"He who would not forgive MUST judge to justify his failure to forgive." - ACIM
Meaning, forgiveness is a fixation on the truth that Christ is real and nothing of the ego is real. It fore-gives by having a purely forgiving attitude so that there are no errors introduced into your own perception, so that you do not see sin as real. This means you are overlooking the ego and not believing in it. You are not supposed to believe the ego even really exists!
If you fail to do this, if you are not truly purely forgiving, which occurs in the Atonement and the acceptance that nothing "real" has happened, therefore innocence prevails, then you will enter into a psychological condition which Jesus has named "judgement".
Judgement becomes your attempt to evaluate or justify WHY you did not forgive, by explaining using various other reasons what the cause is of what you're now seeing. Since you're making a perceptual error and are hallucinating errors, you will see sin as real and will attempt to explain why it is real by judging, ie evaluating, fake reasons.
Also judgement means that you are attacking, are condemning, are attempting to give reality to illusions, and are seeing someone as less than holy. This then takes on and accounts for all forms of what you think of as judgement, which is a judgemental attitude, but really encompasses the ENTIRE ego thought system. Every part of egoic perception is judgemental because it's a split-mind thought system of self-attack and condemnation. It points a finger of blame to scapegoat and enter denial, and finds someone guilty.
The belief that sin is real is judgementalism and is the opposite of forgiveness.
A major mistake all egoic minds make is believing that one part of the ego mind is holier than another, and then pits that one part against the other. One part is called holy and the other part is called evil. And then there is judgement against those that are considered sinful, even though the entirety of that attitude is judgemental. You see people in Christianity doing this where they become very polarized and anti-sin, waging a "spiritual war" against the devil, because they believe it is REAL. But it's not just Christians that do this, everyone with an ego does this.
You WILL be judgemental if you are not forgiving, and the only sign of true sanity is One who has absolutely no belief in "real sin" whatsoever. That mind, Holy Spirit's thought system of real truth, demonstrates and proves that there is no real ego at all. Nothing has happened. The atonement.
People will then say, if you want to do the Course correctly, you need to not be judgemental. So then people repress their ego and hide their judgements. If they believe sin is real they will continue to judge on some level even if they don't express it. And it will be an unconscious self attack. You can't just "stop judging" in expectation that this will solve everything, because the only reason you're judging is because you believe the world/body/ego/sin is reality or truth. You could take that path IF it would lead you to the insight that NONE of that is real, but I don't generally think that's happening for most people.
Instead, focus on forgiveness which is the true undoing of judgement, which must lead all the way to the Atonement if it is to completely uproot the core belief about the separation really happening. Only then will judgement cease, because judgement is really an EFFECT of non-forgiveness, not a cause in its own right.
P.S. I don't mean this post to be a "judgement" about judgemental Christians. Not all Christians are judgemental by any means. But they do often present a good example of this happening due to their belief in real sin and can't help but be "against" sinners. Some of the most intensely judgemental people I've met claim to believe in Jesus with the most gusto and passion, yet were horrible to be around and so incredibly righteous. Their personas were huge and they were in such denial. This doesn't mean Christians can't be truly forgiving and not believe in sin, just that many don't get that far. This is the lower level of expressing Christ's truth and is an attempt to express it within the context of the ego being real, so is really a major "level confusion". Christians can become Christ if they can let go of a belief in real sin and the entire package of evil/hell/sickness/death/vengeful God that accompanies it.
ACIM leads off with this:
"This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite."
It is saying that we are REQUIRED to take this 'course', and that there is some kind of 'curriculum' that is not optional.
Many believe this means that we each have an individual curriculum, which we do (a script).
But what it is also points to, is that there is a set of metaphysics which describes a kind of pre-set or structured layout to existence, describing the mechanics of the dimensions of the dream, how things are 'set up', where the truth IS (God), what the truth is not (ego), and what steps are necessary in order to find true peace.
This layout, or 'plan', if you will, is not optional. It is not something you can interfere with. It is not something you get to determine. It is a set of 'rules' or 'law' by which everything is governed. There is a law of cause and effect. There is a law that what you do to others you do to yourself. etc... these are non negotiable.
The ego thinks it has the power and freedom to establish the rules, to determine where the truth is, what laws govern existence, that you have an 'option' of living without God, that you can just make everything up to be the way you want it, that you can find truth in what is false, that you can live without God (Life), etc... the ego has this fictional idea that it is 'above the law'.
The christians would say that the ego (as the devil), is the law-breaker which thinks it can 'sin' by breaking God's laws, i.e. defying the curriculum. But we're all doing this whether we're christians or not.
The curriculum is the metaphysics. The curriculum is God's plan. The curriculum is the 'how' and the 'requirements' and 'conditions' necessary in order to return to awareness of God. It's like, a set of laws that you have to accept and agree to, if you want to play-nice with the establishment.
As such the metaphysics determines the 'way to God', so all that's left really is the timing of your willingness to ACCEPT the path to atonement, by surrendering the ego idea of self-control and the illusion of choice.
It basically works like this. You believe you are not loveable and are separate from the love that you ARE. You experience a sense of lacking love. This creates a false need. The need motivates you to search. You search externally outside of yourself for what you've lost. You deny your own value and lovability so you project this onto others. You set them up to look like they can save you, that they are better than you, that they are above you, and that they will fulfill your need. You put them on a pedestal in order to put yourself down, and you worship them hoping to get some small scrap of love (that you don't deserve).
We do this with our children. We project so much of our own missing value onto them (by sacrificing ourselves), that we turn them into idols. As idols, they are more important than we are, they are more valuable than we are, we would just about kill ourselves to save them, and we worship them. We set them up to look like they can do no wrong. We enter into denial about any flaws that they might possibly have. We see them as 'can do no wrong'. We imagine that they absolutely are supposed to love us back and that they are only loving and completely overlook any faults. We make them seem like they are our savior and that they have something we don't have, capable of doing for us what we refuse to do for ourselves. And ultimately we live vicariously through them because we've made them into 'everything'.
This all can seem extremely noble and humble and prideful and correct. But it is filled with self deprivation, self denial, unworthiness, self sacrifice, martyrdom, loss, exhaustion, having no time for yourself, being less important, and generally all forms of inequality. Inequality also includes of course the flipside of idol worship which is what happens when YOU believe you are the idol and that the child (or other audience) should worship you. This is just another expression of the same egotism and may result in the child becoming the idol-worshipper (of you). If you are the idol, then you believe you are secretly flawed and NEED to have people worship you to prove that you are good enough - except you never believe it, and it never works, and it's never enough. Idol worshippers are the more obvious victims of the world (those who are bullied), and idols are the more obvious victimizers (those who bully). BOTH of them believe they are not loveable.
This dynamic also extends to all other special relationships, because they are all based on you having a LACK of love, and therefore being compelled to find it in another. The other now contains something valuable and special that you want but don't have. You want to get it from them. Except that you don't REALLY want to receive it because doing so would undo your belief that you're not worthy of it. So you would steal it away and destroy it, to deprive yourself. "If I can't have it, nor can anyone else."
