a dream, then there is no way I can be at peace about it, yet alone love it.

Then I'm reminded that if I strip away all sense of causation from the world, all beliefs that it's doing things to me, all notions of attack and suffering caused by it, or sinfulness on its part, then maybe this lays the groundwork for being able to see it as innocent, to a degree, or at least not accused. Is this what allows me to be loving toward it?

What occurred to me though is that forgiveness really isn't about targeting the world and forgiving it, or having a certain attitude about it. It's not even there to have a relationship with, really. In fact, Jesus says in the course "to forgive is to overlook", and that christ vision looks beyond the body/matter to the light. So really if I'm being forgiving, I more or less should practically ignore and deny the world. "The world you see must be denied" and all that.

But again this denial of the world, this ignoring of it, doesn't really clue me in as to how to be loving. So then what came to mind is, if the world were stripped of all its seeming attack and causation, what is left? Well, what is left is me having an attitude problem. It's me having hatred or anger or a projection of sin. And now we get down to the real situation.

Because in truth it's not really so much that you need to forgive the world. It's more to do with that you need to forgive YOURSELF. If you have sin in your mind, any belief in attack or guilt or fear etc, you're going to project it onto the world and use it as a scapegoat, in one way or another. Whether it be hating the weather or attacking the neighbors or judging the politicians or whatever. The world becomes a target of focus and attention and distraction through projection.

So let's be reminded again. "It can be but myself I crucify", and "I can be attacked by nothing but MY thoughts", and "I am doing this to myself" and "I but accuse my brother (and the world) of my OWN sins." So now we're getting down to it. Because if I have an attitude problem, a belief in sin, an inner guilt, which I am trying to escape through projection and blame, that not only has a whole lot to do with me being unloving toward the world, it also is what MAKES the world that false perception sees. Because "The world is false perception."

In that sense, the world really in truth is neutral and nothing, and "I have given everything I see all the meaning it has for me." Meaning that any sense of "the world is cruel, wrong, bad, evil, sinful" isn't something inherent to the world itself, it's something I've given it. The world is nothing more than what I have given it to be. Through my lack of love.

It still remains impossible to love the cruel world because it is my unlove that makes it cruel. You can only love the real world, and you will only see the real world when you love. Because a loving perception only makes a loving world, because "The world IS perception". "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts". "There is no world apart from what you wish." "The world you made" in hate can be stripped of the hateful attitude and is re-made by the Holy Spirit.

So at the end of it all, trying to love a cruel world is impossible, because the perception of cruelty is part of projected sin and anchors you into false perception. You cannot see it as neutral or forgiven or overlooked while having an unloving attitude, and the unloving attitude always starts within. Because you look first within to what you believe about YOURSELF and then you project that out and THEN perceive. "Perception is a RESULT not a cause" and "projection makes perception."

When you're all caught up in how to forgive the world, you really need to shift the focus to how can you forgive yourself, so that you don't accuse the world in the first place. When you are no longer accusing the world, you aren't believing that it is a bad thing or an evil thing or a real cruel thing. It becomes, I presume, impossible to see it at all, when love is ruling the mind, because "love looks upon love" and hate looks upon hate. And only in unlove can you see the world of death.

To forgive the world, forgive yourself. What you think of yourself will be projected and extend outward, projecting the world you see, causing you to either see the hellish world of bodies and flesh and death, or the real world of light and peace and happiness. You must come from love, to see love or to justify forgiveness. And you can't be forgiving towards the world if you can't be forgiving towards yourself first.

Lesson 136, "Sickness is a defense against the truth", contains statements by Jesus which are hard to accept. They seem like extraordinary claims about what sickness is, how it is undone, and the impossibility of a healthy mind producing a sick body. It speaks of immortality, even at a bodily level.

In ACIM, sickness means a belief in separation from God. This applies to the level of the mind and it is in the mind that it is healed. However, the body is being projected by the mind and is "within" the mind, and reflects the mind’s condition. It is an out-picturing of the inward condition.

Every "form" of sickness which shows up in bodies is included in the scope of sickness applying to the mind.

Sickness projects a sick body. Bodies which have forms of sickness, suffering, damage, something broken or missing etc, are expressions of the belief in separation. These things can ONLY show up IF the mind maintains that belief.

Interesting stuff happens to bodies when the mind is healed. Sickness does not stick around on its own, nor is it sustained by the body or by the world. It is solely MAINTAINED by the mind, and so if it is showing up in the body, the mind IS maintaining it, thus believes in separation, thus is not healed. A broken/sick/dead body is PROOF that the mind has not been healed. When the mind IS healed, the body MUST therefore NOT PROVE that sickness is real, and therefore all signs and symptoms of sickness MUST disappear.

Let’s see what Jesus says which is so radical (my emphasis):

— "(Sickness) Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. WHEN THIS IS SEEN, HEALING IS AUTOMATIC. It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach that carries all of them to truth, and merely leaves them there to disappear."

So right off the bat, Jesus teaches us that all forms and expressions of sickness (including cancer, stroke, heart problems, broken limbs etc, and death), MUST DISAPPEAR when the purpose of the sickness is recogized. Later Jesus tells us that we make sickness in order to DEFEND ourselves against the truth. But we only keep the sickness so long as it serves this purpose, and when the purpose or "need" for the defense is gone, the sickness MUST disappear.

—"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole."

Clearly then, sickness attacks and defends us against the truth. This includes all physical symtoms which is how the mind’s sickness shows up. If the mind is attacking the truth, it is also going to attack the body. The body will then become weak and sick. Since sickness is an attack on the truth, it is NOT POSSIBLE for there to be sickness if there is not attack, and it is NOT POSSIBLE to wake up to welcoming the truth without putting the sickness aside. Doing so must make it disappear, otherwise if it remains in any way, it continues to prove the mind is not healed.

Notice also how Jesus describes the mind as trying to twist, distort, make inept, and reduce to split-off parts. This act of the mind is HOW SICKNESS IS MADE. If the mind is TWISTING REALITY, it TWISTS THE BODY. If the mind is distorting reality, it distorts the body as well. Holy Spirit showed me this happening in a sudden vision not long ago, where the mind was literally "twisting" and distorting, like applying a psychic force, towards the body, making the body sick.

Our attempt to attack and change reality, attacks and changes our projected body image as well. We can’t hold a belief in attack in the mind AND keep a picture of a healthy body in the mind at the same time. The body WILL suffer if we attack reality, and if we DO NOT attack reality, the body MUST BE HEALED for the same reason - the mind cannot hold a picture of a sick body in the mind at the same time as believing in health/wholeness/truth.

Here is how ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH is implemented:

—"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."

So yes, Jesus is literally saying, we can ONLY be sick if we DECIDE TO BE SICK. We can only be sick when we misperceive the truth and believe it is attacking us, and that we NEED A DEFENSE to keep us "safe" from it. We will then use separation as a device for trying to put distance, or a gap, between us and God. This puts a gap between us and LIFE. The result is that we cut ourselves off from LIFE. And that means, we just chose to be sick and to die.

Jesus also tells us here that sickness DOES NOT HAPPEN TO US against our will. This mean ALL sickness. And death. Neither sickness nor death can appear AT ALL unless YOU decide to make them appear. That’s quite some responsibility that you have! You MAKE sickness from guilt, as an attack, to make the truth go away, so that you can have an illusion of your EGO being safe. Since sickness does not happen against your will, neither does it HAVE any will of its own, and therefore CANNOT STAY if you will to accept God’s truth.

—"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be."

Here Jesus is telling us that we attempt to BIND OURSELVES to the body in order to DEFEND ourselves against God/Life. By equating/identifying yourself with the body, you align yourself with the physical and attempt to SHUT OUT the mind. If you can identify yourself with the body, and if the body will then be sick and dead, this is HOW the ego attempts to kill the Son of God.

He also tells us that believing this distortion, which is also a belief in magic, and is also the authority problem, has the capability of bringing about DEATH. All death is a choice. Suicide. There is no accidental death. No-one dies without their own consent. He continues:

—"Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will"

"Your choice to die". Hmm. Yes. We CHOOSE it. Which means, it CANNOT HAPPEN if we do not choose it. Death is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Sickness is not caused by ANYTHING except your own mind. Furthermore, sickness and death (which you made, and can abolish), does not continue when you decide NOT to be sick or die. When you decide NOT to be sick or die, SICKNESS AND DEATH CANNOT HAPPEN.

—"You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin."

So you can pretend to die, if you want. You can pretend to be sick, if you want. But sickness and death are both a dream, not real, and what you really are cannot die. God does NOT SUPPORT SICKNESS AND DEATH in any way. He does not create them, he does not view them in a special way, he does not include them, he does not believe in them. God is ONLY LIFE, not life and death.

Here’s a clincher:

—"Truth has a power far beyond defense, for no illusions can remain where truth has been allowed to enter. And it comes to any mind that would lay down its arms, and cease to play with folly"

Read this and read it again. Sickness (illusions) cannot remain where truth has been allowed to enter. This means, ALL SICKNESS AND DEATH cannot *REMAIN* if the mind chooses to accept the truth. Accepting the atonement, or any act of forgiveness or miracles, MUST undo sickness and death in some way. And that includes at the body level.

Read it again. Truth has a POWER stronger than defenses (sickness, death). When truth’s POWER has entered the mind, sickness and death CANNOT REMAIN. Neither in the mind, nor in the body. NOWHERE. Because truth knows that sickness and death DO NOT EXIST at any level. If you STOP ATTACKING YOURSELF with sickness and death, you will STOP BEING SICK AND DEAD.

—"Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings."

Peace an truth TAKES THE PLACE of the vain imaginings that were "sickness and death". All sickness is imagined, made by the MIND. Stop dreaming it and it will cease to be.

Does the undoing of sickness affect the body? ABSOLUTELY!

—"It (mind) will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey. Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

NOW IS THE BODY HEALED. When the mind heals its belief in sickness, the body MUST HEAL. The SOURCE of the sickness has received relief, and therefore the sickness must "clear up". It must disappear in a MIRACLE.

Now let’s break out the big one.... the IMMORTALITY OF THE BODY:

—"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."

Wowza! The body‘s health is guaranteed, ie it is IMPOSSIBLE for the body to be sick or die. In a state of truth in the mind, SICKNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE. It cannot exist, it cannot stay, it MUST be healed, 100%! You cannot have a sick body and a healthy mind at the same time!!!! This is also supported when Jesus says elsewhere:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for IT WILL BECOME to you. Use if for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will SEE IT as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes HOLY. Because it is holy it CANNOT BE SICK, NOR CAN IT DIE. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all."

So as Jesus has said here, the state of the body is ALWAYS a direct reflection or correlation to the state of the mind. If mind SEES it as sinful, it becomes SICK, and dies. This accounts for the sole cause of ALL SICKNESS in the entire world. And all death. BUT... IF you SEE IT AS HOLY, it becomes whole, it becomes INVULNERABLE TO ATTACK, it becomes INCAPABLE OF BEING SICK, and IT CANNOT DIE! Another word for that is, IMMORTALITY!

Let’s be clear here, before the controversy takes root, that Jesus also says that at some point this "invulnerable, deathless body", which doesn’t even need food or water (!), will likely at some point be laid aside. When it is not longer USEFUL it will disappear. But this does not mean it will be put down on the ground and made to rot. THAT IS DEATH! The holy body can only be "ended" by DISAPPEARING IT by the power of the mind. Nothing else can end it, and it CANNOT be ended by attack. Attack will merely KEEP it and create more sickness and reincarnation.

So yes, at some point the body can become incapable of being attacked in any way. Sustained by the power of God supernaturally. Eventually we will RECOGNIZE that we are not a body at all, and it has no usefulness, so our TRANSPARENT MIND will extend only transparency (total honesty). This will mean it STOPS PROJECTING A BODY. The body thus disappears into the nothingness from which it came. This is how the dream is left! It is the only exit. Leaving via DEATH is the TOTAL OPPOSITE OF CHOOSING LIFE.

Jesus concludes with a reminder:

—"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment 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."

Note here that Jesus says we make a body identity which, separately, attacks the body. This gives a different meaning to body identification.

If we believe we are separate from God we will see ourselves as being an illusion, which will show up as an IMAGE - a body. He warns us here to be careful of MAKING OURSELVES SICK, beause our mind literally does have this power over matter/form. Every miracle demonstrates that the mind must be more powerful than the body. Therefore the mind has power over ALL matter.

Hoepfully it is clear from this chapter alone, that we do not NEED to be sick, sickness CANNOT STAY unless we want to KEEP mental illness along with it, when we choose the TRUTH it is *GUARANTEED* that all sickness and death must be UNDONE COMPLETELY, and it is God’s will that we be perfectly happy and healthy even in a body.

No-one needs to suffer. No-one needs to die. The body cannot be sick unless you make it so, and doing so will keep you from God. But choose again, and sickness will vanish before your eyes. All sickness can be reversed. All death can be reversed. There is nothing your holiness cannot do.

Now, pause a moment, and watch out for an ego reaction of guilt. My intention is not to make anyone feel guilty. Nor is it Jesus' intention. But he is trying to educate us with deep honesty about what sickness is and is not so that we can be more easily freed from using it to hurt ourselves. We need to be willing to look at this, it's part of the course. We are adults here, right? We can handle it.

Jesus's statements simply tell us that all forms of sickness are part of an attempts to make our body sick, in order that we can hold it up as proof that our brother is a sinner, accusing him of having caused the effects/symptoms. We show him sickness, evidence of attack and sin, to imply that we have been affected against our will, thus able to scapegoat him and accuse him of sin. Scapegoating isn't just psychological, it is physical.

And furthermore, Jesus is clearly teaching that the body, as a symbol, CAN symbolize innocence and forgiveness, through its physical healing. A healed body teaches and demonstrates and proves that there has not been sin, it exonerates your brother, AND it helps to heal his mind. Your physical health, stemming from your psychological health, becomes your brother's health. When the body is sick, it accuses your brother "Brother, at your hand I die". This happens are psychological, physical, and metaphysical levels.

If you want to love yourself and your brother, the body MUST depict only a symbol of heath and wholeness. Otherwise it is serving the ego's purpose of making sin real. "The mind, being sane, heals the body."

*** Physical sickness is a symptom of an unholy relationship with your brothers! ***

Jesus demonstrated this principle through the resurrection. Here's what he says in passages from "The picture of crucifixion" and "The fear of healing." These are POTENT teachings not often accepted in ACIM circles.

"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape."

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved."

"Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him. To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned."

"The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the CONSEQUENCES of the guilt they overlook. Yet no-one CAN forgive a sin which he believes is real. And what has consequences MUST be real, because what it has DONE is there to see."

"To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain the proof he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes."

"Who forgives IS healed. And in his healing lies the PROOF that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing."

"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."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing 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."

"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."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.

Show THIS 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."

"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."

If you are not being absolutely immortal, then you are trying to be a victim. Victims are not just those who seem to be overtly attacked by another. Victims are those who believe they can be CHANGED AT ALL BY ANYTHING.

There is a wide range of victimhood, or what you might call "victim consciousness", from mild to extreme. But everyone's doing it. We're all trying to make out that we're something that can be affected. That we can be hurt or suffer, made to feel something, caused against our will, converted and transformed and modified by the world.

The bizarre but factual truth is that the world does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to you. It is not the cause of you, God is. There is not a single speck of anything in the whole of spacetime that has ANY ability to change what you really are at all. You are changeless and eternal and you do not have the ability to change.

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea." UrM6C3

We all entered into a grand charade of pretending we can die. Pretending we can be mortal, that we can suffer, that stuff can happen to us, that we can be affected and changed. Even that we can change ourselves against God's will. None of this is true.

"You see yourself as a ridiculous parody on God's creation, weak, vicious, ugly and sinful, miserable and beset with pain. Such is your version of your self; a self divided into many warring parts, separated from God, and tenuously held together by its erratic and capricious maker, to which you pray." UrW95L2

"You see yourself as vulnerable, frail, and easily destroyed. And at the mercy of countless attackers more powerful than you." UrT22G11 You cannot change what is permanently changeless, but you can BELIEVE you can. This belief is a mistake and a lie. Everyone who believes they can be victimised, attacked, hurt, damaged, destroyed, is lying. Anyone who feels they are suffering or weak or threatened or afraid are lying. Anyone who claims that someone did something to them is lying.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you." UrW191L9

This can be a harsh truth especially when it seems so real and convincing, especially when some other body comes along and performs a physical abuse or harm upon your body or feelings. Especially when it seems to blatantly obvious that someone "not myself" is wholly responsible for "causing changes in me."

And we've all been through shit. We've all experienced what we call suffering. We've all had pains and hurts, sicknesses. We've all died many times over. We've all gone through every form of misery possible and every form of unhappiness and every kind of horrendous nightmare. And even in spite all of it, NOT ONE SINGLE BIT OF IT IS TRUE.

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do." UrT9K8

We CANNOT be victimised or attacked or hurt or damaged or threatened or changed at all. God who is immortal maintains us forever in his mind by his infinite immortal will to be immortal beings forever. We are absolutely incapable of change or of being change or of changing anything. There is NO CHANGE in reality.

"Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack, and His peace surrounds you silently." UrT10D1

We must remind ourselves frequently when tempted to believe we have BEEN changed, or CAN change, that we HAVE NOT done this. IF we believe we have done this, we will believe we have sinned and are guilty, deserving more fake punishment. We cannot BE punished. We cannot become guilt, or turn into evil, or transform into the anti-christ.

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. " UrW152L1

Beyond all lies and all deception and all fake suffering and all pain and sickness and all death, beyond space and time, we are all absolutely infinite beings that are so absolute and so always the same forever that we have not even BEGUN to change into anything else.

"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are." UrW190L5

All that's happened is we have gone into DENIAL about our permanent reality, our permanent perfection, our permanent Christhood. And have PRETENDED to be something that changes. We have damaged the body, damaged the emotions, damaged the thinking, but we have not damaged the soul. What we are can never be changed.

"The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One." UrT29G1

All that's required then in awakening to the truth is to ACCEPT THE TRUTH, that nothing has EVER happened to us, nothing CAN happen to us, and there is not even a world that could be accused of doing such in the first place. Attack does not exist. There is no pain or suffering or sickness or death. We are the sons of God and we are free from suffering forever.

"There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death and see the life beyond." UrW163L8

"There is no death. The Son of God is free. And in His freedom is the end of fear. UrM29A4

Being vulnerable in itself isn't a bad thing. To be vulnerable is to be exposed and open to something. Able to be affected by it. If you expose yourself to God openly you would resurrect into eternal life and joy. That's a good thing.

It's only when you expose yourself and open up to the ego, or really to the idea of the opposite of life, to attack, that you are becoming vulnerable to suffering. Exposing yourself to the ego produces sickness and death. It's like it's toxic, and the more you make yourself able to be affected by it, the more dead you become.

Now, in the victim mentality, which is ego, we always seem to be exposed to and at the effect of something in the world. Something other than God. Really it's an exposure to attack and sin, and ultimately to death. We accuse death of making us dead. We claim that external causes have the power to destroy us and make us sick and suffer. As if "death" happens to us.

In this kind of a mindset, a person is really rejecting invulnerability. They're saying, I am small and weak and frail and easily affected by everything. Everything has power over me and causes me against my will all the time. I barely hang onto life by a thread and live in constant fear that I will be attacked. I have to hide from everyone and everything and become paralized with terror. And anyone who wants to take anything from me can do so.

This mindset of blame and projection, or the reversal of cause and effect, of the disowning of power and playing small and weak, is the opposite of the mindset of immortality. Immortality means you cannot be affected, you are only at the effect of God, and you can only be exposed to life. It makes you invulnerable to attack or threat or danger of any kind, because what you are being vulnerable to is harmless. It is life-giving, not death-giving.

So the question is, what do I want to be vulnerable TO? To life or to death? What do I want to be affected by and open to? By life or by death? If I want to be not affected by the world, not made to suffer, not caused to react, not upset by anything, not terrorized, not threatened or hurt, and actually completely invulnerable to the world, then I need to choose to make myself vulnerable to God. Because God is my safety.

So we have this choice to make between heaven and hell, between life and death. A choice of what I will be an effect of. I am either an effect of God who is life, or I am an effect of death. I will become the spawn of satan. If I become an effect of death I will show up in the world as dead. If I don't want that the only alternative is to be vulnerable with God and open up to him through trust, so that I can be exposed to the life-giving power of his mind.

Just being in his presence can resurrect you back to life and permanent health and eradicate all attackability. Opening up to God reclaims your immortality. It makes you literally invulnerable to anything in the world. And that is the only way you can be safe. Exposing yourself to God IS exposing yourself TO safety. And when you are safe in God, you can never die.

"In my defenselessness my safety lies."

"Nothing except your thoughts can make you think you are vulnerable. And nothing except your thoughts can prove to you this is not so."

"The mind that serves the Spirit is invulnerable."

"Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

"It is not YOU that is so vulnerable and open to attack that just a word, a little whisper that you do not like, a circumstance that suits you not, or an event that you did not anticipate upsets your world, and hurls it into chaos."

"Illness of any kind may be defined as the result of a view of the self as weak, vulnerable, evil and endangered, and thus in need of constant defense."

"Concerns about the body demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life; how easily destroyed is what you love. Depression speaks of death and vanity of real concern with anything at all."

"Listen to what the ego says, and see what it DIRECTS you see, and it is sure that you will see YOURSELF as tiny, vulnerable, and afraid. You WILL experience depression, a sense of worthlessness, and feelings of impermanence and unreality. You WILL believe that you are helpless prey to forces far beyond your own control, and far more powerful than you. And you WILL think the world you made directs your destiny."

"This would not be YOUR wish unless you saw yourself AS ONE with the ego, which ALWAYS looks upon itself, and therefore on you, as UNDER attack, and highly VULNERABLE to it."

"You do NOT need God's blessing, because that you have forever. But you DO need YOURS. The picture you see of yourselves is deprived, unloving, and very vulnerable. You CANNOT love this. But you can very easily escape FROM it, or better, leave it behind."

"The idea that knowledge will make the individual invulnerable. This is the reaction formation against the underlying fear of vulnerability."

"You see yourself as vulnerable, frail, and easily destroyed. And at the mercy of countless attackers more powerful than you."

"A mind which has been blocked has allowed itself to be vulnerable to attack, because it has TURNED AGAINST ITSELF."

"A sick god MUST be an idol, made in the image of what its maker thinks HE is. And that is exactly what the ego DOES perceive in a Son of God; -- a sick god, self-created, self-sufficient, very vicious, and very vulnerable."

"Their OWN thoughts have made them vulnerable."

"The vulnerable are essentially miscreators, because they misperceive Creation."

If you are feeling unworthy or unwanted, know this.

In spacetime, cause and effect seem to occur whereby you cause something temporarily, it produces something temporary, and then the cause is withdrawn. As if it has deposited a creation and left it alone, essentially similar to the idea of birth.

Physical creations are like discarded pieces of trash, made momentarily and then forgotten about. In effect, its creator abandons it, does not want to maintain it, withdraws life from it, and leaves it to die alone.

What is deposited upon the Earth is merely thrown away, discarded and no longer nurtured by its creator. And being without a cause, it must die. This is true of all bodies and objects and forms, which are nothing but discarded rejects from a temporary creator who creates nothing that lasts and who wants none of his creations.

This is the metaphysical origin of feelings of unworthiness, of rejection by God, of being discarded and abandoned, of deserving death and of being orphaned in a trashcan of a world. If you ARE a body, then you are disconnected from your source, and your creator has rejected you as unworthy.

It is simply because you believe you are identified with something that is not permanent, came from a creator who does not permanently love you, were produced by a sinful evil cause who hated you and no longer wanted you, and who has left you for dead in a graveyard, lost and alone to wither and die.

No one can be sustained or maintained without a cause. Effects do not exist unless their cause is ongoing. You cannot step away from something, believing you have caused it, and have it remain. To do so is to reject and discard and abandon it to death. A creation which can exist on its own without its creator is a total illusion in this world. Without your creator you are nothing.

God is a permanent creator and he creates only that which is permanent, and he maintains you in his mind forever by his thought and will and power. He cannot ever stop loving you or stop creating you or sustaining you. That is why you are able to live forever, because he is permanently holding you in existence. You are forever ever-present and ever-perfect. He WANTS YOU permanently and so does NOT leave you.

Only in such a way can you BE worthy, or WANTED, or DESIRED by your creator, or VALUED enough to have permanent ongoing nurturing, support, maintenance and continued existence. Only if you were wanted FOREVER could you have eternal life. And this is how we have to learn to think of ourselves.

If we see ourselves as children of temporary parents, or deposits of a creator who has turned his back on us, or effects who have become orphaned from their cause, or fatherless sons, or motherless daughters, or in any way disconnected from our source, then we will see ourselves as unwanted. This is why all those walking the earth feel themselves to be unworthy, because they think they have become separate from God.

Separation is really the idea that cause and effect have become separated. That father and son have been separated. That the son no longer has a father. That the father is no longer a father and does not want a son. That the father has rejected the son and is trying to destroy him. And that the son has rejected the father and is trying to destroy him also. This MUST produce a sense of unworthiness because it means the father does not want the sons and does not value his life.