Another great example of idol worship takes place in many Christians/Catholics who worship Jesus. They will put Jesus on a pedestal and endow him with all kinds of special value and worth. At the same time, they will claim that they themselves cannot possibly have EQUAL value, so they must be unworthy. Secretly they STARTED by saying they are unworthy, and this is why they see Jesus AS worthier than they are. They may thus 'worship' Jesus AS an idol (even though he doesn't want this), and continually believe that Jesus will save them for them. They will, however, constantly REFUSE to believe or admit that they in any way deserve saving, that they can be saved, that they can be loved to the degree Jesus would offer. That is, unless they believe they have atoned enough to be the 'chosen ones' who are in Jesus' favor and better than those suckers who are even less worthy and who clearly are going to hell (throwing them under a bus).
So with one hand they are trying to reach out to Jesus to say, "hey, please love me for me and save me from my (wretched) self because I can't", while the other hand says "stay the fuck away from me I am not worthy to be your equal." The ego here has conflicting voices - one which sounds like it is filled with adoration and justified worship, but the other which clearly does not REALLY want Jesus to love them fully. If Christians were to fully receive and acknowledge Jesus's love for them, they would have to ADMIT that they too are just as loveable as he is. Otherwise, how could they possibly receive His love? This is what they do not want, because they do not want their own love which God already gave to them.
When you idolize someone you make them more valuable than yourself because you've projected your own value and worth. You then say you want them to save you FOR you, but secretly you hope that they won't. It becomes especially toxic when the person you idolize refuses to be your idol. If they pull away from you or separate from you, they might occasionally throw you a tiny scrap or mosel of attention, which you think is all you deserve. And when that scrap comes, you feel like the entire relationship has been saved - finally you got a blessing from that person on-high and now that means they love you and that they will save you. Your tremendous need/lack of lovability gets a little bit of attention and now it seems like there's hope. And then they withdraw their love again and you feel devastated.
The problem is, you're not really devastated by their lack of loving you, you're devastated by YOUR not loving you. When they withdraw their idol status without you withdrawing your idolizing of them, ie they separate or distance themselves or fail to deliver, you are left with nowhere else to go. You can't get the love from within or from God because you don't believe that is where the love IS, and if your idol ditches you your mind is now reminded of just how empty it is. This is painful and is experienced as loss and grief. The loss of your own self. The grief of your own separation from God.
This is a spiritual lesson, and a hard one. And essentially it is the only lesson. You believe you are separate from love and will never get back to that love, or that it is NOT love, and now you've projected the source outside yourself where it does not exist. To resolve and complete the lesson, you have to UNDO the beliefs you've formed about YOURSELF which tell you that love is not who you are, love is not what you deserve (from within), that you do not love or forgive yourself (and God), that God is not love, that you are not loveable or worthy of love, and that you are not yourself. This belief in separation is what drives the entire projection and idolization of external love. But YOU ARE THE LOVE YOU SEEK.
God knows this. He hasn't forgotten you. Holy Spirit knows it. Jesus knows it. The angels know it. Even you as Christ know it and can't forget it. But somewhere along the lines some part of your mind became convinced by a lie - a LIE - that you are not love itself. This needs correction. And it cannot be corrected by anyone else outside of you because they are not the source of the correction OR of the separation. You might blame them because they seem to be separate from you and they seem to not be fulfilling your 'secret bargain' to love you for you, but it's not really their fault. It's not their fault they fail to love you for you. They're not supposed to. You need to learn to love yourself again so that you no longer NEED to get it from somewhere else, and consequently so that nobody else CAN take it away or deny you.
You are the way, the truth and the light. You are Jesus's equal. You are equal to your children. You are equal to your parents. You are loveable by God and in God and as God's extension of love. And you are absolutely worthy of the joy and happiness of RECLAIMING YOUR VALUE.
I am going out on a limb a bit to say, that Holy Spirit is a powerful healer and is the medium of miracles. He is quite capable of healing all forms of sickness on all levels including the physical. He shares the power of God. There is nothing that your holiness cannot do, and there is nothing that His holiness cannot do.
Holy Spirit doesn't just sit there on some throne winking at you while you watch thoughts go past or while you gently hand over little bits and pieces of ego. He isn't idle. He isn't there to just be some administrator or to sit and watch while you do all the work. And he's definitely not some intellect-friendly 'metaphor'.
Holy Spirit is an active agent of God who is perfectly capable of performing literal miracles, miracles which anyone on this planet would agree is a miracle. Miracles that include extraordinary healing of body parts, the growing of new limbs and organs, the removal of toxins and metal plates and artificial attachments, the correcting of unbalanced body proportions, weight loss, removal of scars, giving you hearing that you never had since birth, providing you with an entirely new set of internal organs... I mean.. there is NOTHING Holy Spirit cannot do.
Ok, this is a bit radical. This is not your ordinary A course in wimpy miracles. This is not "Oh a miracle is just a change in perception" or "a miracle is looking at things in a different way". Fuck that.
This is a course in MIRACLES, folks. It really is what it says on the can - learning how to perform real, powerful miracles. Not some watered-down nice safe little mind-training exercise program to listen to on your headphones. We are talking about the Holy Spirit wielding the POWER OF GOD to perform absolutely any correction to ANY consequences whatsoever that may have stemmed from your belief in separation, sin, guilt or fear.
The ONLY thing that is 'stopping Him' for enacting this power is YOU. Your willingness.
"Holy Spirit will correct all of the consequences of your wrong decision if you will let Him." - ACIM
ALL of the consequences. Not just little mental thoughts and psychological faux-pas.
Ok.. sounding a bit evangelical or something?
Well... the ACIM community is rather sparse and doesn't have a whole lot of leadership and doesn't also have a whole lot of experience in the 'supernatural' aspects of the Course. Most people want to sweep it under the carpet. I have suspected things about it for a long time but felt awkward saying so because it seemed like I was just sticking my neck out and nobody else seemed to agree.
Well. You go watch some videos somewhere of these supernatural churches etc where certain branches of Christians have, over the centuries, come to learn not only how to access Holy Spirit's power but how to wield it in such ways as to perform literally 'real miracles'. Their theology might be riddled with errors but they are STRONG in their application of Holy Spirit to really heal serious problems.
People getting out of wheelchairs. People being cured of cancer. People having completely new organs grown in place of diseased ones. The complete removal of blindness and deafness. Sure some of it is faked, but in many cases it is very genuine. These are the kinds of things that the disciples of Jesus did when they went about their Father's business. These are the kinds of things Jesus Himself performed, WITH Holy Spirit, to raise the dead and change water to wine and feed the 5 thousand and cure the blind and all the rest of it. THE SAME HOLY SPIRIT IS IN YOU, waiting for you to to LET HIM TEACH YOU TO HEAL. He's not some intellectual substitute version of Holy Spirit. He is the power of God!
"I will heal as I let Him teach me to Heal" -- doesn't just mean, oh, I'll sort of have some nice comfortable tidying up of my insides. It means, Holy Spirit can HEAL ANYTHING and He will teach you how to do so with Him, "AS I LET HIM". There is no limit to what you are capable of.
How will you overlook your brothers sins and your own and demonstrate that His attack has had no effect on you, literally, physically, if you do not have the power of Holy Spirit to reverse all physical ailments and cure all diseases and evidence of attack? Are you going to do that on your own with your little ego self? Nope. But with Holy Spirit, you can become absolutely invulnerable.
Yah I know.... sounds far fetched. Sounds "out there". Too radical. This is what A Course in Miracles wants for us. Do you think Jesus only gave us a nice watered down Course that doesn't have the real 'meaty' stuff in it? No. Jesus wants us to do what He has done and more. And that means, pretty big fricking powerful miracles. You are a miracle worker, not a receptionist.
There is only one curriculum. It is God's curriculum. It applies to EVERYONE, no matter how awake or asleep or in what walk or life or following what religion, even people who have never heard of A Course in Miracles. There is a difference between ACIM - the book, the course - and "the universal curriculum", which applies to everyone, book or not.
The curriculum is REQUIRED, in that there is only ONE truth, and every single soul has to find their way TO that one truth eventually. The truth is non-negotiable. "The time you take it is voluntary", and you can go closer and retreat and get lost and come back again etc but generally speaking "the truth" is the curriculum that you need to learn, ie the atonement, and either you learn it or you avoid it for a while, but *everyone* HAS to learn it. Because it's God's guarantee that you WILL wake up from dreaming.
God's ANSWER to the separation, which includes ALL PEOPLE, is the Holy Spirit, who he created AS the answer. Not just a bunch of information. Not just some "optional path". He is IN YOUR MIND as a spirit being, and he forms the Christ Mind, which ALL souls share. It is *IMPOSSIBLE* to be awakened and to exclude the Holy Spirit. The truth that you learn, true perception, IS HIS perception. You can only "learn it", by joining YOUR perception with HIS and aligning with His way of seeing. There is NO OTHER way, other than the ego's.
So essentially the Holy Spirit, sooner or later, is going to form a relationship with you, you are going to develop trust, you're going to open up to Him and work with Him. He is your TEACHER. Jesus also calls him "the only therapist", due to His position of knowing the truth. There is only one truth no matter who you are.
This applies to all Christians, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists, Hindu folk, you name it. The Holy Spirit is *unavoidable* in the curriculum process. Indeed Jesus says that you must learn to join your mind with His and SHARE His mind. You cannot avoid Jesus either. And that's probably something that might piss off some people following the FORM of other paths. That is why Jesus CORRECTLY and truthfully said, "I am the way the truth and the light and no one comes to the father but by me."
Additionally, though some will not like this fact either, being a miracle worker is a God-given right and *completely natural* for anyone who is joining with the Holy Spirit's thought system and waking up to the truth. Removal of blocks to awareness releases or rather stops interfering with miracles, and "miracle working" becomes your natural profession. As Jesus says also, once you accept the atonement you become PART OF the atonement plan and then you PROFESS HIM... ie express Him, because "atonement is the natural profession of the children of God." And that applies to ALL SOULS, no matter how ACIM-oriented you seem to be right now.
The fact is that as you approach the truth and merge with love etc, you WILL, MUST, CANNOT AVOID, becoming miraculous. It is your nature. God created you miraculously and you are miraculous forever. And so you WILL perform miracles as part of your function of healing on Earth. Anyone who "doesn't like" the idea of performing miracles FOR OTHERS (professing Jesus) is going to run into a roadblock at some point because miracles are NATURAL and *EVERYONE* is supposed to be doing them.
So long story short, the curriculum is not optional, nor is becoming intimate with Holy Spirit, nor is having a direct relationship with Jesus, nor is miracle working. This is why Jesus also says you MUST join the great crusade with Him as an active worker. It's not even something you would want NOT to do. It's a given. Part of the metaphysics. You become part of the atonement PLAN which goes far beyond yourself and helps others.
So all this stuff IS MANDATORY. You can, however, avoid it. You can be in denial of it. You can try to reject it. You can refuse to accept it. But it does not change the facts or the truth. At some point, everyone is going to return to God through the universal curriculum. They MIGHT not necessarily do it through the FORMAT of "A Course in Miracles", the book, with the lessons etc... they MIGHT come to it through what SEEM like "other paths", but no matter the appearance of the path, it is ALL part of God's curriculum for awakening, which MUST include the Holy Spirit, joining with ALL brothers including Jesus, and taking lessons to learn the SAME truth as everyone.
I'm trying at the moment to get a better handle on how various MIRACLE WORKERS have been able to achieve their states of mind, and gain access to true miracle working power.
Most of these miracle workers are Christians or Catholics, be it Jesus himself or various saints and other notable individuals.
There is something about what they are reading into in the bible that is steering them towards states of saintliness, christ-consciousness, holiness and humility.
I believe there are parallels to some core teachings in A Course in Miracles, and that some of these aspects may not be so readily noticed.
The bible acknowledges that we are in a "fallen state", and have become "sinners."
ACIM would make a small adjustment to say we BELIEVE we are sinners, and as a result a part of our mind has "become evil". This evilness is what we call ego. Many ACIM students do NOT acknowledge that they have this evil ego in their mind and do not want to look at it. But we have to "confess" that we believe evil things, in order to admit to our mistakenness and seek a better way.
The bible would say we are trying to be evil or wicked, and that by doing so we are destined for hell.
ACIM makes a small adjustment to say that we do indeed BELIEVE that we are evil and wicked, which is the "ego" portion of our mind, and by so believing we project and perceive hell. The "devil in us" drives us towards destruction and suffering and death.
The bible would say "the devil" tempts us and plays upon our sins and uses our mistakes against us.
ACIM makes a small adjustment to say our egos produce this temptation, our belief in sin leads to self punishment, and we indeed seem to succumb to ego/devil when we believe in death and destruction. In unforgiveness we demand punishment for sin, and the wages of sin is death. This is because we are unforgiving toward ourselves and others and must purify ourselves of grievances/sin/guilt/fear.
The bible would say that only that which is of God is good and real and true, and ACIM would agree with this.
The bible would also say that we need to purify ourselves of our evil ways, ie repent of sin. ACIM also agrees in the sense that we have to stop believing in separation and sin and guilt. This means we have to own up to the fact that we are "being sinners" by having egos, we WANT to be sinful, and we need have a little willingness "to repent" ie to CHOOSE AGAIN and change our minds. We're not going to do this if we don't have willingness to admit that we WANT to be evil.
In both paths there is an acknowledgement of the fall of man. There is acknowledge that we have entered a state of belief in sin and death. There is acknowledgement that only that which is of God is holy and good. There is acknowledgement that this world is a fallen kingdom and the body is not natural to us. There is acknowledgement that we need to admit to "being sinners" (egos) and be willing to repent (choose again). That we need to become more forgiving and develop faith and trust in God.
In particular, all saints and miracle workers confess to having faith in God, trusting in his power, believing in his laws, and obeying his instructions. There is a great dependency on God, both in terms of carrying out his will, doing the Holy Spirit's work, and also being looked after by God. This is mirrored in ACIM as well in terms of us developing trust, gaining faith, listening to the Holy Spirit, receiving Help and Guidance and Correction etc and learning how to be HEALERS.
Both the bible and ACIM provide a notion of "salvation" from sin and suffering and death. A way to overcome the world. They both focus on resurrection and life. They both lead us toward God and toward spirit and eventually to heaven itself.