If you are the child of a permanent creator, who wants you permanently, and who can never stop wanting you, then you must be worthy and you must be wanted. If you are something lost and forgotten, discarded like a piece of trash, hated and reviled, evil and ugly, then obviously you're going to feel unworthy. Identifying with a body you MUST reject God and msut therefore feel valueless. The body is not worth ANYTHING, and if it is your self, then you have no creator.

A lack of worth therefore is nothing more than a breakdown in cause and effect. To be an effect without a cause, is to have been disowned. If you are disowned by your creator then what can that say of your value, who has turned his back and left you behind to suffer alone? Only if cause and effect are permanent can you be worthy of God. You cannot be some lump of flesh that was squirted out and became a separate thing, otherwise you ARE literally separate from your creator and are PHYSICALLY unwanted.

Fortunately God never leaves his children comfortless. He never abandons you. He never forgets you. He never stops loving and wanting you. He never finds you to be imperfect or worth discarding. He never stops suspending you in his mind, or making sure theat you live forever. He never leaves you and he never forsakes you. And most of all, he never fails to value you, because he has decided to hold you in his heart forever.

"You have not left me comfortless. I have within me both the memory of You, and One Who leads me to It."

"You do not walk alone. God's angels hover close, and all about. His Love surrounds you, and of this be sure: that I will never leave you comfortless."

"Before that, there was no need for healing and no-one was comfortless."

"It was accomplished FOR you by the Will of God, who has not left you comfortless."

"He will not leave you comfortless, nor fail to send His angels down to answer you in His Own Name."

"He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you."

"God did not leave His Children comfortless, even though they left Him."

"And he is entitled to everything, because it is his birthright as a Son of God."

"The Children of God are entitled to perfect comfort, which comes from a sense of perfect trust."

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't want to let go of attachments because I don't trust that everything will be okay unless I am in control.

Holy Spirit is asking us to be set free (!) of the need to have outcomes be controlled, or follow what we think is in our best interests. We want to be in the drivers seat with our ego, directing things and enforcing things, trying to resist what IS and instead enforce what we THINK things should be.

This is all about ego control and manipulation. I want to control so that I can seem to 'make happen' a particular situation. I don't trust that things will be okay unless I don't do this. I do this because I've become convinced that I NEED the situation to be this way. I think I have this need because I've got some kind of funky ego belief telling me that if things AREN'T this way then I will not be happy, or getting what I want or need. ie I'm going to lose or have lack or have something taken away if I don't make things be a certain way.

So this really boils down to fear, not feeling safe, and the belief that we need to put up defenses against what's happening in order to protect ourselves from attack. The trouble is that these very mechanisms, which are mechanisms of control and resistance, are the very things which CREATE a belief in attack because they ARE an attack.

Each time you create an expectation, or invest into attaining a particular outcome, you are setting yourself up for failure. There's a good chance events are not going to go the way you expect them to, and when that happens you will react unhappily. There is also a chance things will go the way you want, which is the ego's carrot on a stick, and then you think you have somehow 'won' the prize of getting away with murder. But its a gamble that you will likely at some point lose.

These investments into NEEDING things to be a certain way, to fulfill some kind of strange belief that 'then I will be happy' or 'I can't be happy when things aren't the way I want them to be', 'attach' us to these outcomes. We're pinning our hopes on them. We're depending on them. We're relying on things going the way we want and build up all this fear and anticipation about it turning out.

This 'attaches' our mind to these outcomes because if we DEPEND on these outcomes/events/people for happiness then we're HOLDING ONTO the ego's false promise or fantasy that GETTING this outcome will bring you salvation. Salvation will free you from whatever supposed 'need' you think you have and deliver you from the 'suffering' that you think you will experience, or maybe even do experience, when outcomes aren't the way you want them to be.

So really this is all about looking for salvation in the wrong place. Putting our faith into being CAUSED to be happy when certain things happen or certain events line up in a certain way. We're depending on EXTERNAL stuff to change what our experience is, and are relying on someone or something else to happen TO us to indirectly CHANGE us into the desirable state we're trying to achieve. This indirectness is passive and is also the role of the victim, in which you are sometimes at risk of attack and sometimes at risk of reward, and are gambling that if you steer things toward reward then you can avoid attack. But both are depending on the ego and both depend on external, separate things, to come along and affect you in a preferable way.

You can only be affected by things if you are not being responsible for yourself. You can only be changed by external things if you are not being who you really are. You can only have your happiness affected positively or negatively by outside influences if you are not aware that Joy is within you and comes from God and can never be removed. And you will only seek and not find salvation in these external outcomes if you are not finding contentment and needlessness within yourself. You will keep seeking (attaching to/depending upon) and not finding (losing/suffering) while you believe that you have a real need that is unfulfilled and that needs to or can be fulfilled (finding salvation) by some external, separate source beyond your control. And so then your attempt to control is an attempt to control what is beyond your control, to try to coerce it into becoming what you want (your savior).

So it really all comes back to whether you believe that you don't have God. Or that you are not as God created you. Or that you're lacking or failing in some way or have an absence of sustenance from God. If you're `in need` then you will seek and you will project and you will seek for false idols and you will attach yourself and become DEPENDENT UPON external stuff. This dependency is a form of slavery and is a form of losing yourself or 'transferring' yourself into the external thing. And this BINDS you to the ego's `level 1` world of duality and suffering. It binds you to the physical form and it binds you to a separate existence. All of your external dependencies and false needs keep you weighed down in the quagmire of darkness in the ego's world, and prevent you from staying squarely in the Holy Spirit.

So we need to let go of mentally and emotionally depending on anything other than God, essentially. Depending on God means looking to God for fulfillment and happiness and meeting all needs and TRUSTING that you will be taken care of if you let go of trying to care of everything yourself. But it does involve a surrender. You have to let go of your tight grip of fear that says... I won't fully let go because if I do, shit is going to happen that I don't want... which really means, shit will happen that does not align with your ego's plans for what IT thinks will bring you salvation, which is GROSSLY MISTAKEN and actually leading you into suffering. Holy Spirit's plan is better ;-)

So it's really about learning to trust Holy Spirit, to develop a trust that you CAN and should let go and allow and accept in order to RECEIVE LOVE and SUPPORT and HOLY HELP, and that it is SAFE to do so, and that it does not mean horrible suffering will follow. Going from fearfully holding on to surrendering and letting go takes a bit of a leap of faith. But once you've taken it, you'll let God be on your side. And you have mighty companions.

In the ego's world, someone has to be to blame for everything that happens. It's way of thinking is a very closed system. No matter what happens, if something happens, someone is to blame for it, even if that person had barely any control over it or much to do with it at all. To the ego, this is responsibility.

The ego wants you to confess that you are, in fact, guilty, and that you do, in fact, deserve punishment, because you did, in fact, separate from God and make all manner of shit happen. To the ego, this is being responsible and 'mature'.

In the ego's model there is zero room for forgiveness. Absolutely no forgiveness whatsoever. Everything that 'happens' in the physical world is proof, to the ego, that it has caused "real consequences" to occur as a result of separating from God. It is evidence of sin, and proves that everyone involved is guilty without question. To the ego, anything 'happening' in this world is a sin, and only sin can happen. To the ego, nothing unsinful can ever happen and God is impossible, meaning innocence is impossible.

So to the ego, when someone makes a mistake, maybe they bump into the fridge and it knocks a glass tray that was resting on the top and it crashes to the floor, you can bet, to the ego, that person is "responsible" for this entire thing. Not just the accidental bumping, not just the item falling down, not just the smashing, but all of it. Every single bit of it. And, to the ego, every single bit of it was ON PURPOSE, completely deliberate and intentional, producing real irreversible effects. It will point the finger in condemnation and declare "you have sinned". The ego has no concept of `not on purpose` or `unintentional` or `accidental` because that would suggest not guilty, which it refuses to accept.

To the ego there is no room for anything happening without it being involved in guilt in some way. To the ego, nothing occurs but without someone's deliberate intention and involvement, and therefore every single thing proves that someone is guilty. The ego claims that if you own up to this and "accept responsibility" for this and take full responsibility upon yourself for every single part of what happened, then and only then might you be excused or let off. If there is even the slightest hint of what seems like a resistance to accepting this "responsibility" it will condemn you further for avoidance and irresponsible carelessness. It demands you must own up to what you did (sin), that you must completely admit to it (it happened), that you did it intentionally (its your fault) and that you should enter into shame and guilt and suffering because you DESERVE it.

This is not responsibility. It is condemnation. It is a death sentence. When you hold other people to these standards, where the ego exalts the idea of getting someone to admit to being wrong, you hold yourself to that standard also and therefore find yourself constantly guilty for every little thing you do. You don't really want that. It's a way to be a victim and to be constantly tortured and therefore in need of being constantly 'good' in order to avoid making even a tiny mistake.

It's okay to make mistakes and break shit and do things wrong and be in error and not know everything and not be accountable for every single little consequence of events set in motion. You're not guilty for clouds moving, or objects falling, or people bumping into each other. You're not even guilty for seeming to deliberately do something wrong. Why does mistakedness have to always call for judgement and attack and the 'justice' of punishment? Punishment is never justified and it fails to correct anything, so it does not really stand for a pure or right way of living but only for how to get fucked over when you step out of line.

True responsibility MUST include the concept of you being 100% innocent. True responsibility must mean that no matter what you did or what effects it had or how serious or whatever, you are still innocent. It must mean you are unconditionally innocent. There is nothing like this in the ego's repertoir. To let you off the hook here and there it would see as begrudging pardons, or stern warnings, and it would never ever consider that you could be wholly found innocent for EVERYTHING that you seemed to do as a blanket statement. Yet Holy Spirit sees only your innocence.

Do you deserve judgement, condemnation, proof of fault, the justice of punishment, self hatred and shame, or some horrific shock treatment in retaliation for an accident? Nope. You're not guilty, no matter what. You made a big giant mess? You deserve love. You totally fucked up your life? You deserve love. And you broke everyone else's favorite toys? If they have a shit-fit that's not exactly your responsibility. Not to justify any behavior. But you're always innocent. Always. And only by being innocent can you be truly responsible. Because you have a responsibility to BE INNOCENT.

People that make mistakes need to be returned to a corrected state of not making those mistakes. They need to be returned to love. This is in the best interests of everyone. It is completely against everyone to punish that person or to feed lies and attack into them. That causes them to become your enemy. You don't want that. It's in everyone's interests that everyone be forgiven and reminded of the truth of who they are. We all need to own up to being God's innocent child. We all need to take responsibility for being who we authentically are, not who people condemn us for being. Responsibility WITHOUT the guilt.

True responsibility means ownership without blame. It also means that only the extension of God happens and there aren't any other consequences. It means everything is correctable. It means mistakes call for forgiveness and love, not punishment. It means you are let off the hook even before anything happens. It means that when stuff happens, you should be laughing, because it does NOT prove anything about your worth. It also means that you're not guilty when you make mistakes and you do not need to claim the guilt that surrounds them. You can own up to being mistaken, which is helpful, but this should never mean "I really did it".

When problems are recognized for what they are, they are recognized as NOT EXISTING. They are recognized as being part of a larger illusion, wherein the ENTIRE illusion is one thing and NONE of it is true. Because the only problem is whether or not you are sane and happy and at peace.

When you do not recognize that all illusions are one illusion, you fall for the illusion itself. And now you are deceived. And in being deceived you will narrow your viewpoint and become more specific. And now you will start to notice and dwell on the FORM of the specific problem, noticing its part in the hierarchy of illusions, aware of how it appears to be different to all other things and not like them at all.

And now you are lost in the appearance of a problem which isn't even the real problem. You see its differences and believe that they define what the problem is. The form becomes the truth. And upon looking at form as truth, problems are all different and specific and many, and the seeming solution to one is not the solution to another, all of them asking for a custom-crafted solution aimed at solving ONLY THE FORM of the specific problem. Such as using the right tool for the job.

When all problems are uprooted at their source, by recognizing that the FORM does not matter at all, and the form is not the actual problem, you see all of the problems from a single abstract vantage point. This view recognizes that the form of the problem is utterly irrelevant, its appearance means nothing, it is NOT really different to anything else, and you overlook it. You stop being deceived, and now by recognizing that ALL problems are one problem, and all seemingly separate illusions are ONE illusion, the ONE problem reveals itself: you believe illusions are reality.

Upon recognizing that all illusions are NOT REAL, and are all the same in different forms, and the ONE PROBLEM is your MAKING IT REAL, then the one solution that solves every problem regardless of its form, is to withdraw that reality and not believe they contain truth. NO illusions are real, and NONE of them are true. The whole "master illusion" is recognized as ONE thing, and it is ALL FALSE.

The problem isn't the problem. It's not about whether the sink is leaking, or whether the leg is broken, or the car has a hole in the exhaust, or paperwork went missing at work, or you don't have enough ice-cream. The problem is you believe this world is real, has truth, exists, is happening, is causing you, is alive, has a mind of its own, is willing against you, and is God. And the only problem happening is whether or not you are happy, or whether or not you are suffering. And all suffering is caused by you making illusions real to you.

The one problem to solve is the question of whether you are at peace or whether you are suffering. Whether you are in God or lost in an imaginary world. Whether you are safe or whether you are threatened. Whether you are joyful or whether you are experiencing the loss of imaginary things. Whether you are sane or whether you are insane. This is the only problem to actually solve, because once you go into insanity you invent a myriad of non-existent forms of problems which aren't even really the problem. Fixing the kitchen sink doesn't solve the separation from God.

Problems are solved when you are happy, because when you are happy you are free of problems and suffering. When it's true happiness, it forgives problems and rises above the battlefield. When you are not transcending form you are stuck in a maze of unlimited configurations and deceptions and cannot be happy. Only if the world is unreal can you recognize it does not exist, that you must still be with God, and therefore are happy.

----

"A problem cannot be solved if you do not know what it is. Even if it is really solved already, you will still have the problem because you cannot recognize that it has been solved. This is the situation of the world. The problem of separation, which is really the only problem, has already been solved. But the solution is not recognized because the problem is not recognized.

Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted. Who can see that a problem has been solved if he thinks the problem is something else? Even if he is given the answer, he cannot see its relevance.

That is the position in which you find yourselves now. You have the answer, but you are still uncertain about what the problem is. A long series of different problems seems to confront you, and as one is settled the next one and the next arise. There seems to be no end to them. There is no time in which you feel completely free of problems, and at peace.

The temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the problem of separation unsolved. The world seems to present you with a vast number of problems, each requiring a different answer. This perception places you in a position in which your problem solving must be inadequate, and failure must be inevitable.

No-one could solve all the problems the world appears to hold. They seem to be on so many levels, in such varying forms and with such varied content, that they confront you with an impossible situation. Dismay and depression are inevitable as you regard them. Some spring up unexpectedly, just as you think you have resolved the previous ones. Others remain unsolved under a cloud of denial, and rise to haunt you from time to time, only to be hidden again but still unsolved.

All this complexity is but a desperate attempt not to recognize the problem, and therefore not to let it be resolved. If you could recognize that your only problem is separation, no matter what form it takes, you could accept the answer because you would see its relevance. Perceiving the underlying constancy in all the problems which confront you, you would understand that you have the means to solve them all. And you would use the means because you recognize the problem."

"It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you." God has given you freedom. This cannot be revoked. You are free to create, or to mis-create. God cannot oppose your will because it is part of his own freedom.

This means that you have to decide to go back to God, of your free will. You can't be forced, coerced, manipulated or made to do anything you don't want to. You have to willingly choose heaven again.

"The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING."

"But to accomplish this, all your dark lessons MUST be brought willingly to truth"

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

Does this mean that you can take forever? Does it mean that you can decide NEVER to return to God? Does it mean that you could stay in separation and never wake up?

Given that you have total freedom, it should mean that you can take as long as you please, and even to never return.

The thing is, that while God wills that you be free forever, he also wills that you be one with him forever. And here we have signs of a "natural limit" placed by God.

"Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all."

"Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its Creator, who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose."

The way I read this, "will" always has an element of freedom to it, even when will is being USED to try to be unwilling. You cannot escape willingness. You will always have some willingness even if you are highly unwilling, which means that you will eventually will to be back with God.

"He can wait, delay, paralyze himself, reduce his creativity almost to nothing, and even introduce a real developmental arrest or regression. But he CANNOT abolish his creativity. He CAN destroy his medium of communication, but NOT his potential."

God has also placed a limit on spacetime, ie the separation. It has been repurposed as a classroom to learn lessons, which involves consent. And we have all willed freely to participate. In effect, there is a guarantee that we will wake up eventually.

"The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete."

"For if you could REALLY separate yourselves from the Mind of God, you WOULD die."

Another thing is that trying to be away from God is painful. It is a rejection of happiness and love and ease and joy. A rejection of health and wholeness. It is a state riddled with suffering. And eventually this is intolerable, especially when it becomes extreme.

The more extreme the separation, the more it hurts. The more you try to be evil, the worse your life gets, and the more you become insane. The harder you try not to exist, the more you repress and hate yourself. And it does not feel good. Some people have extreme tolerance levels but not unlimited.

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way."

This is part of the fact that there is a safeguard built into free will. Basically, in order to fully will something, you have to be fully willing. If you become unwilling, ie try to use will to NOT will, you are arresting the will. This causes you to shut off access to your power to create, and you become "weaker".

Effectively, if you oppose God's will, you become powerless. If you deny your freedom, you imprison the will. It all gets automatically shut down because by choosing separation you're literally denying freedom and power.

""Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul."" ... "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."

The end result is that you cannot use will to attack will, or to attack or change God. Or to change the truth or anything real. When you try to, there is a lack of will, which shuts it down and causes nothing to happen. You might hallucinate that the nothing is something, but nothing is really created.

Also the Holy Spirit has been created to guarantee holographically that the whole is always in the part, and thus no matter how many times mind tries to split itself the whole of God is still there. You cannot leave eternity or really separate.

"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. 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."

So God has naturally caused a number of things all which guarantee you are not only protected and safe (immortal) and have not really done anything, but also has the side-effect that when you choose away from him you do not like it, and inevitably choose against it. It's almost like saying the impluse to return is built-into the attempt to leave. And you never did quite leave in the first place.

"I CAN offer you my will to make yours invincible by this sharing, but I CANNOT oppose yours without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you. Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His."

We could say then that, we are always free, and can choose when to return to God, but at the same time staying away from God is fundamentally unpleasant, and eventually you will seek to return.

Another aspect of this is that God is so certain and so powerful, and the Holy Spirit shares his infinite power, such that he CANNOT FAIL in helping us to return. In his repurposing of the world we made, he guarantees that we will return to heaven. There are no loopholes in God's plan for salvation.

The Holy Spirit has effectively already finished the job.

"His task is mighty, but the power of God is with Him. Therefore, to Him, it is so easy, that it was accomplished the instant it was given Him for you."

"God's promises make no exceptions. And He guarantees that only joy can be the final outcome found for everything. Yet it is up to us when this is reached; how long we let an alien will appear to be opposing His."

"God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency."

"Reality observes the laws of God, and NOT the rules you set. It is His laws which GUARANTEE your safety. All illusions that you believe about yourself obey NO laws."

"The Atonement is the GUARANTEE of the safety of the Kingdom. Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation."

"The world WAS a way of healing the Separation, and the Atonement is the GUARANTEE that the device will ultimately do so."

"No force except your own will is strong enough or worthy enough to guide you. In this you are as free as God, and must remain so forever."

"The truth is still that the attraction of God is irresistible at ALL levels, and the acceptance of this totally unavoidable truth is only a matter of time. But you should consider whether you WANT to wait, because you CAN return now, if you choose."

In the separation, we entered a state of mind opposite to God. THEN we projected this state of mind outward, trying to hide from it. This produced the world of spacetime.

"That was the first projection of error outward. ***The world arose to hide it***, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

"***The world you made*** is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was ***made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind***, because you were AFRAID of it."

This means that the world is actually once removed from the state of mind of the separation. It is a second stage in separation. The first dream is of being separate, and was then projected as a second shadow dream of a physical universe.

This in turn implies that all things physical are a decoy, a kind of "effect" being projected from a hidden mental state. Therefore, anything physical is not a cause, nor is it capable of sinning, or of doing anything. It is a symbol of something hidden.

The whole world is an illusion of a world, an image, projected from a sick mind. It is being put there by an unseen process. It is not the world that needs to be forgiven and corrected. Or to put it another way, we must forgive the world in the sense that it has not done what we think it is responsible for. It is "following orders."

As purely an effect, the world cannot decide for itself, or choose what happens. It is the mind that is orchestrating every dream, every circumstance, all events and encounters. Behind the physical world its a state of mind which needs to be healed. It is the circle of fear. It is not seen by the body's eyes or by perception. It is prior to projection, and without projection there is no perception.

This is what we might call unconscious guilt, or at least a hidden and more direct sense of attack and sin. Its projected form, the physical world, was made to hide its viciousness.

"You would be willing to look upon your savage wish to kill God's Son, IF YOU DID NOT BELIEVE THAT IT SAVES YOU FROM LOVE. For this wish CAUSED the separation. You have protected it (producing the physical world), because you do not WANT the separation healed, and you realize that, by REMOVING the dark cloud that obscures it (the underlying belief in separation obscures God), your love for your Father would IMPEL you to answer His call, and leap into Heaven."

The world is a symbol of what it has been projected from. Just as the body is a symbol of the ego. It is not an end in itself. This whole world, this universe, is not an end, but a secondary expression from another state of mind. It represents that state of mind, an outward picture projected from an inward condition.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

"Perception seems to TEACH you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what YOU taught. It is the outward picture of a wish, an image that you WANTED to be true."

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that. But, though it is no MORE than that, it is NOT less. Therefore, to YOU, it IS important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the WORLD, but will to change your mind ABOUT the world. "

The whole point of forgiveness then is to recognize that the world is once-removed from what is causing it, and what it causing it is in the mind. Therefore, cause, mind, will, and power, have to be brought back into the mind and recognized as being there. This is where the answer and the healing is. To take back your projection really means to take back the physical world.

Nothing physical is sinful, because it isn't the SOURCE of what it is doing. It is a projected image. It's where the world is coming FROM that is where you'll find the sin. The world was made to disguise the internal sin, to make it look like sin is externalized. That's why "the world of bodies is the world of sin." But it is really a projection of the idea of sin. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outward."

To lift the belief in sin away from the world, to see "the forgiven world", simply means recognizing that all of spacetime is not the cause of itself. It is coming from somewhere in the mind. Anything it does is a second-hand projected form of what is projecting it. Being solely AN EFFECT of an internal belief, it can't be held accountable for anything. The belief in sin is internal, and not perceived out there.

This is why the world really has no meaning of its own. Why it's a meaningless world. Why it's neutral. Why it can act like a mirror to reflect internal ideas of sin, or internal ideas of love. Because it is really nothing but a screen onto which we project stuff. It is an externalization of what's inside us. To blame it for anything, or to even look to it to identify "what to heal", is to misplace what is causing it. The world is a SYMPTOM AND SIDE EFFECT of the belief in separation. The belief in separation is the real problem, and the only problem.

If "all my problems have been solved", it is because the world is NOT the problem. The underlying secret sins and hidden hates are the problem. The unforgiven grievances. The attack thoughts. The belief in sin and death. The idea of separation. All the mental content which projects as the body and the world. Those are the problem that needs healing. The physical world will reflect whatever internal changes we make.

This is why sickness is a projected form of guilt. The inside becomes the outside. This is why death can only happen if the mind chooses it. This is why the mind has power over the body, and why miracles can resurrect and heal it. This is why changing your mind about the world changes the whole world. You're really changing your mind about yourself and God, and this results in a different projection.

First we will project a world of sin and death. Then, changing our internal material, we will project a world of harmlessness and peace and love. And then we will so fully extend our projecting in line with God's will that we will simply resume the full extension of heaven. And in total extension there is no denial or dissociation or "ego projection" or disowning. And so the projected world, which came from the tiny mad idea projected outward, will simply cease to have a source. And without a cause in the mind, without the idea of death, it will simply cease to be made.

"The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."

The world, the physical world, BEGAN IN a dream. A secret hidden dream of sin and ideas of attack and death. Without this IN the mind, the world has no cause to PROJECT it. It came from nothingness and must return to nothingness.

ACIM reiterates many times that WE ALONE ARE THE CAUSE of our own suffering. We are not ever at the effect of the world. We are the cause of the world, the dream, and everything we feel and think and experience. Nothing happens without our consent, and we cannot even be hurt unless we ourselves hurt ourselves.

When you take this to the extreme, it means that YOU ALONE are responsible for EVERYTHING you experience, and NO ONE ELSE has anything to do with it whatsoever. There are no causes in the world, your brothers NEVER cause you (God is the cause of you), and you cannot suffer unless you choose to.

You can't even die unless you choose to. NOTHING can happen without your decision. And Jesus is completely literal about this. If you do not CHOOSE to suffer, suffering CANNOT happen to you. Sickness cannot happen, nor can death. You have automatic innate power over death and suffering at all times, and ONLY YOU can bring them upon yourself.

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it."

This puts 100% of the responsibility on your shoulders. Which means that if you are ever tempted to believe that something is happening for a reason OTHER than your own contribution, you are in a state of being mistaken, and now you need correction. Because it is ONLY your contribution that is causing everything.