I do not see that ultimately, in terms of goals, there is ANY difference whatsoever between the two paths, in terms of their end result. When we become miracle workers we become exactly like this who have gone before us as renowned performers of the acts of God. We become empowered to utilize God's unlimited power, the Holy Spirit works through us, and we simultaneously become purified and holy and innocent and good.
The key to the success of these miracle workers appears to lie mainly in their dedication to the laws and nature of God, their development of faith and trust and dependence on God, their willingness to admit to being nothing without God, their humility and recognition of God as being the source of ALL power, and their great honesty in seeking out and purifying themselves of all devils and egos and evil thoughts within them, and their vigilance for the Kingdom.
A Course in Miracles asks us to do PRECISELY the same, and to become exactly like them.
"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."
There is one more point which must be perfectly clear before any residual fear which may still be associated with miracles becomes entirely groundless. The Crucifixion did NOT establish the Atonement. The Resurrection did. This is a point which many very sincere Christians have misunderstood. Nobody who was free of the scarcity-fallacy could POSSIBLY have made this mistake.
If the Crucifixion is seen from an upside down point of view, it certainly does appear AS IF God permitted, and even encouraged, one of his Sons to suffer BECAUSE he was good. Many very devoted ministers preach this every day. This particularly unfortunate interpretation, which actually arose out of the combined misprojection of a large number of my own would-be followers, has led many people to be bitterly afraid of God.
This particularly anti-religious concept happens to enter into many religions, and this is neither by chance nor coincidence.
The real Christian would have to pause and ask "how could this be?" Is it likely that God Himself would be capable of the kind of thinking which His own Words have clearly stated is unworthy of man?
(There are times when) The best defense, as always, is NOT to attack another's position, but rather to protect the truth. It is not necessary to consider anything acceptable, if you have to turn a whole frame of reference around in order to justify it. This procedure is painful in its minor applications, and genuinely tragic on a mass basis. Persecution is a frequent result, justifying the terrible misperception that God Himself persecuted His own Son on behalf of salvation. The very words are meaningless.
It has always been particularly difficult to overcome this because, although the error itself is no harder to overcome than any other error, men were unwilling to give it up because of its prominent escape value. In milder forms, a parent says "This hurts me more than it hurts you," and feels exonerated in beating a child. Can you believe that the Father REALLY thinks this way?
It is so essential that all such thinking be dispelled that we must be VERY sure that NOTHING of this kind remains in your mind. I was NOT punished because YOU were bad. The wholly benign lesson which the Atonement teaches is wholly lost if it is tainted with this kind of distortion in ANY form.
"Vengeance is Mine sayeth the Lord" is strictly a karmic viewpoint. It is a real misperception of truth, by which man assigns his own evil past to God. The "evil conscience" from the past has nothing to do with God. He did not create it, and He does not maintain it. God does NOT believe in karmic retribution at all. His Divine mind does not create that way. HE does not hold the evil deeds of a man even against HIMSELF. Is it likely, then, that He would hold against any man the evil that ANOTHER did?
Be very sure that you recognize how impossible this assumption really is, and how ENTIRELY it arises from misprojection. This kind of error is responsible for a host of related fallacies, including the misbelief that God rejected man and forced him out of the Garden of Eden, or that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to use words which are ALMOST impossible to distort, but man is very inventive when it comes to twisting symbols around.
God Himself is not symbolic; He is FACT. The Atonement, too, is totally without symbolism. It is perfectly clear, because it exists in light. Only man's attempts to shroud it in darkness have made it inaccessible to the unwilling, and ambiguous to the partly willing. The Atonement itself radiates nothing but truth. It therefore epitomizes harmlessness, and sheds ONLY blessing. It could not do this if it arose from anything other than perfect innocence! Innocence is wisdom, because it is unaware of evil, which does not exist. It is, however, PERFECTLY aware of EVERYTHING, that is true.
The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness. The Atonement is thus the perfect lesson. It is the final demonstration that all of the other lessons which I taught are true.
Man is released from ALL errors if he believes in this. The deductive approach to teaching accepts the generalization which is applicable to ALL single instances, rather than building up the generalization after analyzing numerous single instances separately. If you can accept the ONE GENERALIZATION NOW, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons.
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. The Son of God IS part of the holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is One. There is no confusion within ITS levels, because they are of One Mind and One Will. This Single Purpose creates perfect integration, and establishes the (reign of the) Peace of God.
But this vision can be perceived only by the truly innocent. Because their hearts are pure, they defend true perception, instead of defending themselves AGAINST it. Understanding the lesson of the Atonement, they are without the will to attack, and therefore they see truly. This is what the Bible means when it says "(and) when He shall appear (or be perceived) we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him AS HE IS."
Sacrifice is a notion totally unknown to God. It arises solely from fear of the Records. This is particularly unfortunate, because frightened people are apt to be vicious. Sacrificing others in any way is a clear-cut violation of God's own injunction that man should be merciful even as His Father in Heaven is merciful.
It has been harder for many Christians to realize that this commandment (or assignment) also applies to THEMSELVES. Good teachers never terrorize their students. To terrorize is to attack, and this results in rejection of what the teacher offers. This results in learning failures.
I have been correctly referred to in the Bible as "The Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world." Those who represent the lamb as blood-stained (an all too widespread conceptual error) do NOT understand the meaning of the symbol.
Correctly understood, the symbol is a very simple parable, or teaching device, which merely depicts my innocence. The lion and the lamb lying down together refers to the fact that strength and innocence are NOT in conflict, but naturally live in peace. "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God" is another way of saying the same thing. Only the innocent CAN see God.
There has been some controversy (in human terms) as to whether seeing is an attribute of the eyes, or an expression of the integrative powers of the brain. Correctly understood, the issue revolves around the question of whether the body or the mind can see (or understand). This is not really open to question at all.
The body is not capable of understanding. Only the mind KNOWS anything. A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its strength. It cannot attack the body, because it knows EXACTLY what the body IS. This is what "a sane mind in a sane body" really means.
A sane mind is NOT out for blood. It does not confuse destruction with innocence, because it associates innocence with strength, NOT with weakness. Innocence is INCAPABLE of sacrificing anything, because the innocent mind HAS everything and strives only to PROTECT its Wholeness. This is why it CANNOT misproject. It can only honor man, because honor is the NATURAL greeting of the truly loved to others who are LIKE them.
The lamb taketh away the sins of the world only in the sense that the state of innocence or Grace, is one in which the meaning of the Atonement is perfectly apparent. The innocence of God is the true state of the mind of His Son. In this state, man's mind DOES see God, and because he sees Him as he Is, he knows that the Atonement, NOT sacrifice, is the ONLY appropriate gift to His OWN altar, where nothing except perfection truly belongs. The understanding of the innocent is TRUTH. That is why their altars are truly radiant.
(Dictated directly without notes) pp 7-12 Though Christians generally (but by no means universally) recognize the contradiction involved in victimizing others, they are less adept at ensuring their own inability to victimize themselves. Although this appears to be a much more benign error from the viewpoint of society, it is nevertheless inherently dangerous because once a two-edged defense is used, its direction cannot be self-controlled.
Bill recently observed how many ideas were condensed into relatively few pages here. This is because we have not been forced to dispel miscreations throughout. (There is one set of notes not yet transcribed which is devoted to this. These emphasize only the enormous waste of time that is involved.) Cayce's notes, too, could have been much shortened. Their excessive length is due to two factors. The first involves a fundamental error which Cayce himself made, and which required constant undoing. The second is more related to the attitude of his followers. They are unwilling to omit anything he said. This is respectful enough, but not overly-judicious. I would be a far better editor, if they would allow me this position on their staff.
It is obvious that Cayce himself was not able to transcend the misperceptions of the need for sacrifice, or he could not possibly have been willing to sacrifice himself. Anyone who is unable to leave the requests of others unanswered has not entirely transcended egocentricity. I never "gave of myself" in this inappropriate way, nor would I ever have encouraged Cayce to do so.
Cayce could not see the Atonement as totally lacking in sacrifice at ANY level. It WAS obvious to him that the mind cannot be so limited. It was equally apparent to him that the Soul is merely unaffected by such an idea. This left him only the body with which to invest his misperception. This is also why he used his own mind at the "EXPENSE of his body."
Because Cayce was a somewhat erratic listener, he was compelled to correct his own errors at very great length, and not always adequately. Consider the basis from which he started, when he began with "yes, we have the body." It is noteworthy that in all these readings, a large section was actually devoted to the body, even though he usually concluded with the caution that the body cannot be healed by itself. It would have saved an enormous number of words if he had always begun with this.
Cayce and his devotion to me are in no way underestimated by the realization that he worked under very great strain, which is ALWAYS a sign that something is wrong. One of the difficulties inherent in trance states is that it is very difficult to overcome the split which the trance itself induces through the medium of communications made while in the trance state.
Cayce's whole approach put him in a real double-bind, from which he did not recover. When he spoke of a dream in which he saw his own rather immanent reincarnation, he was perfectly accurate. He was sufficiently attuned to real communication to make it easy to correct his errors, and free him to communicate without strain. It is noticeable throughout his notes that he frequently engaged in a fallacy that we have already noted in some detail: namely, the tendency to endow the physical with nonphysical properties. Cayce suffered greatly from this error. He did not make either of the other three. However, you will remember that it is this one which is particularly vulnerable to magical associations. Cayce's accuracy was so great that, even when he did this, he was able to apply it constructively. But it does not follow that this was a genuinely constructive approach.
It should also be noted that, when Cayce attempted to "see" the body in proper perspective, he saw physically discernible auras surrounding it. This is a curious compromise, in which the nonphysical attributes of the self are approached AS IF they could be seen with the physical eye.
Cayce's illiteracy never stood in his way. This is because illiteracy does not necessarily imply any lack of love, and in Cayce's case very definitely did not. He therefore had no difficulty at all in overcoming this seeming limitation. What DID hamper him was a profound sense of personal unworthiness, which, characteristically enough, was sometimes over-compensated for in what might be called a Christian form of grandiosity. Cayce was essentially uncharitable to himself. This made him very erratic in his own miracles, and, because he was genuinely anxious to help others, left himself in a highly vulnerable position.
His son comments both on the rather erratic nature of the Cayce household, and also on the rather uneven nature of Cayce's temper. Both of these observations are true, and clearly point to the fact that Cayce did not apply the Peace of God to himself. Once this had occurred, particularly in a man whose communication channels were open, it was virtually impossible for him to escape external solutions. Cayce was a very religious man, who should have been able to escape fear through religion. Being unable to apply his religion wholeheartedly to himself, he was forced to accept certain magical beliefs which were alien to his own Christianity. This is why he was so different when he was asleep, and even disowned what he said in this state.
The lack of integration which this split state implies is clearly shown in certain off-the-mark detours into areas such as the effects of stones on the mind, and some curious symbolic attempt to integrate churches and glands. (This is hardly more peculiar than some of your own confusion.)
Cayce's mind was imprisoned to some extent by an error against which you have been cautioned several times. He looked to the past for an EXPLANATION of the present, but he never succeeded in separating the past FROM the present. When he said "mind is the builder," he did not realize that it is only what it is building NOW that really creates the future. The past, in itself, does not have the ability to do this. Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists. In considering the body as the focus for healing, Cayce was expressing his own failure to accept this AS ACCOMPLISHED. He did not fail to recognize the value of the Atonement for others, but he did fail to accept its corrective merit for himself.
As we have frequently emphasized, man CANNOT control his own errors. Having created them, he does believe in them. Because of his failure to accept his own perfect freedom FROM the past, Cayce could not really perceive others as similarly free. This is why I have not wholly endorsed the Cayce documents for widespread use.
I am heartily supportive of the ARE's endeavor to make Cayce's singular contributions immortal, but it would be most unwise to have them promulgated as a faith until they have been purged of their essential errors. This is why there have been a number of unexplained set backs in their explication. It is also one of the many reasons why the Cayce material, a major step in the speedup, must be properly understood before it can be meaningfully validated.
Cayce's son has been wise in attempting to deal with reliability, which in Cayce's case is very high. There is a way of validating the material, and Hugh Lynn is perfectly aware that this must be done eventually. He is also aware of the fact that he is unable to do it. In the present state of the material, it would be most unwise even to attempt it. There is too much that IS invalid. When the time comes that this can be corrected to the point of real safety, I assure you it will be accomplished. In tribute to Cayce, I remind you that no effort is wasted, and Cayce's effort was very great.
It would be most ungrateful of me if I allowed his work to produce a generation of witch doctors. I am sorry that Cayce himself could not rid himself of a slight tendency in this direction. But fortunately I have a fuller appreciation of him than he had.
I am repeating here a Biblical injunction of my own, already mentioned elsewhere, that if my followers eat any deadly thing it shall not hurt them. This is what Cayce could NOT believe, because he could not see that, as a Son of God, he WAS invulnerable.
I received this inspired definition of what A Course in Miracles is today.
A Course in Miracles says it is a "required course", that you do not have any option on whether or not to take it, and that only the time that you take it is voluntary. It says there is a curriculum which you must follow which you do not have any say in defining, meaning there are no other curriculums.
This is a point of much controversy and misunderstanding. But Jesus is telling the truth.
The "Course", if you will, the actual Course that Jesus is referring to in the book "A Course in Miracles", is not a Course that exists AS the book, but the book is REFERRING to the Course.
The Course, the one curriculum, is referring to every metaphysical truth and every metaphysical step which must at some point be taken in order to return to God. This applies to everyone, everywhere, all the time. There are no exceptions or options. It doesn't matter who you are, what religion you belong to, what you believe, you do NOT have a say in determining what the metaphysics of existence is, how it operates, what the laws are, or how you are meant to function.
There IS only one truth. And from that One Truth, following the separation, extends all of the metaphysical levels and layers and facts, which are on an absolutely colossal scale in the trans-personal, trans-temporal mind of the One Son of God. The structural composition of the levels of mind, the stages of separation, the steps that you have to go through in order to fall asleep, the things you MUST experience if you take those steps, are all absolutely irrefutable FACTS. There is a "WAY", there is only ONE way, and it is this one way that Jesus has labelled "A Course in Miracles".