This sounds easy enough. You just need to realize and recognize that every time you are unhappy, upset, suffering, in pain, sick, angry etc, it is because you are making it happen. If you would just stop hurting yourself you'd be totally invulnerable and healthy and happy all the time. No joke.

What becomes seemingly difficult is the many ways that we might not recognize what we're doing, or that we're even doing anything at all. We can become so used to blame, and reaction, and emotional triggers, and powerlessness, and believing other people actually do stuff, and that it seems impossible we can be responsible for everything.

In fact it runs very deeply. Every single thought you have, every attitude, every belief, are all part of the confusion that "its not me doing it" and "they are doing it to me." In every way, it is really you, who are an immortal being who can never even be changed at all, becoming confused and believing that something outside of you is changing you against your will. This can NEVER be true.

Every time that we lose sight of being THE CAUSE, we fall into temptation. We deny the truth and project causality outside of us. And this is the same as projecting sin. Then we find others or the world to be the cause of us. And this is a defense against the healing God placed in our minds. It's a way to avoid being healed by displacing the problem and its source outside of ourselves.

We talk about teaching others, and helping others, and having relationships, and performing miracles and so on, but the foundation of all this is simply YOU BEING YOU. Are you attacking yourself, or aren't you? If you aren't, you are not under attack. If you are, you are your ONLY worst enemy. This is all due to the suicidal self-destructiveness which comes from believing you are sinful. Are you trying to destroy yourself and others, or are you extending creation?

If you were to temporarily remove the entire planet, and all the people on it, and leave just you floating in space by yourself, whatever is going on in your experience is SOLELY caused by you. There is nothing else to cause it. This really tells you that ALL your forgiveness work is ENTIRELY an inside job. IT has nothing to do with others. It's you versus yourself. Is you trying to master yourself. It's your mind playing tricks on itself. It's you alone affecting yourself insanely.

Weaning off of all the reasons, excuses, explanations, justifications, beliefs, projections, and all other forms of displacement of responsibility, is not easy. We have a lot of habits formed, a lot of assumptions made, and a lot of belief in being vulnerable. We position ourselves as victims on a minute-by-minute basis. We might think it's not even POSSIBLE to question whether these things are happening to us. That things can seem so extreme and lopsided that it seems impossible we can be the one causing it.

But even those things which seem convincing, tempting us, secretly our dissociated choice, we have to dig out ALL of them, to question every single mental activity which is leading you away from your invulnerability. Even the notion that if you are being responsible, other people can still do stuff to you, cannot be true. Even the notion that even if you're doing your best, you will still die, cannot be true. Even death itself CANNOT have power over you if you decide NOT to die. "You are immortal and you cannot die."

The aim here is that you become "strong in the truth". That you stand in your own light. That you know yourself and be true to yourself. That you be so certain of what you ARE, that you don't for a second displace yourself, make a bodily identity, project cause outside of yourself, or believe any temptation that you are threatened by the world. This is how you be the light of the world, by going WITHIN to the light that is in you, so that it can extend.

Ultimately it boils down to one simple thing. You are the one who is making your life hell. It's not anyone else, and its not the world. It's not your neighbors, not your boss, your politicians, your celebrities. It's not certain races or countries or the weather or food or where you live. It's not external activities or events or space or time. It's just YOU. You are the one who is doing it to yourself. Holy fuck!

Salvation has been placed IN YOUR MIND by God because he knows that the PROBLEM is in your mind. And so the solution is in your mind. Your mind is what needs to be corrected, and that is all. This will take care of everything else. You are the one who is against you. You are the one who keeps giving YOUR power away to others. You are the one who keeps losing yourself and confusing yourself with things which are not you. And you are the one who can use the power of your decision to get out of it.

"You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do.""It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace in any way.""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."

"Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way"

"Who could be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts himself?"

"Nothing can hurt you, unless you give it the power to do so."

"If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or be hurt"

"You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness."

"I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

"It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events outside him. It is impossible that the happenings that come to him were not his choice. His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident."

"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."

It is not possible for you to suffer unless there is guilt in your own mind. The only way for a mind to have guilt in it, is for that same mind to believe it is guilty, thus identifying itself as guilty. All suffering is self-inflicted.

When it seems that you are upset in relation to someone else, suffering or feeling hurt by them, with them seeming to do something to you, or as though they are the cause of your upset, something has gone wrong with your perception.

You first believe yourself to be sinful and therefore guilty. But then you deny and repress this belief, portraying yourself as an innocent victim in order to pretend you are not guilty.

Then someone comes along and does something. It doesn't matter what they do, it has absolutely nothing to do with you and does not cause anything. It is "neutral". However, it may reflect, correlate to, play upon, emphasize, or put focus on, your own hidden belief in your own guilt.

This will "trigger" your own guilt to rise into your conscious awareness. Having denied that it exists, which places it into unconsciousness, it suddenly appears to come out of nowhere, and you still believe you are not the one who put it there.

It seems then fairly logical, even obvious, that this guilt only showed up when someone did or said something, so what they did must be tied to it or the cause of it somehow. Therefore, you conclude, they are the one who just hurt you and made you feel bad.

This is of course a mis-perception. But it leads you now to launch into a lengthy story, driven by pain, about how this other person must be the one who is mistaken. Whatever or whoever they are, if they caused your guilt and suffering, then there must be something wrong with them.

You then explain that they are the one who must change in order for correction to occur. You will feel justified in attacking them, getting revenge or seeing them as wrong, because you do not see how you have attacked your own self by believing you are guilty.

You can become very lost in this. This story unfolds in your perception about how this person is doing all this hurtful, upsetting stuff to you, causing you to suffer. And while you're in this mode, you will be stuck.

You'll be stuck because they are not the cause of your guilt, so getting them to change, even if you could get them to change, will not get rid of your guilt. The ego will tempt you to try to change another in order to atone and correct the situation, promising that it will "work" and succeed in restoring your illusion of peace. But it won't work, because only you are the cause of your guilt and suffering.

When you have identified your sense of self with sinfulness and guilt, you yourself have come to perceive and believe that you are made from sin and guilt. It redefines your identity. Sin and guilt can be targeted by the ego in others, because these things are inside of the ego thought system.

Anything within the ego thought system is fair game and open to being attacked by any other part of the ego thought system. If your sense of self is "within" this mind, made of or defined by what this mind believes, then this ego mind can attack what you are.

If you have identified yourself as made of sin and guilt, being sinful and guilty, you have identified yourself AS ego. You are now joined with and a part of the ego's belief system. Anything within that belief system can be attacked by that belief system. Then you will seem to experience that what you are can be attacked by other people's egos.

However, if your sense of Self, your identity, is outside of the ego's thought system entirely - if you are unconditional love, one with Holy Spirit, then you are literally out of reach of the ego's thought system. It cannot target you, it cannot attach to you, it cannot see you, it cannot identify you, it cannot interact with you, it cannot touch you, and it cannot hurt you.

The ego is incapable of accessing the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is the light of truth and light dispels darkness. Approach the light and the darkness in the mind must be dispelled and disappear. The ego is shown to be nothing, in the Holy Spirit's thought system, so it simply cannot exist where He exists.

You, identified as innocent and holy, are incapable of being affected by the ego, by any kind of attack, by any kind of guilt-inducing behavior, or any judgements or accusations from others. Without guilt in your own mind, and without you being the one to put that guilt there, nobody can put guilt there on your behalf. Nobody can reach outside of the ego and put guilt into the mind of the Son of God.

Therefore, without guilt in the mind, the mind cannot suffer. "A guiltless mind cannot suffer". A mind which does not, itself, believe in its own guilt, cannot suffer. A mind which does believe in its own guilt, must suffer, by its own hand, and it will project the cause of this suffering onto others. Yet nobody else is ever attacking what you are. Only the ego attacks itself, it never attacks love because it can't.

So if you are upset, caught up in a drama about what someone else is doing to you, how they are wrong, how they are causing you to be unhappy and stressed and upset, you are mistaken. It is YOU who believe you are sinful and guilty. It is YOUR sin and guilt that is triggered by them. They have merely come to show you, reflect to you, make you aware of, point out and trigger, the pre-existing belief in sin that you yourself put into your own mind. You cannot blame them for telling you what you believe is true.

Although you will hate for them to point out your own belief in your own faults, you can hardly blame them for what you yourself believe about yourself. You have to learn to admit that it is YOU who believe you are sinful and guilty, and your experience of upset because of this is entirely something you have chosen to experience. You yourself put it in place, and you yourself can undo it.

You are not upset because of someone else, you are upset because you believe you're sinful. You still believe you are guilty. And regardless of the form or specifics of someone else's attempted attack or judgement, it will touch upon and remind you of the guilt that you believe in. Thus you agree with the content of their attack, that it means you are guilty.

You will react and exclaim that no, they are not telling the truth, and that you have been unfairly attacked, but look again. You DO believe in what they say about you. You DO believe you are guilty. You DO believe you should suffer and be hurt. You DO believe in your own guilt. And that is the only reason you are upset.

You need to learn that all attack is really self attack. You need to learn that the secret to salvation is the admittance that you are doing this to yourself. That you chose this sin and guilt, and can change your mind about yourself - forgive yourself. It is YOU who needs forgiveness, not another person.

You cannot forgive another person. It is metaphysically impossible. You can only forgive yourself, because only you have really attacked yourself. It is not real or true that anyone else ever attacks you, so it cannot be something that is open for forgiveness.

Have you really sinned in the way that you believe you have? Was it a real sin? Or are you forgiven because you did not sin in reality? Are you forgiven because you cannot sin and are still innocent? These are the questions you need to be finding answers to, not attempting to figure out why someone else is hating you for you.

You are innocent. You are holy. You have done nothing wrong. Your sin is false. You are not guilty at all. Let yourself be free.

WHAT ARE THE LEVELS?

1. God is the primary level of reality. God "causes" the 2nd level.

2. Creation, heaven, Holy Spirit, Sonship. This is a permanent pre-separation state where many children of God live in harmony. Each child has a mind, and some of those minds chose to believe in mis-creating another level.

3. This universe, including Earth and all human bodies. The "purest" way to experience this level is in true perception, a reflection of heaven, the face of Christ, once-removed from Heaven. Being in this world you still have a choice whether to be in true perception or false perception. The making of this level introduced or came from "level confusion".

4. False perception produces hallucinations and distortions of imagined worlds laid on top of or as a "perception of" the world. This is the experience of hell on earth. The world itself is still an illusion shared by the many sons of God, so now there's illusions on top of illusions.

In ACIM Jesus is NOT always talking about the same level. Each level is a different CONTEXT, and each is kind of "inside" the one above it. So if he's talking e.g. about your perception of the world, he's talking about you being in false perception and transitioning to true perception. If he talks about "the world IS perception" he's now talking at a higher level than that - level 3. If he talks about "there is no world" he's talking even higher than that, at level 2.

If you read ACIM believing that there is "only one level" or that everything it says is "true everywhere" or in all contexts, you WILL become confused and mistaken. All kinds of false conclusions come from this.

Another very common mistake is "hopping around the levels" during mid-sentence in order to try to justify or justify-against something being true. We've all done this ;-) For example "the body isn't real so why bother healing it" or "the world doesn't exist so why perform miracles". That's an intellectual straddling of two simultaneous levels and trying to make the truth of one override the other. That is an error in logical reasoning. Some people aim straight for higher level non-duality kind of truth being the only valid level, which produces profound denial and level confusion.

WHAT IS LEVEL CONFUSION

The first level confusion occurred when we as God's "effect" (creation) turned around and pretended that we, on a "lower level" could be the CAUSE of the higher level that caused us. Our attempt to "cause God", or to will against God, or affect God (sin), is the authority problem, and it is also level confusion.

So level confusion means that someone is confused about which level causes which other level. What is cause, and what is effect. A common way this plays out is someone takes something Jesus says at some higher level, and then attempts to "apply it to" a lower level context, in order to "explain away" there being any relevance to anything said about the lower level. This is a classic intellectual defense, and an error in reasoning.

An example might be, the course says I am not a body so I will stop eating. Or, the course says my hobbies are not real so I am not going to do them. Or the course says I'm not a body I am free, so when anyone says anything about bodies I'm going to overrule them and trump their claims by *switching context*, ignoring the context of the conversation, and pretending that the higher truth is the only one that applies here - this is intellectual arrogance.

Confusing cause and effect leads to the belief in magic, which is the belief that something which is actually an effect, is causing you, and producing effects in you. It also means you have turned yourself from "cause" into an effect. It also relates to how you see God, believing you are the cause of Him and therefore can produce effects in Him (sin) - which leads to the death wish.

And as Jesus says, "all sickness comes from a confusion of the levels." Which means, ALL forms of sickness (body or otherwise) show up when you believe that you are NOT the cause, and instead something BELOW you is the cause of you, making you its effect. It's the same thing as believing the BODY causes the MIND and can make itself sick against your will. It's as if you have switched the higher and lower levels around. Jesus also talks about how MIRACLES restore the "order of the levels". Ie, they put causality where it belongs (e.g. in the mind) and effect where it belongs (e.g. the body/world).

Fixing a faulty perception of cause-effect rearranges the levels into their natural order and prevents you from seeing yourself as "at the effect of the world I see." It places you back in the driving seat of recognizing that nothing happens to you against your will. Your mind is on one level, your body is on another. Similarly, your mind is on a level BELOW or WITHIN God's level. Your mind is also below the level of your soul (the soul never leaves the sight of God, each soul has their own mind which can choose whether to accept God's will or not).

So level confusion began with the separation idea. And it will continue until you are in the atonement. Until then, you likely will continue confusing levels and seeing things "backwards".

This is why we have to learn to discern WHEN Jesus is talking at one level, and when He is talking at another.

It can SEEM as if Jesus is contradicting Himself if He says one thing and then later says another. But these two things would ONLY contradict if they were on the SAME level. When you realize they are NOT on the same level, it makes more sense. For example when He says the body is not real and God did not create it, that is a higher level truth. When he says the body can be used as a communication device to extend love, that IS on a LOWER level. And therefore it IS confined to and limited to the context of having a body, and all the truths Jesus teaches about the body's unreality/inimportance/nothingness are STILL true. So you have to beware of which level he's talking at and when.

Just even realizing that the course HAS levels was really eye opening for me a few years ago. Until then I just lumped everything together. When you realize Jesus is teaching at and talking in different contexts, it really really clarifies a lot of things. Many people struggle with this, and it's why a lot of the course didn't seem to add up for me for many years.

One final note. When we use higher level concepts to "dismiss" the validity of anything at a lower level, that too is level confusion, and a form of denial. e.g. "there is no world, why bother healing people" is level confusion. Within the context of the world, WHILE there is a world, we ARE to heal people. UNTIL there is no world level, it's not our experiential truth that there is no world. AFTER the world has disappeared, there will be no more need for these miracles. You have to remember what is happening WHEN and where you actually ARE in the context of levels. Otherwise the result of this is just more split mindedness and denial.

To be awake in the atonement is to have NO level confusion. That means you realize you are the CAUSE of everything you experience. It means you know NOTHING can happen to you against your will, and never has. It is the secret to salvation - that you must have done it all to yourself, and you now choose again. It also means you now have POWER OVER THE LOWER LEVEL, which makes you a MIRACLE WORKER who can now break and override ALL of the ego's laws, including laws of physics, time, space, biology, etc.

"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions."

"Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone ELSE'S dream."

The VITAL thing thing to realize, which is brought to light by the Atonement principle, and seen with true forgiveness, is this.

IT IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SIN. You cannot do it in reality. You are literally incapable of changing God. You are literally incapable of making effects in God, stopping His will, changing who you are, corrupting your innocence, becoming sinful or dying. LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

You HAVE NOT sinned. You HAVE NOT separated. You cannot leave God. You cannot do anything to change reality whatsoever. God's Kingdom is totally the same as it always has been. His Kingdom cannot be assailed, it is permanent. NOTHING HAS CHANGED. You are 100% incapable of separation or sin or death. This is literally absolutely true. You simply HAVE NOT DONE, what you think you have done, and you ARE NOT doing it now.

So the question remains, what exactly IS this "state" that you are in? If it is impossible to sin or be separate, why does it seem like you are?

Simply, because you cannot ACTUALLY sin or attack reality or kill yourself, you have ONLY IMAGINED that it is possible. And that means, you are simply IN DENIAL, and you have made the ERROR of BELIEVING that you can do what you cannot do, that the impossible is possible, that you have done what you have not done, and you think something unreal is real.

So it's not like, you actually DID separate or sin, and that now you need to undo all that and heal it. You DIDN'T do it. You HAVE NOT produced real consequences. NOTHING REAL HAS HAPPENED AT ALL because nothing real can be threatened. So it has not been threatened. Whatsoever.

All that's "happened" is you've pretended to be ABLE to do what you CANNOT do, pretending to have done what you CANNOT POSSIBLY have done, and now you are "dreaming", literally "wishful thinking", having a fantasy, that you've convinced yourself you actually DID do it. That you are doing it now. That you are PROVING that it is real and possible. But you're not. You're failing to prove it. Reality is unaffected. You are just delusional.

So it's not that you're inside a real separation trying to get out. It's ONLY that you BELIEVE you are, you THINK you are, and you are MISTAKEN in believing and thinking you are, because in truth YOU ARE NOT. You have not done anything real whatsoever. You're just someone who believes they have committed a crime that they HAVE NOT committed. You think you sinned, but you didn't. You think you had a power that you do not have. You think you've CAUSED something REAL to happen against God, but you DID NOT.

LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

All you have is a case of BEING MISTAKEN. All you have is a case of having MADE THE ERROR, of believing, that you can and have done something that you shouldn't have done. It's not even that you DID make a real mistake. You just THINK you did.

It's like, a child who does something and they think they broke something, and they become upset and start crying, and hurting themselves, because they feel bad about what they did. And there's the adult trying to reassure them, that what they THINK they did, it totally does not matter, they DIDN'T cause any real harm, nothing has really been affected, and if they will just open their eyes and LOOK, they will SEE that it's TRUE, that NOTHING HAS GONE WRONG.

It's the recognition that everything is STILL AS GOD CREATED IT. Everything is still perfect, holy, whole, innocent, unharmed, safe, protected, undefiled, unattacked, completely happy, and totally healed. Because it's only your MISTAKEN BELIEF that ITS NOT, that needs to be undone. You are just mistaken. Just very deluded and deceived, in believing something is true that isn't. YOU ARE JUST CONFUSED.

What you think you've done, you HAVE NOT DONE. What you think was possible, IS NOT POSSIBLE. You're merely in a state of denial, pretense, trying to convince yourself that you ACTUALLY CAN DO what you cannot do. You're using all kinds of illusory dreams of weapons against yourself and others to TRY to bring about the death of God's son, to try to attack, to try to produce PROOF that you ACTUALLY HAVE sinned and that you ACTUALLY DO deserve to die. But not only have you not sinned, YOU CANNOT DIE. And even your attempts to prove it with a DREAM, wherein the dream body seems to die, STILL does not prove it. Because you carry on.

"You have made a bargain that you cannot keep." You literally are NOT CAPABLE of proving to be true, what is NEVER true. You literally CANNOT destroy the Son of God. So this whole ENTIRE dream world, designed to try to demonstrate and prove that God's Son can be anything less than immortal, is TOTALLY FUTILE. It DOES NOT WORK. Death does not work. Death is FAILURE, failure to make illusions real, failure to prove death overcomes life, and failure to have ANY REAL EFFECTS WHATSOEVER.

So basically, there you are, an innocent IMMORTAL BEING, who can NEVER stop being immortal, PRETENDING to be mortal, pretending to suffer against your will, pretending to be a victim, pretending that a dream world is choosing everything for you against your will, and pretending that you can die. ALL TOTALLY FICTIONAL. All fake. All made-up. All illusions. Because NOTHING can change the sheer FACT of what you are, a totally immortal spirit being that IS STILL AS GOD CREATED IT. Which you can NEVER CHANGE. EVER.

"I am still as God created me" is atonement thinking. This is a forgiving perception. It is a recognition that only the truth is true. It is a remembering that NOTHING HAS REALLY HAPPENED. Nothing has gone wrong. You are totally safe and loved in Heaven. You HAVE NOT SINNED WHATSOEVER. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING REAL HAS BEEN AFFECTED!!! Not even a tiny bit! You're just sleeping and dreaming of being a sinner. You'll wake up to realize and remember, that dream was so ridiculous, it's ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for you to sin!

Absolutely EVERYTHING In this ENTIRE WORLD, this whole universe, is UTTERLY RIDICULOUS NONSENSE. Not one single thing about it is true. It is the dream of death, a TOTAL FICTION, absolutely bullshit in every way imaginable. It is a state of denial, a state of unconsciousness, a state of dreaming that you're exiled from Heaven.

You are having nothing more than a bad dream of death, in which terrible things seem to happen, impossible things, unthinkable things. And yet when you wake up, you will know, without a doubt, the ENTIRE THING was totally impossible. And you will thank God that NOT ONE SINGLE THING IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAS EVER TRUE.

This is atonement. This recognition is forgiveness. This truth, that you HAVEN'T done anything, that NOTHING happened. That THERE IS NO WORLD, NO EARTH, NO SPECIAL THINGS, there is NO DREAM, there is ONLY HEAVEN. "Only the creations of light are real" "There is no life outside of heaven." Therefore you are JUST MISTAKEN to believe otherwise, and recognizing this is a forgiving attitude.

You ARE forgiven, fully, because you LITERALLY have NOT DONE ANYTHING!! Your only choice now is whether to recognize and accept this truth, or whether to stay in denial and pretend you can and should suffer. And it's not God's will that you suffer in any way.

"Freedom and peace and joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death."

Whatever you believe is the cause of you, you believe is your creator. God is the cause of you, being your creator. When you displace causality and project it outside of yourself, onto the dream world that you are causing, you believe that the world is the cause of you. This now means that you think the world is your creator.

Idol worship now becomes worship of your false externalized creator. The dream now seems to create you (physical birth), determine what you are, defines you, changes you, affects you, and chooses for you when you will live or die.

Believing you are being caused by any aspect of the world in any way, is a belief that your creator is separate from and outside of you. The dream world was made in an effort imagine that you are outside of or separate from God, producing a world which seems to be outside and separate from you. The dream world is now believed to be your Father.

Believing in external causes is a complete reversal of cause and effect. The dream is believed to be dreaming you. Every time you believe it has power over you, is attacking you, upsetting you, making stuff happen against your will, you are believing that the dream you are dreaming is dreaming you.

Anything it seems to do to you, you see as your inheritance. Anything that happens to you, you interpret as receiving. The world, as an externalized God, is seen to be willing against your will, choosing against your will and forcing you. It's seen as an enemy, because this externalized God is like your opponent.

When the dream is the cause of you, the dream is seen as against you. And this makes you an effect of the dream. Effects show up as physical symptoms of sickness, emotional symptoms of guilt and fear, and dictates your state of awareness.

If the dream is dreaming you, and you are not dreaming the dream, you are not aware that the dream is coming from you. This means to believe the dream is dreaming you, you have to be unconscious. That the dream can make you unconscious is nothing less than the belief that the dream can cause your death.

In orded to believe the dream is the cause of you, and you are its effect, cause and effect must be reversed. This reversal is literally false perception. False perception is backwards perception, in which that which is outside is taken in as if happening to you. Signals and messages come into you, at you, from the outside in. The body's eyes and senses pick up on what the dream world is telling you is there, and the body itself is part of the dream.

In true perception, mind sees and extends outward from the inside out, looking first within to love and peace, and then shining it outward in ignorance of what is in the dream. The dream is ignored, recognized as nothing but an effect of you and not a cause. No power or causality or will is seen in it. Its "alien will" no longer exists.

Nothing stands between you and the face of Christ, beyond the dream, and the dream is no longer an obstacle to peace. It is seen through as a thin veil of illusions which you have power over. You are now aware of dreaming, aware of being causal, and are aware that nothing in the world causes you. This is a correction of level confusion because the world you made did not make you. Recognizing you made the world gives you power - ie causality, over it.

When God is no longer thought to be the dream, no longer seen to be separate or externalized, He is now found within you, and being within you you will see him outside of you. Initially God is in everything you see, and then everything you see gives way to only God. God is all that you see and then perception ends, ending the dream and awakening you to ultimate reality.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

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

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

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

"There is no remedy the world provides that can effect a change in anything. "

"It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect."

"For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what it wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source. "

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

"Place cause and effect in their true sequence in one respect, and the learning will generalize and transform the world. "

"YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless?"

"The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, WITH NO EFFECT AT ALL."

"It is emphasized here that these differences have no effect at all on the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease."

"It is your wish that MAKES it what it is in its effect on you. "

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

"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?"

"They will not fade when dreaming ends. They end the dream instead; and last forever for they come from God to His dear Son, whose other name is you."

"He must be Savior FROM the dream he made, that he be free of it."

"His light is ALWAYS the call to awake, WHATEVER you may have been dreaming."

"You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it."

Somewhat channeled just now... Thanks Holy Spirit.

Fear is a protection against guilt. It is put in place to hide guilt. If the guilt were to be revealed, it would condemn you and you would "find the guilt" i.e. "be found guilty."