Stop right there before you associate the book form with what the Course is. Jesus, outside of the book, is referring to the metaphysical structure of reality and the illusion and everything that can possibly take place in it, the "true nature" of existence, and in His book titled "A Course in Miracles" He has chosen to NAME that experiential metaphysical structure "the curriculum." There is no room for bending the rules or breaking the laws of the curriculum.
As a result of choosing separation, certain things came into existence which have a certain structure, a certain behavior, a certain inter-relationship with each other, and it is all entirely based on metaphysical facts. Everything that seemed to happen after the separation happened according to completely clear-cut causes and effects. Basically, by choosing ego, you MUST experience very exact "effects", and it is only by reversing those exact effects that you can be free of the ego. You took 3 steps forward, you MUST take 3 steps back.
Therefore there IS only one real curriculum. Either you are moving away from God or toward God. Movements toward God are the curriculum. This applies to everyone in all walks of life regardless of whether they heard of "A Course in Miracles" or not. In a way, though, Jesus has associated the term with the curriculum, because at the beginning He says:
"This is a Course in Miracles. It is a required Course."
Therefore Jesus is really referring to the one universal curriculum, the one universal metaphysics, and the steps required in order to follow the curriculum, as "A Course in Miracles". Not the book per se. The metaphysical structure of the dream and all of its levels and layers and facts and side-effects is all what defines the fixed curriculum, and taking a "course" in that, is the "Course in Miracles".
It is called a Course in MIRACLES because if you take an actual step in following the curriculum, making actual metaphysical progress in awakening, no matter what belief system you are surrounding those steps with, you are performing miracles. Corrections of mind.
It must be true that you are ALWAYS inside of the curriculum, you are always taking the curriculum, and you are alway bound by its rules. However, the option you have is whether or not to LEARN, i.e. take the curriculum, and so you are free to choose WHEN to learn it, i.e. when to take the next steps toward God. You do not get to choose what those steps are because they are based on the metaphysics. You can continue to be in DENIAL of this truth, which is an attempt to not take the curriculum, but you cannot CHANGE this truth, and sooner or later you MUST take it.
The curriculum therefore exists outside of the "book" of the Course, and applies in ALL belief systems at all times. There is only one "real" path to God. There are corrections necessary in order to awaken to the one truth. Whatever so-called path you are using, even if you never heard of A Course in Miracles, it MUST contain at least some metaphysical truth IF it is going to WORK at all. If it is not in alignment with the metaphysical truth and if it does not advance you along the ONE curriculum, then it CANNOT work.
Also different belief systems and religions either make the metaphysical truth clear, or obscure it, to varying degrees. Some belief systems obscure more than others and may obscure heavily. For example, satanism most likely is going to be very effective at denying the curriculum and electing "not to take it yet". Similarly there are many other delaying maneuvers.
However, what we see as the BOOK, "A Course in Miracles", the FORMAT it takes, and the way it describes the metaphysical truth, is perhaps one of, if not THE, most effective, clear, inspired, ACCURATE, least obscuring, and maximally EFFICIENT formats on the planet today. It can save significant time, because it very closely aligns to the one curriculum, and very effectively teaches about what the metaphysical truth is.
The BOOK, "A Course in Miracles", is piggybacking, or describing, the "real course", which is the curriculum, which is experiential and applies to everyone at all times. The book itself is not necessarily "required" to be read or followed in order to awaken. HOWEVER, whatever FORM of a path you choose, whatever the belief system, whatever theology, it MUST, *ABSOLUTELY MUST* correspond to the metaphysical truth taught in A Course in Miracles if it is going to WORK at all, and if it does not, it will NOT work and will only delay your awakening by producing more delusions.
You can wake up to the ONE TRUTH, through many many many paths. In fact, "all paths lead to God" is true because even the most obscure, highly delaying, extremely denying paths still have at least some amount of the curriculum applying to them, still present lessons, still offers the truth in some small way, and is still governed by the same ONE metaphysical system.
For example, Christianity's interpretation of the metaphysics is correct in some areas and a little off in others. It is correct that there is One God, and that Christ is God's One Son. It is also true that as Jesus (as Christ) said, He is THE way, THE truth, and THE light. Not one of many. THE ONLY ONE. And it is also true that no-one can come to the father but by Him. HOWEVER, Christianity is mistaken in its claim that this means you are forever separate and non-equal with Christ, that other FORMS of paths to God are wrong, that the Christian religion is the only "way" to God, and that all other paths are evil. That's not true.
Christianity CAN be an effective path to awakening and to becoming equal with Christ, but in many many of its flavors and interpretations, it is riddled with a heavy weight of delusion, illusion, confusion, and deception, which masquerade as truth but actually are part of the delaying maneuvers which attempt to PUT OFF the true curriculum. The only way Christianity can WORK is when it is in correct alignment with the truth that has been described in the book "A Course in Miracles", and is following the ONE CURRICULUM which Jesus has basically named "A Course in Miracles" (beyond the book).
Effectively that means that anyone who takes the Christian path (or any other religion or system), CAN ONLY wake up to the truth IF they have actually either inadvertently or on purpose taken the One Curriculum, which IS actually A Course in Miracles. Remember that Jesus begins the Course with "This is a course in miracles. It is a required Course." He goes on to say this is the only curriculum and that you do not have an option about what the curriculum entails. That means, if you woke up "through" Christianity, you actually DID take A Course in Miracles - the metaphysical, experiential, spiritually corrective path back to God, which is present in EVERYONE's mind and MUST be followed in order to return to God.
In this respect, A Course in Miracles, the one true curriculum, IS the only way to God, it IS the way that Jesus is referring to that HE woke up to being Christ, it IS the way that Buddha woke up, it IS the way that any other ascended master woke up, and It MUST be the way that everyone wakes up.
All of the rest of the descriptions and forms and formats and supposed ILLUSIONS of separate paths that people seem to be taking, where they might claim "I am not doing A Course in Miracles", or that they don't believe in it, or that they aren't taking the One Curriculum, are heavily clad in ILLUSIONS that make it seem like they are not taking the One Curriculum, BUT THEY ARE.
*cue meme with "there is no escape" and evil laugh*
Either you are taking A Course in Miracles and learning the metaphysical truth and following the one curriculum and are waking up to God, which is THE ONLY WAY, which does not necessarily have to entail having anything to do with the book whatsoever,
OR
You are delaying the one curriculum, are attempting not to take the "Course", and are in denial.
THAT is the true nature of A Course in Miracles. It is not just a Course that you are only taking IF you are doing your forgiveness or IF you own the book of IF the book is in your hands with you studying it. It is ALWAYS the course, whether you like it or not, and you are always taking it, whether you like it or not!
It is not just a book. It is not just a bunch of text and a set of lessons and a manual. That's just one format. One expression of ACIM. It's one way of explaining what the Course is, one way of TEACHING what the Course is. The Course is the one metaphysical curriculum for awakening which applies to everyone at all times. There are many ways to teach it. The BOOK "A Course in Miracles" is Jesus's way of teaching it, and is a very accurate way. There are an unlimited number of ways of teaching it. Some will appear to be extremely close to the true nature of the one curriculum, and some will seem to be so far removed that you would not say it is the one curriculum at all. But there is no escaping the one curriculum.