We put fear into place because we do not want to deal with the guilt that has created the fear. Guilt always is the source of fear because Sin confirms something really happened, guilt confirms that what you did was wrong and you're to blame, and then because of that you can't help but be afraid of punishment in the future.

Anyone who has guilt will become afraid.

So we actually use fear to put a layer of protection and disguise on top of guilt, to cover it up. Then we dwell on how afraid we are. And we project the fear as well because we don't want to live with the fear either. We don't want to be "found fearful". So then we try to get rid of the fear too by projecting onto others and accusing them of causing it.

The whole point of that projected fear, then, is to reverse cause and effect, to make it seem like the cause of the underlying guilt is someone else, and not ourselves. When we do this we're throwing a decoy out there and trying to pin blame on it. IF we can blame someone else for causing our fear, i.e. if we can project responsibility for the fear onto someone else, then we can find them GUILTY. Its then their fault. They seem to be causing the fear. They seem to also be threatening to 'create' the punishment that you believe you deserve (because deep down you feel guilty).

So then having projected fear and blamed its cause on someone, covering up your secret plan to use it as a cover for guilt, you'll believe that they are the ones who are 'making you be afraid' - because by projecting you are completely "disowning" the fear and are trying to get rid of it. So if you can pull off this deception, even deceiving yourself, that someone else is causing this fear, then you've accomplished a tremendous switcharoo... a wonderful coverup story that prevents you from having to go back and look at the GUILT that caused all this fear in the first place.

Other people are not making you afraid. They are not turning you into fear. They are not attacking you or getting ready to punish you. But you'll still believe in punishment forthcoming while you cover up the guilt and don't heal it, because fearing that punishment (which HAS to come if you believe you are guilty) doesn't really get rid of the cause of the fear, and you still believe in guilt, and even though you're trying to make out that other people are the ones who are sinning against you, it STILL does not convince you that you are safe or innocent.

You'd rather be afraid than be guilty. Even though the fear is really about you becoming WORSE OFF than when you were 'just guilty', because now you are guilty AND afraid, the fear pretends to hide the guilt and make it 'unconscious', so that you seem to not be aware of it, so that you can pretend that you are ONLY having to deal with fear. And then of course you are ONLY having to deal with the idiots that you project the fear onto - its all about them, having disowned responsibility for the fear as well.

So even though fear sucks, and fear of punishment sucks, and being so afraid and so PROJECTING of fear that you believe you're actually WITNESSING the people show up who are there to come and punish you (for you, so that you can blame them ;-), you'd still rather be in fear and projecting of fear than be guilty.

You don't want to look at the fact that you CANNOT BE AFRAID unless you are guilty. Who can have anything to fear if they are innocent? Who, who believes they are not guilty, can possibly have a NEED for an ego device that *seems* to alleviate the guilt by covering it up and turning it into fear?

You also cannot be PUNISHED if you are not afraid. The only way you can find punishment is by projecting your fear onto other people, effectively recruiting them as your attackers to do your dirty work for you, WITH your will, pretending that it is against your will. If you are not afraid there is nothing to project, which means you will not READ INTO other people a suspicious frightening motive of bringing down GOD's WRATH of punishment for your sin.

Remember this all goes back to the underlying belief that you sinned by separating from God. That's what this is entirely all about. All the guilt is about that. All the fear that comes from the guilt is about that. All of the projection of fear is about that. And all of the punishment that you're sure will be forthcoming because of how guilty you are, is all about that. It's all about what you think God will and should do to you, which you are deciding FOR Him on His behalf - i.e. on your own. Which is a mistake.

So where are you on the scale of forgetfulness? Are you in the separation stage? Have you turned your experience into one of sin? Have you gone further and blamed yourself for the sin, demanding that you be responsible for it? Have you taken the guilt even further and realized that it means you must be punished, which induces fear? Are you in fear mode? Or have you taken fear and projected it onto others outside of you, describing all the ways that it is their fault that this whole thing is happening? No matter where you are on that scale, right now, you CAN get back to God's love by retracing your steps.

And that means, if you are terrified of punishment, you're pretty sure to be in a state of projected fear right now. You need to take back that projection so that you at least own the responsibility that the fear is yours, its in you, and you made it up. Then you need to rewind that more and ask yourself, WHY am I afraid? It ABSOLUTELY IS NOT because of any projected reason or outside person. Ever. Absolutely not. That's heading in the wrong direction TOWARD the ego. You need to turn around and go the other way, back the way you came. Back toward the Holy Spirit. Retrace... if I am afraid now, it's because I believe I SHOULD be afraid because I believe I AM GUILTY.

Under the fear is guilt. What is it you are so guilty of that it requires such a fear of terrible punishment? Why are you so fervently TRYING to orchestrate that punishment, bring it on, and make it happen, forcing it to occur, through the device of fear and fear's projection? Why do you deserve such a punishment? Did you sin? Did you do something wrong? Do you have a false BELIEF that says you're a guilty sucker and don't deserve FORGIVENESS? You always deserve forgiveness. Always. There is ALWAYS a way to return safely to God's welcoming love.

Retrace those steps. Go backwards. Undo the fear by undoing the guilt. Get out of the fear by recognizing you are NOT GUILTY and therefore have NOTHING to be afraid of. Recognize your innocence. Holy Spirit recognizes it for you while you pretend otherwise.

You are perfectly safe in God's love and He will not condemn you of the things that you think you are condemned for. You are certain that there is NO WAY you can be forgiven for what you did, and NO WAY that it can be TRUE that you are innocent and deserving of love. This is your mistake. This is what must be corrected. You MUST find a way to remember you are not guilty, or you will just keep feeling afraid.

You don't need to 'deal with' your punishing attackers. If you stop projecting your shit onto them you will not see them AS attackers and it won't be their fault you are afraid. You also don't need to really work on the fear, because if you get rid of the GUILT then the fear will automatically disappear completely. It has no foundation. And you don't even especially need to work on guilt because if you have NOT DONE ANYTHING WRONG, you have not sinned, and you have not separated from God, then there isn't any call for guilt and you are perfectly innocent.

Choose again. You are not stuck and you are not being victimized by anything but your own certainty that you deserve it. Choose again. You are worthwhile and lovable and deserve complete forgiveness.

God loves you still. There is a way to be free of this whole nightmare. Choose in the DIRECTION of the Holy Spirit and your way will be made straight.

Let's take a closer look at sin and find out why no-one has ever sinned.

"While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

""Sinless" means without sin. You cannot be without sin a little. You are sinless or not. If your mind is part of God's you must be sinless, or a part of His Mind would be sinful."

What is sin?

Simply, it is the attempt to reverse cause and effect. You are the effect of God, and God is the cause of you. When you attempt to reverse this, so that you are CAUSING GOD, this is "sin". It would mean God is now affected by you, changed by you, against His will. That means you have attacked Him and changed him. The belief that you CAN do this, and that you HAVE done this, is the belief that sin is REAL. But this is IMPOSSIBLE.

There is a simple fact to keep in mind. You CANNOT change God in any way. You cannot cause him or affect him. You cannot do anything against His will. You cannot attack Him or make Him be something He does not want to be. Which means, literally, YOU CANNOT SIN against Him. You cannot cause God, therefore you cannot sin. Your hands are tied. You cannot attack anything real.

This also means that IN REALITY, nothing real can be threatened, nothing real can be sinned against, nothing real can be CHANGED, and therefore SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE. You literally cannot go against, oppose, object to, resist, attack, defend against, or do anything TO God or anything real. Sin is literally impossible. Sin literally CANNOT HAPPEN, and HAS NOT HAPPENED. And this isn't mere theory, you literally HAVE NOT SINNED AT ALL.

It is vital to absorb this FACT, because it lays the foundation for correctly framing what's to come next.

You have not sinned, you cannot sin, sin cannot occur, you cannot attack God, you cannot change reality, and you cannot cause the death of life. SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE IN REALITY.

Now. As you find yourself in a DREAM WORLD, Earth, reading words on a screen, you are not being aware of reality. You are not effectively "IN" reality. The world is an attempt to overthrow reality and replace it with unreality. The world is unreal. It's a dream of death. It's an ATTEMPT TO SIN, despite the fact that actually doing this IN REALITY is impossible. It's your best effort to TRY to PROVE that sin is not only possible but has occurred.

You MADE UP a bunch of dream illusions to try to paint a picture of what it might look like *IF* you had sinned. That picture is this world. "The world was made as a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." It's a picture of THE IMPOSSIBLE. "It is the world you see that is impossible." In this world, NOTHING HAPPENS. "All events are nowhere."

Yet this world SEEMS to contain things happening, seems to feature bodies attacking bodies, and seems riddled with sin. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." And if we BELIEVE that this world is REALITY, we WILL believe that the "sins" that occur are REAL sins, mistaking FANTASY SINS for reality. These ILLUSIONS of sin, IMPOSSIBLE sin seeming possible, are literally nothing but fiction, with NO REAL CONSEQUENCES against anything real. God is not affected by it, nothing real is threatened by it. You literally have NOT CAUSED ANY DAMAGE OR HARM EVER.

The fact remains. You literally cannot sin. You can't even begin to sin. This world is not real and so anything "happening" here is not REALLY happening. If you break a window, you did not break a real window. You broke a dream window. If you killed a flock of sheep in a fit of rage, you didn't. You merely dreamed of doing so. If you think you did some terrible crime that is punishable by death and suffering, you are ATTEMPTING to hold a deathly judgement against an INNOCENT Son of God, BY MISTAKE.

Because here's the fact of the matter. If you cannot sin against anything real, and therefore sin is impossible, you believing you HAVE DONE SO MUST BE MISTAKEN. You MUST be confused. You MUST be delusional. You MUST be out of your mind insane if you think it's even POSSIBLE to sin, yet alone that you have, or "have the proof" to show for it. There is no such thing as evidence of sin. There are only lies and illusions of sin. There is no real sin. ALL SIN IS FAKE.

Only by being very mistaken does anyone BELIEVE they have sinned. Only in confusion are we convinced that it's even POSSIBLE to cause something against its will. Only by being in ERROR having made an error of discernment does it seem plausible or "happening" that there can be "real death", "murder", "war" and the like. These are DREAMS of hell, not real hell. They are illusions of sin in an illusory world.

You have never sinned. You will never sin. God finds you guiltless, sinless and innocent forever. This is what you need to wake up to - accepting this is FORGIVENESS. The overlooking of sin, the overlooking of guilt, the overlooking of death. There is no sin, or guilt, or suffering, or sickness, or death. ALL of it SEEMS real, SEEMS to be happening, SEEMS like an awful terrible nightmare. But it is nothing BUT a nightmare. It's a nightmare to BELIEVE you can sin when you can't, or that you HAVE sinned when it's impossible.

You cannot sin. You will not sin. You have not sinned. There is no sin. No one has ever sinned. No one can sin against you. You have never sinned against anyone. YOU ARE NOT A SINNER. You are ETERNALLY INNOCENT. This is the only verdict the Holy Spirit will accept about you because He knows without a doubt that your idea of sinning is UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE and completely illusory.

You are DREAMING of sinfulness, suffering and death. You are punishing yourself in a hell of your own making for NO GOOD REASON. You are finding yourself guilty for having DONE NOTHING. You are not criminal, sinful, or guilty. You have never hurt anything or anyone. You are EXONERATED because IN REALITY SIN DOES NOT EXIST. If you think it exists, you are unaware of reality.

Belief in sin IS THE PROBLEM, not the sin itself. This whole world, the entire ego separation, the dream of death, is ALL about your BELIEF that you DID SIN, in DENIAL of the fact that YOU DID NOT. The WHOLE THING is a case of mistaken identity and false accusations. A claim that you accomplished something you could never do. It's an attempt to invent the evidence and give it credit/reality so that it SEEMS to prove you DID commit a horrible crime against God. YOU COULD NOT, NEVER DID, NEVER WILL.

So this whole world is A MISTAKE. You are MISTAKEN when you believe you or others are sinful or guilty. "BELIEVING in" sin being true is the actual issue. Your belief is mistaken. Your belief is madness. Your belief is an ERROR. And all errors can be CORRECTED. You believing you CAN and HAVE sinned is NOT TRUE, it and this error in thinking needs to be corrected so that you will REALIZE, you never did anything AT ALL. You accused yourself FALSELY.

No matter what you think you did, no matter how extreme or severe or what the consequences seemed to be, YOU HAVE NOT done a single thing EVER that God is upset with you about. You have ONLY been very mistaken. You have only ever had "mental illness", believing something is possible that isn't. You've acted insanely because you were not in your right mind. No one in their right mind believes in sin because the authority-problem notion of "I can change reality" is utterly ridiculous.

Mistakes call for FORGIVENESS AND HEALING. To forgive is to overlook the error and recognize the truth. You have not sinned. There is no sin. "And in this view are all your sins forgiven." A mistaken person merely needs healing, not punishment. You deserve forgiveness and healing, not condemnation. You have simply been confused and have mistaken illusions and dreams of sinning for reality.

Not one single sin in the history of the planet has ever happened. There is no sin anywhere. All "doing" is illusion. Everyone is eternally innocent. God finds you worthy, and loves you forever. Sinless, guiltless, deathless, fearless. You are holy and always were.

If you meet a person who complains a lot, they frame themselves as a victim and then tell you all the many many ways that someone or some group of people are wrong. They go on and on and on and on and on endlessly. And meanwhile you feel like you are being held hostage and can't get away and you can't shut them up. And then as you try to leave, they follow you and keep on going with their diatribe.

What's happening is the person is full of guilt and shame and secretly condemns themselves a lot. They see themselves as victimised by all the many things in the world that they seem to not like. But they are not being spiritually responsible, for their experiences and feelings, so constantly accuse the world of causing it. They feel justified in pointing a finger of blame and listing off all the many sins they see outside themselves, but really because they themselves believe they are sinful. They hate themselves, so they like to hate others. Their shit don't stink, and they portray themselves as always idyllic and harmless and justified in being righteous.

The payoff for them is that if they can project their sins onto other people and find everyone to be guilty, it makes them have a certain sense of psychological relief from the heavy burden of their own hidden guilts. They get to come off as innocent and not like those who sin, separated off from them, and therefore not the guilty one. It produces an illusion that they believe they are not guilty, which is a form of denial.

Meanwhile, the more that they do this, the more they are basically imprisoning others. They are projecting their own imprisonment, and in effect really see themselves as imprisoned by their own guilt. They are locked in and stuck in their own confinement, so are expressing confinement to you. And that makes you feel like you are being locked in confinement. Whether or not they actually target you or complain about something you are believing or doing, it doesn't matter, because they want your indirect acknowledgement that they're right and that you are bearing witness to their innocence.

So long as you agree with them, don't stop them, allow them to spew, and go along with it as though condoning it and not challenging it, they will keep going and never end. They find validation by your passive receipt of it. Meanwhile their condemning blaming imprisoning vibe can make you feel like you're being held hostage and that the other person is using you, like you're chained to them and have to hear the long list of sins, so that they'll feel better about themselves. They don't want to let you go or be free because they won't be able to scapegoat and get rid of their guilt. It's really a guilt dump onto you so that they feel better, in illusion.

There is another way that this plays out. I've noticed if someone sees themselves as a victim and isn't being spiritually responsible, they'll believe that things you personally do make them feel unpleasant, guilty, shameful etc. They will then accuse you of being the cause of their suffering, even though they did it to themselves by taking something personally. They will twist what you said and use it against you as though you caused them to have a reaction. And now they'll start to get angry at you and scapegoat you and demand an apology.

This becomes a form of intimidation, where responsibility has been shifted, and now you supposedly are responsible for making them feel better. They hold what they did to themselves against you, and now you feel like it's your fault, you feel guilty, and now you feel like you have to atone or make it up to them. You have to now grovel and lower yourself and make an apology, after which they grin with delight that they forced it out of you and made themselves feel superior.

It becomes a kind of tyrannical relationship of control and blame, where you are accused of causing them what they're supposed to be responsible for. You feel imprisoned by this accusation, and supposedly guilty for causing them. They get this angry strong opinion about how you're wrong. They totally depend externally on someone apologising or meeting their needs or sucking up to them, in order for them to feel better, because they are not being responsible for how they feel. They depend externally on this positive feedback and getting positivity from others, to make up for their lack of responsibility for feeling shit. And meanwhile they judge the living shit out of everyone and everything.

So then you start to feel obligated and held hostage and like you can't tell them they're wrong. Since they depend so heavily on external validation, you also sense that if you were to say anything against them or that they might take as an attack or that they might think of as not validating their bullshit, they will become even more angry and negative and scapegoating, and then they'll become a big monster and do something even more threatening and aggressive and controlling. So then you become afraid that they'll have power over you, control you, manipulate you, and that you're not good enough.

This kind of person is so victimy and so dependent on externals and so believing the physical world and generally likely atheistic and non-spiritual, such that they act like a gatekeeper and superior person whose opinion has to be requested on all matters. Like they are really important and special. And if you agree with them they shower you with ultra positivity and loveliness, and if they don't agree with you they go into an angry pout mode and become aggressive.

The special love flips to special hate. So now it's very hard to question their motives or to point out their flaws or to push back on their strong opinion because you know they'll just go into attack mode and make you an enemy. So instead they get to stay in a kind of 'everything's wonderful' state of illusion and fake special love relationship and dishonesty and irresponsibility, acting like they have the face of innocence all pleasant and nice to everyone, only to become an enraged monster when anyone points out their bullshit.

Either way you can end up feeling held hostage by someone's ego, with demands that you act a certain way, or indirectly demands that others act a certain way, in order for them to be happy. It can be difficult to stand up to and to draw a boundary with these people, to stop them from their spewing or to raise doubts about their motives. In both cases the person is a scapegoater, a judger and a hater of the things in the world that they consider wrong.

They segment the world into positives and negative, side heavily with what they like and side heavily against what they don't like. This is a spilritualizaiton of the world, an attempt by their egos to make out that some parts of the illusion are better than others, and leads to believing that they themselves are better than others. In their siding with the face of innocence they become overpowering and seeing themselves as holier than thou. In effect, those who portray themselves as the innocent victims tend to be the most vicious accusers.

"The partly innocent are apt to be quite stupid at times." UrT3D3

"This is particularly unfortunate, because frightened people are apt to be vicious" UrT3C15

"The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears, at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good." UrT31E2

"Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand condemned, because of what I am." UrT31E4

Ok here's something you may never have considered about this world. This is an eye opener!

The world itself, by which I mean spacetime and all its contents including Earth, is in fact a projection FROM AND OF a hidden inner state of guilt and fear. We in fact first believed in separation, AND then we projected that idea OUTWARD from our mind, which MADE THE WORLD.

The world is therefore ONCE REMOVED from an inner state of guilt and fear, on which it is based. The world therefore HIDES a deeper layer in the mind. We used projection to pretend that the egoic content IN the mind was not in the mind, and "extended out" (projected) that idea, which then appeared to form an EXTERNAL world. This external world is a decoy and a cover-up for the INTERNAL belief in sin.

"***The world you made*** is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was ***made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind***, because you were AFRAID of it."

"That was the first projection of error outward. ***The world arose to hide it***, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

"the ***mad projection*** by which this world was made."

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides **the screen** for the misuse of projection."

"Do you REALLY think it strange that a world in which EVERYTHING is backward and upside down, ***arose from this***? IT WAS INEVITABLE."

"**The first dream** has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear ***on which the world was based***."

"The dreaming of the world is but a part of your own dream you gave away, and saw as if it were its start and ending, both. ****Yet was it started by your SECRET dream, which you do NOT perceive, although it CAUSED the part you see and do not doubt is real.****"

What this means is there really are two things going on in the separation. There's our internal mental state of insanity, sin and guilt, which entails the IDEA of separation - the tiny mad idea - and then secondly there is a PROJECTION of this idea outward which forms the physical "universe" of space and time and bodies etc.

"The body is the IDEA OF SIN made flesh and PROJECTED OUTWARDS."

Jesus goes on to describe this "attempting to get rid of" sin, and its SOURCE, in terms of the "circle of fear" which lies BELOW the body level and out of sight. This is quite a profound statement:

"The circle of fear lies ***just below the level the body sees***, and SEEMS to be ***the whole foundation on which the world is based***. Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury, vengeance, and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place, ***so that the world could RISE from it***, and ***keep IT hidden***. ****Its SHADOW rises to the surface**** (the physical world), enough to hold its most ***external manifestations*** in darkness, and to bring despair and loneliness to it, and keep it joyless. But its INTENSITY is ***veiled by its heavy coverings*** (the physical world hides it), and kept APART from what was made to keep it hidden."

So below the physical level, behind and prior to the PROJECTION of the world, there is a circle of fear, and of fury and vengeance and betrayal, of sin and guilt, which festered in the mind BEFORE the world was made as a projection. And then this was then projected out to make it seem that this ego shit wasn't IN the mind but OUTSIDE of the mind - which is the ego's use of projection. This HIDES the fact that the ego content is still buried in the mind, and puts all the focus on "the world of bodies is the world of sin."

"The body cannot see this, for ***the body AROSE from this*** for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger"

So what this is saying is that guilt is in the mind below the physical level and it is projected outward, producing its SHADOW, which is the physical form. The body cannot SEE the underlying origins of itself in the mind because it is not visible or made of matter. Yet because guilt PROJECTS the body, the body remains "guilt's messenger" or speaks for what is hidden. "Its SHADOW rises to the surface"

"Without the IDEA of death there is no world." - the idea is hidden by its projection. The world, as the shadow or projected form of the hidden error, cannot exist if the inner IDEA of death is removed from the mind.

Basically then you can't project a world that's based on the mad idea or the THOUGHT of death and separation, if the thought of death and separation is removed from the mind. And the world is actually the EFFECT of an internal CAUSE. Projection makes perception. You looked within and saw sin and guilt and projected the physical universe out from it to "externalize" and dissociate from the mental content. It was this which also formed a wall of flesh around the mind, as a body. If the SOURCE of the world in the mind is gone, the world can no longer BE projected.

To overcome the world therefore, we have to properly forgive by FIRST recognizing that the world - the physical level of it - is not really the problem. Just as another person is not really the problem. We only think the world is the problem because we are not realizing that it is being PROJECTED. If we stop using this FORM of projection, ie we stop projecting FROM fear and guilt, we will stop projecting a world that appears sinful, and instead project "the real world" FROM an inner state of peace and love.

"But to find the place, you must relinquish your investment in the world ***as YOU have projected it***, allowing the Holy Spirit to project the real world TO you, from the altar of God."

"At first you see a world which has accepted this as true, ***projected from a now corrected mind***. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done."

The takeaway is that in fact planet Earth, in its physicality, is in fact once removed from the problem. It isn't even WHERE the "sin" really is. The problem is in the mind and is below the physical surface level. The physical HIDES the problem and makes you focus on its projected FORM. The world ITSELF is not where the problem IS. Because underneath the physical world there is a hidden layer of terrible fear, FROM which the world projects.

This practically almost means that there are TWO worlds we made.... an inner world of hidden guilt and fear - a sort of "underworld", and a dissociated PROJECTED world of physical form and sin. This perhaps makes sense given that all of this is taking place in a SPLIT MIND, in which "you are in two minds", and literally one part of mind houses the secret guilt while the other houses the projection which pictures its crucifixion.

"This world IS a ***picture of*** (projection of) the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see (project to perceive)."

"This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low, dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is WHOLLY an illusion."

"It can indeed be said the ego ***MADE its world on sin***. Only in such a world COULD everything be upside down. This IS the strange illusion which makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness this world's foundation SEEMS to have is FOUND in this."

In effect, this world IS A DECOY, which in fact hides the "real problem" which is hidden from physical sight, and lies in the mind. If we have sin in the mind we project a sinful world. If we have love in the mind we project a loving world. And neither is first-hand reality because they are both projections. Once the "real world" is projected and "the forgiven" world is perceived, both the real and unreal worlds will disappear, because the mind will stop projecting on ego terms.

The separation will be undone, and only the TRUE CREATION of heaven - the projected extension of pre-separation reality, will remain.

God finds you WORTHY of love, right now!

God loves you completely, right now!

God has absolutely no judgement about you being sinful and holds no grievance against you, right now!

God sees your PERMANENT INNOCENCE, right now!

God knows you cannot really sin and have not really sinned, and so are STILL as He created you, right now!

There is nothing you can do to change His mind about you. There is nothing so bad that it can't be forgiven. There is no mistake so real or certain that it is irreversible.

The problem you seem to have is NOT a problem of whether or not God loves you, whether He would love you, whether He forgives you, whether you've been good enough, or whether He's given you permission to be part of His Kingdom. The problem is, you keep rejecting God.

You keep saying to God... well, thanks for the offer, but.... I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough, I don't deserve that, you just go give that love to someone else and leave me alone.

That's what we say to God every time we believe that we have done something wrong, been bad, evil, corrupt, sinful, guilty, made poor choices, caused hurt, or have been hurt. Every time, it's a statement AGAINST what God is already offering to us. We just keep saying, no thanks, I'm not eligible, I don't agree, I'm not worthy.

This unworthiness, a core belief, is fundamentally based SOLELY on the fact, that you believe that sin is reality. You think that you are in a real body, on a real planet, where real things are happening, that you did a real thing, that you really produced real consequences, that these consequences produced real damage or harm, and therefore you REALLY have sinned. And because of this belief that all of this is REAL, you automatically MUST, absolutely MUST, therefore be in agreement that you are UNWORTHY of love because you are no longer innocent.

If sin is real, innocence is not real.

If sin is real, there is NO WAY that you can be forgiven.

If sin is real, you have NO HOPE of ever being innocent again.

If you mess up and REALLY SIN, you MUST be going to hell, death, and damnation. No second chances. Just one tiny slip and you're fucked!

That's why you believe and experience a sense of unworthiness, unlovability, unforgivability. Your belief that you really did something, that something actually has gone wrong, has produced this side-effect of the rejection of love. You think that your sin has automatically forfeited your eligibility and permission to RECEIVE the love of God. You think God therefore is WRONG to love you, because of what you've done. Even if He is trying to love you unconditionally 100% you STILL will insist that He cannot, and you turn away from Him in shame and regret, yet CONVINCED that nevertheless you do not deserve love and that you're right not to.

As I sit here right now, I feel this. I feel my head wanting to hang low, because in some way, I feel ashamed of something. I believe that there's something I have actually done, something that I think is REALITY, which proves, demonstrates, confirms and agrees that I CANNOT be innocent any more. This stain, this tarnish, this defilement, this corruption, this error and mistake, SEEMS to scream that I am guilty, because I'm sinful. And that makes me feel as though God couldn't POSSIBLY love me now... that there's just no way that God could overlook this, and therefore, God MUST be ashamed of me.

It is MY false belief that I am a sinner that has produced a corrupted view of what God's opinion of me is. I can't ACCEPT that He can love me, if my sin is real. My real sin automatically MUST reject love, and MUST insist that I CANNOT be loved. It implies and enforces the idea that God simply WILL NOT, CANNOT and WON'T forgive me. Even if there is evidence to the contrary, even if everyone is saying, hey, Paul, wake the fuck up, God is unconditional love. The sin will say, noooo.. you're all wrong, God is not someone who loves unconditionally. God CANNOT love unconditionally, I'll claim, because my sinfulness proves it.

I will claim that BECAUSE I was able to "really sin", that PROVES that innocence is not forever, that God CANNOT be unconditionally loving, and that I have SUCCEEDED in proving that separation is real. Therefore, I HAVE separated from God, I HAVE sinned, and therefore God has been attacked, I am guilty, and there is no way to undo this because it's REAL. Permanent damage is the hallmark of sin. This all arises solely by believing that "I really did something". And a BELIEF in "permanent damage" (sin) shows up sooner or later as sickness and death.

So if you believe you have really sinned in God's eyes, or in your own eyes, you will be incapable of accepting that God is unconditionally loving. And that means you being loved is off the table. You'll just reject it and refuse it left and right. You won't even want it. You'll think you DESERVE PUNISHMENT.

You'll think, because you really did sin, it is TRUE that you are a sinner and it's TRUE that you fucked up, so that MEANS that you SHOULD be punished. As ACIM says, "sin demands punishment". It is automatically logically consistent that if you did really sin, you MUST be punished, and then you will feel guilty and afraid of this punishment being forthcoming, AND you will believe that it's going to come from God Himself.

So now, because sin is real, God is not only - in your view - DISABLED from loving you, INCAPABLE of loving you, God now is also going to PUNISH you for this sin, and that's just going to make you ashamed that you didn't obey God's laws or that you did something unforgivable and should go to hell. Suffering, damnation, condemnation, judgement, torture. It all becomes WELCOMED by you because you believe sin is real. You believe God is justified in condemning you, that you deserve it, and that you even WANT it!

If you really sinned, you will believe you SHOULD be punished, and that you SHOULD die. And you will believe it is God's will, because God cannot possibly love you. You are using sin in order to attempt to change God, to convert God into an unloving God, who wants you dead. And you actually AGREE with such an unloving God, that you should die and be punished and suffer and be unloved, because you really believe you "did it".

As such, if you do not CORRECT and seek healing for this MISTAKEN PERCEPTION that you "really sinned", YOU WILL CHOOSE DEATH. You will look to suicide as the automatic, God-approved, perfectly logical outcome, based solely on your belief that sin is real. If sin is real, YOU MUST DIE. And you will not fight it. You won't even put up a resistance. You will reside yourself to believing it's RIGHT, it's what you deserve, it's meant to happen, it's what God wants, and its what everyone including you wants. You'll not even particularly feel horrified about it, because you'll see it as being JUSTIFIED - that you are WORTHY of dying, because you are UNWORTHY of life. You'll offer yourself up to death and make it EASY for death, because of your belief in sin. You will AGREE with it!

This cannot be what God wants for you.

You must reconsider your belief. You HAVE TO. If you do not, it will lead you to continue to reject God, to reject life, and ultimately it will be a WISH on your part to die - a death wish. This is not a joke. "People" in "real bodies" really do choose to die because they believe in real sin. And that's the only reason. Death proves you deserve not to be forgiven because your sin (of separation) was real. Everyone who dies GIVES THEIR OWN CONSENT for it to occur, purely based on this. Somewhere inside there is a dark twisted belief, that you think is actually TRUTH, that says, well, I did that thing so.... I should die. That's how you choose it!

Belief in sin produces death. Belief in sin is suicide!

This is why YOU need forgiveness. You need forgiveness to undo the belief that sin is real, not just to pardon the sin. If you continue to believe sin is reality, you CANNOT forgive it. This is simply metaphysical logic. If sin is reality, death is truth and life is a lie. Therefore forgiveness is impossible because God would be lying. If sin is real, your innocence has ACTUALLY been defiled, and that PROVES that you are not innocent, and therefore forgiveness has NO SAY in claiming that you are forgiven.

So if sin is real, you cannot be forgiven. If sin is real, there is no such thing as innocence. If sin is real, God CANNOT love you. If sin is real, you will choose death.

So how do you overcome this? The only thing that you really need to do, is to realize, that sin is NOT REALITY!!!!!

Sin is not real! There is no real sin!

Whatever you did, you did not really do it. I don't care if you think it was reality, or that you think the people were real people, and there were real consequences, and someone got really hurt, and bodies were really damaged, and you had to pay a real price, and now you have real memories, and everyone really hated you, and you really hated yourself, and your life went to shit because of it. IF that's REALITY, there is no hope for you.

The only way out of hell, then, which is based on sin being real, is that you MUST question whether sin is real. And if sin is NOT real, that completely brings into question ALL of your life, the world, bodies, people, events, places, circumstances, consequences, ALL of that has to be NOT REAL. It all goes together in a total package.

If sin is not real, the things your body did it DID NOT REALLY DO. If sin is not real, the consequences of your actions DID NOT REALLY OCCUR. If sin is not real, and you point and you say, well, that person still doesn't have a leg because I cut it off with a chainsaw.... well, then you are still believing in real sin and there is no hope for you.

And that's because, in your belief that sin is real, you have DENIED MIRACLES, and therefore you have prevented that person from receiving a NEW LEG, and you have failed to DEMONSTRATE that NOTHING HAPPENED by literally undoing all of the effects of what you said was real. Atonement requires that you demonstrate and PROVE that you and your brother are innocent, because sin DID NOT HAPPEN and had no real effects.

Your failure to recognize your innocence and your brother's innocence has caused miracles to be BLOCKED, and has resulted in you and your brother KEEPING the effects of sin. And now you look to the presence of those effects, which you chose not to undo, and claim that this means you really did do something. NO! The effects are there BECAUSE you claim that you did something and you have not become open to corrective miracles.

The ONLY way you are going to be able to experience being innocence, if you think you've sinned, is for you to STOP BELIEVING YOU SINNED. You cannot transition to a belief that you are innocent while you are still holding onto a belief that you sinned. You have to let that go! And you WILL NOT let that go if you believe there is any REALITY to it, any truth to it whatsoever.

So in the forgiveness, which leads to the atonement, you must question the idea that there is REALITY AND TRUTH to what you think you did. Is it True and Real in God's reality? NO! Therefore is cannot have been true and real. Forgiveness does not look upon sin and MAKE IT REAL. Which means, you cannot forgive real sin, but forgiveness is meant to remind you that sin is NOT REAL. It takes reality AWAY from sin. It removes its sense of reality or really occurring. Forgiveness does not PUT reality into sin and then try to pardon it. It recognizes that THERE IS NO REAL SIN, and that in that view - in that truth and perception, YOU MUST BE FORGIVEN ALREADY.

This is absolutely the only way that you can ever be innocent again. It HAS to be true for you that you did not really sin. You did not really do what you thought you did. It did not really produce the consequences you thought it produced. And the only way that is POSSIBLE is because the entire "world" that you thought this all occurred within was JUST A FUCKING DREAM! Dreams are not real dreams, they are not reality, and nothing REAL gets affected. Everything in a dream is NOT REAL. So when "sin" happens in a dream, it is not REAL sin, it is make-believe sin. That's why you're still innocent.

And what this must reveal to you, is that as you accept this truth, which is the atonement, i.e. nothing REAL happened... you will become aware that God has actually not changed. God has not even once considered you sinful. God has not even begun to agree with you that you really sinned. He laughs at your belief that separation is real or has real consequences. He is AMUSED by your belief that your DREAM is reality.

God is like, still up there, being totally joyful, totally happy and peaceful, totally loving you 100%, totally seeing your 100% innocence, totally oblivious to any possibility of you EVER being sinful. GOD DOES NOT BELIEVE IN SIN. He ALREADY sees you with TOTAL FORGIVENESS. He already recognizes that you MUST BE innocent still because He created you to be permenantly, REALLY innocent, and you CANNOT do anything to change that, and you HAVE NOT.

God still loves you!!!!!!!!!!

GOD STILL LOVES YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you can accept that - your belief that you sinned was TOTALLY MISTAKEN - and if you can accept that God still loves you 100% - YOU ARE INNOCENT FOREVER - then you will experience relief, joy, release, and celebration, because the good news will have come to you that not a single thing about Heaven has been defiled, God has not been harmed, nothing real has been threatened or damaged, and EVERYTHING IS STILL OKAY!

You did not do what you think you did. And because of that, YOU ARE FORGIVEN. Permanently.

Thank fucking God for that!!!!

And do you know what that means? It means you are still innocent therefore YOU ARE WORTHY OF LOVE. You DO deserve to be loved. You CAN be loved. You ALLOW love. You ACCEPT love as truth. You stop rejecting God. You allow God in. And that means, you are no longer CHOOSING death. It means instead, in your choice to accept the atonement, that you are choosing ETERNAL LIFE.

Not as if you can un-choose eternal life anyway because death is just an illusion in a dream that you make-believe is real, lol ... but now you can FULLY EXPERIENCE eternal life because you have claimed your innocence. You've accepted that you did not sin. And that means, there is NO REASON why you cannot be immortally innocent forever and ever.

Amen.

P.S. The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the atonement for themselves, SO THAT they will believe in love and eternal life and will be able to GIVE MIRACLES to everyone else, helping them to accept the atonement also.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO DIE!

There is one reference to "vertical perception" in ACIM, as part of miracle principle 41. Jesus says:

"41. The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. The sudden shifts from horizontal to vertical perception which the miracle entails introduces an interval from which the doer and the receiver both emerge much farther along in time than they would otherwise have been."

So he introduces this idea that there is a horizontally oriented way of perceiving, and a vertical way. The horizontal way is what you don't want, and the vertical way is what you should be trying to shift towards. But what are these two ways of perceiving?

Let's start by saying the world doesn't exist yet. You are designing a new world inside a computer. You're using some 3D software to model forms and objects and are placing them in a scene. Your intention is to create a 3D holographic movie of various CGI scenes, in which anything goes.

As far as you are concerned, as the director and editor, it's a level playing field. There are no inherent rules or laws as to what is possible or what can happen. There are no laws of physics set up. There are no limitations. Your imagination can run wild.

So you start designing this environment, composed of what seem to be models of objects - cars, buildings, bodies etc. But simply by putting them in the scene, nothing happens. They just sit there. Nothing causes anything. There are no consequences. There are no laws. There are no forces of repulsion or gravity or collisions between things. Objects can exist in the same space overlapping even. There are no chemical reactions. No biological processes.

From this perspective, which we'll call "vertical" or "above the battlefield", you are in a position of vertical causality. The level you are on is ABOVE the level of the world you're making below. Whatever you decide, happens. So if you decide to move one of the models of a car, the car moves. It can't move on its own. But moving it doesn't do anything. There are no effects or limits. You can even move one car to overlap another car, without anything happening. But let's say you want to make it SEEM as if there is a car crash. What do you do?

Well, you're first going to have to CAUSE there to be a scene with two cars in it. You're going to have to cause the two cars to SEEM to move. They will not be moving as a result of having an engine, that's just a pretend engine "for show". Your mind is going to determine where the cars are. You can even pick up the cars and plonk them down somewhere else, or make them float in the air, with no regard for any laws of physics. So you deliberately move both cars in what appears to be a direction towards each other, on a fake road, pretending they are "driving" and making "broom boom" sounds like children at play.

When the cars approach and seem like they should "crash", nothing's going to happen. They'll pass through each other. So you have make up some fictional "laws of physics". You make up some rules which suggest, when this car touches the other car, it will SEEM as if they push into each other, "causing" a crash. One car might be thought of as SEEMING to "cause the crash". But this is entirely illusory. It's on purpose. The car does nothing. The mind that causes EVERYTHING about the car, causes what seems to be the crash.

The director - the true causer - is deciding that car A will crash into car B. And the director also has to deliberately model the way car B will deform to make it LOOK AS IF car A's impact caused bodily damage. So when you now "play the scene", it's going to SEEM as if it's an animation in which the two cars move towards each other on a road - under their seeming own power - not seeing the hidden hand of the director - and collide. Car B seems to become damaged, and it looks like car A was the cause. But it's just an illusion. Everything that happens is orchestrated from above. Did you fall for it?

You know better. You know that NEITHER of the cars has any causal power. You know from this vertical position, looking down on the whole scene from above, as the director, who can pull all the strings and change anything at will, even changing or breaking the laws of physics, that it's NOT TRUE OR REAL that car A crashes into car B. But based on appearances, viewed through a camera (the body's eyes), it SEEMS as if car A causes damage to car B. The camera frames the scene just right to make it seem believable.

This is because when you look at the scene through the camera, which ONLY looks at the **end result** of the director's work, the body's eyes do NOT see that the entire scene is fabricated, they do NOT see that if the director so chooses the car will not be damaged, they do NOT see that there are strings being pulled to create the ILLUSION of laws of physics, and they do NOT see that the movement of both cars is being orchestrated by the ACTUAL CAUSE, the mind. All the laws of physics are EFFECTS, not causes.

Even the damage to car B cannot occur without the higher level mind causing it. It is NOT caused by car A. The illusion that car A has causal power is AN ILLUSION! It's "causality" is ONCE REMOVED from what the REAL cause is. And taken at face value, the body is "blinded by perception of form" and appearances, not looking past them and not seeing the trickery and lies that are producing this illusion. And so it is tempted and deceived by what it sees.

So at the level of the world, which is the scene containing the objects, viewed through the body as the camera, looking at the props and taking them to be not only real but the FIRST ORIGIN OF CAUSALITY, your body assumes there is no other cause that CAME BEFORE, no prior or higher cause, no bigger picture, no author, no orchestration of the world, no secret agenda, no plot to deceive, and just takes it at face value. It thinks then that the car ITSELF had causal power. And now there's reason to blame the car for "causing it".

Seeing the scene this way, is what we call FALSE PERCEPTION. The entire physical world IS FALSE. All the objects are false. ALL the laws of physics are false. ALL of it is a lie. It's a movie set. Every apparent "horizontal causality", where it seems something on this level in the world CAUSES something, or is the true origin or chooser of something, creates the illusion that the world has real consequences, causal power, makes things happen on its own, and isn't being run by a deeper, hidden author.

The DREAMER - the director of all things that happen - goes unnoticed and hidden behind the scenes. He is the cause of the "causes" in the world. He is the one deciding that all objects move. He is the one making up the laws. HE is the one deciding what SEEMS to affect what. HE makes both the causes and the effects that we see as being on the same level. He orchestrates all events and has power OVER everything.

He can also BREAK all the laws and consistencies and illusions of the world through his seemingly "miraculous" freedom and transcending of all illusions. He can rewrite the world. He can make mountains move in an instant. He can reverse death. He can make a pretend body seem to walk on pretend water, as if gravity were total nonsense. He MADE UP gravity, and is not bound by it. He MADE what we call sickness and death, and can ABOLISH both. He is the director. He has the power to dominate all things in the world. There is NOTHING his holiness cannot do. His mind has the power to make WORLDS appear!

To those on the horizontally perceiving level, who are living within the context of ASSUMING the world is real and causal, when the awakened dreamer - a miracle worker - decides to CHANGE the dream in a way that BREAKS the normal order and laws, having shifted into vertical perception, and EXPRESSING a vertical causality, SEEMS to be doing things which are "impossible".

He seems to be breaking the laws of physics. He's walking on water, he's multiplying objects, he's cancelling death, he's curing all sickness, he's moving mountains with his mind, and seems completely unlimited by anything in the world. To those asleep, he appears miraculous. Yet he is just being natural. He is in touch with the power to cause and choose, under NO LAWS but God's. Those fixated on the body's world see him as OUTSIDE what's possible. He breaks their reality. And they do not understand how he can do this.

When you are believing everything the body sees, which is an illusion, the illusory world of form, you are having "horizontal perception". It's the same thing as false perception. And everything in the world, all objects, all laws, are what you see when you are only looking through the camera which was designed on purpose to NOT SEE the secret behind-the-scenes activities. The body fixates only on the story, the appearance, and the illusion. The end result or effect. The dream. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

To horizontal perception, ie false perception, everything in the world seems to be lined up side by side. Like in a crowd of people. All horizontally spaced out. And so if one of the bodies is sick, and dies, the appearance is that not only is the sickness and death "reality", there is also a strong BELIEF IN (being deceived by) these appearances. The divisions between things make the body's appearances seem very tangible and pronounced. Differences are emphasized, so as to blind you to the deeper truth.

Someone operating on the level of false perception believes that sickness is real, death really happens, the world is dangerous, people sin in bodies, stuff is attackable, there are causes to be afraid of, we are victimized by the world, and are at the effect of the world. To them, the FORM of differences are very strongly deceptive, bodies all seem different, problems seem different, and the world is highly fragmented. What the body sees is believed. And then all kinds of coping strategies arise from that perception of horrors.

To move into "vertical perception" ie true perception, you're not merely going upwards above the battlefield and still perceiving in a horozontal way, you're moving OUTSIDE of horizontal causality and seeing from an entirely different perspective. Outside of the laws of space and time and physics. You're lifting up out of the illusory world, the story, the fictional movie. You're taking your perception OUT of the role of "character in a dream", and becoming aware that YOU ARE THE DREAMER. You are that one who MADE the world, made the bodies, made the planets, and invented all the laws. And you recognize you have been "doing it to yourself" - which is the secret of salvation.

You made up bodies, made up a world, made up laws, made up scenarios, forgot who you were, believed YOUR MOVIE was orchestrating YOUR life, that your scene had causal power over you, that you were now a character IN the movie, a body - the hero of the dream, and thought the dream was happening to "you". You lost touch with your vertical causality, the fact you are directing the whole thing from above, and that you are under NO LAWS BUT GOD's!

Your "miraculous" freedom FROM all causality and laws on the horizontal level, allows you to perform "miracles" - or rather, expressions of vertical causality, which BREAK AND DEFY these "second hand" "once removed" causes. Illusions of causes and illusions of laws are nothing to a miracle worker, who recognizes there is no order of difficulty because ALL of the lower orders are at YOUR effect, including what seem to be causes. You are free from all limitations. The hierarchy of illusion is FLAT to you. ALL illusions are the same. Raising the dead is no harder than healing a headache.

From the higher vantage point of vertical perception, looking down on the WHOLE scene from above, the distracting ILLUSION of appearances is SEEN THROUGH. The spiritual eye, Christ vision, looks PAST the movie set. It sees all the props and cameramen and sound crew. It reads between the lines. It sees the glue holding the scene together. It sees the light of the room in which the movie is being edited.

It does not BELIEVE FOR A MOMENT anything that the appearance of the movie would say is true. It doesn't even buy that physical objects are even really there. It pays no attention to appearances of form, shapes, colors, sizes, distances, weights, laws, or supposed differences of any kind. It has the VISION to SEE the WHOLE scene, including all hidden parts and mechanisms and trickery. It recognizes it is all an illusion. It is not DECEIVED by anything at the level of the world. Vertical perception is inclusive, horizontal perception is exclusive.

Mind is cause. World is effect/dream. Mind being causal is vertically positioned above the world. Everything below, in the world, is an illusion of horizontal causality. Nothing about the world is TRUE. Believing it is false perception. When you are in true perception you do not REGISTER the illusions of differences between things. Bodies are not separate. Objects are not real. There is a subtle connectedness that you didn't see before. A light which sparkles between things. A glue which you become aware of. A sparkling unity and sameness that seems to be behind everything.

A vertically perceived world is a forgiven world. Being aware of ALL the information about the scene is awareness of the real world. You cease to project sin and guilt and fear and death onto the scene. These arise only from false perceptions. You don't see it from a horizontal vantage point. You ignore the eyes of the body. You know that nothing in the world is real, so nothing is sick, and nothing is dying, and everything is one thing.

You see death as not an end, at the end of a horizontal linear sequence, but as a dipping DOWN from a higher level to a lower level perception. As an immersion into falseness. And from above, you know death is TOTAL FICTION. Just some arrangement of fake particles that you DECIDED you would call death. Which can easily be rearranged and reanimated if you so choose. It's totally fake. Actors in a movie do not die when their character dies.

Here, above the battlefield, you know you cannot die. You are the author of the world. You are not a body. You are not the story. You make the rules. You can break them. And nothing in the world has any bearing on anything real. Death is now vertically no longer seen as an interruption, but as merely another form of objects on par with all others. Just an effect you have power over. You can choose not to make it happen.

Dead bodies, living bodies, they are all illusions. They have NO inherent meaning. The world has no inherent meaning. You give it all the meaning it has when you design it, projecting made-up stories onto it. The world is nothing but fiction. You are not bound or limited by any of it. You are free. The director of a movie is not bound by ANYTHING that seems to happen. And edits can be made at any time. You have power over the world, because you are its cause.

"W-pI.190.5. It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. 2 Nothing external to your mind (horizontal) can hurt or injure you in anyway. 3 There is no cause (at the horizontal level) beyond yourself (who are above it) that can reach down and bring oppression. 4 No one but yourself affects you. (from above) 5 There is nothing in the world (below) that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. 6 But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see (as director, author, dreamer, law-maker) by merely recognizing what you are (from a position vertically aligned above the world)."

Can you accept the atonement?

For the ego, atonement means that you really did something wrong, and now you have to pay for it. This is the idea that you must make up for the losses you caused, because of your guilt. It calls for you to make a sacrifice, to have some portion of yourself or what you value taken from you, to make up for what you stole when you sinned. It suggests that if you "do your time" and suffer enough, MAYBE... just maybe, there might be a forgiveness or a pardon.

MAYBE those with authority and justification and righteousness to judge you guilty might decide to pardon you and let you off the hook. Except that, these judgemental accusers are never really satisfied, and there is no amount of atoning you can do to make up for your sin. Once a criminal, always a criminal. And all crimes are considered punishable by death. Even little ones.

If you believe that this is the truth of what atonement means, you will not want to accept the atonement, or understand it.

Similarly, it is believed by many that when Jesus allegedly died on the cross, he was suffering and in pain. And that this tremendous suffering, having to undergo death, somehow "carried the weight" or "paid for" or "took on the sacrifice for" or "suffered for" everyone else's sins, so that everyone else could be considered forgiven thereafter. It's even said that God, in all his loving ways, condemned His beloved son to death, in order for this atoning to occur, so that everyone else could be let off the hook.

Nevertheless, it's quite obvious that in spite of this alleged atoning and suffering, pretty much everyone is still riddled with sin and guilt and fear and murder and death. So it didn't exact "work", according to the evidence. And the fact that this explanation is evidently false is covered up with further theological justifications which are all unfounded band-aids trying to patch up a broken fundamental misunderstanding of what atonement is.

Jesus's atonement was misunderstood. He did not suffer on the cross. He was a profound miracle worker, had no guilt in his mind (the guiltless mind cannot suffer), did not believe in death at all, had already raised the dead, had power and authority over all illusions, and was an embodiment of the power of Christ. Nothing could happen to him against his will. He was not a body at all, and anything seeming to happen to his body did not happen to him. He was truly beyond it, beyond all suffering and death and sin.

He was not a victim in any way at all. It is claimed that Jesus was "sacrificed" for us. How can sacrifice be in any way associated with Jesus, who does not believe in the sacrificial thought system of the ego, and its belief in egoic atonement through loss? Jesus was not asked to sacrifice and he was NOT a sacrifice. He was a demonstration that sacrifice was an illusion and was not POSSIBLE, because sin was not real, and He had not done anything wrong. And he knew that we hadn't either, so sacrifice was never even called for.

His act of being on the cross showed that in spite of the fact that he was supposed to die, he could not die, and could not feel pain, to DEMONSTRATE the miraculous truth that you are not a body and you are invulnerable. And upon returning in a brand new manifested body later, He further demonstrated and proved that bodies are not who you are, that you cannot die, and that you are immortal spirit.