This is the metaphysical nature of A Course in Miracles. And this is why it is REQUIRED, and this is why Jesus said it is required. He is not lying. You just have to get your definition of what the "Course" is correct so that it makes sense.
If Christians are making ANY headway towards God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. If Muslims are making ANY headway toward God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. If Hindu's are making headway toward God, they are taking A Course in Miracles. What Jesus has described AS A Course in Miracles is the one, the only, the profound metaphysical teaching, which is completely factual and 100% FIXED and cannot be changed and has no exceptions. That's what He has revealed to us and has attempted to outline and teach in the book. Whether you opt to use the book or not, you are still bound by the curriculum and you still cannot take any other curriculum that works without it being a curriculum in miracles.
"The ego is certain that love is dangerous, and this is always its central teaching. 2 It never puts it this way; on the contrary, everyone who believes that the ego is salvation seems to be intensely engaged in the search for love. 3 Yet the ego, though encouraging the search for love very actively, makes one proviso; do not find it. 4 Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as: "Seek and do not find." 5 This is the one promise the ego holds out to you, and the one promise it will keep"
The ego is simply an attempt to deny the existence of love. Using it, you deny the existence of love within you. This means you put in place a belief, that you do not have love in you. That you are not made of love or are inherently love.
Since love is the absolute core essence of what you are, your soul, to suggest there is no love in you is an attempt to say "love is not your identity." Your very "self" is brought into question.
This creates the belief in a LACK of love within you, and also the belief you are NOT love and cannot BE loved. This is brought about by the idea of sin, which suggests you are separate from Love - from yourself, and from God.
Since you believe it’s not in you, and you feel empty and lacking, you have now become "needy". You’ve invented a fake need - an absence of love. This compels you to SEEK FOR LOVE. You reason it is not in you, so it must be ANYWHERE else other than in you.
The problem is, it is not ANYWHERE ELSE other than in you, shared with God. So as soon as you start to seek for it, you move AWAY from where it is, and TOWARDS where it is not. It is not "out there", outside of you.
This compulsion to address the "hole" in your heart by finding what’s "missing", sends you on an extraordinary journey away from yourself. You are literally trying to "find yourself" anywhere other than where you are, within. You are also therefore trying to find love, anywhere other than where it is, within.
This then means you don’t believe the love is going to come from yourself. Someone or something OTHER than you has to provide it. So now, whether or not you have love, or even your self, depends on someone or something outside of you providing it. If they fail to provide it, it’s their fault. I they provide it, you worship them. Anything other than seeing it in yourself.
This also means therefore, you now believe that someone else has taken posession or responsibility for your love, and your self, as if having stolen it from you. You now see your self and your love, in other people, locked up inside them, as though it’s stuck in them. And now it’s your job to steal it back from them. You believe it belongs to you, and that you’ve lost it.
What you are looking for in them, however, is not real love. You already believed that there is no real love in you. You already chose not to have real love. You saw yourself as unworthy of it when you believed in sin (separation from love). This made you perceive that there is no love outside you either, because you will perceive externally what is within your beliefs. A lack of love in you will show you its absence outside of you. So real love is nowhere to be found.
Instead, what you seek for is a replacement for love, a substitute for love, and for yourself. You are seeking for specialness, some sense of "value" that you want and think is worth having - or which will save you from your emptiness. And you are also trying to find a substitute identity, something which can stand in for who you really are. Something which seems special and can somehow be similar to the love you lost sight of. You want to become spiritual and special and the best you can be.
This is all described in the laws of chaos.
Law #1) The truth is different for everyone - this results from everyone failing to see an equivalent love in themselves. What they see themselves as they believe is truth. If they are not all the same love, their own selves are different and conflicting, so now the truth is different because identities are different.
Law #2) Everyone must sin and deserves attack and death - comes about from having attacked yourself and believing that someone else did it to you. Disowning your own love and your own self was an act of becoming irresponsible, through disassociation, and therefore someone else is responsible for what you are. That means it seems like they took this love from you, so you are justified in attacking back to re-acquire what they stole, or to force them to give it to you.
3) God is believed to agree with your lack of love - since you yourself believe it is true, see love/God as separate, and as having attacked, you believe the truth is that love is no longer love. That means God is not love, so God agrees you are not love, which means God cannot help you to get your love or self back. If neither of you are love, you have to get it somewhere else.
4) You can get from others what you lack - since they stole it you feel justified in getting it from them. In the least, to have them willingly shower you with specialness. In the worst, to rip it from their dying limbs in a murderous attack. What is it that you are trying to get from them? A replacement for the love you lost - specialness and a replacement identity.
In addition to this process, the absence of love compels you to find a substitute in specialness. A lack of love makes the illusory world seem real to you. You are blind to its fantasy because your lack of love makes you feel imprisoned by it, like a needy inmate. Your mind now is in a split state, because you’ve introduced a separation between you and love. Between you and yourself. This has split your mind and you are now split minded, in two minds.
When the mind is split, it sees one half of the split as different to the other in some way. Typically this skews the mind‘s associations where one part of the mind seems to contain illusions of innocence, and the other part illusions of attack/guilt. One part is thought to be your self, the other not yourself. This is disassociation.
The mind associates more with the part which seems innocent as a way to avoid the pain of "no love", ie sin, and relegates the rest of the belief in sin to unconsciousness. This later is projected out and is not associated with as "my self". It is considered "other than me", even though it is inside the same mind. "Ideas leave not their source", so your "enemy" is now inside your own mind, making it able to attack you. It is you attacking you. All attack is self attack. (The secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself).
The part of mind that tries to focus only on an ILLUSION of love, an illusion of innocence, an illusion of spirituality, an illusion of peace and happiness, remains in conscious awareness. It is what has been "permitted" into awareness. "You" then think that this self is ALL of yourself. You do not see the rest, yet alone see it as yourself. You think it is "outside you", because it is external to your persona, but is not outside your mind.
This special part of the mind, the persona, makes the world seem real and then attempts to section it off into "good and bad", "right and wrong", "spiritual and ego". This is because the mind has done the same thing to itself, labeling some parts as innocent and some as guilty. It separates the world and labels some parts or behaviors or diets or clothes or actions as "spiritual" and some parts as "evil". Then it pits them against each other.
The shift towards trying to include and accept only the parts which seem spiritual, and to reject the parts which seem evil, reinforces the artificial sense of sef which your mind is trying to build. It is trying to assemble a fake self, a replacement self, to replace the one you hid from yourself.
Since this all takes place within one "realm", whether your mind or in the world, it means you’ll create an ILLUSION of spirituality, and will try to change the ego into a "more spiritual" self. You’ll surround it with all kinds of things which look and sound spiritual, based on judgement and selecting between illusions.
The problem is that this fake self which is trying to only accept the most spiritual illusions as a sign of awakening, is also attacking the rest of the world, and yourself, to try to get rid of any trace of evil/sin.
In the name of "perfecting your self" - your fake self - you’ll attack your real self constantly to pick it apart and find any little thing wrong with it (which you judged/condemned as true of you), to get rid of that and keep only the best parts. This gradually rips you apart piece by piece. It is actually an act of self destruction, because eventually there will be nothing less. It is self attack in the name of self improvement or "self help".