Jesus knew this because He knew what the atonement really was. He knew that it meant that, in truth, nothing real can be threatened because the entire world, bodies, and death, are all illusions. He did not believe in them. AND he did not believe in SIN. Not one bit. He had no sin in him because He did not believe in it. In that view, HE knew that everyone else's "alleged" sinfulness was forgiven, because nobody had really sinned at all. And all of the ways that people believed they were sinful, HE knew that those were not "real sins" in the eyes of God, and that all sin WAS undone because it had not really occurred. That's the true meaning of the atonement and most people did not get the memo.

That also demonstrates why, in spite of the fact that Jesus knew and perceived and experienced the atonement principle, that nobody was sinful or guilty at all, claiming it for himself and thus for everyone, this didn't prevent everyone else from STILL BELIEVING IN SIN. In fact, most onlookers believed in sin so much that they thought that his death was real and did not "get" the teaching of his demonstration that the body is not real at all. And it was precisely the people who DID believe in sin and death and bodies, who MADE UP the interpretation of Jesus being "really sacrificed" and "really suffering for us", which has been an ongoing ego myth for 2000+ years. The ego rejoices that so many people believe that Christ could suffer and be sacrificed. It's satanic!

And so people have carried on believing in real sin and in BEING in sin, because they still believe that sin is real. That's why Jesus's atonement did not instantaneously lift the belief in sin from everyone's mind, which it should have done if what is claimed about the crucifixion were true, ie that Jesus took the hit for us. If he did that, why are we still believing in sin and death? Jesus's awakening should've removed all sin from everyone. In HIS eyes, this was done, but in OUR eyes, it was not done, because WE still freely chose to continue believing in real sin and real death. And plenty of people have demonstrated this by DYING ever since.

Jesus IS the atonement in that Jesus has united with the Holy Spirit in a mind of pure innocence, in which God recognizes the truth that we HAVE NOT SINNED, and that sin is not reality. Jesus knows this is true of us, but WE have not woke up to this reality yet. And so we DO continue to still do "real sins" because we still believe in real sin. That keeps us bound to sin and death. We CAN be liberated from this if WE will accept the atonement, but WE do have to willingly do that ourselves. Jesus can't force it on us. He knows we have not sinned but we don't believe him. Not really.

So all these false definitions of atonement have to be thrown out. The atonement means that literally nothing "real" has actually happened, and that all the things that you thought were "real" were just imagined, just a dream, a vast illusion, masquerading as a real world with real bodies doing real bad stuff. Its UNREALITY is the proof of innocence. You cannot have become less than innocent if you did not achieve a REAL sin. Make-believe sins do not count! You cannot REALLY sin and you have not really sinned. But while you believe that you HAVE, that's a problem. That's keeping you from the truth and keeping you from ACCEPTING Jesus's demonstration of the atonement.

The world is not reality. It is an illusion. And you have not really done anything wrong here, because everything you've ever supposedly "done" has ONLY ever been a portion of a made-up dream that isn't really real. It sure as heck can seem real, but ONLY because you believe that dreams are reality. Look around you at all the people who have set up camp in this dream, believing it's the real world, believing it is real life, prepared to hang out here and just die and not wake up to the truth. There is more than this.

Undo all of your beliefs that the physical world is reality. It is not. Jesus proved it, IF you will believe it from His vantage point. He knew that there was no real sin, and saw that everyone's sins ALREADY were forgiven before He even came to that awareness. God does not condemn. God does not judge. God knows your innocence is still pure and holy. And God knows that you cannot POSSIBLY "actually" separate from Him other than in a dream-like illusion of separation. Your innocence is guaranteed. It is ALREADY the truth, even while you believe that you have really sinned.

The truth of the atonement ALREADY WAS TRUE before Jesus became the first to claim it for Himself and for all. It was ALREADY TRUE that God had not condemned us and had not believed that we really sinned. It was ALREADY TRUE that God's unconditional love had not wavered for a second, and that He KNEW that it was IMPOSSIBLE to actually separate from him. Real Sin is impossible. Jesus came to ACCEPT that the atonement is true, He did not CREATE the atonement. The truth of the atonement is God's truth, and has always been true and always will be.

It's a done deal. Nothing happened. Wake up.

Forgiveness is rooted in your immortality. Accepting atonement means recognizing fully that you are immortal, and letting go of everything that is incompatible with your immortal nature.

"But the guarantee of your continuity is God's, not the ego's. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS" UrT11J13

It is extremely simple. You simply recognize what it means to be immortal, the qualities and characteristics of that, and then compare that to the position you are trying to take. Anything which is out of accord is false and can be let go, as you remind yourself of what is true.

"Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its RESULTS, is merely to recognize that their SOURCE is NOT natural, being out of accord with your TRUE nature." UrT10F5

Anything which is not in accord with, compatible with, your immortal nature in spirit, cannot be true. All you have to do is put your immortality first and foremost, and then look to see if what you are believing, experiencing, perceiving, feeling etc, is in accord with it.

A huge thing to be forgiven is the basic idea that things are happening to you which are causing you to change. It takes many forms including that other people are affecting you, someone is doing something to you, the environment is causing you to be afraid, situations are making you anxious, your body is making things difficult, etc. All various ways that you seem to be being changed.

Look to your immortality. Your immortality says you cannot change even slightly because you are always the same forever. I am immortal. If I am immortal, can it be true that I am affected by this person? Can it be true that they are making me feel this? Can it be true that I am suffering? Can it be true that I am weak and vulnerable and threatened?

What does your immortality have to say about this? You can also ask Jesus or the Holy Spirit - who are also immortal - and they can tell you the exact same things. The truth about you will set you free.

What about the secret of salvation? Basically the idea is that you cannot suffer because you are immortal. If you seem to be suffering, you must have lost track of your immortality and have started to see yourself as being affected by something. You've started to believe you can be changed, hurt, influenced.

This then means you need to look at what you are doing to yourself, because only your mind can attack itself with faulty thoughts. You must be participating in choosing to suffer, and to fake the suffering, because your immortal self cannot suffer.

The fact that you are immortal should tell you that whatever you think other people are doing to you, that can't be true, because you can't have things done to you - they're not guilty. So if things seem to be happening to you, you must be doing them to yourself, but you can't really be doing it to yourself because you can't even change yourself. So you're not guilty either.

It ALWAYS comes back to your immortality. To your self. To knowing yourself as you really are, as God created you. This is the whole point "I am not a body I am free for I am still as God created me." You are remembering what is true of you and becoming ever more clear about what is NOT POSSIBLE.

A simple line of questioning to begin any forgiveness might start: "I am immortal." You can then take it from there. If you simply reiterate the various properties and characteristics of being immortal, that alone injects so much truth into your mind that it dispels a ton of myths and lies and brings great clarity.

I am immortal. I can never change. I cannot be changed. I cannot change myself. Not even God changes me. No-one in the world is changing me. I am permanent. I will live forever. There will never be an end to my existence. I have no reason to be afraid of anything because I will never stop existing. Nothing can threaten me whatsoever because nothing can change me. I can't be affected by anyone or anything because I am immortal. This is a forgiveness process. An articulation based on a simple fact of your true nature.

Projections of guilt onto other people? It's just a way that you're trying to free yourself from guilt in a way that doesn't really work. The solution is to recognize you are immortal. If you are immortal you cannot attack or be attacked. You are invulnerable and see everyone as harmless and unharmed. You bring healing and life only. You resurrect, you do not destroy. Therefore you cannot have ever sinned, and cannot be guilty, and have no guilt to project. Neither you or the other person is guilty of anything.

How about the fact that other people are also immortal? If they are immortal, they cannot be sinning or guilty either. There can't be anything wrong with them. They can't be corrupt, they can't be sinful, they can't be broken, they can't be in fear, they can't be suffering, they can't be sick or dead, they can't be attacking or attacked.

So then there is no basis for you to project or scapegoat because you recognize they are absolutely invulnerable. What point would there be to project guilt through anger in an attempt to bind guilt into someone, if you knew this was impossible? There'd be no point even trying. You can't take away anyone's innocence.

How about you playing the role of victim? Seeing yourself as unfairly treated, victimised, hurt, abused, attacked, offended, upset, made to feel certain feelings, forced to suffer, things happening to you against your will, pain and misery? NONE of this is possible. If you are immortal, you cannot experience or be in a position where any of this can happen to you.

How can you be a victim if you cannot be attacked? You can't accuse anyone of anything if you are unattackable. How can you be hurt, if you are so invulnerable that you can't be changed in anyway? Hurt, what is that? Some kind of lie that you are not immortal, that some parts of you can be bruised and injured and damaged. Impossible for an immortal being. So you cannot be a victim, you cannot be affected, made to hurt, caused to change, defined, redefined, attacked, damaged, or made to malfunction.

This is what forgiveness is about. Getting your mind to approach the TRUTH, and to ACCEPT THE TRUTH. This is accepting the atonement. The acceptance of the truth is the acceptance of the truth ABOUT YOU. What is the truth about you? You are an absolutely immortal innocent being that lives forever and is absolutely beyond all attack and threat. Nothing real can be threatened - your immortal self is your reality. Your life is never in danger.

Keep it simple. There are many many ways that you can word and articulate forgiving ideas. Ideas designed to undo lies, to untangle cause-effect confusions, ways to try to take back errors and stop yourself from making them.

It all starts with your immortality. It all starts with you as an immortal being deciding to PRETEND that you are mortal, that you can suffer, be a victim, be hurt, be destroyed. It's you playing a game of death, and you have to take full responsibility for that and stop doing it. It's pointless anyway because not only can you not ever BE something that is destructible, like the body, you are so beyond all attack that you can never be even slightly influenced toward death.

Center on your immortal nature. Focus on it. Learn about it. Live it. Let it inform your perceptions. Let it unravel the lies and egotism in your mind. Use it as the litmus test to compare everything to. If anything in any way suggests that you are even SLIGHTLY vulnerable, weak, afraid, as though your existence is being brought into question somehow, as if you can be hurt and changed somehow, you must be listening to "the ego". ie, you are trying to pretend that you can die.

This is really all you need. Salvation comes from your one self - your immortal self. Know thyself as immortal and be free from all forms of suffering and death forever.

"The world goes AGAINST your nature, because it is out of accord with God's laws." UrT7L1

"Forgiveness, then, is an illusion, but because of its purpose, which is the Holy Spirit's, it has one difference. Unlike all other illusions it leads away from error and not toward it." UrU4A1

"Forgiveness might be called a kind of happy fiction; a way in which the unknowing can bridge the gap between their perception and the truth." UrU4A2

"Whatever is IN ACCORD with this light He retains, to strengthen the Kingdom in YOU. When it is PARTLY in accord with truth He accepts it and purifies it. But what is OUT OF ACCORD ENTIRELY He rejects by judging against. This is how He keeps the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified." UrT6H1

"God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency. IT RESTS ON YOU. And what can be more certain than the Son of God?" UrT20E9

"Yet what is it except a game you play in which identity can be denied? You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everything set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality." UrW191L4

"We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING."

Believing in separation from God produces a split in the mind. The mind becomes confused because it's trying to believe in both light and dark, or true and false, without distinguishing between them. The will becomes divided and the mind seems to form two areas. Being in fear (uncertainty), you are now "in two minds".

One area seems to become associated with "who and what I am", and the other area seems to be projected as "who I am not", seen as outside yourself in others. You can refer to these as the persona and the shadow. The persona is the accepted parts of mind and the shadow is the denied repressed parts.

In this dynamic, there's always two parts to what you experience. For example if you are in fear, where you believe that you are under attack by another, you are in fact also attacking them. But the part of you that is attacking them is dissociated and projected - kind of disowned. You don't want to believe it's still part of you. So you "associate it" with someone else.

So then in fear you see yourself as "only the victim" and you do not see yourself as "the victimizer". But your mind, as a whole, is actually playing both roles. It's just that the projected disowned role of victimizer seems like it's "not you", and the you that you think is being victimized is just one split off half of the mind.

"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."

"Ideas leave not their source."

So the split mind has sort of become divided against itself and is now at war with itself. And various different properties seem to be assigned to one half, which you accept as "yourself", and the other half is denied and projected onto others as "not yourself".

Yet both parts are in your mind and don't go outside of it. So this whole roleplay of the two parts interacting, is happening inside your mind - ie you as a whole are actually doing it to yourself. This is the secret of salvation, to realize that you are NOT just one half of the equation. You are playing BOTH sides.

This is actually true of all things ego. If you take the position of victim, you are also victimizing. If you take the position of fear, you are also frightening and terrorizing. If you take the position of being sick at the hands of the world, you are also causing your own sickness. If you take the position of being helpless against death, you are also trying to destroy yourself from the outside in - which seems indirect.

So if i catch myself being afraid, I need to also remind myself that I am also the one who is scaring myself because I am the one who is doing the attacking. If I catch myself focusing on sickness, I need to remind myself that I am also the one causing sickness. If I am having pain, I need to realize I am making myself be in pain while pretending that it's not coming from me.

The stronger the state of dissociation, the less "oneness" there is with others. You'll see others as separated off from you, and you'll want nothing to do with them. You may even want to "get rid of them" at all costs, or wish they'd not exist, in extreme cases. The other seems to look truly "not me", to you, to such an extent that you think you are justified in blaming them for causing everything.

But what that means is that your mind is divided and strongly "taking sides" against itself. It's hiding from the other part of itself which it has projected through blame. You might think that the innocent victim self is the whole of your self, or your mind, because it's all you seem to be aware of as "within you".

This is because THAT part, thinks of the OTHER part, as OUTSIDE of itself. And therefore due to this separation between the two parts, you - this one part - believes the other part is "not you". And this is the major ego hurdle to be overcome.

Jesus describes ACIM as a course in "reintegration".

"To heal, or to make joyous, is therefore the same as to integrate and MAKE ONE."

"The purpose of this course is integration."

What is being integrated? The two sides of the split mind need to be rejoined as one whole mind. The sense of dissociation which splits you off from "your attacker" and frames others as "outside of you" needs to heal. It's not WHICH side you take that matters, it's the fact that you are taking sides at all.

We heal by becoming whole, moving from a state of "I'm playing the role of being on this one side", towards the recognition that you are playing BOTH sides. You play both sides of every conflict. You receive the effects of your own attack. What you do to others you do to yourself. What applies to them applies to you. This is the Golden Rule.

So if you find yourself "one sided", with you seeming to be caused by or at the effect of anyone or anything else, you know there is a brick wall of denial and disowning standing in front of you, behind which is the other half of your mind. And the wall needs to come down so that you can see that the part "in the shadows" and the part "in the light" are both parts of the same one mind.

By recognizing that both "sides" or "roles" or "personalities" or "identities" are existing within ONE mind, you recognize that NEITHER of them can be true. They are both illusions of separate identities - a victimizer and a victim. And the mind is pretending to be both of them. Neither really exists, and on seeing this both disappear, as the mind recognizes and "wakes up" to the fact that it is ONE MIND, not two.

"Opposites must be brought together, and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as YOU are."

"Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking, whereby two systems of belief, which CANNOT coexist, are BOTH MAINTAINED. It HAS BEEN recognized that, if they were BROUGHT TOGETHER, their joint acceptance WOULD become impossible. But, if one is kept in darkness FROM THE OTHER, their SEPARATION seems to keep them both alive, and equal in their reality. Their JOINING thus becomes the source of fear, for, if they meet, acceptance MUST be withdrawn from one of them."

"In our longer practice periods today, we will claim the peace that must be ours when the problem and the answer have been brought together."

"The light of guiltlessness shines guilt away because, when they are BROUGHT TOGETHER, the truth of one MUST make the falsity of its OPPOSITE perfectly clear."

"The miracle is possible when cause and consequence are brought together, NOT kept separate."

There is a pivotal moment when you let go of the ego's hand and decide to take the hand of Christ.

This can and will happen in many scenarios and many times over. And it's going to happen in your "real life" in relation to people and your beliefs about people.

Cate Grieves gave a good example of this recently in relation to her daughter where she would clash with the "ego" in her daughter, or rather, her own inner fight with her own ego projected there, but after having enough, one day she finally decided to recognize the Christ in her and to relate only to that identity, not to the ego. And everything shifted. That's an example of letting go of the ego's hand and taking the hand of Christ.

Similarly I had spent many many years believing in sickness, thinking it was real, irreversible, truth. Each time I saw it I had reactions and grief. I believed it was real. It was actually horrifying to see disability and very upsetting because I believed it was real, and how tragic it was what had been lost as a result of it. All that suffering was ego bullshit.

I had gone through many many periods of trying to heal it, fix it, rescue the person, trying to learn about what caused it, diagnosing it, figuring out why it happened etc. All of these ways that I was actually continually using the ego to try to find some kind of truth outside of me. Always it would lead me to dead ends and failing to find anything that made sense. It was infuriating. I tried and tried and tried to explain why and how the sickness happened and all that did was justify and keep it.

And this was all because I believed my own ego, my own intellect's ability to diagnose truthfully (which is impossible), and that if I would seek externally for truth I would actually be able to find it, if I looked hard enough. But this was all classic seek-and-do-not-find tactics. It was all based on me believing that the problem was real.

One day, I was getting to where I had really had enough, like, fucking hell I cannot put up with this bullshit any more. And I was starting to recognize with Jesus' help the ways that I kept trying to solve this "real problem", and He was just always trying to get me to surrender and stop doing that. When I was in 'fix it' mode my mind was just lost like in a tunnel vision of thinking that I was going to find the answer, not realizing and not having the awareness that this was fundamentally impossible. The entire basis for my searching was flawed and based in the ego, so I was trapped and failing before I even started.

Somehow enough of these events of futility and failure and gradual tiny steps in becoming aware of this, led to a moment where it started to dawn on me. I started to finally get it. This had all been based on the idea that sickness was REAL. And that also fed into an awareness that was growing in me that there just was no truth out there whatsoever. I had been looking in the wrong place - in the ego - for a truth that doesn't exist there. And that maybe this whole world had no truth in it at all.

Up until that point I'd been believing that the world was real and sickness was real and sin was real. Even if some part of me understood otherwise. And my belief that there is somehow a truth in this world just met with a total loss in finding it. That was GOOD, because it revealed to me that this ego pursuit was totally a distraction, and a pointless one at that. There IS no truth in the world. The truth is NOT out there. This really started a MAJOR shift in my awareness that has been leading to just a tremendous flood of insight and awakening lately.

But the main thing is, I had to question whether sickness was real. And that meant even going against everyone else who said sickness was real. Going against the doctors and the neighbors and the family members and even those closest to me who all believed in real sickness. I had to find enough certainty and be pissed off enough and fed up enough to finally say FUCK THAT. There is no truth there. So I decided, or at least found enough of a sense of conviction, like a ray of light peeking through the window for the first time, to open up to the idea that sickness is not reality, because this world is not reality.

This was a major turn of events because this has now laid a foundation for really huge strides forward, a foundation for hope, a foundation for miracles, and a foundation for healing. That would not have been possible had I remained in the ego belief that sickness is truth. So in this same way, I became able to let go of the ego's hand and take the hand of Christ. And because it took such tremendous frustration and desperation to exhaust the ego's bullshit and to really reveal to myself that this fundamentally major world-wide claim about real sickness was total f'ing bullshit.

So now something is different for me. It's a turning point, suddenly instead of looking at, believing in, and reacting to "real sickness", I am learning how it is an illusion, I am starting to actually overlook it, which means I am finally actually forgiving it. My mind and awareness are shifting and I'm seeing sickness in a whole different way. I'm no longer allowing the ego interpretation of it to be the limit of my belief or awareness, and instead am opening up to the Christ perspective that sickness is not the truth. It's not real, and because it is not real, it can be undone.

These shifts happen in big ways and small ways. Each time you come to question or doubt the ego and see that it's been leading you on a wild goosechase, and its claims are not the truth, you gradually let go of its hand and shift allegiance to Christ. You go from perceiving FORM as though it's real, and looking beyond it. You go from seeing people as real bodies, to no longer regarding them as "just that". Your vision no longer stops at sight of form and it starts to see a truth that transcends it. The person is not their body. The person is not their ego.

This basically means you are gradually de-coupling yourself from form, and are actually letting go of your own body at the same time. Everything in front of your eyes is an attempt to get you to see it as real, and to fail to overlook/forgive, leading to judgement. We need to learn to not believe it! It's not real. It's not truth. Form is just an effect of an idea, not a solid reality. Nor is it fixed, and nor is it identity.

Form is not the truth about a person. Their body is not the truth about them. Their personality/persona/shadow is not the truth about them. They actually are more than that. Even when they are filled with hate and rage, that's still not true about them. Their real self, holy and innocent, is still in there somewhere, just temporarily covered up. It doesn't go away! This justifies unconditional love at all times.

Going into a questioning mode, in which you ask yourself, should I do this or shouldn't I.... is actually a movement into fear.

As soon as you're in this mode of perception, there is no way you're going to settle on a peaceful decision.

You'll think that deciding one way will bring you peace, except that.. you can't get the other way out of your mind. And then you think if you decide the other way, maybe that will bring you what you want, except that, the first solution still seems to have something about it that the other doesn't.

Always in this mode of fear, it is a mode of duality, where your mind is split in two and you can't "make up" your mind - because you HAVE 'made up' a mind - an ego mind, which is now trying to rectify the fact that it has to deal with two different and unrelated options.

By perceiving differences, you are fixating on the appearance that one option has something about it that the other does not, and these differences are what MAKE the two options seem like two distinct options. And yet, as soon as you see this and try to deal with it, you cannot possibly see any kind of certainty, truth, clarity, obviousness or lack of confusion.

There is no sane way to choose between these two different paths, at least not from within a position of choosing. When you're weighing up your options, what you're really doing is trying to decide whether to accept what's missing about one of the two things, versus whats missing about the other. And the fact that they are both incomplete, can only leave you uncertain and unconvinced.

The only way out of this confusion, which masquerades as very careful decision making - on your own, in isolation - but really is a movement AWAY from decision and certainty, is to entirely STOP this whole deception of choosing between things. When you are questioning what to do, you are questioning YOURSELF, and throwing yourself into fear and confusion needlessly. "My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability." - ACIM

There is no way you can choose between things, because that requires separation and rejection and you will never be able to experience certainty or peace while separation is operating.

The only way to peace is to entirely step back out of the 'split' between options, to back off from being in a position of trying to know, or trying to figure out. You even need to get past the illusion that a decision even needs to be made, because the sense of NEED has entirely come from the very same FEAR that you have entered into, which has CAUSED you to think that you have to decide something in the first place. "Let my recognize my problems have been solved." - ACIM

You have to RECOGNIZE that what you are trying to do is impossible, and that's why you will be confused and frustrated. You need to see this deception for what it is - not two clear-cut choices, but a device for indecision, fear, egocentric control, and trying to know everything on your own.

You can't know everything when your mind is split. So when you are in this decision-making mode of selecting between things, you are not only choosing which of two things is "better", you're also choosing which of two IDENTITIES you want to associate with. And that means you are literally putting your SELF into one of two boxes.

Once you're inside boxes, or are attempting to hide in boxes in the name of getting out of a box, you can no longer see clearly and won't be able to feel the sense of relief and peace that comes from being OUTSIDE the box.

So really there is absolutely no way that your ego (split mind) can make a decision on its own and be certain or happy with it. Either you struggle and seek for truth in only one part of existence and not another, causing you to be inherently insane, or you stop trying to decide on your own.

Decisions can still be made from a vantage point outside of this split mind, where you join with Holy Spirit and see the whole situation as one, recognizing the temptation of the illusion of deciding for yourself and ceasing to enter into it. Then Holy Spirit can share His light and freedom with you, to instill a knowing, inspiration or guidance - a peace-based decision - which you CAN trust and feel certain about.

As Jesus says in the Course, seek not to make decisions about doing something you do not want to do, because it will only make you afraid.

You need to learn to notice when you've slipped into a "I don't know if I should" mode, or a "what should I do" mode, or a "I can't decide mode", which pretends to be decision-making, because it means you've gone into the ego split mind and cannot possibly decide anything. You are AFRAID, and for no real reason.

Questions are doubts. They are not real questions. This is why the tiny mad idea was a movement AWAY from knowing and truth, towards "questioning truth", i.e. entering into fear and doubt, in an attempt to pretend that you're looking for an answer, while using that excuse as a cover-up for actually moving AWAY from the answer.

Ego questions do not lead you to truth. They lead you to more illusions, and you will never find happiness or peace of mind there.

So stop yourself if you notice you're being indecisive. No matter what your ego mind says - for or against certain options - do not listen to ANY of the arguments or cases for or against anything. They are all deceptions, because the overall deception is you believing that you NEED to decide at all.

You only think you need to decide when you've become afraid, and really then you're in a state of fear, trying to decide something in order to gain relief from fear, but every effort to do so will just make you more afraid.

Imagine all the wonderful things you will actually achieve and 'do' and feel good about and act fearlessly on, when you're moving and flowing with Holy Spirit's truth and trust and awareness, instead of trying to be "sure" about what "you" need to do with "your" life.

What you will realize eventually, as is dawning on me now, is that maybe there isn't even a decision to be made, and maybe moving into decision-making is actually just fear and undermining yourself with your ego, and you need to stop doing THAT, because that is the real problem here, not what option to choose.

I thank Jesus for this clarification today, and for reminding me when I am questioning whether I'm doing the right thing, thinking that this means I have to decide all over again what to do, I need to recognize the real problem - I've entered into fear and have attacked myself, and that's the only reason I seem to be separated from truth. To return to truth I do not NEED to make this illusory decision, I need to stop listening to my own bullshit.

When there are ego beliefs which say, there is some truth to something opposite to God's truth, you will not be willing, ready, or able, to accept atonement.

You'll want to accept it but there will be something in you which objects or nags or gives you a sense of suspiciousness, that something just isn't quite acceptable or true about God's truth. No matter how plainly clear God's truth is, how clearly presented, or how obvious, the ego STILL distorts perception and can't quite see it squarely, suspecting there is some kind of deception going on, which is its own.

This is why the ego ranges from suspicious to vicious. At best, it does not quite agree with God, and so has this in-built fear and doubt that makes it "not believe" what the truth is saying. This is because it believes something else and has loyalty to something else.

What needs to happen in your mind is that you undo ALL beliefs which are false or saying something out of accord with God's truth/will. Until you do that, you will not be willing to accept the truth.

So if you have a belief that you are afraid and fear is real or fear causes something or you can't stop the fear, there is no way you are going to be willing to accept God's truth. You won't be able to see that it makes perfect sense, or that there is no other reason NOT to accept it.

So then you have to look at the fear and recognize why its an illusion, recognize it as false, unfounded, non-causal, and the fact that it is actually an EFFECT of something deeper. Fear covers up guilt and makes guilt go unconscious, and is being caused BY guilt.

So you have to then dig out the guilt and make it conscious and then do the same thing. You have to come to recognize and accept that the guilt is not true, it's a lie, you're not really guilty, the guilt isn't causing anything, it's just an effect of a belief in sin. Guilt is denial of sin.

Same thing applies to sin, it has to be uprooted and examined, and its at this point that you are bringing into question whether something even happened at all. If the sin occurred "in reality" and thus this world is reality, then you can't let it go. But if you can recognize there is no sin because whatever seemed to happen was an illusion in a fictional world, you can recognize the sin did not happen in REALITY, only in a dream, and thus is not a "real sin". This allows you to let go of the belief that you are sinful.

Once you've got your mind and BELIEF to the place where you recognize that "it makes sense" to you, that you have not sinned in reality or against God, and therefore no REAL effects can have happened, it simply LOGICALLY justifies to you that you MUST therefore STILL BE INNOCENT.

You have to get to that point logically and in terms of it making sense to you, for you to believe that this is correct, accurate, and truthful. THEN, it is absolutely effortless for you to see that God's truth makes sense. That means, you will now be not only ABLE to accept it, but also WILLING to, simply because you don't see ANY other reason not to, and your reasoning (truth) has set you free of all the contrary opposing beliefs. You basically run out of excuses or beliefs as to "why you shouldn't".

This makes you able to accept, fully, and embrace, the atonement. The atonement means nothing happened, you are still as God created you, God still loves you, you did not DO anything at all in reality, there hasn't even been a real sin, you MUST still be innocent, and therefore you MUST BE WORTHY of God's love. This makes it possible for you to ACCEPT that God loves you and RECEIVE HIS LOVE. Acceptance is receiving. What you accept you will receive into your mind and it will be REALITY to you.

Your accepting of this truth without any objections or counter-arguments, allows you to RECEIVE LOVE, and therefore this is what it means to RECEIVE A MIRACLE. This reception also means, since you are willing to recognize that you are WORTHY of being loved, that you also recognize that EVERYONE is ALSO worthy of being loved.

So your willingness to receive atonement/truth/love entails the automatic extension of that worthiness to everyone. And this is also why your receipt of the atonement, the receiving of miracles, puts you in the position of BEING PART OF THE ATONEMENT ITSELF, and therefore you now have received miracles and CAN GIVE MIRACLES TO OTHERS. "You can only give the miracles you have received". To really RECEIVE a miracle requires acceptance and willingness to receive God's truth, even for a moment.

You then are an expresser of the atonement, of God's will and God's love, to others, to help others to also get to the atonement through miracles and correction and teaching. And this is your FUNCTION at that point. It is everyone's function to become part of Jesus's atonement plan and to then be an ACTIVE WORKER in the world helping to demonstrate the truth is true through miracle working. There is much "work to do" at that point, in the "Great Awakening" or "Great Crusade" as Jesus calls it.

So this can only happen for you when you are willing, ready, and able to accept the truth, to see that it makes sense to you and therefore to logically have no other reason NOT to. This is why all other opposing ego beliefs have to be let go first.

As a special final note, I want to make it clear that you do not have to undo ALL of the ego in order to accept "some" atonement, or to receive a miracle. "One moment of love without fear is all that is necessary that all this occur" even if fear returns afterwards (paraphrasing).

You can for example, if you are working on a specific issue, e.g. maybe you are forgiving a parent or an abuser or something, you can undo all beliefs surrounding it and go ALL the way to the atonement principle with it, accepting God's love. You WILL be able to experience SOME measure of love and worthiness, and will therefore be able to receive SOME healing. And this WILL give you a miracle, and you WILL become able to give this miracle to others at that point, even if you still have OTHER seemingly separate issues to undo. There are obviously some limits to this but the first time I did this Jesus told me, "you can perform miracles now."

The final atonement happens when you have basically atoned on ALL issues and have no ego left whatsoever.

Atonement is also the same thing as forgiveness, so when you are "applying forgiveness", you really SHOULD be taking it ALL the way to the atonement and accepting and receiving God's love at the end, otherwise you are not doing a COMPLETE forgiveness.

"You are immortal and you cannot die" - ACIM

Let’s take a moment to put everything in its proper perspective and remember THE TRUTH.

YOU are immortal. God created you with eternal life. You can NEVER DIE. You can never be sick, you can never suffer, you can never be anything other than God created. HE decided what you are, you did not. You cannot change what you are. You are permanently fixed as God’s PERFECT creation. There can NEVER be anything wrong with you. You can never stop existing. There is NO END to your life.

Now. Take a look at the things that you are CLAIMING are true. Look at your stories. Look at your suffering. Look at your sicknesses and pains. Look at your dying.

HOW CAN ANY OF THIS BE TRUE?

Given that you ARE immortal, what MUST it mean, if you SEEM to be experiencing sickness? It must mean that YOU are LYING. It must mean that you are deceived, you are mistaken, and you are not being truthful or honest. It means you are in denial and are pretending to be something you are not.

Given you are immortal, you simply cannot ever be sick. So what IS this performance of sickness? Why are you making it? Why are you claiming that you have it? Why are you believing it is real? Why are you fearing it? Why do you think it’s really there? IT CANNOT BE THERE BECAUSE YOU ARE IMMORTAL.

So this whole story, all the symptoms, all the supposed proof of sickness, MUST BE A LIE. There is no sickness in God and there is none in you. You are an immortal fucking being. It is IMPOSSIBLE for you to be damaged, hurt, suffer, die, be sick, malfunction, break, distort, mutate, or in any way change from the way God created you. What you are is HIS PERFECT WILL to be PERFECT FOREVER.

So what is all this other BULL SHIT? What’s with this HORSE SHIT story about sickness being true, you suffering, you being powerless, you being a victim, you having no say in it, you being half dead, and you being under attack? IT CANNOT BE TRUE OF YOU. You are immortal and you cannot BE attacked. You cannot BE threatened. You cannot BE changed into a sickened state. It is IMPOSSIBLE for you to be even SLIGHTLY sick. So what is this massive lie that’s going on?

The sickness has to be false. It has to be unreal. It has to be untrue. It has to be made up. It has to be fiction. It CANNOT EXIST. It can have NO REALITY. It is literally NOT THERE. It cannot BE HAPPENING. In order for it to be valid or have any truth to it whatsoever, is has to be true that you are NOT immortal but mortal, and that God did not create you, and you are some temporary unreal illusion which is blown away in the wind. YOU ARE NOT THAT.

YOU ARE PERMANENT LIFE!!! YOU CAN NEVER DIE!!!!

All you have to do is own up to that and stop pretending that you can suffer. Accepting it is instead of fighting against it is the atonement.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

Why would immortal beings attempt to PROVE that they can Be HURT, when it is patently IMPOSSIBLE for them to be hurt?

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself"

WHY would you hurt yourself? Even when you hurt yourself you are not hurting yourself. Your real self CANNOT BE HURT. Why even ATTEMPT it?

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

Even if you choose to die you CANNOT DIE. Death is DENIAL of life. It’s pretend. It’s an attempt to pretend that you are not immortal. Death has NO EFFECT on you. It has NO POWER over you. It can DO NOTHING. Death is not a cause. It is an illusion. There is no death whatsoever.

DEATH IS A FUCKING LIE!!!!!!! IT DOES NOT EXIST AND IT HAS NO EFFECT ON ANYTHING REAL.

You are real, not an illusion. You cannot be threatened and death cannot even touch you. Sickness cannot even HAPPEN to you. You are permanently innocent, permanently whole, permanently perfect, permanently holy, permanently powerful, permanently safe, and permanently alive. You can never change that. You have no power over God’s will that you be this way. And God has never changed his mind about you.

YOU MUST STILL BE PERFECT. YOU MUST STILL BE IMMORTAL. RIGHT NOW THIS SECOND!!

So what is with this other shit? These stories and attempts at victimhood and little symptoms that you use to try to prove you are suffering? YOU ARE IMMORTAL, YOU CANNOT SUFFER! When you try to suffer you pretend to be something you are NOT. And even as you pretend to be something you are NOT, you are NOT THAT.

And what you make suffer IS NOT YOU, it’s a fictional body. It’s not even you that is seeming to be sick. It’s like attacking something that is not even YOUR SELF pretending that it IS your self so you can pretend that your self can be attacked. And yet while you attack the body to put on a SHOW that YOU are being mistreated and harmed, YOUR SELF remains IMMORTAL AND UNCHANGED. And so the entire thing is dishonest, inauthentic, a massive lie, a deception, untrue, false, and totally fictional.

Are you done playing dead? Are you done being sick? Are you done trying to prove that you are guilty and deserve to die? You can’t even REALLY be guilty. You can’t even commit a sin. YOU ARE PERMANENTLY INNOCENT. You can never change that. You can never revoke it. You can have no effect on it. You cannot make yourself evil.

You are PERMANENTLY GOOD. And God LOVES YOU FOREVER. This is the truth. These are the facts. This is what you have to accept. Everything else has to go. Let go of the need to suffer. It is not having any effect on who you really are anyway, it is FUTILE AND POINTLESS. And it just makes you believe you are something that CAN suffer, and so makes you confused about WHAT you are.

You are immortal spirit and you cannot die.

"You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."

Nothing you can do can EVER HAVE ANY EFFECT on your Holy Self. Ever. It is ABSOLUTE. Give up trying to make yourself dead. You cannot accomplish it. God gave you eternal life and it cannot be revoked. It IS POINTLESS and a waste of time to cause yourself to suffer. And all your suffering IS caused by you. And yet it is NOT real suffering, and you HAVE NEVER REALLY SUFFERED. Because you can’t, because you are immortal and can never be attacked.

"Swear not to die you holy son of God. You have made a bargain that you cannot keep."

"There is no death. The Son of God is free."

Sometimes doing ACIM seems very difficult. It boils down to a simple fact. Everything in the world is opposite to the truth. And that means you're going to have to become opposite to everything in the world!

"This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

This is no easy feat. Everything in the world is totally backwards, inside out, and upside down. It is opposite to heaven's laws and nature in EVERY way.

"...earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

So it's calling for you to totally go against the grain in order to be sane, to deny and defy the whole nature of this entire world and not believe a single thing about it. The world is insane, and you want sanity.

"What does this prove except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true? Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."

"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. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

"This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream IS sacred to you."

Our position in "false perception" is one where we have reversed or swapped cause and effect. We've also swapped what is true and what is false. Everything is totally back to front. We now believe the world is happening to us, causing us. And yet, we are immortal beings, causers, creators, rulers of the universe, to whom nothing is supposed to be happening.

There are very strong empowerment themes in ACIM to do with you learning to re-adopt the position of having power OVER the world. Over even sickness and death. Over all problems and forms of suffering. In which you are the cause of the dream, and not its effect. Where you are invulnerable and incapable of being hurt. Where you would show and demonstrate to others that you cannot be hurt even physically.

"Show your brother you've had no hurt of him."

"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."

Whenever our mind believes for a second that cause and effect have been swapped, we see ourselves as at the effect of the world and other people. They're doing it to us. We're being affected. We are now passive victims, suffering against our will, experiencing things we seem to have not chosen or wanted. But then the course is saying, absolutely everything that happens you must have chosen and wanted, and you did it to yourself.

This is reflected in the secret of salvation "you're doing this to yourself." It doesn't even matter what form it takes or who seems to be the victimizer. If you see yourself as an effect of the very thing you made, you are playing a role of victim and are positioning yourself to be hurt by it. And yet you are an immortal being, who cannot be hurt.

"Nothing real can be threatened."

The real meaning of this is that you are an immortal being and you are CAUSAL. You caused this world. You are the dreamer of it. It is nothing but an effect and it cannot do anything to who or what you really are. You've dreamed up dream figures and set them about attacking your body.

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? "

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did."

"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 is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen."

And then Jesus even goes on to say that you cannot suffer or be sick or hurt or killed or anything against your will. That even death is CONSENTED to in all its forms.

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details."

So we've got the world seeming to function backwards, in which it seems capable of causing your body, making it an effect of the world. You've got random chaotic events "happening to it". You've got all manner of inescapable problems, people attacking you, stuff going wrong. And you're supposed to fly in the face of it all exclaim, THIS IS DOING NOTHING TO ME.

That's not easy. You're asked to act like an immortal being in a mortal world. And that means if you are not vigilant, you're going to be constantly drawn into the world's ways, tempted to believe what it shows you, deceived by its illusions and frightened by its images. You have to constantly be on-guard and vigilant in your willingness to take a forgiving attitude instead.

Forgiveness means little more than looking at the world from a point of view of it BEING NOTHING LIKE YOU, and therefore that you are immortal and it is not. Forgiveness symbolizes your immortality and points to your invulnerability. You can accuse no-one of sin if it is impossible for you to be sinned against. If the world can do nothing to you, you cannot be angry at it. You can only be benevolent by recognizing that you cannot be changed.

That's difficult work. Being confronted with a totally backwards world all day every day, and being asked to totally go against it and deny it in every way. That even your body lies to you. Even your planet is a false world. Even the events that sure as hell look like they're happening aren't happening. That even the suggested proof of sin that your body can be crucified is a total deception. The world is COMPLETELY UNNATURAL.

"as it seems to be the most unnatural and difficult for the untrained mind."

"Deny your own identity and you will not escape the madness which induced this weird, unnatural and ghostly thought which mocks creation and which laughs at God."

"The ego wants to teach you that you want to OPPOSE God's Will. This unnatural lesson CANNOT be learned"

"Miracles seem unnatural to the ego"

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them. And when you are TOLD about it, you cannot UNDERSTAND it. The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

"Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is UNnatural. Perverted thinking will ALWAYS be attended with guilt, because it IS the belief in sin."

For you to become your natural self, you're going to have to stop believing anything the world says or does. That's not exactly easy if your'e used to being in false perceptions where you buy into the entire system and think it's the truth. You're quite literally stuck in hell and trying to get back to heaven. And the only way to get back there is to become heaven-like while you're in the midst of evil.

You're being PULLED in two different directions. The world is trying to pull you into hell and darkness and death. God is trying to pull you into heaven and light and happiness. The two are irreconcilable. They are totally opposite. You will have to abandon the world if you want to go home to God. You will have to turn your back on death and reject sickness and choose away from sin and guilt and fear. And most of all, you will have to learn to see yourself as the RULER of the universe, in no way a victim, and entirely equipped with the power of God.

The body is very much the opposite of your reality as an immortal being. Your real self can never be changed, attacked, hurt or destroyed. But the body is defenseless, exposed and vulnerable, capable of destruction and utterly unsafe in a dangerous world.

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

Having lived your life in a body, you've had to deal with all kinds of vulnerabilities. And this has taught you that you are a target for destruction. Weak, susceptible, fragile, attackable and unsafe. That you can be destroyed and should take great care to avoid all possible threats. Wary of every passing car, frightened of every stranger, upset by the mere presence of something moving.

The body has endured suffering, pain, breakage, malfunction and damage. It has been influenced by the weather and the environment. It has been attacked and hurt, bullied and hit, poked and prodded, maybe even assaulted surgically. Maybe the body has been mutilated, perhaps parts of it are missing, perhaps it is ugly and deformed and lacking, and maybe it was never whole to begin with.

Because of this, and because you believe you are your body, you must have thought this about yourself. You believed you'd lost parts of yourself, that you were under attack, that you have to be constantly vigilant when crossing roads and stepping on cracks and turning corners just in case it is your day to die - hoping to alert you early that you might avoid more suffering. You've put considerable effort into securing your body, making a home for it, protecting it with walls upon walls and layers upon layers, trying to shield it from your enemies.

All of this has told you that you are weak and fragile, vulnerable and attackable, defenseless and exposed. It has caused you to feel frightened and threatened all the time. It has given you constant anxiety and nervousness, constant stress and concern. You never feel fully safe anywhere, you are always on alert and wary of the next biting teeth or hammering nails or sharp pointy objects, trying constantly to avoid the body's death.

"In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful."

This can have done nothing but undermine your peace of mind, your sense of safety, your confidence and your happiness. Having to be constantly on the lookout for danger like some kind of animal in dangerous territory. You avoid the places you don't like to go, you avoid the people who bother you, you steer clear of the brand names you don't trust, and you only expose yourself with select few. And you reason that better the devil you know than the ones you don't.

This all comes about by confusing your identity with the body, believing you are a body, that you are body-like or of a physical nature. It comes with the territory. You cannot believe you are a physical body without being afraid of death, because you know the body can die. You cannot believe the body is your self, without being traumatized when you clip your nails or cut your hair. If you are a body, you are literally as susceptible and vulnerable as the body is, even if you take measures to defend yourself or ward off attackers.

It is not possible to believe you are a body and to feel confident. It is not possible to believe you are a body and be sane. It is not possible to believe you are a body and have real relationships with anyone, because the body literally cuts you off from them. It is not possible to believe you are a body and feel a sense of true safety and peace, or happiness and love. "the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union"

The body is separate in a separated world. It stands apart and alone. By the mere fact that it does not share with others, separate by space and time, it is lonely and isolated. Believing you are a body brings with it a fundamental loneliness and sense of exclusion, of conflict and disagreement, and even constant war. Bodies can never be equal because they rely on inequality and difference to make them distinct. And so there is no peace available when bodies are your truth.

Believing you are a body deceives you and sets you up for failure. It guarantees death and sickness and ensures a breakdown in communication. Being a body means putting a death sentence on your head and limiting yourself to a small span of time, riddled with obstacles and difficulties and suffering. If you are a body you cannot be a mind, or an idea, or a thought of God. You are parentless and orphaned and alone.

The body is essentially a blasphemy against God, because it suggests things about you which cannot be true in reality. You are actually an immortal, permanent, absolute, unchangeable, endless being, given eternal life and incapable of ever being hurt in any way. If you believe you are a body, you do not believe in yourself. If you believe you are a body, you are shutting yourself off from who you are in reality, and are guaranteeing suffering.

Your real self is immortal, it cannot be hurt or attacked, it cannot be affected or altered, it is utterly invulnerable, it is impervious and unassailable. It cannot be attacked or threatened, it cannot be hurt or made to be sick, it cannot be poisoned or traumatized, and it cannot die. Your real self is permanently happy, constantly joyful, and utterly at peace. Its peace can never be disturbed because nothing can ever threaten it, just as it is always free from all fear and anxiety because it knows that it is perfectly safe from all harm.

To identify with who you really are as God created you is to escape from the torment of being a body. It is to free you from all potential for suffering, attack, sickness and death. Identifying with your spirit/soul lifts you out of hell and into heaven. It lifts you away from danger and out of harm's way. It gives you real protection and permanent peace. It guarantees you are sinless and guiltless, incapable of being evil, unable to attack or be attacked, harmless and unharmed forever.

Only by not being a body can you be as God created you, because God did not create bodies. Only by not being a body can you laugh in the face of death and overcome the world. It is the body that becomes a target for attack and destruction, and not your real self. Your real self is beyond the world and beyond space and time and beyond the laws of physics. It is not of this world because you were created in another world, in the Kingdom of God, where everything is eternal.

"You can never suffer because the Source of all joy goes with you wherever you go."

Your eternal self can never suffer pain, can never be hurt by another, can never be upset or offended, can have no reason to ever be afraid, can never have its peace disturbed, can never become sick or suffer, can never experience pain, can never malfunction or break down or degrade, can never become old or tired, can never lose anything, and can never die. Surely you would rather identify with your real self and be free from hell forever, than to regard yourself as a lump of flesh and bones stalking the earth like a zombie waiting to finish dying.

Only by associating yourself with the properties of immortality can you be set free from the mortal body and all its limitations. Only by identifying as permanent and unchangeable can you have no grounds for upset. Only by recognizing you can never be changed can you free yourself from the blame and tyranny of other people's actions. Only by knowing yourself as the eternal life God gave you can you utterly disregard anything the world seems to do or cause.

"I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."

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

"This is accomplished very simply, as you instruct yourself that you are not a body."

"But I am not a body. What am I?"

"The Christ in you inhabits NOT a body. Yet He IS in you. And thus MUST it be that YOU are not within a body."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body."

"But I am not a body. And my mind cannot attack. So I can not be sick."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

When someone says or does something that you judge and perceive as wrong, you become upset.

In your upset, you claim that you are upset because they said or did something that was wrong - i.e. something incorrect, something that is a mistake, or something untrue.

But, even though YOU are claiming to believe that this thing is untrue and wrong, you are still upset.

Why are you upset, if what the person said is not true? Why do you become upset when someone says something untrue about you, something that seems to attack you, to slander you, to accuse you, to portray you as unfairly guilty, or to label you with something derogatory? Why are you upset if its not true?

The truth is, even though you are to some degree aware that it is not true, you're upset because some part of YOU does believe it is true.

If you didn't believe it, you'd just laugh. You wouldn't take it seriously. You'd KNOW with so much certainty that it's just ridiculous and completely false, that it wouldn't even seem to touch you or engage with you at all.... like it's got nothing to do with you.

But you DO think it's got something to do with you. On some level, deeper down, there is some part of you that actually thinks there is truth to what someone has said about you, even if you are simultaneously horrified and upset and are claiming that it's completely false in a very intense way.

You could be experience a very intense sense of it being unfair, of the slander being vicious, of the person being totally nuts in their accusations, and all of this other framing of the situation that makes it looks like they are wrong and you are not... and yet, you're still upset, despite your claims about how mistaken they are.

You don't really, really, really believe that they are mistaken, you actually believe that they are REAL, and what is real is true. So if you are 'really' being attacked, then you are being attacked with truth, and you believe in this truth so you will be upset. What you receive as real will strike you as the truth and you will accept it. i.e., you took it seriously and didn't overlook/forgive it.

And so this boils down to this simple fact: you are upset because YOU believe these things about YOURSELF.

So then it's really not so much anything to do with what anyone else has said or done. It's not really that they have accused you of something so incredibly - potentially - hurtful. It's not that there is even some kind of inherent attack-power embedded into their slander, or some kind of force in their words that can actually come into you and MAKE true whatever they are judging you for.

Instead, it all boils down to your own beliefs about yourself - your own sense of identity. Has this *attempted* attack got anything to do with what I AM? If it hasn't, because I'm clear about what I am, and I am immortal spirit, and I am eternally innocent, then in that clear identity I have absolutely no grounds for even thinking that it's got something to do with me.

But if I do not believe in my own innocence, if I myself am actually in some way AGAINST MYSELF, or have undermined myself, or think of myself as unworthy or not good enough, or think that I don't deserve love, or I don't like something about myself, you can bet that when someone comes along to appear to provoke you, you WILL think that it has something to do with who and what you are - you will think that they're talking about YOU and you will 'take it' as an attack on that identity.

So you can see this in people who are very against themselves, who have a lot of self-hate or self-loathing or low worth etc. When someone seems to attack them or judge them, they become very upset very quickly. This is because they themselves very strongly believe in and AGREE WITH what the other person is claiming is true of them.

The person is so upset by the stimuli because they themselves are very upset about their own self, they are upset about how they see themselves, they are already walking around with a huge baggage of pain and suffering within themselves that they feel very badly about, and this is now tapped into by the other person.

The pimple then seems to pop and the cover of denial laid over the top of this mountain of self-attack is taken off, and out pours the gush of a "reaction"... which typically is then blamed on and projected on and targeted at the other person, as though they created all of it.

But all the other person is doing.... is nothing. Absolutely nothing. They're just showing up and mirroring back to you a reflection of what YOU think of yourself. People will come into your life "as if by magic", attracted to the vibrational frequency or mental focus of content in your mind, that reflect to you what you currently think of yourself. And you will hate them for doing this, because you hate yourself. And each time they come along and seemingly do TO you what YOU are already doing to YOURSELF, you don't like it. And the only reason you don't like it is because they are doing to you exactly what you're already doing to you.