The more that you try to develop a replacement self, and to make it spiritual, the less there will be of you. It will create a facade of niceness, seeming spiritual, trying to love everyone, being positive, people pleasing, idol worship, wearing the right clothes, saying the right words, getting dressed up for the lord on sundays to asuage guilt, having all the special books and charms and magical things. All to create an illusion of spirituality.
The problem is this spirituality is constantly under attack by the very parts of Self which that same fake self has judged as evil. Having made sin real, the "sinful others" - your own unconscious self, is now your constant enemy. You’ll try to hide from it and avoid it. You’ll try to keep it "in others" or "other than yourself". You’ll see it outside of you and attack it and condemn it to disassociate from it. And yet it will haunt you and keep coming back into your awareness, back into your life, to remind you of what you think of yourself. Because it is in your mind and you can’t make it go away without healing the split.
This fake spirituality takes constant defense. It is exhausting. It also does not work - to undo sin or guilt. Yet it is filled with promise and hope and yearning and striving and trying and being passionate about all these magical illusions of wonderfulness. And it still leads to death, be sure of that.
The more you seek for love the less love you have, the less life you have, the more you will become sick and die. "All sickness is a form of seeking outside of yourself." When this fakeness is pointed out, it is taken as a terrible attack. A horrifying truth. In particular when the special relationship is undermined, or shown to be fake, it can be very upsetting. And so wages the supposed spiritual war between good an evil. Between yourself and yourself.
The ego is simply a device you made to show you a distorted version of the truth. It only has one function, to block love. To shut out spirit. It will never have another function. But a person with fake spirituality will try to change the ego into something spiritual. To take it into the light. To make it be closer to God. This will threaten its destruction, and the "you" who is identified with it, will take this as an attack. This is the source of all ego rebounds, and much sickness, which implements defenses against truth to "protect" the ego.
The problem here is, your sense of identity has become associated with the ego. You are then trying to convert yourself from emptiness into "having love" or "being spiritual", but while still holding onto the ego. This makes you try to change the ego into something spiritual. It cannot change. It cannot become spiritual. It has a fixed function and a one-track mind focused on death. You’ll have a constant bouncing back and forth between fictional spirituality and despair and fear. Identifying with it automatically keeps it. Keeping it and trying to change it into the truth does not work. Ever. It has to be dis-identified from, to reclaim who you are.
But because we have identified with the ego, and we’re tired of suffering, and want to become more spiritual, we try to change "our self", which now is the ego. All this will do is transform the form that the ego is showing up as. It means changing up your life to "look" more spiritual. To do the spiritual things and not the non-spiritual things. To emphasize how evil the evil stuff is, and how spiritual the spiritual stuff is. To create a special little corner of the world safe from the bad stuff. For a while.
You can see many Christians doing this. Not all, but many. Some, in fundamentalist extremes of ego, heavily believe in "good and evil" and will do anything they can in a war against evil to judge it and make it very wrong, while also trying to cultivate an "image" of being more spiritual. This then entails wearing the "Sunday best", being "good", condemning "evil", adjusting behavior, avoiding sinful behavior, and generally creating an illusion of spirituality. It is very judgemental because there is so much separation in it.
You can also see this in most of the world’s religions. People with their false Gods, their idols, their shrines, their special songs, their statues, their rituals and traditions, their special clothing, daily behaviors, sacred images, holy locations, and various other magical things. You also see this in all super-positive approaches (magical unicorns) and all super-negative approaches (witchcraft etc). Both, being a belief in a special external power, or external love, are beliefs in magic. Just different sides of it.
These are all ego distractions of false spirituality. Also the new-age movement with its positive thinking, magical charms and paraphenalia, law of attraction, yoga, special kinds of body activities, etc is all part and parcel of an illusion of spirituality. Things which seem like they will achieve something, but achieve the opposite, is the hallmark of the ego. The test of any genuine spirituality is whether it "really works" to bring about more awareness of love.
All of this is an attempt to "find yourself". It’s the same thing as trying to find love. Believing that it is OUT THERE, and that if you just try hard enough you will find it. The ego has a response for you. It will tell you that you need to make a lot of passionate effort to become spiritual. It will encourage you to do lots and lots of "spiritual practice". Even if it overwhelms you. Why?
Because it denies that you are already very spiritual. It takes you away from the love that is already in you. Having a really strong passion for "finding the truth" and "finding love" and "becoming spiritual" actually makes you feel hopeless and worthless and unloved. It takes you away from the love that you are already. Appreciating what you already have (gratitude for what God has given) is a better strategy.
The more the ego can emphasize how much love you lack, the more it can compel you to seek for it. The more estranged your are from your own self, the more you think you will find it outside you or in someone else. The more you disown your own love, the more you will blame others for making it go away. And the more you try to find it, the LESS you will find it.
You already had it! Seeking for it makes it seem like it’s not here. Seek, and you will not find it. And you will not find love or truth, or health, or happiness, or wholeness, or peace, or willingness, or power, or unity, or joy, "in" the world outside of you. If you are doing that, prepare to be disappointed. This is the ego’s guarantee.
After you have recognized these illusions and have stopped trying to pretend to be loving or spiritual, through radical honesty and authenticity and responsibility, sorting out what is really true and what is really false, and have surrendered the seeking, and have seen through the TRAP of believing that you are not ALREADY love, you will return back to where you started from. This is the "journey without distance". Your destination, the love within you, where God put it, required no real distance at all. To find it, you didn’t need to travel in dreams at all.
Love is already in you. God put it there.
Your SELF, your real identity, is already in you. God put it there. No-one can give it you you and you can’t find it anywhere. Because you have not lost it.
The only problem you have are the blocks to the *awareness* of love’s presence WITHIN YOU. It’s already there!
It’s just covered up. It’s hidden. Love being hidden makes it seem like love has "gone away". This suggests that you really did become sinful, as if you sin made innocence become corrupted. You never did. You just *covered up* your innocence with a cloud of images of sin, and then tried to cover that up with illusions of innocence. Sin did not corrupt your innocence, or make you unworthy of love. It just temporarily blocked your awareness of it being PRESENT, right here, in you, as you, right now.
You have no needs. You need do nothing. You need not seek for love. "You are the love you’ve been looking for." All that is needed for enlightenment is the recognition of this truth. "Enlightenment is a recognition and not a change at all." It means recognizing where love IS, that you ARE IT, accepting that it is COMPLETELY TRUE OF YOU, your willingness to receive it from God, and your willingness to accept it is IN YOURSELF ALREADY! Accepting the atonement is accepting that you never did lose the love that you are.
You already have the light in you. You already have the truth in you. You just don’t believe it’s there or that you’re worthy of it, or that you want it, or that you need it, or that you can have it, or that it hasn’t gone way. Love didn’t leave you. Love didn’t reject you. You left love. This is the inheritance that we threw away. And which is waiting for us to reclaim. God has kept our love safe for us, forever.
We ALREADY HAD EVERYTHING we needed. God already gave it fully and shared it with us. It was after having it that we tried to throw it away. But we could not get rid of it. You can’t make love go away. You can’t get rid of God. But you can deny it is there by blocking awareness of it. Remove the blocts, and hey presto, OH LOOK, I AM ALREADY LOVE!!!! I’ve been the love that I‘ve been trying to find, all along! Surprise!