And so even if you are upset, deep down you in some way must agree with that person, even if they seem to be a horrible enemy, otherwise, why would you be upset? Why would you be having a reaction, if their judgements were completely false and you knew it? Why would you lose your peace and blow up in a rage or whatever if you're calmly certain that that person is very mistaken about who you are, and you are very clear about who you are? And I don't mean, clear about your ego self, but clear about your REAL self as God created you - innocent immortal spirit. Your real identity.

So every time you get upset, and it seems like someone caused it, it just means that YOU HIRED SOMEONE to come along (attracted them mentally) to come and point out, within you, what it is that you believe is true, about yourself and God, so that you will become aware of what is in you, and get an opportunity to question it. Is it really true? Do I really want to hold onto this belief? And if all you're doing at that point is falling for the appearance that someone else is causing everything you're feeling, then you've totally missed the point. And you're being dishonest.

It's more honest to step back and look at why you are upset. You are upset because you believe that your worst enemy's attack is actually true of you and deserved by you. You actually want it. You chose it. You asked for it. Yes you did. And that means that they're not actually doing it 'to' you, as much as YOU have done it to you. And since you're the one who actually believes this bullshit about yourself, YOU are the one who needs some correction. The other person is only there to "trigger" you, to draw your attention to areas of yourself where you thought you were pure but are not, or areas where you believe bullshit that needs to be purified. They're helping you. They're actually on your side, in the bigger scheme of things. And you hired them to do so. All those enemies of yours? They're your servants.

So at some point you have to get past this fireworks of blame and denial and projection, and take some responsibility. It's you that believes you suck and are not worth shit. When someone does something to highlight this, you should be thanking them. AND then you should work on undoing YOUR belief that this is true. If you are upset, you DO believe it is true, and you DO agree with them, no matter what you are experiencing and no matter how much you think this is not the case. If you are upset, you are believing something untrue about yourself, and the only way to be not upset is to undo that.

So yes, it's not anyone else's fault that you're upset. Look at yourself. What have you decided about yourself? What is it you believe about yourself?

Because if what the other person has 'done to you' is not the truth, then why are you still upset? It MUST be because you actually don't FULLY believe that it's not true. Some part of you agrees and some part of you has attacked your own self.

And what this will lead to is the simple insight, that ALL of your upset is really the result of your own belief about yourself, and NONE of it is really because of other people. And therefore, if you can change your own attitude about yourself, and learn to love yourself, you will be learning your LESSONS and will wake up to the truth about who you are. And then you will have peace, and you will stop putting 'helpers' in your life to provoke you "painfully". Instead your way will be made straight and Holy Spirit will go before you to smooth the way, such that nothing is about your little ego self anymore and you are fully convinced of your own innocence.

Not until you are fully convinced of your own innocence will you cease to be upset when other people accuse you of guilt. But when you get there, you will experience invulnerability, confidence, empowerment, peace and immortality.

Most people believe that death occurs when something outside of your control happens to the body. Some external cause, an act of nature, some environmental influence, a contaminated food, some attack by some external thing or person etc.

This belief is very strong because it is none other than the belief in separation, it is the authority problem, it is the belief in magic, it is level confusion, it's what happens when you believe you can go against God's will - you start to perceive there is a separate will (God's) that is working against your will.

The belief in "inevitable death" is the belief in God's wrath and the inevitability of the consequences of SIN! The innocent have no reason to die!

It's fairly simple to explain that YOUR MIND IS RESPONSIBLE for absolutely everything that happens to your body!

"The mind is responsible for every condition of the body."

"The body is the IDEA (in the mind) of sin, made flesh and projected outwards (by the mind)."

The belief that the body is CAUSED BY something ELSE other than the mind... no matter what that cause seems to be, IT IS NOT TRUE.

The body is not COMING FROM the external world. It is coming from WITHIN. The mind within is projecting the body outwards. It is the ONLY CAUSE OF THE BODY.

The entire point of the course is becoming aware that you are 100% responsible, in mind, for every single thing you choose and everything that happens, such that there is absolutely NO wiggle room for some other stray "causes" to influence you, in any way, on any level.

"I am not a victim of the world I see" proves this. "The world is but an effect" proves this. "There is nothing that can bring oppression or make you ill or weak or afraid" proves this.

THERE IS NO EXTERNAL CAUSE OF DEATH. EVER.

That means the mind is 100% responsible for whether or not the body lives or dies. "No-one dies unless he chooses to do so." "No-one dies without their own consent." This is very clear. It's a BLACK AND WHITE decision. Either you choose to MAKE the body die by killing it with YOUR EGO, or you dissolve the ego and love the body and CAUSE IT to be healthy and alive and INCAPABLE of suffering.

Many ACIM people believe that there is some kind of separation between the mind and the body. And many popular teachers have taught that you must transcend the body and that it doesn't matter because it's not who you are. And this has also led people to believe that whatever state the body is in, IT DOESN'T MATTER, and therefore you can be at peace IN SPITE OF (and should) any sickness that is showing up. THIS IS BULLSHIT! Who the fuck put the sickness there?! YOU DID. "You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both"!

This is nothing short of the belief that there is STILL an external cause that can produce effects in you and therefore influence the body AGAINST YOUR WILL, causing the body to BECOME sick and suffer and die. It is none other than the ego belief that the body becomes sick through ANY reason OTHER THAN that YOU CHOSE IT. It is the conviction that sickness and death arise "on their own" through some "natural" bullshit cause "separate from you" ie separate from the reach of your own mind. If that's the case, your mind is STILL IMPRISONED in the body because it has not fully opened to sharing and extending and BEING EVERYWHERE.

This is what we have to own up to. The body's condition is 100% totally UNDER YOUR CONTROL. Your mind projects it, makes it, makes it suffer or well. It has no mind of its own, no will of its own, and no say in the matter. It is JUST A TOOL. It's a teaching device and a communication device. That's all. It does not live or die of its own will. Nor does it get sick by itself or as the result of anything beyond your mind. YOU ARE responsible for whether it is sick or healthy, and whether it is alive or dead. And if you do not OWN that responsibility, you ARE CHOOSING TO DISOWN YOURSELF, and that IS AN ACTIVE DECISION TO DIE. And death will result.

There are no exceptions. The body literally cannot enter into sickness in any form without the mind attacking it or using it for attack. And when you stop using it for attack it becomes healthy. THIS IS GUARANTEED. People believe all too strongly that the body has some kind of permanent existence of its own, its own "history", its own continuation, its own identity, and that therefore it exists independently. IT DOES NOT. It is nothing but a SYMBOL in your mind. It has to OBEY YOU. If it dies, you must have commanded it to die. If it lives, you must have commanded it to live.

The body is a MEDIUM through which you communicate. If you send SHIT through it, it becomes clogged up with shit which interferes with communication and makes the body sick. If you send LOVE through it, the love breaks down and heals the shit and clears it away, restoring clarity. Mind that is extending love IS A HEALER, it heals the body, it doesn't just let it sit there suffering and dying. It ACTIVELY HEALS IT.

THIS HAS TO BE SO. It is the principle of resurrection. God's love HEALS, and restores to life that which HAD BEEN DEAD. In order to do that, love has to have a MIRACULOUS QUALITY of being able to RAISE THE DEAD, ie GIVE LIFE TO that which was dead. YOU, as a son of God, in a dream, could not even get back TO God, having sinned, unless LOVE was able to in some way HEAL YOU and UNDO the symptoms of separation. Love heals. Love shines away darkness and sickness and death are darkness.

LOVE RESURRECTS THE BODY and sustains it in perfect health indefinitely so long as it is useful. "The mind, being sane, heals the body."

So it doesn't matter how much you made the body suffer and be sick and get close to death, THAT CAN BE REVERSED BY LOVE. And this is why the body's condition can therefore be restored to HEALTH (the ego opposes health in every way), and MUST and WILL automatically be restored to health when the mind is healthy.

YOU CANNOT STAY DEAD WHEN YOU APPROACH RESURRECTION!

Resurrection means ONLY LIFE IS REAL and death is an illusion and therefore you demonstrate THERE IS ONLY LIFE IN YOU and no death!

That makes the body a temporarily purified and HOLY device for communicating to your brothers and to bring God's love/word to them, which *guarantees* the body's health.

There is no other power or cause which can interfere with this mechanic. There is no such thing as an external threat or danger. The secret to salvation is that you do EVERYTHING to yourself, and if you do not CHOOSE TO HURT YOURSELF, you cannot be hurt. "You cannot be hurt unless you choose to hurt yourselves."

Therefore NOTHING ELSE besides you can cause your body to be sick or dead. And so if you do not choose sickness or death, THEY DO NOT OCCUR and become impossible.

How else, by making sickness and death impossible, could you ever reach a state of atonement and resurrection where you can NO LONGER DIE and you escape death forever? How do you think that is possible, other than for you to have TOTAL POWER OVER ALL CAUSES OF DEATH? Which means, simply recognizing YOU were the only cause of suffering EVER in your existence, and if you do not hurt yourself you WILL NEVER SUFFER AGAIN and will not hurt the body.

This is what "heaven is a choice I must make" means... you MUST CHOOSE NOT TO DIE by embracing a reality of ONLY LIFE. "Swear not to die you holy son of God!!!!"

And then there is nothing that can take that away from you. This makes the body INCAPABLE OF DYING, and therefore it will remain so long as you find it useful. You cannot make it go away by KILLING it, that is not an option. You cannot make it die in order to drop it! If you think it will just die in time "on its own" you are mistaken. YOU MUST ATTACK IT in order to make it sick or dead, and you WILL NOT attack it if you are sane. So how can it die?

You have to make it DISAPPEAR by shining it away with your mind USING LOVE. This is the loving end of the body and the dream of death is NEVER left by death, only by truth and love.

If you choose to die, that's your choice. It's not because of anyone else or anything else in the world. And it is failure. It is failure to reach resurrection and therefore is failure to reach the COMPLETION of the curriculum. Death is a mistake. It is a WRONG ANSWER to the question of what is the truth. If you come up with this answer, you MUST CARRY ON to learn what the real answer is. Death is never the answer. ONLY LIFE IS REAL.

In A Course in Miracles, in the beginning, you are safe in God, happily co-creating with Him. Then along comes the tiny mad idea. The authority problem forms, level confusion begins, you go into the separation and the idea of real sin is given belief.

Believing that sin is possible, has reality, has occurred producing real effects, and is irreversible, is an unforgiving attitude. If you were to be forgiving you'd recognize that sin is impossible and there is no sin - that you remain innocent. But without forgiveness you immediately enter into the belief that sin is real.

At this point, you are already attacking yourself. You have condemned yourself by believing that you really sinned against God. You now have an unwillingness to forgive yourself. This sets up a chain reaction whereby, since you sinned, and you did it, you must be guilty of it. And since you are guilty, you deserve punishment.

This is all a judgement that you are placing on yourself. It has nothing to do with other people. Just the simple belief that you really sinned is enough to condemn yourself to death. Actually death is a completely logical conclusion if sin is real, and until the sin is undone, you will seek to destroy yourself for what you did.

So the mere act of believing sin is real is actually an attack upon yourself, a condemnation. And this automatically is going to lead to you believing that you should be punished. It will even make sense to you that you should be punished. You will agree that punishment is called for, because of your guilty nature.

If you believe in your guilt you're going to continue the process of self attack. You will allow yourself to be hurt, because you will agree with punishment as if it should be happening. You won't resist it or defend yourself against it. You'll welcome suffering and want retribution against yourself. And when you arrange for others to seem to play the part of victimizer, punisher or abuser, you are secretly wanting to be the victim because you think you deserve it.

But the more dangerous aspect here is, it isn't really others or the world or God that are going to enact this vengeance for you and upon you. It's you. Your own belief that you sinned and are guilty will compel you to believe you should be hurt. You are starting to hate yourself and find yourself unworthy of love. And you will start trying to hurt yourself. It will make sense to you that you should suffer and you will actively try to make it happen because it seems justified.

As this develops you are becoming more and more suicidal. What is suicide other than self attack, self punishment, and an attempt to destroy yourself? We should make clear here that the entire ego thought system is an attempt to destroy your identity. It's an attack on God's Son, on His immortality. It's an attempt to deny that you exist and destroy yourself. So the whole ego thought system is suicidal and self-defeating from the beginning.

This essentially is the cause of all death. Every single death, no matter the seeming circumstances or appearances of causes, is solely the result of the belief that sin is real. And all forms of sickness are symptoms of the fear of God's wrath, the desire to suffer, and an attempt to project your sin onto others in a futile effort to deny that you believe you did it.

"The wages of sin is death."

"No one dies wihtout their own consent"

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

So anyone who believes they really sinned, is suicidal, and is choosing to die. They are consenting to punishment, because they believe they deserve it for what they did. Every single dead body in the history of the human race has been caused by the belief in sin. It's essentially a death wish, a wish for the death of yourself as consequence of your sinfulness.

If you consider the belief that you sinned against God, attacking Him against His will by usurping his power, playing God and having authority over Him, you will now believe that God is entirely justified in vengeance. In essence, you will believe that God wants you dead - that your death is God's will. And this will then lead to the belief that you cannot go home, you are not welcome in Heaven, sin cannot be undone, and there is no choice at all.

Based on this a death wish is formed, producing the sense of the inevitability of death. It's the belief that returning to Eternal Life is no longer an option, so the only thing you can do is suffer and die. This makes death the only path you can seemingly follow. And it's this belief that makes death seem inevitable. The driving force is your own belief that you really sinned, which is already a way to condemn yourself to death.

The good thing is, that in truth you did not really sin, God is unchanged and nothing has really happened. You have only dreamed of all this and there is no real sin at all. Nothing real can be threatened so the idea of sinning against something real is nonsense. This means that if you can recognize your sinlessness, which is accepting the Atonement truth, the belief in sin is uprooted at its core. There is no foundation for sin when innocence is recognized, and this is how the atonement cures you by proving sin doesn't exist.

"Only atonement can be said to cure."

The good thing then is, that if you are willing to forgive yourself and recognize you never sinned, you are not guilty, and you are still loved by God, this opens up to the door to option B. You can now CHOOSE whether or not to go towards death or towards eternal life. Death becomes OPTIONAL. You recognize you don't HAVE to be sick or die, and you actually can choose never to die again. To never commit suicide.

By acknowledging you are welcome to return back Home to God, because you are forgiven and have never sinned, Real Life is on the cards again and you can choose it. Which means you can choose not to die! You can choose to experience eternal life, and never have to die again. To never again torture yourself, make yourself unhappy, suffer or make yourself sick. That you deserve to live and not die, because there is no sin or death and you are free.

"There is no death, the Son of God is free."

"I am still as God created me."

"There is no sin."

The acceptance of the Atonement is the end of suicide because it is the end of death. It is the end of the sense of inevitability or "lack of another option". It's the reclaiming of the power to choose to accept the eternal life you already have. And it therefore signals the end of the need for sickness and death. Those who are innocent have not sinned, are not guilty, do not deserve to die, and thus death has no purpose.

The fact is then, that most of the people on this planet are suicidal. To varying degrees, we're all trying to die. And most believe death is inevitable because they have not forgiven the belief in sin entirely.

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

No-one deserves to die, and no-one needs to die. In truth no one CAN die, but we can confuse ourselves with things that seem to.

"You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."

Given you cannot die and are permanently innocent, it is pointless to try to make death happen. This is why Jesus is asking you to "swear not to die, you holy Son of God." Only those who are committing suicide want death and thus choose it. Those who are awakening to truth, forgiving themselves and are preparing to go Home to God, MUST relinquish the attraction to and need for death. And this automatically melts away as the guilt and sin disappear. Without sin there is no death. And without death there is no world of sin.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

If you have not sinned you are not guilty. If you are not guilty you do not need to be punished. If you do not need to be punished you have no basis for hurting yourself. If you stop hurting yourself you never have to suffer or die ever again. This is the secret of salvation.

This is a course in LIFE, in resurrection, and returning to your immortality. It is the end of all suicidal death and the restoration of eternal life. Death is a failure to forgive. And succeeding in forgiveness opens the gates of heaven.

I asked Jesus last night fairly bluntly about death, whether a person's body can die without any problems in the mind, and whether a person can be fully awake/enlightened and still go through the death process.

His answer was short and sweet and cut to the chase:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Demonstrate death and you must believe in death."

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Just to make sure you grasp what this means, recognize the ACIM ideas that "to teach is to learn" and also "all teaching is demonstration" and "you will demonstrate what you believe is true" and "you are always demonstrating even while you sleep".

So that means, whatever you are expressing, whatever you are showing up "as", whatever state your body is in, whatever is coming through you, however you are using the body, whatever you are trying to communicate to others on all levels including the physical, whatever "message" you are giving through the state of your body which reflects the state of your mind, that is your DEMONSTRATION. Which means, it correlates exactly to what you BELIEVE IS TRUE.

This is proven out in this quote, which tells us that whatever you use the body to DEMONSTRATE, it will BECOME THAT, so if you use the body to demonstrate sickness or death, it becomes sick and dead, because you BELIEVE IN DEATH. The mind makes ALL DECISIONS about the body's condition, including whether it lives or dies:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body’s condition. "

So when you are believing in true health, you will demonstrate true health. When you believe in attack you will demonstrate attack. When you believe in sickness you will demonstrate a sickness. When you believe in death, you will demonstrate death!

What Jesus is saying is, in order to demonstrate death - "to die" as we like to refer to it, where the body goes through a death process, that is ONLY POSSIBLE when you BELIEVE that DEATH IS TRUE AND REAL. And it is because you believe in death being true, that you demonstrate that this is your truth.

It also means therefore, that if you DO NOT BELIEVE in death, YOUR BODY CANNOT DIE. Literally ****CANNOT****. Impossible for it to die, no matter what. If that is your 100% perfect belief in absolutely no attack, the body MUST become a symbol of immortality, to remain in perfect AGELESS HEALTH, as long as it is needed. Not even affected by weather or food or time.

Long story short..... DEATH CAN ONLY HAPPEN IF YOU BELIEVE IN IT!

And that also means... TO COMPLETE THE CURRICULUM AND FULLY WAKE UP, YOU MUST NOT BELIEVE IN DEATH, AND YOU MUST DEMONSTRATE IMMORTALITY.

So everyone is constantly demonstrating, teaching, communicating, what it is they believe the truth is, putting on a "show" which exhibits for everyone to see, exactly what it is you believe in.

Jesus also teaches simply that if you REALLY believe that something is true, you WILL be ABLE to demonstrate its truth. Not just a sort of powerless wishful thinking, but that if it is your actual experience that something is true, you will wholeheartedly be willing to demonstrate it to PROVE that you believe it. Nothing will hold you back from demonstrating it. Being fully convinced of its truth, it becomes REAL for you, and that gives you the POWER to demonstrate it.

"Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right guidance, for learning is invisible and what has been learned can be recognized ONLY BY ITS RESULTS. Its generalisation is DEMONSTRATED as you use it in more and more situations. You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles when you apply them to all situations. There is NO SITUATION (including sickness and death) to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them to ALL situations you will gain the real world."

So what this boils down to is this simple fact.

If your body becomes sick, or if you die, YOU MUST HAVE CHOSEN IT, BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE IN DEATH.

There is no exception to this. If you "demonstrate death" for all to see, you are PROVING that death is something you believe in, and that is why you are TEACHING DEATH to everyone through your EXAMPLE. You're saying, look everyone, look at how death is real, look at how death is happening, look at how death is my truth, and LOOK AT HOW YOU DID THIS TO ME!

When you look at all the passages in the course which talk about "demonstration" this is clearly revealed, that when you demonstrate something it "applies" your belief to others. And therefore when you make your body sick, you are attacking others because you are demonstrating your belief that you have been "made sick" by someone other than yourself. And when you are attacking others, YOUR BODY will be attacked, and will become sick, to DEMONSTRATE that you are believing in attack. And this is nothing other than the attempt to PROVE that your brother must be a sinner because EFFECTS are showing up in you which he MUST have caused.

And even further, when you CEASE believing in death and sickness, you EXONERATE your brother, because you are no longer believing that he is the cause of your state of being, or the world. Jesus used His own resurrection - the re-materialization of a body which was NOT DEAD, proving He had NOT been killed by crucifixion, to DEMONSTRATE that death is not real. Here:

"We said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to "demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God." This demonstration EXONERATES those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have NOT hurt anyone."

He refers to misperception because in a prior paragraph he spoke of how the misperception of others was the justification for their attempted attack on his life. He resurrected to PROVE that they were EXONERATED, through physical demonstration, because of his BELIEF that there is no death, and therefore showed that they were no longer ACCUSED of having caused the death. Simply, by showing up as "not dead", it immediately cancelled and proved false any belief that anyone had killed him, thus rendering all onlookers INNOCENT. He thus TAUGHT THEIR INNOCENCE through this miracle demonstration, because miracles are teaching devices.

The demonstration of what you believe is important. It is all over the course. When we are making ourselves sick, we are accusing our brother of sin. And yes THIS DOES MEAN AT THE PHYSICAL LEVEL. It is only at the physical level that you can see the RESULTS of miracles and the results of the mind's belief system. And this physical level is used as a COMMUNICATION device to make statements about WHAT IS TRUE OF BOTH YOU AND YOUR BROTHER. Your sickness attacks BOTH of you. Your death attacks BOTH of you. With death you are saying, "you killed me, and I killed you, and both of us are dead". This is spelled out in black and white, that "your sickness" is an attack on others and an attempt to accuse your brother of sin. Your body *MUST* be part of your awakening process and part of your view of yourself and part of what it is you believe in.

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price if they can say, "Behold me, brother; at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors must be sins."

Here Jesus is not talking figuratively or metaphorically about death. He's talking plainly about a person's body dying as an attempt to accuse your brother of sin. Anyone who is sick, anyone who dies, is accusing the whole sonship, and the world, and God, of "causing it", and therefore claiming that we are all sinners. Sickness and death OF THE PHYSICAL BODY are WEAPONS OF ATTACK. The body is an IMAGE you are showing your brother to say hey, this is what I think of you, and this is what is true of us both. This is why the body is an integral part of your MIND and an integral part of your entire process of spiritual enlightenment. IT MUST SHOW WHAT YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE.

You can't it be that the body just sits there like a separate "thing" having absolutely no input from your mind and not reflecting your inner condition whatsoever, with you blissing out in some corner of your mind pretending to be awake while the body is still showing everyone that you believe death is real. You can't just be like, oh I'm not a body I am free, I'll just sit here and not be a body, while my body is sick and dies, and I don't care if its sick or dead cus it's an illusion. THAT'S DENIAL. THAT'S A LIE. THAT'S DISHONEST. THAT'S BULLSHIT!!!!!!!

I know that many people cannot accept this and many deny it. But Jesus in A Course in Miracles, and supported by everything He has said in his own words, is telling us to STOP BEING SICK and STOP DYING. That sickness and death are the total OPPOSITE of God's Will, and that we are to DEMONSTRATE AN UNWILLINGNESS TO DIE, in order to PROVE that we really truly believe that death is not real.

It is not enough to sit on a fence and say, ok, I don't believe in death. And to then die. That is a lie. It is dishonest to say you do not believe in sickness and to then demonstrate being sick. Or to claim you are not dying and to then die. Or to say it's not my mind that's dying, it's just my body, which is not me. That's an intellectualization because THE BODY CAN ONLY DIE IF YOU ATTACK IT. It is a lie. The mind IS believing in death and is making the body sick. A SANE MIND heals the body!

"Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. "

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, the mind HEALS THE BODY (making sickness and death IMPOSSIBLE) because it has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything."

If your mind is sane, YOUR BODY CANNOT DIE. If your body dies, YOUR MIND IS NOT SANE.

Whatever you demonstrate, whatever you express, whatever you show, it is coming from your inner condition as an outward picture. It is a demonstration of your thought system and what you REALLY believe. If you go through death, YOU DO BELIEVE IN DEATH. No exceptions. If you do NOT believe in death, YOU WILL NOT DEMONSTRATE IT.

You do not get to wake up from being a body in the dream and then go through death. You do not get to wake up from being a body and believe intellectually that you're not the body and to then have the body be sick and die. Where is the correlation of proof that your mind makes your body? Where is the consistent honesty? This is deception. You can't be demonstrating one thing and believing another.

Jesus is literally teaching us to OVERCOME DEATH. "You made sickness and death and can abolish both". This is not an OPTIONAL course teaching. This is not just some side-thread which you can elect whether to participate in. This is a CENTRAL TEACHING. It is inherent to healing. It is inherent to being right minded. It is inherent to miracles. It is inherent in all of the Course's metaphysics, and it is GOD's WILL that you not demonstrate death. Death is an attempt to kill God's Son, no matter what anyone claims about their supposed state of mind. Death is humanity's belief in hatred made manifest. Period.

Anyone who shows that they die in this world, is demonstrating and proving that they believe in death. That's all there is to it. It doesn't matter how much of a guru you are, how enlightened you seem to be, how many miracles you performed, how many yogic skills you have, how many followers you accumulated, how many people adore you, nothing. The proof is in the pudding. If you die, you did not overcome death.

"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."